Blazing Grace Radio

Rob McIntire is a former police officer who now runs Freedom to Live Counseling in Colorado Springs. As a youth, Rob was kidnapped, beaten, and molested, then was able to escape. Later, Rob became a police officer; his career in law enforcement ended from a spinal injury during an operation. Prior to that time, Rob, then married, had fallen into a cycle of porn and sex addiction that would eventually end his first marriage.

In last week’s episode, Laura Graber shared the story of being molested by her father and the fear and tension that was in their home. Many of those who’ve been abused struggle with debilitating anxiety and fear, which are exacerbated by hyper-vigilance. Laura struggled with the fear of taking a shower, being alone, and other situations. She turned to the medical community, and at one point she was taking as many as 11 pills a day, none of which helped. In this broadcast, Laura shares how God led her to overcome anxiety and fear.

This radio program is PG-13. Parents strongly cautioned: some material may be inappropriate for children under the age of 13.

Jesus’s mission was to comfort those who mourn, bind up the broken hearted, proclaim liberty to captives, and open prison doors for those who are bound. For those who want more than status quo Christianity has to offer, Blazing Grace Radio begins now. And here is your host, Mike Genung.

Hey, Mike Genung here. And welcome back to Blazing Grace Radio. Glad to have you along. Last week we talked with Mrs. Laura Graber from James Port, Missouri, and she shared how she grew up with a father who was basically sexually abusing her, and did a lot of horrible, traumatic things growing up. There was fear, and hyper vigilance, and if you’ve missed that show I’d encourage you to go online and listen to that first one.

And before I start talking with Laura again, I want to introduce a question that many believers have when they’re suffering. And we can go back to the book of Job for this because God allowed Satan to sift Job like few people in history have been sifted. Where Job lost ten kids in one day – I think it was seven sons and three daughters – killed in one day. He lost his business, and then he was left with the wife saying, “Curse God, and die.”

And then if you read through the book of Job, a lot of his questions are “God, why? What are you doing? Why’d you allow all this?” And that is a key question in life. So Laura, my friend, welcome back to the program.

Thank you, Mike.

And where we left off last week, as you had said, that you were bitter towards God for the things you grew up with, with your dad, and you mocked Christians. And how did you resolve the why question? “Why, God, did you allow this to happen to me?”

It took several years of, I mean… okay, so I should back up a bit. Like most of my preteens and teenage years, I was… I was very angry and bitter at God. And I remember, you know, hearing my siblings or different people talk about God. And in my mind, I made fun of them. I viewed Christians as weak. And I always told myself, you know, the moment I can get away from my dad and move out of this house, you know, I would… I would never let anyone hurt me like that again. I would never, you know, live like this again.

So it was at the age of 20. I went with my cousin to church… haphazardly. And that day the sermon was on how much God loves us, the love of God, that he gave his son, and just, you know, all the aspects of that. And I remember walking out of church that day and I looked up at this guy and I was like, “I’m going to give you one chance, and you’d better not screw this up.” I… it was, yeah. I’m [laughs] not your typical conversion story.

[chuckles]

Over the next several years I… my relationship with God grew. I mean, I’d be reading my Bible, I’d be praying, I started going to church. My life started changing. My physical aspects of it. But there was still a part of me that always in the back of my mind, like, I couldn’t completely trust God. Because I didn’t have an answer to explain the first 17 years of my life. I didn’t know how to come to grips with that, like, how… what was in that.

So I thought I was a Christian, you know. I thought I was a believer. Life was relatively well. I got married and then we had our struggles in our marriage, and it wasn’t until probably, well, the wives retreat 2018 was pivotal. You shared, you spent some time in prayer and you shared a Bible verse with each of us women to take home with us. And this verse, I know it was the Lord, but it’s in Deuteronomy 31 where it’s,

“Be strong and courageous, Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you. He will never leave you or forsake you.”

And I remember that last night at the retreat, just being in my bed and just sobbing. Because I just had this picture that God was with me all those moments as a little girl. He saw what was happening. And over the next year, like, things kept on coming back to my mind just here or there of, like, “Wow, like, God was there in that.” I remember, you know, someone showed up maybe in the middle of one of my dad’s angry rants, like a neighbor to visit, or, you know, like, I got away from my dad here, or, you know, this happened that interrupted this from happening. And I just, like… slowly, like, God kept on bringing them to my mind.

