Who We Are

Church leadership advises or asks us to not attend services at the campus we led; they do offer, in a conciliatory way, to attend services at another campus. This proposition is not readily accepted by Kevin or I, as he can barely hold his head above water when around others. Friends ask if we want Harper and Elijah to attend the kid’s program, the same program they had both been attending since birth. The same children’s ministry I had covered when we were down on volunteers, even though, I for the most part, had really never enjoyed being around children. I decline, as my realization of how to move forward in this impossible situation is murky, and I have to plug the hemmorrhage of suffering and confusion for the kids. A voice of reason is in me, but the roof is only over the kids and Kevin. All I do is cry. Then sob. I try to ask questions, to myself, and then to Kevin, but we are both caged animals, trapped under a magnifying lens, beaming a consistent concentration of immeasurable...

I am so brave as I sit in front of the camera crew; about to describe a sexual assault that happened to me, at the hands of Grant Pankratz, almost twenty years ago.  Leaning on my years of dance and theater training I feel no shyness as the cameraman adjusts my microphone and when the journalist asks me how I feel, I can honestly answer that I feel just fine. How bizarre it is to finally be speaking about something that is still so visceral. I can take my mind back, easily, to the exact moment it happened and replay it like a favorite television show and yet is so secret I have never even told my husband. I get through the interview easily with little emotion and do not feel at all overwhelmed; even after everyone at the filming tells me I absolutely must file a police report, before the story airs the next evening on the ten o’ clock news.                      As I drive away from the filming location I realize what ...