Chapter Three: The Great Lie

"I believe in the sun even when it’s not shining.

I believe in love even when I feel it not

I believe in God even when he is silent."

Scratched in the wall of a cellar in Cologne by Jewish Holocaust survivors

TRIGGER WARNING: This post discusses difficult experiences related to child sexual assault. Please be kind with yourself and feel free to skip if this is not in your best interest.

NOTE: I've felt the nudge to share my story for over ten years. And I've been hesitant to do so. Not because it's still raw, but because it is personal and so individual to me. No two trauma stories are the same, because no two people or situations are the same. I share this experience not to garner pity or set myself as some kind of pillar, but because I think there may be some important lessons to learn from it. In some ways, this is the beginning of a long journey, and it sets up some of the lessons I have learned and am learning along the way. Please take from it whatever serves you and leave the rest.

I was eight years old when I first believed The Great Lie. 

I’m sure I’d been told it before. Kids are pretty resilient. And smart. And they don’t always believe everything they are told. It's a good thing, sometimes.

I was a pretty strong, spunky little girl -- a mop of curls that ran full speed underneath the dining room table because the adult chasing me had to go around (perk of learning to walk at 9 months). I come from a long line of strong, spunky women, so I guess it’s only to be expected.

I had lots of friends and often worked hard to keep up with kids older than me. One such kid was my cousin, Connor. He was only a few years older and I adored him. He was confident, funny, and a bit of a scoff law, testing his mother's limits with a bit of a glint in his eye. His family lived just a few blocks away from mine, so we would often play at each other’s house, sometimes doing what we called a "Double Double" and playing at both houses in one day. Even after his family moved an hour away, I loved playing with Connor at family get togethers.

The summer after I turned eight years old, my family moved to a new house two blocks away, and I was excited for this grand adventure -- new house, new school, new friends, and I'd finally get to learn cursive in third grade.

While my parents and their friends moved all our boxes and furniture, Connor's mom, my Aunt Brenda, agreed to watch my younger sisters and me for the weekend. It was Fourth of July and we were excited to make use of Aunt Brenda's beautiful swimming pool. Aunt Brenda was an amazing seamstress and took us three girls to the fabric store to pick out fabric for cloth dolls. She even fashioned dresses and pants to match, and made them fabric wings and twine halos. She wrote our names and dates on the leg of each doll. I loved my smiling cloth angel with the dark green floral dress and striped pants.

On the 4th of July, Connor's family hosted a huge pool party and invited all their neighborhood friends. Their backyard had a great view of the valley, and as the kids splashed around the pool, the adults stood by the barbecue or sat around tables, chatting and laughing as the sunset dimmed. Connor was playing with a boogie board, running and sliding on it, his usual dare devil self. I wanted in on the fun and asked Connor if I could play with the boogie board. He said I had to get my own, and I asked where I could find one. He told me they were in the garage and pointed in its general direction. So I got out of the pool and with little wet footprints hurried to the nearby garage door.

My cousin followed, and as he opened the door and turned on the light, I was greeted by a cloud of dust, dirt, and earthy smells. I saw before me rows of ATV’s, dirt bikes, surfboards, bicycles, and wheeled vehicles of all kinds. Rows upon rows of gears and metal stacked quasi-neatly leading to the back of the garage. 

My cousin pointed out the boogie boards on the far side. I ran over to grab one and hurried back to the door, eager to get back in the pool. Connor was standing in front of the door with a small smirk on his face, not letting me pass. I thought he was playing with me, so I asked him to move. He wouldn’t budge. So I reached around him to open the door, but found that it was locked. I looked around for a key, and wouldn’t you know it, he stood there, dangling it in front of me. 

“Come on, Connor. This isn’t funny. Let me out.” I swiped for the key, but he pulled it away and buried it in his pocket.

