Day #5 - Stress Recovery - the Day Noah Faced the Truth

It happened. I spent enough down days during my 15 Day Covid-19 Stress Recovery for ALL the feelings to start coming up like a fountain of the un-imaginable. Except this time, it wasn’t me who overflowed.

It was my Noah.

Even though he was 3 when the assaults happened, he has actively dealt with the fallout his entire life. It’s unalterably life-defining to have a violent sexual attack happen to you when you’re small. Yes, even when you don’t remember all of it.

But despite his active pursuit of his own healing, there was something he never realized stemmed all the way back to the moment(s) he was assaulted - his fear of intimacy with other people. Noah has an impenetrable wall when it comes to those outside our family. We’ve encouraged him to stretch himself as he’s grown older and while it was a desire he himself has (finally) had for many years, there has still been something holding him back. He prayed to find what it was? How could he move forward with his newly adult life?

And after much prayer and increasing layers of deep study, God revealed the answer to him as a complete thought; a balm to his questioning soul. Noah doesn’t trust others because he had his trust severely broken as a small child. Monsters are out there. He saw it himself.

It was a surprise to hear it was simple, and even that it was completely related to the horrors he endured. Like many other things in life, it seems patently obvious from the outset. You’re probably thinking “How did they miss that?” But just like blaming parents is the easiest thing to do as adults process our broken past, making us avoid it unless everything else is removed as a possibility, so have both boys always made sure the root of any emotional or spiritual issue wasn’t something else - anything else - before they settled into knowing it was because of the attacks.

We were in the car when he told me. He grabbed my hand and said “I’m so sorry.” but truly, I’m okay. I’ve dealt with the fact I will always hold some responsibility for not protecting Noah from Sam. Ignorance and deception are no excuse. Parents still need to stand up and claim any pain their children endured at the hands of a pedophile as their fault. It’s not only their fault, but they are still to blame. I am to blame. My children accepted my apology long ago, and I forgave myself long ago. Now we are tight in ways we never would have been, if we hadn’t walked through it together. We are the epitome of the scripture “God works all things together for good……” and He DOES!

It’s been nearly 17 years since Noah was attacked. The man who did it was never imprisoned, though I’m sure he’s done it many times before and since. I’m positive he will do this until he’s locked away, if he’s locked away, only to emerge and do it again. He is smart enough to get by with it, and make more of the smallest and least able to communicate boys in the world go about their lives wondering why they’re broken? Why they can’t give and receive love, intimacy and sex like others do.

But for Noah, there has been a victory. He has come to terms with the why, and now the prayer is how. How to move past this. God is faithful & He will show Noah the way.

I’m sure of it.