These Ashes

This post comes from Daniel Eichelberger.

* * * * *

I’m like a man poking through the cold ashes of a long-dead fire—bent, intently combing, sifting, and looking for remnants of a childhood untouched by pain, and where innocence is unshattered by the knowledge of forbidden things. I’ve been poking for a long time and coming up with nothing.

What kind of treasures can I really find in the leftovers of an inferno, the heat of which reduces everything to a substance nearly as light as air? If sifting through them is futile, why don’t I just give up the search? Why can’t I just leave them alone?

Some of my true friends probably silently ask the same question as they observe my persistent behavior. What power is there in the remains of experiences long past? They never ask those questions in my presence. A few of them even poke around with me in this gray-and-black mess. Although I appreciate their support, they really don’t know what they’re looking for or understand the attraction such a fruitless task holds for me.

Neither do I.

Maybe the remnants of a childhood aren’t what I seek. Perhaps it’s redemption.

It Was a Crime

When we were exploited as children, we were the victims of a crime. Our perpetrators broke the law. Most of us understand that when we read about people like Jerry Sandusky and pedophile priests. And yet, most of us rarely think that way when we look at our own lives.

They robbed us of childhood. They stole a precious part of our lives.

To admit that reality can be a source of freedom. It’s like saying, “You victimized me and left me this way.” (That doesn’t mean we must stay the victim, but that’s where many of us need to start the journey.)

A reader of this blog, Roger Rowe, wrote to me privately, admitting that wasn’t his real name, which is all right. Here is a slightly edited version of what he wrote:

I underwent therapy and couldn’t seem to make any progress. I felt guilty and filled with self-condemnation. After about the 10th session, my therapist said, “The TV news reported a home invasion and the intruder shot and killed five couples. If they hadn’t lived in that house, they would be alive today.” 

“That’s crazy,” I said. “They did nothing to—”

“So how does it feel to exonerate your abuser? You’ve taken the blame on yourself.”

That was the turning point for me. I was blaming the victim (myself) for what was done to me.

Are you still blaming the victim?

Excusing

“She couldn’t help it,” I once said of my female perpetrator. “Her father made her his sexual partner after the death of his wife.”

For a long time, I used that as a way to excuse her. “She couldn’t help it. It was behavior she learned as a child.” That’s true, but it doesn’t pardon her for sexually assaulting me.

I excused the old man who molested me. “He was such a lonely man.”

More than just excusing the culprits in my life, by defending them (and I was defending), I didn’t face my anger.

But one day that changed. I went out for a late afternoon run by a small lake and (fortunately for me) no one else was around. For at least an hour I raged at the two now-dead people. I was angry at myself for defending their actions. After the venom poured out, I allowed myself to grieve over my stolen childhood.

I finished my run, sank on a bench, and cried for a long time. “I’ll learn to forgive you,” I said to both culprits, “but right now I want to feel my anger. You hurt me and made my childhood sad and lonely. I didn’t deserve what you did to me!”

It was almost dark by the time I left the park. I didn’t feel vindicated or happy. At the time I was worn out, but deep within was the sense that I had faced reality. I had pronounced them both guilty of murdering the innocence of my childhood.

When I no longer defend the guilty,

I can have compassion on the innocent.

The Fantasy Life (Part 1 of 2)

I wonder how many of us had a rich fantasy life. I never thought much about that until recently. I had a vivid imagination and put myself in every kind of troubled, problematic situation and always, always came out victorious.

As a child that fantasizing probably “saved” my life. I learned to pretend, to imagine a happy life where everything was fine. During intense periods of pain, I discovered solace in my fantasy world. In school, I was skinny. Short. Not athletic. One of the two or three kids the captains argued over. “You take him this time. I got stuck with him for the last game.”

My late friend Steve Grubman told me that he invented an imaginary friend who was there for him in those painful times. That was how he coped.

Many of us received temporary peace through our imagination or pretense. And we can look back and be thankful that we could face some of our problems, even if they were only in our imagination.