He glowered. “I’ll let you out if you let me__________.“

What he asked me to do was so humiliating and vile to my little girl senses that my immediate reaction was, “No way!” Enraged, I became more adamant. “Let me out!” And I wrestled him to try and get the key away from him. But despite my desperation to get out, I found that my strength was no match to his, and after several minutes gave up the struggle.

I looked for alternative ways out and noticed another garage door on the other side. I ran quickly to the other door and desperately tried to yank it open, but it wouldn’t budge. Connor's voice followed me, stating the obvious, as if taunting me. “That’s locked too.” 

Ferocious and determined, I looked around for any windows, and saw a small window above some shelves in the garage. Thinking I could probably fit through there, small as I was, if I could only climb  across the top of bikes and motor vehicles and reach the shelves. However, as I started my journey, I found many of the bikes, not meant to support someone’s weight climbing across them, were unsteady. Even while trying to climb up and across, I fell down, gouging my shin on the exposed gears of one of the bikes. 

As a thick trickle of red protruded and oozed down my leg, I became angry and discouraged and gave up hope that I could reach the high-up window, which seemed further and further away.

Frantic, I did the last thing I could think to do. My mind reverted back to what my mom had coached me to do if anyone tried to touch me inappropriately: run away and call for help. I took a deep breath, filled my lungs, and then yelled as loud as I could: “Somebody help me!!”

Now, since birth God has blessed me with an independent will and a strong pair of lungs. And if you ask my mother, she would be the first to confirm this. So when I filled my lungs and let out a deep, guttural cry that seemed to rattle the garage, I was confident that someone would hear it and come rushing, banging on the garage door until Connor was forced to open it. After all, didn’t my mom tell me that if ever someone tried to touch me inappropriately I could call for help and someone would help me?

But as the silence settled back in after my mighty wail, there was no banging on the door. Instead, slowly wafted in the happy sounds of a people chatting, adults laughing, and kids splashing, seemingly oblivious of my desperate situation just feet away. 

And that’s when he said it. 

The Great Lie. 

“No one can hear you.”

And as my last cry for help slowly settled like dust on the floor and was gradually replaced with the laughing, happy sounds of the party, I believed him. I believed the Great Lie. 

I stopped. I knew he was right. How could they hear me, a small girl, over the music and the party and the fireworks and the happiness? So I believed him. I believed the Great Lie. 

And I broke. 

Three deep gutteral sobs came from deep within. I knew the only way I was getting out of there was by acquiescing and doing what he said. There was no other way. 

So I did the only thing I could think of in that situation. I prayed. One of those soulful honest prayers only a child can give. The prayer of a child pleading for mercy before a seemingly impossible monster. A desperate plea for God to be with me, to protect me, to lessen what was going to happen, and perhaps even to forgive me for what I was about to do. 

Then I turned around, slowly lowered my swimming suit, and waited. My cousin did what he said he would. I remember being surprised he didn’t go further. I was in such a vulnerable state that he could have done anything and I couldn’t have stopped him. 

It was over sooner than I thought it would be. I quickly pulled my suit back up and headed to the door, eager to get out, to be free before he changed his mind about his end of the bargain. 

But as I approached to let myself out, I heard his voice. “Don’t you want this?”

I turned, and the look on his face was one of pure shadow, a look so vile. His eyes were dark and sneering, and there in his hand, as if waiting for me to take it, was the price of my innocence. A boogie board. 

To this day, I’m still not sure if I took the boogie board or snubbed my cousin and walked past, hoping to retain any semblance of dignity I had left. I'm pretty sure I took it just to be done. 

The rest of that night and honestly the next few days were a blur. I remember my aunt feeding us Cheerios with orange juice the next morning because they were out of milk, and her cheerful chit chat as I sat across the table from Connor, as if nothing had happened. 

After my dad came to pick us up, I was rushed into a busy world full of new house and boxes, a five-week cross-country vacation in our 40-foot RV. Then coming back to our new home and starting at my new school a few days later. The incident and shame of "what I had done" seemed to get forgotten in layers of everyday life.

