My Failure

It was the years following my wedding that I really began to be affected mentally and spiritually by the abuse. There is no way to describe the thoughts and feelings I experienced every time I sat through a church service. And I sat through plenty of church services.

After being married a year, the youth minister of FBC (a godly man I hold in the utmost regard to this day) asked me to return as his youth intern. Without a second thought I accepted. I spent the next year and a half as the youth intern at the same church where I was systematically and repeatedly abused by the man who was still the minister of music.

It doesn't make sense to me even now. During that time I was just as responsible for protecting the youth as anyone. Somewhere, buried deep down inside, I knew then that what happened to me was still going on. Knowing and admitting to myself that my relationship with David was wrong was, for me, still a long step from coming to grips with it actually being abuse.

So, for a year and a half I was responsible for the youth. Many of the youth I was responsible for during that time were abused in the exact same way, by the exact same monster. A big part of the healing process for me was coming to the realization that I couldn't blame myself for that year and a half. That I did what I could to stop him, when I was ready and capable of doing it. The thought of the kids I could've saved during that year and a half still hurts, but it's not a guilty hurt, and I know that I was just as incapable of saving those kids as I was incapable of saving the dozens who were abused before me.