As I thought about fantasy, I remembered the verses from the famous love chapter of 1 Corinthians. The Apostle Paul said that when he was a child he thought and behaved as a child, but after he became an adult, he pushed those things out of his mind.

I still have fantasies, but I’ve noticed in the last 10 years they’re far more benign and rather fun. I focus on events or experiences when I relive a situation and think of what I might have said to make me smug. But I don’t need them any more to escape an impoverished, stolen childhood.

Do you?

Victimized Again

(By Cecil Murphey)

I heard comments on TV after the sentencing of Jerry Sandusky for sexually molesting ten boys—and most people know there were far, far more. At his sentencing, one of the survivors said "You had the chance to plead guilty and spare us the testimony. Rather than take the accountability, you decided to try to attack us as if we had done something wrong."

As I listened to that statement and the rest of the report, two words hit me: Victimized again.

To his great credit, Judge Cleland said to Sandusky, "The crime is not only what you did to their bodies but to their psyches and their souls and the assault to the well-being of the larger community in which we all live."

Sexual molestation shatters our lives. Even after we begin to heal, we still face being misunderstood, questioned, and even contradicted. That victimizes us again. Cleland and the jurors understood; the "larger community" doesn't seem to grasp the meaning—or perhaps they're too uncomfortable to ponder the message.

When we need compassion, we feel accused; when we speak, others tell us to be quiet; when we need to be believed, they question our integrity.

I doubt that any of us expected an apology from Sandusky. But he not only maintained his innocence and made a horrible statement, "I would cherish the opportunity to be a little candle for others as my life goes on as they have been a huge light to me."

(This post first appeared at Joyful Heart Foundation.)

Separation Anxiety

(This post comes from Anonymous.)

Sexual abuse began so early in my life that I missed the chance to become my own person in the way that I should have at an early age. My initial identity was formed as someone who existed to bring another a sick pleasure.

The secret use of my body to satisfy someone older and bigger was the first place that I felt valued as a human being and that identity stuck to me like hot glue. Fortunately for me, I have come to know that that was only a false identity and not the real me.

Babies and small children often suffer through what we know as separation anxiety. Having been so close to the mother in the womb and at the breast results in fear and anxiety when infants experience separation. I have experienced a different form of separation anxiety as I have faced the reality that the early identity formed in me on was the wrong one. Or worse, that it was forced on me by my abusers. I became an object and not a human to them and then to myself.

My abuse stretched out over many years, and I was acting it out in multiple bisexual relationships primarily as the sex-slave of others. I lived to pleasure others and took that role because it was the only thing I knew. I was the powerless one and the partner always the strong one. It was sheer hell in so many ways, even though I thought I wanted this. I didn’t know that I was living out the wrong identity for many years after the abuse. Eventually, truth broke through.

I've spent many years untangling the effects of abuse. I've made great strides in separating myself from the false identity forced on me and in developing the real me, the man who has power over my own mind and body. This causes anxiety at times when I seem to fall back into old patterns of thinking. Like a baby, I don’t know who I am apart from the abuse that "mothered" me in many ways. But with each day I find that I won’t die becoming the real me.

I will live and I will live well.

"My Inner Dialogue"

A therapist on the third segment of the Oprah Winfrey show on male sexual abuse brought out something I've done, but I haven't written about. He spoke about the wounded inner child. My friend David refers to it as "my little kid."

A few months after I began my healing journey, I had several dreams one night. In the first, I saw myself as an adult and I held an infant in my arms. I knew it was myself and I said to him, "I'm Cec and you're little Cecil. I'm sorry I wasn't able to take care of you in childhood, but I'm here now."

In the second, little Cecil was a toddler and sitting in a high chair. I stroked his cheek and said, "I couldn't help you then, but I'm here now."

In each dream the little child was older. In the final dream, Cecil must have been a teen, although he was still shorter than Cec. I took his hand and we walked down the street together. "You were so brave," I told him. "You survived and you're healthy. Your brothers didn't make it, but you did. I'm proud of you."

I stopped, turned to him, and hugged him. Then I awakened.

