God Girl vs. Good Girl
God Girl vs. Good Girl - Watchtower Series
God Girl vs. Good Girl
Watchtower Series
“I will take my stand at my watchpost
and station myself on the tower,
and look out to see what he will say to me,
and what I will answer concerning my complaint.”
—Habakkuk 2:1, ESV
God Girl vs. Good Girl
Watchtower Series
A couple weeks ago, I told you I needed to step away. My daddy had just died, and I needed to grieve, to mourn, to simply be his daughter for a while. I needed to breathe.
I'm also three years into battling triple-negative breast cancer, with more surgeries ahead. Even so, God has kept me serving. My fall studies with law enforcement, women, and children will continue as planned.
While sitting in grief, something else stirred.
I've been writing the Hosea Bible study since I finished the powerful Micah Study, sitting with Moody Publishers, and somehow it brought me back to what God spoke to me a year ago.
Before a ten-hour surgery that nearly took my life, I recorded a 23-minute video about what had happened to me: I had been sexually assaulted at my church while serving through cancer. The year before, I had spoken up after the church knowingly misrepresented a registered sex offender as a "Bible Scholar" and let him transport me over 200 miles to a state prison for my Pink Bible Project event, shortly after my double mastectomy.
When I brought the assault, the theft, the legal issues, and the church's handling of registered sex offenders to leadership, I was threatened with a defamation lawsuit and served legal paperwork warning me not to speak publicly. All in the name of causing panic, of people leaving due to RSOs. A numbers game!
The church refused to apologize or release its bylaws and policies. They called me a troublemaker with a vendetta, because I insisted they address the fact that registered sex offenders were roaming the halls.
Before surgery, before the ICU, I got on Facebook and recorded a glimpse of my story. I said the church's name five times. They never followed through with the lawsuit.
It's now been exactly a year since I got out of the hospital from that surgery. A year later, I listened to that video again and heard it completely differently.
What happened to me was never meant to be the whole story. It became the beginning of a larger conversation: not about one church, but about all churches, and the gap between what we expect a church to be and the safeguards that actually exist.
Writing Hosea, I remembered exactly what God asked me in that season. It's written right there, in my NIV Life Application Study Bible:
"God may ask you to do something difficult and extraordinary, too. If he does, how will you respond?"
It asked whether I would obey, trusting He has a purpose I can't see, and whether I could accept that the pain of obedience might benefit those I serve, not me.
I said yes.
I said yes because I didn't want another woman to experience what I experienced. I said yes because I didn't want children, our littles, exposed to people who could harm them. I said yes because protecting the vulnerable was worth the cost of speaking, even when silence would've been easier.
Now Hosea has brought that question back that Micah had just been preparing me for.
Maybe this isn't a new assignment. Maybe it's the continuation of the “yes” I already gave.
I don't have it all figured out. I'm grieving my daddy. I'm preparing for another huge surgery. I'm continuing the work God has already placed in front of me.
But this conversation isn't going away.
We entrust our churches with our children, our women, our elderly, our vulnerable.
Good intentions are not a safeguarding system. Hope is not a safety policy.
We need to be watchmen. There are wolves in sheep's clothing in every congregation. I feel safe at the church I'm at now, the one that commissioned me 20 years ago. That's comforting. But I'm still watching.
We need to know the people we serve and worship with. We need to notice when something isn't right. We need to protect the ones who can't protect themselves. We cannot assume someone else is watching. We cannot wait for tragedy before deciding safety matters.
I don't know what the next chapter looks like.
But I know what I said before.
I said yes. And I'm still saying yes. One step at a time.
This conversation continues until victory is won: a victory where love unites the community and protecting one another defines the identity of the Church.
Until next time . . .