But the seeds of the Great Lie had been planted.  And every now and again the dark monster of shame reared it’s ugly head in my life until I managed to quiet it again. With the Great Lie was the belief that I was a terrible person, that if my parents found out what I had done they wouldn’t love me anymore, and that God knew my dark secret and hated me for it. I remember walking the playground of my elementary school by myself, praying to God, pleading for him to forgive me. God and I had many conversations on that playground. But that’s a conversation for another time. 

So life continued as if nothing had happened. I was smart and learned at school, made new friends, played in my backyard, and began taking flute lessons from my grandmother. 

I kept the rag doll I made with my aunt that weekend for years, with the date of the “incident” written on her leg in curling letters. 7-4-94. Her twine halo became frayed and eventually lost, along with her fabric pants, leaving her legs and nether regions exposed. Fitting. I think I finally threw her away in high school, hoping to discard her along with the memories of that time. And it worked for a while. But memories are not so easily discarded, often showing up as unwanted visitors at the most inconvenient time. 

The lie that no one could hear me lived within me for a long time. I remember family events as an adult where I would be talking, my mouth would be moving, but I felt like no words were coming out. I’d always loved singing, and was one of the loudest singers in Primary. But as I continued to sing through high school and college, I struggled to sing out, especially in a one-on-one setting. My voice would freeze up auditioning for solos. I had voice teachers routinely tell me that I wasn’t connecting with the rest of my body (which is another issue) and that it sounded like my voice was caught in the back of my throat. I struggled to speak up, to voice my opinions, and to express my feelings. Turns out feelings are a package deal -- if you want to feel one, you need to feel all.

After I walked out of that garage, I did the best I could to forget it ever happened, or to tell myself that it wasn’t that big of a deal or didn’t really affect me. Many of my memories became hazy and I rarely thought of the incident through most of my growing up years. 

However, in my adult years, when things in life seemed like they were going off the rails and I started meeting with a therapist, I realized I had to figuratively visit that garage again, to face and seeking understanding about just what happened there. So for a period of time (and with professional mental help) I took my questions back to that garage. Why did I “let” him touch me? Why didn’t I fight him more? And the biggest one: Why didn’t God protect me? Why didn’t He answer my prayer? 

As I asked questions, memories started coming back. At first, the memories that opened up made me angry and I often felt like I was that raw little girl experiencing the trauma all over again. Some memories came back as a flood of eye-opening images (like remembering I did try to escape), some more as a gradual lifting of the haze (like seeing myself as a small girl crying in the middle of the garage). Some memories were torturturous realizations (like remembering the boogie board payment) and some were gentle reminders of God’s love. Like the sweet reminder when I prayed that night, I asked God to lessen what was about to happen, to soften it somehow and protect my spirit from the more damaging effects. And then feeling Heaven's heart break and reassure me that it would.

I still visit that place in my memory every now and then, less frequently. Now when I visit, I don’t seek more answers to angry questions or understanding for struggles as an adult. Now I go to witness, and to send tender compassion towards that little girl.

I tell you these things got because I’m the only one or even because this incident was especially dramatic in any way. On the spectrum of child sexual abuse, it is on the mild side. It was a one-time incident, the age gap wasn’t great, the nature of the abuse wasn’t especially severe, and I was older than some of my less fortunate counterparts. 

But the Great Lie is the same. No one heard us. And when we believe the Great Lie, there are so many other lies that came along with it. Lies like we are worthless, we are to blame, we are shameful and would never be loved or worthy of love. That if other people really knew what happened, they would be disgusted with us. The adversary is super skilled at repackaging the Great Lie. And sometimes we don’t even realize we are believing it

So much of my work has become learning to believe and trust God when He says that I am worth it, that He does love me, that I can repent and learn from my mistakes. Some days are easier to believe those things. And others I have to choose to have faith, even when I don’t feel it. I have to choose to believe God loves me. Even when I think He is silent.