And even today, sometimes I… it’s not as much today but definitely in that next year or two of just like realizing, like, God was there. He hadn’t left me. And as an adult, I can see more and more where He did call my dad to repent him, He did send things in my dad’s life. You know, my dad faced a close call with death, and different things like that. That should have woke him up, but he kept on choosing to live a life of sin, and be a slave to Satan, through all of that.

But God was actually there in those moments. And I had just… I was blaming God for not changing my circumstances, instead of realizing that it was my dad’s free will choice to be living in that sin and to rebel against God. And he was the one that… yeah. My anger need to be directed toward him more so than God, because God was there. So that was extremely healing for me to recognize, you know, of all the times that maybe horrible things did happen, but then all the times that God intervened at just the right times, and also sent help and relief, and protected me. He protected me profusely in different areas and instances that there’s no way to explain except it was the Hand of God protecting me.

Mmm. So it sounds like he didn’t answer the why, but he said, “I was there and I’ve always been with you.”

Yeah, yeah. And that to me was like, you know, I… today now, I know that there’s been a work done in my heart. And I have giftings, like, through the Holy Spirit working in me that I probably wouldn’t have if I wouldn’t have lived through all those things. But for me, the biggest thing was understanding that God is sovereign, and He actually has good for me, you know?

After so many years of just thinking there’s nothing good in this life, much less than God being good, like, understanding today at a much deeper level, like He has good for me and He didn’t just, he’s not going to let all those years of pain just go to waste. It’s not going to just be a, “Oops!” like, “My bad! That shouldn’t have happened.” He’s going to use it somehow. It’s going to glorify Him. And I’ve already seen it glorify him, you know, in different areas in the life of being able to relate with people, or understanding maybe what someone else is going through that I wouldn’t be able to if I wouldn’t have walked through that.

So he has already used it. I still don’t know why fully, but I can fully trust that God is good and that He’s sovereign and there’s going to be good in it. And when I ever, if that day ever comes, that I do understand why completely… yeah, that would be great to know. But I don’t battle with it anymore, because it doesn’t matter. Because… I mean, it does matter, but it doesn’t because God’s sovereign.

Well, a couple pieces there. First off, you’re glorifying Him right now by sharing your story in public. So when we share brokenness that’s when God shines through the cracks. And so I love what you’re doing, and being able to willing to share And so and I also believe that he takes every drop of suffering if we’re willing to cooperate with him and he redeems it for his purposes.

Amen. Amen.

So it’s wonderful to see you come to that place, and you’re not even 30 years old, is that right?

I’m not. I’m 27 [laughs]

So you figured a lot out at a young age. That’s great.

[laughs] I’m not sure if I figured it out, or have had to learn lessons the hard way, but God has been faithful to just continue to show me His truth.

Wow.

Very faithful.

And I know from my own personal experience we all have our days where we run into a concrete wall and say, “Oops, wasn’t supposed to do that!”

Amen.

So you talked about transferring your bitterness to your dad. Did you come to a place of being able to forgive him?

I did. It was… I thought I had forgiven him. I could be around him. I still had this, like, big pit in my stomach when I’d see him at the gas station and, you know, I’d just wait in my car till he was gone, then I’d go inside. But I kept telling myself, “I’ve forgiven him, and I’ve read books and forgiveness, and I’ve talked with counselors about forgiveness,” and, you know… like, all of that seemed so… I had done everything I’d been told to do, I guess. And I thought that I had forgiven him. But what really… I don’t know, brought it to a deeper forgiveness – if that’s the correct way to say it – was when things in my marriage… we started struggling, and the pornography, and the anger and stuff started happening in my marriage. And it was, like, I had to face the very fears of, “What if my life will always be like this?” You know, “What if it’s like when I was a child?” Seeing aspects of that become my reality as a wife, as an adult, and having, like, through that God in his great mercy… like I can’t even express His great mercy and all of that, to just gently be able to help me relive some of the things as a child and like, fully grieve those things, and being able to say, like…

I wrote a letter to my dad. It took me couple months and I just wrote everything that he’d ever done toward me, or had hurt me, or let me down, or betrayed me, or just anything I could possibly think about. All the things I would say to him today if I could. And I remember just I had that letter in my drawer for a long time, and finally, one day – through something that had happened in my marriage – being able to just, like, sit and read that letter out loud. I was alone in my house, and I just read it out loud, and I pretended like I was reading to my dad. And I just sobbed. It was really, extremely painful. But after that, I can honestly say I can meet up with my dad somewhere. I can hear his name and I don’t just instantly recoil in my stomach. I… what happens with him is between him and God. I don’t need payment for what he did. I don’t. He’s never even said, “I’m sorry.” And that used to be a big thing for me. And today it’s like, that’s not okay, but it is okay, you know? I don’t even need an “I’m sorry,” from him. Like, God will deal with him and will take care of him. And I pray for his salvation. I pray for God to have mercy on him because I don’t want to see him being punished for the sins that he did commit. But I can genuinely say, yeah, he’s free as far as I’m concerned. He doesn’t need to pay for what he did and that’s huge for me, to be at that place.

