There are two puzzle pieces from my early life that played pivotal roles in bringing me to where I am tonight, posting on Fanda Eagles.
Uncle Chuck was an interesting character from my childhood in Thailand. My parent's co-worker, in fact. He was single, and very odd. He usually had a smile on his face, and a dreamy, far-away look in his eyes. People thought he practically walked with God, like Enoch. He was constantly humming hymns, and knew the Scripture backwards and forwards. Uncle Chuck had a strange fondness for little girls. He liked to smile at them as though he had a secret, and he liked to touch them. Adults thought he was rather childlike himself. They laughed about his eccentricities, and considered him to be strange but harmless.
RN was a very frightening man, to me. He too, was considered by the adults to be very Godly. He was a loner, and for all the years he spent with his family in Thailand, I am not aware of any ministry he had, or any positive effects he left in his wake. His life seemed to revolve around his home and his family - a wife who always looked like she was cowering, and three children who were my peers and friends. It appeared to me that he always stayed at home, and never got out with the locals, or learned the language. It seemed as though he considered his own family to be his ministry. He would hold family devotions that would literally last for hours. He was a very stern, harsh disciplinarian. I remember hearing him beating his children, locked up in his bedroom, for any small infraction that was not even anything at all ... at least not in my young opinion. I can still hear the swats, and the wails, and the shame I felt for somehow having gotten those poor children in trouble with their monster father, for something I didn't even know was wrong. Like playing outside around the corner where he couldn't see us or something.
When I was a young adult, my mother told me that something had come to light. It was the biggest shock I had ever received up until that point in my life. She told me that RN's younger daughter had revealed a long-hidden secret. Her father had been molesting her all those years of our childhood.
Not long after that I received another surprise, only this time I was a little more prepared for the news. Uncle Chuck was actually a pedophile, not a harmless weirdo. An MK my younger brother's age had revealed a history of abuse at his hands, and described being raped by him when she was a little girl, while he softly recited some of the many Bible verses he'd memorized.
Puzzle pieces. From these two vile sinners, now both dead, I learned: you can never be sure you really know someone. Anyone. People are capable of heinous crimes against the most innocent of victims. Even people who appear to be the epitome of spirituality. Missionaries can, and do rape and sodomize small children. A seemingly saintly man can preach a long sermon to a circle of missionary co-workers, and a few hours later be forcing his little girl to repeat that nightmare thing he makes her do. Again.
And children you think you know ... kids you play with, giggle with ... can be hiding horrible, horrible secret. Things you have never even heard of, happen to them on a regular basis. And still they smile. And don't tell. And they are obedient, and submissive, and you assume their Daddy is like your Daddy. But he's not.
All these years later it is re-traumatizing to me to think about these two people who don't even deserve to be called men. I felt violated myself, when I found out they were not who I thought they were. They were not who my parents thought they were. They lived and died with their secrets, thinking no one ever told on them.
But their victims DID tell. Two brave women stopped keeping their secrets. They are heroes in my eyes. They ripped the tape off of their mouths and raised their voices and said, "I won't be silenced anymore!"
Those two perverts from my childhood prepared me for the awful news that I received in 1993, in the Philippines. The news that once again, a missionary had been in our midst that none of us really knew. We trusted him, and he betrayed our trust in the worst way possible. He groomed our children, and then he violated them. Because of Uncle Chuck and RN, when I was told that Les Emory had molested my daughters and many of their little friends, I was prepared, and I believed it. Once again, I was being reminded that anyone is capable of anything. Any human on earth has the potential of harboring a dark side, an evil part of them that has not been transformed, even though they claim to be followers of Christ.
Three puzzle pieces I lay down. Uncle Chuck, RN, and Les Emory. These three taught me that evil can exist even in a place that is supposed to be filled with light, truth, and safety.
The people who inspire me to stay in the struggle are the survivors who have been wounded by that evil. My MK friends from Thailand. My precious Aritao MKs. The MKs I've met here in the forums. The MKs who are still waiting in the shadows, afraid to come out and tell us their secrets.
The world is full of survivors, I have learned. They fill me with hope. The battle is not lost. There is redemption and healing, as long as we don't deny, and hide, and keep the closets locked up.
Let us take courage ... the truth can prevail.
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