For the last several months, I’ve shared bits and pieces of my PTSD recovery on Facebook. I haven’t given many details, other than alluding that there was a very sick man in my past. Until I could face what had happened head on, there wasn’t much to say. I was a 54 year old woman trying to relive and make sense of a 12 year old girl’s anguish.

It took nearly a year of intense therapy to release the gallons of tears behind a façade of strength and to suffer the resulting unbearable grief. It took sinking into such a deep depression that I slept night and day until my body hurt from the mattress, holing up in the house with no desire to see other people and enduring heartache that made death preferable to living. It took traveling to a place deep inside of me where I could no longer deny who he was and what he did. Pandora’s Box had been opened and couldn’t be closed. After 40 long years of lies, the truth was out and it was ugly.

At first I couldn’t speak of it to anyone else.

A friend suggested that when I was able, I consider writing about my experiences so that those who feel alone will know that wellness is possible. They can read the words of a survivor who once believed that healing was impossible, but now knows that a light at the end of the tunnel isn’t just a metaphor.

They may need to hear a survivor sing a song of hope, that resonates in an impenetrable swirl of darkness.  

I told him that I had to think about it.

One day I was reading an article about churches that blatantly discriminate against gays. The subject matter wasn’t new. I’d read dozens of articles about it, horrified afresh with each account of hatred gone berserk. But for some reason two words stood out in this particular article. One of the men interviewed said that he felt “judged and humiliated,” and would never darken the door of another church.

Judged and humiliated.

Feelings I know well, as do many others. Desperate, shunned, abused and broken, born different and in need of love. Craving to know Jesus, to be accepted in his church yet turned away by those tasked to do his work.

Many of the judged and humiliated like me give up on God altogether, because we have been told over and over that we are undesirables, and unworthy.

But after a year of therapy, I realized that reinvention was possible, that I didn’t have to allow the hurtful behavior of others to define me. For those who believe the hate they are fed, it’s time to stop and heal. To hear a song of goodness and mercy.

Let the music begin.

~Verse 1: Dad~

My father was mentally ill; bi-polar as well as likely suffering from borderline personality disorder, given his explosive bursts of temper. Until recent years there were few treatment options. I later found out that it was hereditary.

Dad grew up in a home where his own father regularly beat and threatened his mother’s life. Grandpa would drink and hold a gun to my grandmother’s head, clicking the trigger to an empty barrel as she cried in terror, or knock her across the room for over cooking the meat. Dad witnessed the woman closest to his heart go through hell. He was determined to be the man that his father could never hope to be; a kind and gentle husband.

After they were married, Mom broached the idea of starting a family. Dad was adamant that he didn’t want children. I’m not sure why this hadn’t been established before they tied the knot. Mom was confident that he’d come around in time. After all, everyone wanted children. It was an unfortunate assumption. Dad usually meant what he said.

Eventually the whole matter was settled when Mother Nature dropped off an unwanted pet.

Me.

From the start, Dad barely hid his contempt for my intrusion into his life. A good day with Dad was one where he didn’t know I existed.  The bad days would appear without warning. I couldn’t do anything right, was mocked, belittled and threatened. He rarely hit me, but sometimes I wished he’d do it and get it over with. Verbal cruelty hurt far more than fists. Bruises heal. Wounds received from razor sharp words rarely do.

I still wince when I remember the look on his face each time he shouted at me. I rarely heard the words. It didn’t matter what he said. All I heard was disdain behind each syllable.

Coping with Dad’s rages created a volatile situation that continually put Mom in the middle, trying to placate him while doing all she could to protect me. She wanted to leave him, but we had nowhere to go. She had few work place skills as she’d spent most of her adult life as a wife and mother. There was no money.  

We were stuck...

So I stayed in my room when he was home. Out of the line of fire.  

~Verse Two: Phil~

I met Phil during a “Family Night Supper” potluck at the church our family attended.