Yeah, we can… we have a choice between, “I’m going to hold on to forgiveness,” or, “I’m going to choose to grab on the bitterness again.”

Yeah.

So let’s let’s talk about fear, and anxiety, and spiritual warfare. Because those three are bound together often, and the enemy knows how to piggyback on fear or anxiety and attack with fear darts. And you grew up with a lot of hyper vigilance, and fear, and looking over your shoulder. And so what does that journey look like? And what have you been through? What has worked? What has not worked?

I honestly didn’t realize how much fear and hyper vigilance that I lived with till a couple years ago. It was so normal for me. I was a highly active person, I worked a lot, was just busy all the time. And, like, that fear would… I mean, I was… I didn’t go outside alone after dark, even as an adult. Like, I didn’t even sleep alone in my house as an adult. Like, I just had… I was trapped with a lot of fears and anxieties. Anxieties about things that, you know, like, something as simple as taking a trip to Walmart to buy groceries, you know? I’d be watching people around me, someone watching me as someone following me to my car. Like, just, like, living in constant panic and fear. Showering. You know, there was a week when I had to force myself to shower because… just frozen in fear. Like, I lock all the doors leading back to the bathroom, the front door, the back door. And you know, just I had to shower when I was home alone, and just lots of fears and a lot of different areas. And I always just told myself, you know, “I’m healing, I’m overcoming it.” You know, “There’s going to be a day when this gets better,” you know, “This is going to get better.” And it did. And I think I had to walk through that journey of, you know, I did find healing a little bit here, and a little bit there, and all of that. But I did a lot of different counselings and also, like, you know, prayers and rebuke Satan, and then just – and I think all those things were helpful. They were helpful.

But it all came to screeching halt in 2022. Or it was ’21. It was ’21, yeah. My husband left for a nine month program for sexual addicts and I was left alone in my house. So with there was a lot of trauma and things happening before he left. But after he left I completely lost my mind. The next two to three months I had panic attacks all day long throughout the night. I never knew what would trigger them. I couldn’t even really work. I had a part-time job at that point. I spent a large part of my days, like hiding at my mom’s house or a sister’s house and just like my insides just shaking. I had anxiety that was… it was so intense I can’t even put it to words. I got a medication, I got on a lot of different pills, I tried everything. I was finally taking like 11 to 12 pills a day, like, morning and evening, and sometimes at noon. Drinking, you know, a lot of, like taking a lot of, like, magnesium. Just things to calm me down. I take a bath before I went to bed at night. For several weeks on the end, I couldn’t sleep for more than 20 minutes –

Mmm.

– during the night, and I’d wake up – be awake for several hours of panic attacks, and finally be able to sleep again for a little bit. It was, it was horrible. I cried out to God just over and over, like, “Just let me wake up from this nightmare!” Because it was… it was the most horrible thing I think, that I’ve ever had to walk through my life. And it’s, like, somehow in those two to three months does all that fear and anxiety came tumbling out. And there was a pill that helped. I mean, it would help somewhat, but it didn’t. There was… I tried to lean on people. I tried to lean on, you know, distracting myself, trying to busy myself. I tried every avenue possible. And once again, in God’s grace, he didn’t let anything work well. I mean, it worked maybe for an hour or whatever. I mean, I was getting massages. I was doing whatever I could just like calm my body down. Like just calm down.

And finally, in all of that, there was only one place that I could go finally at the way end. And that was to trust God completely. And I remember, like, the week that me and God just hashed it out all week it felt like, when things slowly started changing. And I’m not saying that anxiety, and fear, and those things, “Oh, just trust God more.” I’m not saying that in a flippant way. I think I had to have that, you know, 15 year journey, 20 year journey, 25 years, whatever number you want to put on it. I was 26 at the time when it happened, to finally… I’d be in my house by myself after dark. Like, being able to sleep peacefully, and just completely trusting that God was the only thing that was keeping me safe. And whatever he desired for me, for my life, I would accept. Whatever glorified him, I would accept.

