Category Archives: abuse survivors

The Real Quiet Place

Posted on by
Reply

In the stories of Jesus’ public ministry there are accounts of people who have been healed of skin diseases which would have set them apart from their communities due to infection prevention measures codified by the Mosaic law.

In some of these stories, Jesus heals them and gives them permission to not tell people they were ever infected with these diseases.

I think this injunction was made (at least in part) to allow them to have a new life, unencumbered by prejudice.

When my family moved to a new place a few years after we found out that our adopted son had sexually assaulted some of our children, I realized that this was our chance to “start anew.”

We had pushed for legal consequences for Charles. We had a good counselor in the aftermath. We moved to protect the children. We were open with everyone in our previous community.

But we chose to continue

To tell our story.

The result has been fascinating and lonely.

There is a lot of prejudice about victims of sexual abuse and their families, maybe especially in churches.

We could be contagious?

Maybe

Or maybe it is our openness that scares them.

Either way, we call it “the island.” We live on an island

An island made of truth and pain and loneliness

With a single, unwavering resident

The one who heals us.

The one who knows this quiet place.

The one who tells us the truth will set us free.

My family is healthy, happy, and stable because we have never tried to hide

The story of our grief

But it can be quiet

On the island.

lighthouse

Posted on by
Reply

I started this blog eight years ago, when it became clear that no one was going to come to our rescue.

At that time the issue was my adopted son, who had sexually assaulted some of my children and some of the other children we knew, was being released from the Texas juvenile system. He would not have to register. His crimes had been lessened in a plea bargain, and then they were to be sealed.

We lived in the house where he had lived, where he had hurt the children.

I started the blog because I didn’t own a gun. I started the blog so there would be a record.

It has become more than all of that, and (at least so far) we have survived.

I believe in writing. I believe words can stand where people have walked away. So that is what lighthouse is about–a blog about fosters

Wherever you may find us.

Burlap Bridegroom

Posted on by
Reply

Any day–today

We

could skitter down the concrete spillway, slide unceremoniously into

This river, dying leaves catch in our hair

We suspect we know who burned the burlap wedding gown used to dress the

Wounded tree

no way the boy could

have mistaken the signs of our ministration

For kindling

Yet, all has been

Inexplicably paid

by The Burlap Bridegroom

Who takes the flames

Restores the river

Revives the tree

And fashions

wedding clothes

Out of light

Matthew 25:10,13 NIV

[10] “But while they were on their way to buy the oil, the bridegroom arrived…[13] “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.

Damned Pictures

Posted on by
Reply

I have grief, things I drag to the Cross.

Pictures so rough there is no other place to take them.

Jesus became horror the day he died.

All those damned pictures

Of the terrible we do or become.

He becomes the damned

Pictures

what if he had not?

Where would I go with this?

If all I had left was prone to burn

And God were just

A consuming fire?

Luke 23:44-45,48 NIV

[44] It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, [45] for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. [48] When all the people who had gathered to witness this sight saw what took place, they beat their breasts and went away.

The Vigilant Ones

Posted on by
Reply

If I were to write a book of fiction for my children I would construct people for them, community, a family, let’s say, a big, sprawling, messy family

Maybe they would live next to some kind of river

Maybe the dogs would talk or the fish would taste like brightly colored jello confections.

Or maybe these fictional people, these purely hypothetical people, would just be back up

The silhouetted figures you might see on the crest of the hill above the sycamore tree as the sun sets

After the dam breaks

When they-you-we

Might need the vigilant ones

The most.

Contemplating Hell

Posted on by
Reply

He says that I have lost my chance with him, as though he is a lottery ticket torn from my grasp by a strong wind in a storm, fluttering away with its winning numbers and it promise of untold riches.

I have lost my chance with him.

A week ago I stood in the Salvation Army and showed my youngest daughter a tee shirt–got love? Become a foster parent.

Her face clouds. Her life was radically altered by my decision to foster parent.

You had your chance with me…

He was small and scratched his face into bloody tiger stripes, he did not speak at almost two years of age. He did not potty train until just before kindergarten. He once desecrated a couch in a strange feral way.

The stories of my chances with him could fill terrible books.

I get it kid, you have a new god now.

But I am haunted by what will happen to you if you don’t have the guts to contemplate

The hell you unleashed on all of us and all it’s damning consequences.

Protect your ass, you mean

Posted on by
Reply

Recently I took an online “course” designed to protect Christian ministries from lawsuits arising from child sexual abuse.

I knew it was going to be annoying, but it was worse than I had anticipated.

Here are some (but definitely not all) of the curriculum deficiencies:

  • There was very little information about helping victims of child abuse
  • Many of the recommendations were protective of the church over the child
  • There were broad, unsubstantiated allegations about the victims of child abuse and their families which included saying that they were mentally disabled and prone to familial dysfunction
  • The course stated and repeated that the adult survivors of child sexual abuse were not emotionally stable, neither able nor willing to process and recover from childhood trauma
  • The methods of ferreting out both abuse and abusers were shot through with harmful stereotypes and inadequate information
  • The course taught the participant to favor in-organization reporting over direct and immediate reporting to law enforcement, legal guardians, and child protective services
  • The test reinforced curriculum biases

I contacted the company directly after I took the course and asked them for information on their source material and bibliography.

No answer.

I am not a rape victim, but I was targeted by at least one pedophile when I was young, and I have children who are childhood sexual assault survivors.

I am not “low IQ,” and my children are all smarter than I am. Had any of us been “low IQ” (term taken directly from course material), we would still deserve help from the law and relief from abuse.

Our individual and collective intelligence was not the reason my children were molested by my adopted son, but it also did not save us from protracted and compounded grief.

First from the felonies,

Later from the way “good people did nothing,” or worse still, did things to let us know they wanted to silence our story.

Jesus said, tell the little children they will always be safe with me.

Yet in order to protect their legal asses big, well-known communities and institutions all over this country are serving up biased, unsubstantiated defamation of childhood rape victims and their families in place of solid, simple procedures to ensure that children are safe in church and that the law is followed.

It should never be “protect my ministry,” over protect the children.

Matthew 18

The parable of the retold

Posted on by
Reply

I remember you

I remember when you ran into the waiting room with your sister

I remember all the warnings and admonitions I got from Martha-the-caseworker and your recently relieved first foster mom

And your blue-as-the-sea implacable gaze across a very misguided table

I remember your speech therapist and her fairy godmother-like delight in seeing you make eye contact and in watching your self-inflicted facial wounds

Heal and not return

Storms all over the place

Storms in you swirled all around us, even when I tried to contain them.