2005

"Enemy, don't laugh at me.  I have fallen, but I will get up again.  I sit in the shadow of trouble now, but the Lord will be a light for me.  I sinned against the Lord, so he was angry with me, but he will defend my case in court.  He will bring about what is right for me.  Then he will bring me out into the light, and I will see him set things right." Micah 7: 8-9 (New Century Bible)

My Bible was my necessary food as I made my way back to God.  Micah 7:8-9 became my life verse, and I quoted it daily, knowing that my responsibility was to get up again and start walking with God.  His responsibility was to show me where to go.  I sent these verses to my father with a note explaining briefly how they were changing my heart.  I did not want him to depend upon me for spiritual guidance because there was too much room for manipulation on his part if I pulled in that close to him again.  "Please, Father, give Daddy his own, authentic relationship with You."  My daily prayer.

For a second time, Daddy did not receive jail time for his molestation charges; however, the court appointed a trained chaperone to escort him to church services because vulnerable children would inevitably be present. That is how Daddy became friends with Jesse, a Christian man who volunteered to watch over the sad elderly convicted felon who was a member of Jesse's church.  Accountability is a powerful deterrent against recidivism and an effective agent for the stripping off of the false self in order to expose the real self.  Countless hours of confrontation and conversation, of confession and contrition, bonded my father to Jesse in trust as God began to peel away the layers of manipulative masking the pedophile father had worn for decades.  The process was deeply painful and was the catalyst for ugly arguments with Jesse.

Court ordered counseling was also once again mandated.  This time, however, Daddy was less reticent to expose himself to the process.  He was required to journal and to complete probing homework assignments.  His first task seemed to be coming to grips with the fact that his homosexual pedophilia was wrong! Justification and denial had been twin companions of his for so long that they had to be slain before light could be shed on the abject depravity of his actions.

The love and support of the very congregation Daddy had sinned against was nothing short of miraculous.  If my father is in the presence of the Lord today it is because the people of his church loved Daddy despite his sin, giving him the freedom to seek a merciful, gracious Father. The church became his lifeline in their compassion.

Daddy had been trapped for most of his life in a dark pit, stuck in the deep, thick clay that made his movements constricted and kept him from climbing to the light.  The decision to escape this pit of addiction, helped along by his second debasing arrest, was an arduous choice, at best.  My father had his first sexual experience at the age of twelve, with a man.  By the time he was fifteen, he had had other homosexual encounters.  His sexual history necessarily had barnacled to it every fathomable manipulation - lying, justifying, minimizing and blaming.  In order to throw off the darkness of the pit, Daddy would have to experience the blinding light of revelation not only on the perils of pedophilia, but on the reprobate actions he had always employed to live his covert lie.  Had Daddy not had Jesse, he might have lacked the raw courage to boldly look at the pedophile he was.

On June 19, 2005, I received a letter from Daddy.

Proverbs 3:11-12

Dear Ones,

Eighteen long months have passed since God began His chastisement.  I do not despise this nor do I detest His correction.  Rather, I praise Him in this period of darkness as He takes things of the flesh from me and reveals many of life's secrets.  More and more each passing hour He strips away all veneer and reduces me to utter dependence on Him!  I revel in the light that inserts into the darkness.  He teaches me how to budget my time and my finances; how to depend on public transportation; that even my breathing (supported by oxygen) is in His hands!  Still, He permits the darkness, yet a little while, to continue until I learn the infinite completeness of His will and desire for me.  When His light completes its victory over the darkness, then shall I claim Micah 7:8-9 as my prize!

I love you,
Daddy
P.S.  Your thoughtful Father's Day gift was an extra ray of light thrust into the darkness!

Hopeful, I tucked the letter away with the others and prayed because, I, too, know what it is like to cry out for forgiveness and restoration from the God I have disappointed.  Somewhere in that deep despair is a gift from Christ - the realization that it is much more painful, finally, to hold onto the addiction than it is to walk out of it; it is just harder to walk free.  It is dark either way, but there is His light at the end of the tunnel. Daddy, I prayed, was walking toward it and discovering his true self in the process.