The meaning was obvious, but it started an inner dialogue with me. Even today, probably 20 years after that dream, I still talk to the boy. I remind him of his survival and thank him for not committing suicide (which he tried to do once).

"I like who I am now. I like who I am because you were brave and kept fighting. You didn't let Dad or others defeat you. You were alone and had no one but you kept on. I'm strong today because you were strong then."

Years ago I read something by Marsha Sinetar in which she wrote about the "invulnerables," whom she referred to as those who survived an oppressive childhood and by every law of human behavior should have failed.

I'm an invulnerable.

And I'm grateful to little Cecil, who showed his courage and refused to quit.

Loss of Nurture

A third serious loss--and there are many others--is the loss of a healthy, nurturing environment. Children deserve to be loved. We can't protect them from falling when they start to walk or from fumbling the first time they try to catch a ball. But shouldn't they have--and don't they deserve to have--an atmosphere of acceptance and love?

Children need to know that they are wanted and that they are loved. They also need to know that no matter how bad the world is, they have families to protect them. This isn't to blame parents for the abuse of their children by someone else. It is to point out again the loss that abused kids feel. When kids can't feel protected and safe, they've lost something that they can never regain. Because of not being loved and valued as children, it's difficult for them as adults to create a sense of healthy self-esteem and worth.

--excerpted from When A Man You Love Was Abused by Cecil Murphey, Kregel Publications, 2010, pages 44-45.

Wearing Masks (Part 2 of 2)

"I feel like I'm so many different people," Albert said. It was the second meeting of a state-sponsored group of men who had survived sexual abuse in childhood. He went on to explain that he behaved a certain way with close friends, differently with casual acquaintances. "At work I don't act like I do when I'm with friends."

"Maybe you have a handful of masks to choose from," one man said.

We discussed Albert's situation and we finally realized that all of us wear masks. Like Albert, we relate to people in a social setting differently than we do to people who don't know us well.

"So who is the real me?" Albert asked. "I don't know."

"Probably all of them," I said. Not everyone agreed with me, but I believe we show only parts of ourselves at any one time. Another way to say it is that we wear safe masks when we need to do so. That is, we may be friendly, even outgoing, but we choose how much we want to self-reveal.

I also admitted that sometimes our masks show who we'd like to be—that may be a form of hypocrisy, but it's also a mask to hide behind.

The less we trust, the more we feel the need to wear masks and convince people we're who we purport to be. It's safe. And it's actually not difficult.

But it's not freedom. We have to size up the situation and the safe side of us breaks out. For me, it's not whether to wear masks—because we all do at certain times—but we need to be aware that they are masks. Or better still, why don't we get rid of the masks and decide to show select parts of ourselves?

In the Woods

(By J.B. Mahugh)

Those woods were as much mine as anybody's. A few hundred yards from the house where I grew up was a small, forested vacant lot. It led to a large clearing, encircled by a few fallen timbers that started to decay years before my family and I arrived in the area.

With the advantage of time and distance, I've started to see those woods more clearly for what they are, a simple stand of trees. But that spring day in 1968, I wasn't quite five years old. They were still a place of enchantment.

Was it boredom or curiosity that lured me on? I can't say. Whatever it was, I followed four older boys I'd never met. When they looked back, they laughed at my trying to tag along. But they didn't stop me.

I was soon with them in the seclusion of the clearing. One boy ordered me to take down my pants and to lie on my back in the dirt. It didn't feel right but I did what I was told. As I lay there for what felt like a long time, pine needles pressed against my bare bottom and the back of my legs as they thrust pointed sticks into my private parts. Laughter intensified and increased as the voices jeered and belittled my small shivering body.

An intruder entered the woods. "What are you doing to him? You leave him alone!" It was my mother.

They scattered. She told me to pull my pants up. I did and we walked home.
That was the last anybody spoke of what happened that day in those woods for another twenty-eight years.

It took me nearly three decades to recall what occurred in those woods when I was small and those woods were still mine as much as anybody's. After that day they became something else too.