Just as we were leaving the house, macaroni and cheese in tow, Dad began his second tirade of the day. My reaction to it was the same as it had been the last 3,000 times he’d started in on me; blinking back tears, trembling inside and wishing I understood why I made him so angry. It didn’t take much to set him off. Sometimes all I had to do was breathe.

When we got to church, I sat in the corner of the room looking out a window, and fuming. I wasn’t about to let anyone see me cry. Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder and jumped. A bearded man stood above me and apologized for startling me. He introduced himself as Phil Craig, one of the new youth chaperones. I glowered at him with fire spitting from my eleven year old eyes, and told him that I didn’t care who he was and to leave me alone.

He shrugged his shoulders, said “alright” and walked away.

A little while later I remembered one of Dad’s cardinal rules. Never be impolite to my elders. It would be just my luck that Phil would squeal on me and I’d end up in even deeper trouble.

So I asked him to forgive my rudeness.

He was so nice about it that I liked him right away. He introduced his wife and three kids. Two of them were close to my age.

Over the next eight months or so, Phil and I became good friends. He encouraged me to tell him my secrets, and my worries, laughed at all of my childish absurdities, while telling me how beautiful I was. I’d never heard a man speak to me that way before. When he smiled, his blue eyes smiled too. Dad’s smile was usually cold.

On Easter Sunday, I stopped by Phil’s Sunday school classroom where he taught high school students. After everyone filed past me, I came inside to wish him a Happy Easter. He suddenly pulled me close, held my face firmly between both hands and kissed me full on the mouth.  

Shocked, I backed away and he walked past me and out of the room.

All I could think of for an entire week was that kiss. Certainly he couldn’t have meant it as anything other than fatherly affection.

The following Sunday we talked privately during youth group and he told me that he was falling in love with me. He kissed and held me, whispering endearments. It was intoxicating. I couldn’t hear the words enough.

Love. Love. Love. He loved me.

I’d never had a relationship with my own father, so when Phil came into my life I had no idea what I was getting into. I was 12 and he was 42. It all seemed to happen so fast. One minute I was hearing him tell me he was in love with me, and the next minute… The physical aspect of our relationship was unsettling. I still played with Barbie dolls and he knew it. Walking home after spending the day with my seventh grade classmates, I’d sometimes see his car parked at the church waiting for me. I’d run inside and tell him all about my day. He pretended to be interested but he clearly had other reasons for being there.

One afternoon he asked me to marry him. I was astounded. He promised that we would tie the knot as soon as I was of age. His kids would be grown and he could leave his wife.

I said yes, happier than I’d ever been in my life.

We were involved for 18 months before Mom began to suspect that our friendship wasn’t innocent. She warned me that it wasn’t right to fantasize about him. He was married and too old for me.

Looking back, I know that both Mom and I lived in a sheltered world where pedophiles didn’t exist. Neither of us understood that older men don’t gravitate to young girls unless there’s something terribly wrong.

She told me years later that she didn’t tell Dad because she was afraid he’d kill Phil. I found that amazing, since he never wanted me around. But I guess even bad dads have their limits.

But Mom did report her concerns to the head of the youth department, wanting to know what he was going to do about keeping “that man away from my daughter.” She was assured that it was already being handled.

Whatever the church definition of “handled” meant, it was poorly managed.

The powers that be sent him packing, rather than pursuing charges of statutory rape-a Florida law that was very much on the books at the time and would have been enforced. No one ever asked me what had happened between us, which could have helped them build a case.

If I’d been asked, I might have feebly denied our relationship at first but it wouldn’t have taken much to wear me down. I’d have never lied to the police.

Instead of seeking justice for me as well protecting him from future victims, Phil was given a ticket to ride.

Within a matter of five weeks Phil’s house was sold, and he moved everyone back to their home state of Illinois. The family settled in a town where no one knew them or anything about his past. Phil was free to prowl for prey, and he didn’t even have to fly under the radar.