I started showering with all the doors unlocked, and I remember one day I was like, “What?” Like, “This is crazy!” But I was just like, “Whatever happens is in God’s hands,” like He’s here and He’s going to be here no matter what happens. And just being able to, like, lay in my bed at night, start having a panic attack, hyperventilating and all that, and just being able to just like… just over and over tell my brain like, “It’s okay, you’re having anxiety, but God’s here. He’s going to get you through it. You’re going to breathe.” Like, you know, all this time thinking I couldn’t breathe and I’m going to die because I can’t breathe. And just, you know, well, “Even if you die, you’re still going to be okay,” like just… there was like just this profound knowledge of that God is sovereign that He’s here and He’s going to take care of me and whatever He desires for my life is good. And is okay with me. Even if it was painful and excruciating and hard.

And that, I mean, a year and a half later, I still – don’t get me wrong, I still struggle with anxiety and fears coming. But I have never had a panic attack since then. I have not had the amount of fear I’m… the fear in me subsides so much quicker by going to prayer and just, like, spending time with the Lord. And I used to do all of those things before, but it’s like somehow the depth of my heart, it needed to be settled that God was in control and nothing and no one could help me but Him.

Hmm.

And He was all that I needed.

I love it. So it sounds like in a way, and this is just kind of a general way of saying it, you went from… maybe a little deeper – and I’m not saying you didn’t have a relationship with Him before – but He became more real and more powerful.

Yeah.

Is that true?

Yes, absolutely. He, for the first time in my life, like the past year and a half. But I honestly am completely confident that the Lord is with me, helping me, and is good, and I’m going to be OK. And that’s huge. Huge for me to say.

And it sounds like surrender was a part of that, too.

It was, it was simply saying, you know, like, “God, even if my worst nightmare were to come true, you would still be God. You would still be here. You would still, you know, I just… I just give you my life, my rights, my… whatever I want, whatever I desire is yours.” Like, “Have your way.”

Mmm.

Yeah.

Spiritual warfare. What does that look like, and how do you deal with that? Because I know the enemy attacks those pressure points.

Amen.

Today it’s still hard for me to recognize sometimes when it’s happening. All of a sudden I find myself, I’m doubting my husband, or I find myself doubting the goodness of God, or I find myself, you know, just struggling with, like, being able to relax at night. And then I start recognizing just the attack that Satan has been having on my mind, and my emotions, or my circumstances, and how he’s just like trying to get in whatever door that he can. And I think the biggest thing for me, like in the spiritual warfare, is recognizing it is spiritual warfare and fighting it through prayer, and scripture. You know, it may not leave. It may not get better. But still choosing to have faith that God’s here with me, He’s hearing my prayers and reaching out to other people, it is incredibly powerful to be able to to call other Christians and reach out and say “Hey, I need prayer.” Like, “I’m struggling. I’m drowning over here. I need some help with this.” But this is bigger than me. Like can you be praying? I have a number of friends that I can call, and just right then and there, like, they’ll pray with me and they’ll check in and keep praying or, you know, send me messages of a prayer. And just like being covered in prayer has been one of the biggest weapons that I use in fighting spiritual warfare.

The surveys show that somewhere between 80-90% of US Christians are isolated. Meaning they don’t have another believer to turn to. And Laura, we have two minutes left

Wow.

– so take a minute. What goes through your mind when you when you hear that?

I feel incredibly sad for them. That sounds lonely, and hard, and devastating. Honestly. Because it weren’t for other believers in my life, I wouldn’t know the Lord as I do today. I mean, obviously God calls us personally. He speaks to us personally. He’s personal with us. But having other believers around you to just walk along beside you, holding your arms up, you know, when you’re weak. I often think of that battle in the Old Testament.

When they hold up – was it Moses or Joshua’s arms? – in the battle. And every time his arms would go back down, the Israelites would start losing the battle. So a few people stood on either side of him and held up his arms during the day so the Israelites would win the battle. And I often think of that as a physical form of having believers around you to hold up your arms when your your faith is low. Have, like, lean on other people’s faith that their faith can stand in that gap for you and they can fight for you while you can’t.

Amen. Laura, 30 seconds. Anything you want to say?