They became my woods of shame. And it would be years more before I'd clear out the debris left behind, rotting away inside my head.

Three Thoughts

(By Tom Edward)

Unresolved childhood sexual abuse, or any type of issue, doesn't disappear just because you grow up or ignore it.

Past troubles are manifested in your adult life in different ways whether you realize it or not.

Coping mechanisms may have helped us as children, but they can be destructive and damaging in adulthood.

--Tom Edward is the founder of Healing Broken Men. For more information, visit www.healingbrokenmen.com.

Michael's Story

NOTE: Michael was neglected by both parents and terrorized by an alcoholic father. He was physically and emotionally abused by his mother. Michael started to drink at age 11 and became an alcoholic until he was 28 years old. In early 2010, he almost died of acute liver failure because of the abuse of prescription drugs. Here's the rest of his story:

My elderly grandparents lived with us when I was young. My parents seemed too busy or detached to nurture me and show me affection, so I often went downstairs to sit in my Granny’s lap. She was my comfort, sang songs for me, and made me laugh. Granny told scary stories and took me for walks.

Granny is also the one who sexually molested me when she gave me my baths. How could I face that? The only one who thought I was worth spending time with, who took time to enjoy me for who I was—her loveable grandchild— wasn't who I thought she was. She robbed me of my innocence.

Through those days in the hospital, when I suffered from acute liver failure, my wife stuck with me. That's when I finally realized that nothing I could do would make her emotionally abandon me or leave me. I was able to tell my wife what Granny did. Then I told a counselor. I broke down and wept and he told me it was okay to cry. He was compassionate and he understood, just as my wife had understood.

I am beginning to realize how much abuse has affected my life. I'm grateful to be alive and have opportunity to heal. I'm grateful to courageous survivors who have dared to tell their stories so that I could gain the courage to tell mine.

We Are Survivors

About three years into my recovery, I became part of a year-long, state-sponsored group called Adult Male Survivors of Childhood Sexual Assault.

I learned invaluable lessons by participating in those every-Monday-evening sessions: I was with others who had the same issues of low self-esteem as I did. I felt camaraderie with other broken men. Connecting with them helped me to stand strong.

On the last day, the state-appointed therapist said to me, "You're a survivor. You didn't fail; an adult failed you."

I am a survivor.

An Overview of Absurdity

(By Jackson Douglas)

I’m often hesitant to share my story because it often feels less important than the stories of others. In comparison I was, and am, lucky. But the honest truth is that a small wound unattended can be as dangerous as a major wound that is properly addressed. Many times we are tempted to try to push through the pain and hurt without asking for help.

My own story begins with a young girl leading me away from the other children into another room where she had stayed. A place for us. I remember that I wanted to watch cartoons but she started taking off my clothes and then my mother walked in and stopped us. I was four. Four years old and already I was awake and looking for more. I will not lie to you. My parents were great and my childhood was wonderful. There was no abuse at home, but I still didn’t know how to talk to them about what was already stirring in me.

Then came David. David was the youth pastor at our church and he took a particular personal interest in me and my friends. The four of us were all between twelve and fourteen and he took us out of the Wednesday night service and into a “Bible study” where we talked about sex. It was exciting and we were all curious. I distinctly remember the time when he called me into his office to speak with me privately. Once the door was closed, he asked to look at my genitals to see ‘how I was developing.’ I told him “no” and he accepted it, but later betrayed me and told my mother some of the things that I had been talking about in our group.

David introduced us all to pornography and masturbation during these “Bible studies.” We were less than thirty feet away from our parents in the back of the church, but we were still worlds away. I wasn’t raped or physically fondled so the temptation is to deny that the experience affected me on a deeper level or to convince myself that it is less important or less meaningful. But I struggle to this day to abstain from pornography. Some days I win. Some days I don’t. I see the hurt and shame that it causes my wife and I wonder what type of monster I am that I still keep doing it.