He obtained quite an education at our church, which was a virtual university of how to hunt for children. Like many, ours was a thriving congregation with our share of damaged and vulnerable members, with damaged and vulnerable children. Like me. Much could be learned about a prospective victim simply by socializing with their family. Church members can be very open with each other, discussing their feelings and fears, expressing their inner most thoughts. 

Somewhere along the way, Phil realized that pursuing a career in ministry was the way to go. Not only would it give him unlimited access to his prey, the title of “Reverend” would robe him with impenetrable respectability.

While Phil weighed his options, I fell apart. In the early days after he left, I lost weight and was too thin, developed migraines, barely slept and nearly everything I tried to eat came back up or I’d have cramps for hours. Every evening I sat on the front step of the church and cried, desperately missing him.    

If that wasn’t bad enough, the church rumor mills kicked into full gear, churning out salacious stories of what was presumed to have happened between Phil and me.

Suddenly the men at church were kept on a short leash by their wives. The kids who once were my friends excluded me like I was a disease. Years later I learned that Phil had made moves on them too. Most of them were fatherless, but unlike me they weren’t as needy. After he made passes at them, they told their mothers. 

I told no one.

Mom didn’t realize that I’d been ostracized. I was too ashamed to tell her, so I hid it by weaving stories about activities with the youth group that never included me. She later told me that what little social life our family had at church dried up around the same time. She assumed it was because Dad was so cold. She now realizes that the same people who treated me badly were judging them for raising a married man's mistress.

My home life was awful, and I had no one to depend on at church either. The irony was that a few of those who shunned me were responsible for handing Phil the keys to the harem in the first place. So in Phil’s absence, his young victim was blamed for his transgressions. And unknowingly my folks were blamed as well.

No one ever came out and said what they were thinking of me to my face. I would have preferred that. I was isolated, which for the loneliest of children was far worse.

To say that my life was a living hell is an understatement. I lost track of how many times I wished for my own death.

But God was about to reveal a gift that he had given me at birth. It was that gift that pulled me away from the abyss.

~Verse 3: Music~

I always knew that I could sing. But with no encouragement from anyone who heard my voice along with my lack of popularity among the church crowd, I never attempted to audition for anything. There didn’t seem to be a point.

Then eight months after Phil Craig left Florida, an elderly gentleman who led hymns at Sunday night service thought it might be nice for one of the youth to sing a solo during the offertory. He asked me to do it.

After that solo, my life changed.

People not only loved my voice, they overwhelmed me with a storm of compliments. I was asked to sing solos on a regular basis, and repeatedly awarded vocal leads in cantatas. I was the church “it” girl; transformed from Lolita to an adored songbird.   

Perhaps among the fallen, those with talent are easier to forgive.

At the same time, I became involved in the music program at school; singing in ensembles and choir and made life long friends. I took piano lessons for nine years, and practiced at least two hours per day preparing for competitions. Music was my reason for getting up in the morning.

Notes never hurt me. People did.

While melodies poured from my mouth or my fingers moved across piano keys, I received a dose of much needed love. In the absence of what I wanted from Dad or Phil, music was able to temporarily fill the void in my heart.

In my early 20’s, most of my closest friends married and had children. The time had come for me put the music down for a while and do the same. I found love in a  sweet, generous man named Ralph and we had a lovely daughter named Julie. We all adored each other. It was the circle of life and it was good. Although I wasn’t always successful, I made every effort to forget that Phil ever existed. I had a new life now that mirrored the lives of my friends, which made me feel more centered and normal.

Except for Dad. Our relationship was anything but centered and normal. It was practically non-existent. His love still eluded me. 

Shortly after Julie was born and just before I was about to give up on him, Dad attended a Methodist Men’s retreat in Lakeland, FL. It turned out to be three life changing days. He went as a bitter, confused man, and when he returned home he was a changed creature after baptism in the Holy Spirit. Bewildered as though he was seeing me for the first time, Dad realized that he needed a relationship with the daughter he never wanted.