Definitely. Anyone who’s struggling or, you know, just wondering how they will ever heal or get to the other side of something, there’s so much hope. There’s so much help for you, and God cares, and He’s faithful, and He will get you through this, and get you – not to the other side, because I don’t know if there is the other side – but He will continue to help you, and to trust in that.

I love it. And Laura, thank you for sharing your heart and your struggles the last two shows. I love it. I really appreciate your transparency.

Well, thank you Mike for what you do. You are appreciated.

Well, thank you my friends, and we’ll see you next time.

Blazing Grace is a nonprofit international ministry for the sexually broken and the spouse. Please visit us at blazinggrace.org for information on Mike Genung’s books, groups, counseling, or to have Mike speak at your organization. You can email us at [email protected] or call our office in Chandler, AZ at (719) 888-5144, Again, visit us at blazinggrace.org, email us at [email protected] or call the office at (719) 888-5144.

Growing up, Laura Graber’s father was an alcoholic. He was also addicted to pornography and molested his daughters. There was constant tension and the fear of sexually inappropriate behavior of their father in their home, to the point that Laura was afraid of taking a shower. Laura grew up in an Amish family; while many have the perception that the Amish live pristine, peaceful lives, an undercurrent of unspoken sexual abuse is alive in their community. In this first of two interviews, Laura shares her story.

This radio program is PG-13. Parents strongly cautioned: some material may be inappropriate for children under the age of 13.

Jesus’s mission was to comfort those who mourn, bind up the brokenhearted, proclaim liberty to captives, and open prison doors for those who are bound for those who want more than status quo Christianity has to offer, Blazing Grace Radio begins now. And here is your host, Mike Genung:

Hey, Mike Genung here, and welcome back to Blazing Grace Radio. Glad to have you along. It’s a beautiful sunshiny day here in Phoenix, AZ. And before I introduce our guest, a couple of quick announcements.

So for our listeners there in the UK and Europe, I’d love to see you. Go to the website at blazinggrace.org, there’s an events calendar on the homepage.

And so today I have back with me at the program, Mrs. Laura Graber from James Port, Missouri, Laura my friend and welcome back to the program.

Thanks for having me, Mike. It’s an honor.

Thanks for coming on. And so, Laura’s going to be with us the next two weeks, and today we’ll be talking about some sexual abuse issues she encountered growing up in her family. And then next week, what she’s been through with porn addiction in her marriage. And a common thread that can run through both of those scenarios, is anxiety and fears. So along the way, we’ll be picking that conversation up and looking at what recovery looks like.

So let’s begin, Laura, and go and begin by sharing what you went through growing up.

Sure, absolutely. So I grew up in a in a Baptist Amish home. So, you know, a lot of people have their opinion of how they think the Amish are [laughs] who they are and how they live their lives. Granted, my home that I grew up in was was an exception. Thankfully there’s not many of them in the culture, but my father was an alcoholic. And with that came lots of anger and rage, and, you know, all the aspects of that. And as I grew up there became more and more sexual impurities in his life, became more evident, until it got to the point where he definitely was sexually abusing us through a lot of different forms. For a long time in my life I was able to ignore it, and not, you know, call it for what it was because it didn’t seem like that big of a deal. Which is, a lot of times, what sexual impurities and sexual sin… you can lie to yourself for a while, believing that it’s not as bad as you perceive it to be.

But… so, obviously, growing up with a father that you know was an alcoholic, and angry, there was lots of tension in our home. My parents would fight a lot, and argue a lot, and just always being tense, never knowing when something would tip them off. And he would spank you, per se, but it was much more than disciplining you. It was a way for him to unleash his anger, you know, using a whip or, you know, whatever he had close to his hands to use. So a large part of my childhood was spent, like, just living in constant fear. I remember bumping his chair one Sunday afternoon as a little kid, when he was taking a nap, and getting a beating because I bumped his chair.

Mmm.

You know, just instances that were completely crazy, you know? Yeah. Sometimes he would come to the table and I’d have to sit beside him and… because that’s how we sat at the table, in that row. And he would be angry because he’s looking for an excuse, you know? Someone to take his anger out on. And it was so nerve wracking trying to eat, you know, just fear, just complete fear. So obviously as I got older, you know, in the age of eight, nine, ten years old, I started becoming aware that… I can’t necessarily pinpoint, like what happened, that I knew to never be alone with him. But I was always very aware at a young age, you know, if he was in the house and there’s no one else in the house, like, don’t be in the house with him. Yeah, I just… I spent a large part of my life just not being in the same place as him, alone. So by the age of 8-9 years old, he would make me uncomfortable with staring at me. And that led to, you know, occasionally he would, you know, try to touch me as I walk past him, or depending on where you sat or what you were wearing, he would be staring at you. He would write vulgar things on, you know, papers and leave them laying around where… you know, if I was, if he was out in the shop and I was out there too, he’d be sitting there, you know, looking at, like, magazines that were full of, you know, porn, literally.