I remember the times that I’ve made her cry and promised that this would be the last time only to disappoint her again days later. I fear for my children and keep an overly vigilant watch lest they fall prey to the same fate that I did. So it has not only affected me deeply but also affected my family as well. David is now dead. He died of AIDS two years ago, but he still haunts me. Don’t cheapen your story because it is not as dramatic or as horrific as another man’s story. Your story has weight because it is your story and it happened to you.

God Can Heal My Son

(By Anonymous)

My daughter informed us that my son told her he was gay. He admitted to having been abused by at least two people when he was a young boy. In his late teens he attended a party where he was brutally raped. Do I need to tell you how my heart shattered? My dad was an abuser. I suspect strongly he was one of my son’s molesters.

Every part of me wanted to protect my children and I found out I had failed to do that. After my own devastation at growing up in an abusive home, I had done everything I could think of to provide a safe place for my own children. Believe me, I talked to God about this. How could this happen to yet another generation?

I pray for my son's healing. He's a wonderful person--a broken person. I'm not discouraged, because I have faith. Faith is the hope of things to come. And in my case, it's based on God's track record in my own life. My son lives, as I do, in a sinful world and the consequences of others' choices pours over onto us sometimes. But God raises us up when we call on him. I know He can heal my son because he healed me.

"It Isn't Really True!"

(By Dann Youle)

When I first discovered (uncovered or whatever you want to call it) that I had been sexually abused as a boy, in my head I heard myself saying, "But it isn't really true!"

Denial was such a defense in those early days. I had been able to deny I'd been abused for 28 years, so because I thought I recalled something now, did that suddenly make it true?

This was the beginning of what I thought was my going crazy. I felt split off from myself: I didn't know who I was and the denial was the only way I could survive. I sometimes wondered if I would or could take my next breath. It was the wildest, weirdest feeling.

One day these thoughts raced through my head:

It really isn't true.

It really isn't true.

IT really isn't true.

It really isn't true.

It really isn't true.

It really isn't true!

"God, You can't expect me to believe this and you can't expect me to live if it is true!"

It was at that moment I felt God say to me, "You don't believe it can be true, I wish it weren't—but do you believe you can breathe? I give you breath, Dann; I will breathe for you."

In that moment, even though it was so hard, I realized I was more alive than ever. I felt such intense pain, but all the same it was glorious. Jesus was letting me know that I didn't have to be afraid. I might be scared to death in that moment that I was going to die, but I didn't have to fear anything, even if I did.

I have found that this phenomenon is generally true of men who have been abused. Until we can come out of that denial and get to the pain, the healing never begins.

When I was trying to convince myself that it wasn't true, there was something I needed to be in touch with even if it was painful. It is like a gentle but persistent wake-up call that God uses to point me to Him.

The it-really-isn't-true response is rare for me these days. If I have to feel the pain, there is a good reason for it. It's not that I enjoy the pain, but I find that I can find Jesus in the middle of it. He feels my pain and understands pain Himself. When I think of where my sin put Him I know that He has felt my pain in ways that I can't even begin to imagine. To know the depths of pain He has felt has allowed me to trust Him more and more in depths of my pain.

So, yes, it really is true! I was abused—horribly, terribly, but not unredemptively. The pain my past abuse causes at times seems unbearable, but the healing is sweet and real.

My Story of Abuse

(By Thomas Edward)

I was the martial arts tiger--rough and tough. When the convenience store was held up that night, I disarmed the robber and smashed him into the wall. I was steel on the outside, but no martial arts training prepared me for the battle of facing the aftermath of childhood sexual abuse.

Childhood sexual abuse doesn't happen in Christian homes, right? Especially not in the home of a gospel preacher. Wrong.

Today as an adult I realize people are imperfect, but try explaining that concept to a six-year-old child whose trust was betrayed by an illicit familial relationship of sexual abuse. I still remember six of the perpetrators, and I hope you'll trust me these aren't false memories. I still have a burn mark as a constant reminder of sexual abuse and torture for rebelling.

My earliest encounters occurred at six years of age and stopped around age fourteen. Numerous abusers, some family, and other close friends who groomed me, knew I was the tender young lamb to be preyed on. There are many stories I could share with you, but I’ll share one.