It was an answer to prayer, and one of the most beautiful gifts I could have ever hoped for.

Though we shared common DNA, in all other ways we were strangers. Dad broke the ice by asking me to meet him for coffee. He would call me for a few minutes each day, or I’d ring him at work. He’d never been a conversationalist-especially on the phone, but that was ok. Hearing his voice was all I needed. Sometimes in the evenings after he finished at the gym, he’d stop by and hang out with Julie and I before he went home.

His bi-polar disorder was still problematic, causing moodiness and depression. But the worst symptoms of his illness didn’t define him as much as it once did.

Thank God, thank God, thank God.

My Dad loved me.

I began to depend on him, and lean on him in ways that I’d never been free to do before. Dad knew how to fix things, to figure out how to make things work. He was a phone call and three miles away if I needed him, or if I just wanted a Dad-fix. Mom, Dad and I were finally becoming the family I’d hoped for.

Right after my 30^th birthday everything changed. My folks announced that they were moving away to care for my aging grandmothers who lived in Indiana.

I felt as though I’d been kicked in the stomach. It was as though I was a young child; afraid to be abandoned by the only family I’d ever known, and was losing a dad I never believed I’d have.

Things had not been good for my own little family for a few years. Continual money troubles, Ralph’s health troubles after a brutal car accident, and raising my little girl while trying to keep us afloat; I was scared to death to be left behind without a safety net.

Overnight, life became too big, too overwhelming. I felt the same gnawing pain that I had long ago, when I was desperate for someone to take care of me. Dad had become that person.

After they sold the house and left for Indiana, I did the unimaginable, in what could only be described as a moment of madness.

I found Phil’s phone number and called him.

At first he sounded frightened, no doubt wondering what I was planning to do to him.

As I type these words, I know what I should have done. But I hadn’t become that person yet.

Instead I spoke from a wounded child’s heart, demanding to know why he had romanced someone so young, and questioning what we’d been to each other and had he ever really loved me at all.

Of course in response, he said all the right things; had never stopped loving me, had always wondered how I was and most of all insisted that he wasn’t a child molester.

Blah blah blah.

He hadn’t lost his touch. I melted at the sound of his voice. I believed every word. Because I wanted to, I needed to. I was convinced that I still loved him.

~Verse 4: Phil's Mrs.~

Four years later, we tied the knot. Looking back I doubt I'll ever understand why he pushed so hard to marry me, given his sexual predilections. Perhaps it was for the thrill of having a victim love him for decades. Perhaps he sought respectability.

During the years leading up to our marriage, I not only learned more about Phil but I also learned a great deal about his family-particularly his father. What he told me should have made me run for the hills. His father was a sexual deviant in every sense of the word. That animal taught Phil how to be a man.

And he raised him to be a chip off the old block.

Two months prior to the wedding, Phil brutally raped my Julie. He told her he’d kill me in my sleep if she told anyone and it would be her fault that I was dead.

I hadn’t a clue that anything was off between them, other than my normally chatty girl was holed up in her room more than usual, moody and indifferent. I thought she was simply being a teenager; an assumption that haunts me to this day.

Another haunting image. My 13-year old maid of honor had to look over my shoulder as I married her worst nightmare; one who would be sleeping in the bedroom next to hers.

Once we began settling into the business of married life, the real Phil came out of hiding. He was a financial disaster with the worst possible credit rating, and more debts than you could shake a stick at. We didn’t live together before we were married, so his money situation was a shock. When we returned from our short honeymoon, the answering machine was loaded with threatening messages from collection agencies because he’d forwarded his old phone number to mine. Soon his forwarded mail arrived too; a blizzard of demand letters.

I was blamed for his debts. He needed to wine and dine me, to romance me. The money had to come from somewhere so he stopped paying his bills.