Right in front of his daughter?

Yes, yes.

Mhmm.

I mean, he would sometimes try to hide the cover, but I knew they came in the mail. And, you know, we knew that’s what he had in his hands. You know, we walked behind him, you’d see what he had. There was just like… slowly but surely it kept getting worse. And I was very naive, like no one… like, my mom would have never talked to me about sexual things, you know, growing up. So for me it was, it was all foreign. It was disturbing to me, like, disgusting to me. Like, I knew it wasn’t right, and yet I had no one to explain to me, like, that this is wrong. So it’s kind of, yeah, a lot of confusion mixed in with that.

But it kept on going throughout my teenage years. You know, like, if in the morning, if he would hear that you’re awake then he would all of a sudden, you know, open the bedroom door in hopes to catch us changing. Or if you were showering, the the lock on the door didn’t work very well. Which I’d say it was probably done on purpose. And he would, you know, open the door and pretend he didn’t know you were in there. It got to the point where us young little girls would, you know, if one of us were showering, the other one would be hanging around the bathroom door or be inside the bathroom just so he didn’t try those things. He would, by the time I was like 13-14 years old, he would, like, in the living room evenings, he would sit on his recliner in front of everyone and be masturbating or something. You just… yeah, lots of very disturbing things.

In front of the whole family?

A lot of disturbing things. Yes. Yes. I mean, obviously I had older brothers, and if they were around he never acted out in front of them as much. He definitely hid it from them, because there was a time when some of us younger girls started speaking up a bit, and my brothers were just kind of like “What?”, you know? Like they didn’t know this stuff was happening. So I think he hid it more from them than what I realized, you know, at the time.

But yeah, like, my mom would be sitting there sometimes, so us girls would just, I spent… I remember spending quite a bit of evenings in the bedroom until he went to bed. He’d go to bed fairly early. You know, 8:30, 8:00, something like that. And then coming out in the living room and hanging out with mom after he went to the bedroom. So yeah, that was just reality. And I somewhat knew that other dads maybe weren’t like that, but it just felt too much for your brain to even process that, that this isn’t completely normal. Because then I would have had to admit that this is wrong and there’s something wrong. And that felt terrifying to me. Yeah. I would have much rather just had to live in an alternative reality and not face the actual effect that all of that was having on me at the time.

Mhmm.

So yeah, he was very… a vulgar person. I mean he would tell me that I was made to satisfy the other half of the population. Oh, that would that would make me very, very angry. [laughs] Obviously. Yeah. Those things kind of all continued until my parents separated when I was 16 years old. And yeah, so obviously that released me from having to live in the same house as him. The last year before they separated I would be home a lot alone with him and my mom. And that last year was… it was awful. It was completely awful. I know there was other people around on the weekends, a lot to distract him. And yeah, it was just a lot that happened that, sometimes I wonder if I even gathered, you know, mentally, today – years later – you know, what all took place. But yeah, so that obviously left me with a lot of, like, the mindset of, like, anything sexual is disturbing and disgusting. And even viewing men in general, in a very… ungodly way. Just, like, being disgusted by males in general, which in a sense, like, God used for good. Because I didn’t have a lot of boy drama in my life [laughs] as a teenager. So that was… that was a little positive in the whole aspect. Yeah. Kind of a small glimpse of of my childhood growing up.

How many kids in your family?

There was nine of us, and I was the youngest.

How many boys? How many girls?

There was five boys and four girls. Actually, I said that exactly opposite, four girls… five girls and four boys.

And your brothers had no idea that a chunk of this was going on.

There was things that they did know. I mean, they were aware of, like the magazines he got in the mail. They were aware of different things because, you know, after he was done with the magazines, he would lay them in on my older brother’s bed, you know, gave them to the boys. So he was very, like… entitled, you know, as a male. That was just what males did. This is who they were. So my brothers, you know, he… he tremendously impacted their purity at a young age. And they knew some of the things, but a lot of the things that he did toward us younger girls, we just didn’t talk about, not even really that much to each other, nor to my mom. It was kind of something that you just didn’t want to talk about because it was hard. And subjects like that in the Amish culture, you don’t hear anyone talking about sexual things. They’re just like a, yeah, a silent subject. Especially in the community that I grew up in that era… you didn’t get taught any of that in school, you know, there was no sex ed classes in school. So there was just a lot of silence on the subject.