Steve came to live with us during his divorce. He was a cool guy. He was masculine and had time for me, not like my father, who spent time with me only to discipline me. Steve often teased me about girls, so I felt comfortable and trusted him. When I tried to talk with Dad about girls and the birds and bees, he told me to look it up in the dictionary.

Steve was an avid fisherman and we often headed up to the lake. He bought me anything I needed for the trip: bait, snacks, or lures. As we walked and talked, he always put his hand on my shoulder, like he was my good friend. I trusted Steve. During such a tumultuous time in life, pre-adolescence, I had already been sexually abused for five years and it felt great having a friend.

We had gone to one fishing spot many times, but on one particular adventure something was different. As we sat and fished on the bank, Steve reached across me for a soda, and he "accidently" spilled it on my pants. As he tried to wipe and rub the soda out of my lap, physiological events started happening to my body. He said it was okay and natural and nothing to be embarrassed about. He unzipped me as he tried to dry off my pants.

That was how it began. Before I knew it, he was doing things to me. It felt strange but sometimes exciting at the same time. It was different from the other sexual abuse instances.

Fast forward twenty years later when my college roommate and I cruised to the theater to watch a movie. From the title and review of the movie, it seemed like a good murder mystery. That is, until they showed that the person was sexually abused, tortured, and murdered.

To this day I can't fully express the powerful emotions and thoughts triggered by the film. My mind flashed with images that had been buried for decades. I couldn’t stop them. I saw faces and people. I saw violations and betrayals, sexual abuse, and torture. Rejection flooded my mind. "I have to leave," I told my roommate.

The floodgates were opened. I cried, trembled, agonized, sobbed, and experienced uncontrollable outbursts, rage, anger, fear, doubt, and hopelessness in the next 36 hours. I experienced record depression and began a suicide death march.

Something stopped me. God brought a caring friend into my life. Where other Christians had rejected and ignored me, he comforted me. The healing began.

Thirteen years down the road, I began a ministry in Seattle called Healing Broken Men. I want to help men like me who have lived with the terrible secret. Some battle addictions with food, sex, money, power; others become workaholics and have serious relationship issues. Such dysfunctions are the manifested fruits on their tree of life, but at the root and origin is the secret of childhood or adult sexual abuse.

Thomas Edward is a speaker and the author of HEALING A MAN'S HEART. His desire is to help men of faith experience freedom from the pain of childhood sexual abuse. For more information about Thomas, his book, or his Healing Broken Men workshops, visit www.healingbrokenmen.com.

Lasting Effects

The impact of sexual abuse can be devastating and it is long lasting. Because you were a child, and you were victimized by someone—and most of the time it was someone you trusted.

The first thing you need to know is this: The sexual abuse was not your fault. You may even be told that you did something wrong, but that person lied. You were a victim; you were an innocent child.

Most of the adult survivors with whom I've talked told me that they grew up feeling something was wrong with them. They believed they caused the abuse and blamed themselves.

You may have tried to talk about the molestation and no one listened. Until recent years, too many adults refused to acknowledge that such things occurred. If that happened to you, you have probably felt inadequate, embarrassed, isolated, guilty, shameful, and powerless. Then you probably reacted by suppressing this as a shameful secret.

For example, I was once involved with a men's group. One member, Greg, said that when he was seven, he wanted to tell his mother that his own father was sexually abusing him. One night at dinner, he said, "Daddy has been pulling down my pants and doing bad things to me."

"Eat your dinner," his mother said.

His two siblings said nothing; Dad continued to eat. That was the last time Greg opened his mouth about his abuse until he was thirty-one years old. That's when he joined a group of survivors of male sexual assault.

Research now affirms the link between the abuse and the effects. Each of us needs to be able to admit that the long-term effects are powerful and include poor self-esteem, difficulty trusting others, anxiety, feelings of isolation, self-injury and self-mutilation, eating disorders, sleep problems, depression, self-destructive tendencies, sexual maladjustment, and substance abuse.