And after the ring was placed on my finger, he believed he had the right to control every aspect of my life. One by one my friends stopped calling, he “forgot” to give me messages from my family. He wanted me isolated and available to him; and he wanted complete control. I did what I could to please him, bent over backwards to cater to his whims although it was in direct conflict with my independent nature. In the end it was a waste of time. No matter what I did, it was never enough.

And during every argument, every explosive tirade, a part of me I knew that it wouldn’t be long before words turned into fists. 

Behind my back, he made Julie’s life a living hell. He bought her silence with his continual threats on my life. Then one afternoon she found photos in his glove box that showed him raping young girls; all who appeared to be in their pre-teens. There were close ups of their faces, terrified and in pain. He didn’t take the pictures himself, so there was an accomplice.

The first time he became violent with me, he slammed me against a wall. Then he kicked in our bedroom door and threatened to kill me if I ever locked him out again. Finally, one morning he hit me so hard that I nearly lost consciousness, and told me that it was my fault for making him angry. I got a restraining order, and had him removed from the house.    

Many of those who had known me all my life were unable to believe that a minister was capable of abusing his wife. To this day, there are people who still believe that I threw him out into the night without a cent to his name. He told everyone who would listen that he slept in his storage unit, and the whole thing happened because I was suffering a nervous breakdown. Of course he forgot to add a few essential details. He was escorted from the house by two armed Pinellas County sheriff deputies, and he didn’t have any way to pay for a hotel because his credit was in the gutter. And I wasn't crazy.

But that didn’t matter. Everyone believed HIM.

One woman, our former choir director who had known me since I was three years old stated “He’s a minister. Why would he lie?”

Her words proved what Phil knew all along. If a man is dressed in a black robe, with vestments around his neck and “Reverend” before his name he was beyond reproach.

~Verse 5: Singing My Song~

Phil died in 2010.

A month later I found out what he’d done to my precious daughter. He was gone, and she no longer had to hold onto his secret.

“Mommy, Phil raped me.”

Every word that followed was a blow. Slap. Slap. Slap. My chest was pounding so hard that I thought I was having a heart attack. I sat on the bed next to Julie, in shock, barely able to do more than mutter “I’m so sorry” over and over again, rubbing her back as she sobbed.

Something inside of me died that day.

Before the rape he told her things that he once said to me-words of tenderness and endearment. When she struggled and tried to get away from him, he attacked her.

All I could think was that it happened on my watch. I am her mother and it is my job to protect her. And I failed. I brought a monster into our home and he took her innocence, just as he’d taken mine.

Deep down inside, the adult Michelle knew what he was all along, but never wanted to face it. I didn’t want to see that over the years he’d become more brazen and vicious. He’d escalated, partly because he knew he could do whatever he wanted and get away with it.

In spite of all Julie told me, I still couldn’t get it through my head that he raped me too.

For 19 months.

I began having panic attacks and deepening depression. I stayed at home, rather than going out. I slept more, kept to myself more. My family saw less and less of me.

When I began working with my therapist Jane, it was necessary to go back in time and realize what had happened and why. I found a picture of myself taken a month after he left. The young girl was smiling, but her eyes were pools of sadness that gave me the last piece of the puzzle of my life.

What followed was a plume of rage that nearly ate me alive. I felt like a bonfire, roaring uncontrollably after someone doused me with accelerant. I was spitting mad at God for taking Phil, denying me the chance of revenge for what he has done to us both. I desperately wanted the last thing Phil saw before he drew his last breath was my face.

And I was robbed of the chance.  

Then I came across a quote.

“Not forgiving someone is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”

So where does one find the heart to forgive the unforgiveable?

Mom told me that if I was unable to forgive, that I must ask God to do it for me. He will do it, as forgiveness is a pathway to love and a renewed spirit.

So I asked Him, and He delivered. Over and over.

