On my 16th birthday...is that when it started?

On my 16th birthday, I stopped by the parsonage after a day of watching the Ganzer kids. The youth and education minister had invited a bunch of us to his house as a sort of impromptu party. But there wasn’t any cake, and we didn’t play croquet like I thought we would.

We played flag football. I wasn’t athletic and had never played any kind of football. But I didn’t want to whine.

Somehow, over and over again, I wound up face down on the ground with the minister on top of me. He was about 9 inches taller than me, and weighed a lot more, but somehow he couldn’t manage to just pull the flag.

It felt awful. He was all over me and always slow getting off. But I didn’t want to whine. I didn’t want to seem like a wuss. Besides...everyone else seemed to be having a good time.

Is that when I became prey? Is that when it started? I don’t really know.

The kids in the youth group used to play Twister. Somehow, every time my turn came, he would step in, and the next thing I knew, he would be all over me. Maybe that’s when it started...but of course, it was just a game.

Maybe it started when I used to practice the piano in the sanctuary. He started coming in to talk to me. I didn’t really mind, but it made it hard to get my practice time in. Besides, the reason I liked practicing in the sanctuary was because I liked the solitude and the full whole roundness of the sound going into the stillness. So after a while, I just quit practicing at the church as much.

Maybe it started when my dad had back surgery. The youth minister offered to let my sisters and I sleep at his house while my mom stayed overnight at the hospital. It was right after my 15th birthday. The three of us slept in a double bed with my youngest sister in the middle. Did he leer at me while I slept? Or worse?

Was there ever anything at that Baptist church that was just good and clean and wholesome? Or was every bit of it some piece of the minister’s set-up for sexual abuse?

Every memory I have is tainted....every retreat, every bible drill, every camp-out, every mission trip, every choir trip, every prayer group, every ping-pong game....all of it.

But even though the taint bleeds wide, it’s my birthday that always fills me with dread. Even the anticipation of it carries a dark sense of doom.

I don’t really know when I became prey for that Baptist minister. Probably sooner. But it was on my birthday that my brain imprinted a neural link to something really bad...and I think that was it.