Moving Beyond the Abuse

"It's the past. Forget it and move on," my youngest brother, Chuck, said to me. We had both been sexually assaulted by the same person. He didn't admit being sexually molested, but he didn't deny it either. On the few occasions when I tried to talk to him about it, his answer was, (1) "You can't undo the past," (2) "We don't have to think about those things," or (3) "That stuff happened back then." His words implied that we need only to forget the past, leave it behind, and it's gone.

If only it were that simple.

Chuck died after years of trying to cure his pain through alcohol. I don't know if the pain he tried to medicate was the abuse, but I suspect it was. On rare occasions when he was drunk, he made oblique references to "that mess in childhood."

Outwardly, Chuck wanted to get past the sexual molestation and get on with his life. So why didn't he "move on" with his life?

I had a second brother named Mel, also an alcoholic. He was married five times and died of cirrhosis at age 48. Unlike Chuck, Mel wouldn't talk about our childhood. "There's nothing back there to talk about," was the most he ever said.

I write about my two brothers because both of them seemed determined to get past the abuse of childhood by forgetting, denying, or ignoring. That approach doesn't work.

We don't forget—not really. We don't forget because childhood abuse affects our lives and shapes our attitudes about people and relationships. Some guys want to hurry and get over it, but it's not something to get over and to move on.

Abuse happened to us. Until we accept it and face what it has done to our lives, we don't really move forward. We only live unhealed lives.

Cecil Murphey's Story (Part 1 of 2)

In some ways I'm one of the lucky male survivors: I forgot what happened to me. As I would realize later, it became my method of survival. For years the pain of abuse lay buried deeply. Despite the repression (which is what forgetting is), I grew up living with the effects of the abuse, even though I no longer remembered my abuse until a series of emotional disruptions in 1985 brought them to the surface.

My memories didn't begin to surface through the intervention of a therapist. An area of controversy today, called the False Memory Syndrome, suggests that many who claim childhood abuse have "false" memories inadvertently planted by therapists. Even though my best friend, David Morgan, was with me from the beginning of my healing, he carefully avoided any intervention. One of my brothers and two of my sisters later corroborated many of my childhood memories.

Those abusive experiences had left their mark on my life. Like thousands of other abuse victims, I struggled because of my

• lack of trust
• fear of abandonment
• sense of loneliness and aloneness

I became a serious Christian in my early twenties. Months after my conversion, I met Shirley and we later married. We had five or six problem-free years, but a single event changed our marriage. I had been gone for nearly two weeks and when I came home, Shirley was in bed. I climbed in beside her. In the dark, she turned over and touched me. I froze.

Feelings of anger and revulsion spread through me—such a thing had never happened before in our marriage. I couldn't talk about it, and I couldn't respond to her. I pushed her arm away and mumbled something about being exhausted.

I lay awake a long time trying to figure it out. What's wrong with me? I asked myself repeatedly. No matter how much I prayed, I couldn't understand my reaction.

Over the next several years, occasionally I had similar reactions. Looking back, I realize it happened only when she initiated any affection that I hadn't anticipated. Each time I froze, I felt guilty, questioned my masculinity, and silently begged God to show me what was wrong with me. Slowly my seemingly irrational feelings decreased, and life seemed to take on a loving normalcy again.

One day I went out for a 12-mile run. I came home crying. The painful past finally broke through. I had a memory—vague, unclear, but a memory nonetheless—of the old man undressing and fondling me. I also remembered the female relative who assaulted me. Over the next few months, other childhood memories crowded into my consciousness. Those remembrances hurt, and I had never before felt such inner pain. Even though engulfed by shame, embarrassment, guilt, and a sense of utter worthlessness, I had to talk to someone. Haltingly, nervously, I told Shirley.

Once she got over the initial shock, she said exactly what I needed to hear. "I don't understand this, but I'm with you."

Of course she didn't understand. How could she? I didn't even understand myself.

I also told David and he hugged me. I don't recall anything he said, but I knew he was there with me and would be at my side as I slayed the dragons of my past.