So I remember, you know, several years after my parents had separated, I was talking to one of my brothers and sharing about the showering and he was just horrified. He was like, you know, he remembers me asking him if he could hang out in the hallway while I’m showering. And he remember just like being like, “Okay, what’s wrong with her?” you know, “She’s acting strange,” you know? But he did and he would do that for me if I asked him. But I guess I always just assumed he knew why I was asking him, and he didn’t. That’s just how less we talked about it at the time. Now, today, and even, like, you know, by the time I was 17-18 years old, all of that stuff was definitely discussed and very openly talked about. At the time it was just a silent subject, yeah.

Well, a lot of people, myself included, have or had a perception of the Amish community, of being peaceful. They’re living life the way it should be. There’s wonderful families and communities. And so our listeners know, I’ve been to James Port where Laura lives, and you guys have kind of educated me that that’s not quite the situation. So is there a lot of sexual abuse… immorality in the Amish community?

There is, there definitely is. And it greatly saddens me because of how that subject is not discussed. It’s not taught. It’s not addressed. There’s, you know, a lot of young kids, you know, things happen between kids, and adults view it as, “Oh, it’s just kids doing things.” And that’s not just kids doing things, you know? I don’t know as far as, like the ratio of, you know, the difference between the Amish culture and the so-called English culture – [laughs]

[laughs]

– you know, that if you do statistically the difference between the two. But I would say in the Amish culture there is more, from my personal opinion. For the mere fact that A: it is hidden. Few people bring it to the light, talk about it, actually find healing. And it’s, like… the Amish community is a really close knit community. So if one person finds it out, like everyone knows, a large part of the time. So it’s something that a lot of shame and fear and just complete terror is associated with, so you don’t want anyone to know about it. So it’s better just stay silent and shove it to the back of your mind and forget that it exists.

Mmm.

So that’s definitely, like, a lot of times when, like, instances do come up that you catch, you know, little snippets here or there, that you know something may not be quite right. Or something may have happened, but you never know, like, full details, or people don’t just openly talk about it or share, you know, that “Hey, I was sexually abused, and this happened, and this is how I found healing.” Those conversations would not be a part of the life and Amish community in James Port where I lived. It’s more of a yeah, definitely a very shameful thing that hidden scraped under the rug, you know, covered it up.

Well, the official numbers are that one out of every four women have been abused or molested and one out of every six men have been abused. But those, those are the official numbers. That doesn’t even include all those that had even reported it. So the real numbers are –

Exactly.

– probably much higher. So was your family going to church when all this was going on?

Oh yes, yes. We were in church every Sunday that there was church. My dad was actually looked up as a respected person of the community, at one point, a lot. I think as the years went by, more people… he might have happened to show his anger at the wrong time, and more people got to know that there was definitely, maybe some issues, you know, happening in the background. But there was… like, when we left, when my mom and dad separated, we actually – my dad left for work, and my mom and my brother, me and my sister, we just loaded up in the car and left and left him a note. That’s how we separated because that’s… we just left. And at that point, you know, I think a lot of people were shocked. And still today there’s people in the community that they don’t know the full story, you know, they don’t know what all happened and they would still view us as being wrong. For having just left because my dad was, I mean, in public, he was a jolly person, he was funny, you know. Still today I hear a comment, you know, oh, you know, his laugh or they so enjoyed talking with my dad or something my dad said or, you know, whatever. And there’s still a lot of people today that would not, yeah, would not know the real Jake as I knew him growing up.

And part of the reason on this program I have people who come on and share stories of being molested, like you’ve been willing to do, Laura, is because a lot of this gets repressed in the family system, and then people grow up thinking, “I’m the only one that’s gone through this,” and it’s far from the truth.

Yeah.

