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Lost Boy: The Journey to Healing from Childhood Sexual Abuse

Related article from Sept/Oct 2002 issue

There I was, a veteran youth pastor at a youth worker's retreat, listening to a speaker talking about ways to understand and counsel kids who'd been victims of sexual abuse; suddenly something began to stir inside me. I awoke to the nightmarish reality that I was one of those abused kids.

That retreat is now more than a decade in the past, but it marked the beginning of a long and difficult journey of healing from my experience of childhood sexual abuse, a journey that has become a most significant part of my personal spiritual formation and my ministry to teens and young adults.

The Wounds of Childhood

Kids who are the victims of sexual abuse have been robbed of their childhood innocence. What's left is a bag of scars and memories with which they're unable to cope. There are numerous self-protective defense mechanisms that victims like me use in order to survive the trauma of abuse.

An abused child often isn't able to feel the full emotions of pain, fear, and rage that are associated with abuse. If they allowed themselves to, they feel they'd go crazy. So these terrible memories and accompanying emotions are involuntarily blocked or repressed, often until adulthood. Or there might be denial or rationalization of the experiences: "It happened so long ago;" "worse things have happened to others;" "maybe it was all just a bad dream;" "he really didn't mean anything by it."

Survivors of childhood abuse can become excellent counselors for others. In a twisted way, helping other people deal with their pain becomes a way to avoid facing their own. This is who I was. I became a caring and outgoing youth pastor. In fact, there seemed to be certain types of kids who were drawn to my ministry and to whom I felt compelled to pay special attention. A number of these kids had been victims of abuse. I believe that they may have been attracted to my ministry, unconsciously knowing that they'd receive the empathetic response of a fellow traveler.

Yet I wonder about the depth of assistance I was able to offer them at that time. I continue to have a deep desire to help kids who've been victims of abuse, who struggle with low self-esteem, or who find it hard to assert themselves in relationships or tasks. But at that decade-old retreat, I started to realize that I was the abused kid with low self-esteem who needed the ministry of healing.

The Journey of Healing

A few years after the retreat, I went to a spiritual director to get help because the spiritual stream within me had run dry. I was expecting to face accountability for my spiritual disciplines or advice on how to pray better. Instead, I was led to the mirror of my soul and was asked to look at myself and the wounds of the past. The new trickle of living water in my spiritual streambed was born in this unexpected way. Although I wouldn't wish this trauma on anyone, God has shaped me for life and ministry through my wounds—one of the mysteries of divine work.

There's no need to describe the details of my childhood experiences or the personal aspects of my adulthood journey of healing, but there were a few ingredients in my healing journey that are typical for adult survivors of childhood abuse. In fact, most adult human beings come to process previous life experiences in some way at some point in their lives. How we process and integrate our experiences, both delightful and difficult, will have a profound influence on our personal formations and our approaches to ministry.

The emotions that I was unable to experience as a child and teenager came roaring to life, beginning with terrifying nightmares and irrational fears and moving to feelings of deep pain, loss, and betrayal. I was a powerful and successful man in the world. I had a successful youth pastorate with a growing ministry and good relations with colleagues and congregation, a loving and supportive wife, three healthy children, a house, and a mini-van—what more could a man want? But pain doesn't discriminate. On the inside I became a lost little boy, feeling fully the terror and hurt of my childhood wounds for the first time.

In the midst of this terror and pain, death and numbness seemed almost pleasant alternatives. I felt the loss of my childhood innocence and the betrayal by my boyhood hero. If spiritual life were described in climatic seasons, autumn and winter were my perpetual states as I recovered from the surgeon's scalpel that was slowly removing the pain and fear from my past. The season of Lent, with its rituals of brokenness, deprivation, and desolated deserts, became real for me like never before.

The road to healing is usually different from what we expect. For victims of abuse, healing often comes through anger and empowerment. Yet I found it very hard to be angry with my abuser. For real healing to occur, I had to leave the role of victim that had been my retreat for so many years. God is angered when the human temple of the Spirit is desecrated, and God was calling me to place the responsibility for the abuse where it belonged—with the abuser. The silence and the darkness of the evil tomb of abuse had to be broken!

"…the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall." [Malachi 4:2]

I regained some of my childhood innocence; the lost little boy was found. The Easter of new life became just as real to me as the Lent of desolation. Spring was welcome after waiting in a long winter. I was born again, a grown man, free and empowered to be that which I was created to be. Mysteriously, God used the most terrible thing in my life to bring new insight, joy, and meaning to life. But how did it affect my ministry?

The Wounded Healer

Henri Nouwen, in his book The Wounded Healer, has articulated for me how our wounds can become our gifts of healing to others. By facing our own traumas, shadows, shortcomings, hurts, and wounds—whatever they are—and by being honest with God and ourselves about who we are, we create opportunities for others to be real with themselves and to come to us for the ministry of healing. This is a very difficult thing to do; it was for me. But until we do, we youth ministers will (often unconsciously) continue to be too preoccupied with ourselves to really listen to young people in pain. Jesus' example of the wounded healer (1 Peter 2:24) has become the basis for my ongoing ministry with youth and college students. I am both the wounded minister and the healing minister; I cannot separate one from the other.

How does this reflect itself in my daily life and ministry? It doesn't mean that I "hang out all of my dirty laundry" every time I talk to young people or shock them with the sordid details of my past experiences. We must be conscious of the fact that we minister out of our own woundedness. We must be honest about our wounds with those to whom we minister so we can be truly "with" them in their unique experiences.

Each time I share of myself and my wounds, I'm vulnerable. I face the risks of misunderstanding or rejection, and I must relive the pain to some extent (just as is happening to me as I write), but each experience also brings a measure of personal healing and opens the door for others to entrust their wounded selves to the Wounded Healer I represent as a minister.

Related article from Sept/Oct 2002 issue

Gareth Brandt presently teaches and directs the youth work department at Columbia Bible College in Abbotsford, British Columbia. His experience includes denominational (in the Mennonite Church) and congregational youth ministry, as well as youth work in a group home setting.