I grew up under a traveling evangelist’s roof where a polished public persona hid the violence and shame behind closed doors, and that split shaped my youth, my addictions and eventually my faith. This piece traces the secret, the descent into substance abuse, a sudden night of spiritual encounter, and the long, messy work of facing trauma, forgiveness and repentance. It explores how faith and honesty intersect when wounds come from those who were supposed to protect us, and why bringing hidden things into the light matters. The story does not wrap in tidy closure but aims to show the painful path toward healing and accountability.
My mother was warm and kind, the sort of person people trusted instantly, and yet her calm surface hid a household rule: never tell anyone about Dad. At public events he stood behind a pulpit, but at home he was different, and I learned early that appearance and reality could diverge drastically. That contradiction whispered to me that silence was survival, and we practiced it religiously.
I still remember the day someone noticed my mother’s bruise and asked about it at a camp meeting. Before she could answer, my father cut in with the line, “She fell in the shower.” Hearing him lie that way hit me like a physical blow. The scene froze me—my mother pretending ignorance, my father guarding an image—and I had no language for the fear and fury inside me.
As I moved into my preteen years, anger and confusion pushed me into bad choices. By eleven and twelve I was smoking, stealing and drinking to fill an ache I could not name. Teenage life turned darker: nights of cocaine, alcohol and pot, and eventually painkillers to numb the restless nights. At seventeen I met crystal meth, which felt like a point of no return and left me questioning how I had allowed myself to descend so far.
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One night at 3 a.m., when everything inside me had calcified into despair, Jesus revealed himself to me in a way I could not ignore. In that dark hour I put my faith in Him and felt a sudden, radical change that altered my direction overnight. That shift led me to write about the journey in Radically Restored: How Knowing Jesus Heals Our Brokenness. The transformation did not erase consequences, but it opened a path I could not see before.
I believe God still heals because I follow the same Jesus who “cast out the evil spirits with a simple command, and he healed all the sick” (Matt. 8:16 NLT). But there is a hard question when the wound comes from a parent or spouse we trusted: can faith really fix the deep rips left by betrayal? Those kinds of injuries cut into identity and trust, and healing them is more than an emotional bandaid; it often requires honest work, safety and sometimes professional help.
Honest faith, in my view, allows questions and grief without denying God’s character. We can wrestle and still trust; authenticity does not equal disbelief. When we face the truth about our pain and bring it to God, the chains that once bound us start to be exposed and can be laid down. That process is neither fast nor painless, but it is the only way I know to move from being defined by hurt to being defined by restoration.
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Unresolved trauma became a prison for me because the abuse was never named or addressed by my father. He lingered in my life as presence without apology, and his detachment became another kind of wound. I have tried to make sense of his silence; maybe he thought he did not deserve to be a father after what he had done, or maybe admitting the past would have forced him into shame he could not bear to face.
Jesus warned that “For everything that is hidden will eventually be brought into the open, and every secret will be brought to light” (Mark 4:22 NLT). That reality can feel terrifying, but it can also be freeing when confession, repentance and reparation replace cover-up. I believe healing awaits on the other side of owning wrongs and making amends, and that this promise matters not only to the wounded but to those who have caused the harm.
My father never moved into that light, and I think that left him trapped in guilt and shame until the end. If you see yourself in these pages, know that grace aims at both the broken and the breaker. Jesus offers a way forward that doesn’t excuse the hurt but invites truth, repair and the possibility of new life through repentance.