So how did you unwind the idea that men are basically scumbag pervs? [laughs]

Umm… [laughs] That’s a big question, Mike. Do you have a couple hours? [laughs] First of all, my brothers were pivotal in that. I mean, obviously God was in the background, you know, orchestrating all of this, but my brothers played a huge part because they treated me differently than from what my dad did. They cared about me. They were, you know, never sexually… toward me in any form. They advocated for me, did things for me, they loved me, they looked out for me. They, you know, were there. They were vibrant in my life and I could trust them completely. So that was huge. And, like, to hear they might be hanging out with guy friends or they might be hanging out with people. Like, if they were comfortable with them, I was comfortable with them a lot of times. Like, who they liked, I liked because I knew that they they had grown up with the same dad as I did. So that that was huge for me. Definitely my brother’s impacting me. And also you know, as I became a Christian in later years, recognizing that there are a lot of men out there who have a heart for God. And, you know, as I started sharing my story, little bits here and there, you know, I barely wouldn’t say much, you know, because I’d still be scared. But people’s reaction, like men’s reaction, the same like, “Wow!” like, “That is so wrong!” Or, you know, like, “That’s awful!” And recognizing like, “Oh, they would think it’s wrong to do this?” You know, “They wouldn’t think that’s okay?” You know, “That’s not just how males are?” So those are probably the two biggest aspects of, yeah, my brothers, and then, like, hearing other males react to parts of my story –

Mmm.

– was huge.

So when I first met you was in 2018 when I led a wive’s retreat in Colorado. So, you and seven or eight other women. So I’m wondering what was going through your mind when you’re going to a wive’s retreat that a man is leading [chuckles] with your background.

[laughs] Well, I definitely… I was… most of the reason why I went to the retreat was because I needed to get away from my husband. I was losing my mind, it felt like, and I was just desperate to get away. And my friend invited me and I was like, “Hey, let’s go. Who cares?” But when I showed up there and I met you and I realized like, “Whoa, like I’m spending the weekend at a retreat that’s being led by this male.” And it was… yeah, there was thoughts in my mind, definitely, of like “Who are you?” Like, “Why would you do this?” You know, yeah. “What type of person are you?” And then that first evening we were broke up in groups to share a story, and you just happened to be in my group. And you shared your story, and that… yeah. That instantly, I… through hearing your perception and seeing your love for purity and calling things out for what they were to be wrong. You know, speaking the truth over subjects, not just brushing them under the rug, or making them sound better than what they were. Yeah, you gained a lot of respect for me that first evening and I continued to go on that.

Well, we’ve got several minutes left, and so I’m wondering what your healing journey… Can you give us a point or two on what that has looked like? Because that was a lot of damage to recover from.

That was a lot. In a lot of different areas, you know. A lot of small things that I even today, sometimes something strikes me and I’m like, “Wow,” like, yeah, “I didn’t recognize that until today.” Probably the biggest, obviously the biggest thing was becoming a Christian and having God, like, the Holy Spirit, to walk me through those things. And I did a lot of counseling… have done a lot of counseling. And my siblings. My siblings have been pivotal in my life. And, like, we can sit together and we can talk openly and honestly about our childhood and connect and, like, just talk about the hard stuff. You know, the disturbing stuff that’s really hard to talk to other people about openly. We do that with each other. We’re not afraid to go there and to talk. We can talk about anything. And that has been majorly healing to have people who understand what it was like, and being able to just share and talk and not people freaking out about what all happened. Yeah.

And at what age did you become a believer?

I was 20 years old when I first… Yeah. I happened to go to church, which is kind of a crazy thing because I hadn’t been in church for a long time, because all of this, really, I was really bitter toward God.

Mmm.

I was. I just had the mindset of “If there is a God and he would allow me to live like this, you know, for close to 17 years, then I don’t want anything to do with him,” you know. If he… yeah.

Hmm.

You know, people would tell me, you know, “God’s good,” or, you know, I would hear things like that and I’d be like,”Yeah, whatever.” I would mock Christians and mock people who believed in Him because to me it was like, “How could he turn a blind eye while we suffered all those years?” I mean, just day after day of complete agony and darkness and just horribleness. I mean, just complete terror and fear, and… yeah. It was awful.

My friends [clears throat] we’re going to continue this conversation with Laura next week, so I would encourage you to join us. And Laura, thank you so much for your honesty and transparency, and I look forward to seeing you next time.

Blazing Grace is a nonprofit international ministry for the sexually broken and the spouse. Please visit us at blazinggrace.org for information on Mike Genung’s books, groups, counseling, or to have Mike speak at your organization. You can email us at [email protected], or call our office in Chandler, AZ at (719) 888-5144. Again, visit us at blazinggrace.org, email us at [email protected] or call the office at (719) 888-5144.

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