Forgiving Phil was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. And forgiving him it isn’t a one-time only job. I’ve had to ask God to help me forgive him every time I feel myself growing angry again. Some days that can be a frequent petition. I had to face yet another fact. As flawed and hateful as Phil was, God loved him. Phil was damaged too.

I now realize that children are far more fragile than we know. I’ve often heard people say that kids are resilient. To germs maybe. But their hearts and spirits are anything but.

Phil was fragile once. He experienced what no child ever should. And the outcome was catastrophic; for him and his victims.

To look beyond the label of “monster” and try find understanding in what happened to all of us has been incredibly hard. It’s easier to allow our first instinct to take the front seat. To hate.

The toughest test of forgiveness was for the church body that had so little compassion for a broken hearted young girl.  To them I was a threat to their happy marriages; not a child that they failed to protect.

Yet I needed to have compassion for them too. The idea that Phil Craig was a predator didn’t exist in their world any more than it did in Mom’s, or my own. Phil made me promise not to tell anyone what we did, and I kept my word for years-even when telling the truth could have meant redemption and freedom from shame decades earlier.

Telling the truth might have saved Julie from the worst year of her life.

Recently I’ve turned a corner, unwilling to continue wallowing in it, unwilling to put what’s left of my life on hold and unwilling to let a very unworthy dead man control me until the end of my days. I’ve tried to make sense of all that’s happened; my actions, Dad’s actions, Phil’s actions. In some ways I can, but in others I can’t. Even if I could crawl into the minds of the disturbed, I wouldn’t be able to understand the language.

That’s not what this has been about anyway. It’s been about purging, releasing the beast that lay on my shoulders since birth.

Mom has been with me every step of the way through this recovery process, and has given me the biggest shoulder to cry on I could have ever asked for. My wonderful husband Ralph has been a tower of strength too. Amazingly, Ralph took me back as though nothing ever happened when Phil and I were through. As I have gone through therapy, Ralph never pressured me into giving him more than I was able. He understood how incredibly important the healing process was and gave me the space I needed.

Mom has blamed Dad for failing me, placing me in the path of a monster. However with counseling and a lot of mother daughter talks, I think she has grown to understand why things happened as they did and that the one who owns most of the blame is Phil.

As I’ve gone through the therapy process, there have been many “bad days” when I simply couldn’t cope, couldn’t leave my house.

I’ve closed those exit doors permanently, and will be going forward looking for a new life, a new Michelle that I know very little about yet. From the time I first drew breath, I was under the spell of someone who mistreated me. Now that the spell is broken, I’m starting at ground zero. Jane and I are planning to go to a twice per month appointments, which thrills me because it means that the worst of this nightmare may be drawing to a close, and I can take time to figure out some things about me now that I’ve put down the baggage.

If someone had told me a year ago that I’d no longer be chained to the horrors of my past, I wouldn’t have believed them. Forty years of nearly intolerable sadness was a way of life. To live without it was an even more frightening prospect. If I wasn’t defined by pain, then who was I?

It used to irritate me when I’d hear someone say that they were finding themselves. What on earth was that supposed to mean? 

Now I know how very real that state of mind is. And it’s a world filled with possibilities. It’s a chance to reinvent my life, to discover what makes me tick, what makes me happy.

As I said in the beginning a very wise friend encouraged me to “sing my song,” and encouraged me to share what I’d learned with others who may be struggling with their own nightmares from abuse. 

So here I am. Singing a song that’s been buried for decades.

It was time to stop covering up another person’s crimes. I’m telling you as part of my healing, as well as healing for my daughter.

And I’m singing like a canary because I’m certain that someone with a Phil in their past will read this missive, and need to know that what happened to them was not their fault.

Most of all, I’m singing a song to every church everywhere. Weapons should be tossed aside once and for all. The church must stop shunning what they can’t understand, to stop judging, and forcing their prejudices onto others.

To stop hurting the lost as well as the found.

To bring people to Jesus, rather than driving them away.

To love.

To sing.

Michelle Close Mills ©