My Early Christian Days

At one point, my pastor was accused by a lady in the church. She said he made a pass at her and that he tried kissing her. He denied it all. He said she was being used by satan to bring him down and break up the church. I believed him because I couldn't accept that a man of God, a pastor, my pastor, my teacher, and my prayer leader could be capable of such behavior. I began doubting but fought every negative thought that crossed my mind. We all cried and prayed with him, asking God to resolve and bring this matter to light.

Our mother church, sent a representative to help out in the church and to act as counselor/advisor and I guess, to investigate what was really going on. He was keeping an eye on everything. The woman later confessed that it was all a lie and that satan used her against our Pastor. I was relieved because I wanted to keep everything the way it was and I had began trusting my Pastor to the fullest.

The representative decided to stay with our church and it was very convenient for him because the church was built on a portion of his land. The church accepted him and we were all very pleased because he was a musician but also because he was smart and extremely organized which was useful for the church. His wife was our church missionary.

We had lots of celebrations in their home and we became like family. I used to visit their home often because I was usually in the church doing something. I prayed and tried staying neutral when it came to judging any of the situations until something happened to kill my joy. This was the first thing that cracked and weakened my faith.

About two years later, I was almost seventeen, just before starting the service, my pastor called the lady I mentioned before, (the one who told me about the gay rumors), and me outside the church. We were standing right by the door steps. He began saying that he didn't know what it was about us two but he felt he was in love with us. We smiled and responded that we loved him too. He then explained that he loved all the women in the church but what he felt for us was different and special.

At that moment, I didn't think anything of it. I'd never thought he was trying to get fresh with me. He knew I was only a child when it came to matters of the heart. I was still sixteen. What can a man at his age (like sixty) and at his level ever want with me? In him was the father I longed for and until then he had been doing a great job at it.I don't know what my friend felt or thought at that time but I know my mind was not ready to accept reality.

I told myself he just didn't know how to express his feelings of gratitude and appreciation for standing by him in one of his darkest hours. She and I did all kinds of work and fundraisers to help the church. We were committed and were relentless when it came to keeping the church at the status it was expected.

Unbelievable, my pastor tore my heart to pieces! The other lady smiled and went inside the church and I was following her when he grabbed my arm and asked me to wait a second. His lips began moving. "I don't know if it is how beautiful you are or if it's your body or the softness of your voice or just the way you are but you have made me fall in love with you." That is what came out of his mouth. I tried forcing a smile and I said, "Of course you love me, you are my pastor and I am like one of your kids."

This was his chance. I gave him an opportunity to back up and redeem his honor and status before me but he was not taking back his feelings, his words or intentions. He continued to say, " I know it is so wrong; I am a married man and a pastor but I am only a man; a man with feelings for you and there is nothing that can change what I feel."

His confession of love got worst by the seconds. He said, "Every night you come into my room, in my bed and I do things to you in my mind, that I've never done to my wife, who is lying next to me. I know it isn't you I see; it's a spirit but it comes because of what I feel for you. I want you real bad. I love you."My jaw almost hit the floor and he was there like expecting a response. I don't know what he expected me to do or say. Was he crazy?

Now, I couldn't even look at him. I felt dirty and guilty because of what he said I caused him to feel. I wanted to be invisible. He was about to touch me and I pulled away. I wanted to run home but what would people think? What could I tell my mother? She was a master at blaming me for everything and I didn't need to feel any guiltier than I already felt.I went numb for a while. I couldn't feel anything. If someone had cut me, I don't think that I would have bled.

I walked straight to the altar and fell to my knees but couldn't pray; I couldn't cry. I just stayed there trying to wake up from this nightmare, only I was already awake. I knew God was there and that He was waiting for me to ask for help and strength but I was too ashamed. I couldn't go to God after what I had done to His anointed. I was less than dirt. That is all I felt, shame and guilt, condemnation for causing the man of God to sin.

After a while of just being there, I walked back to my seat. For the first time in almost four years, I wasn't able to worship God. I began to weep. I felt pain in my chest. I had problems breathing because I wanted to scream but I couldn't. Shame was weighing me down. It was my entire fault. I was too nice, too loving, and too needy and men could not resist this. I blamed myself for my pastor's weakness. I caused this to happen by always being so available to everything they asked of me.

I found every excuse and used it against myself.I stopped crying and shut down. I didn't hear the message, I heard no singing, and I don't even know how I got home. After that night, it was never the same for me. I became paranoid of being anywhere my pastor was especially if no one else was close by. I just avoided him as much as possible and sometimes he would find ways to either pinch me or touch me while he was with his wife. To everyone else, he was being fatherly with me but I knew what really motivated his hands to find my body and I felt disgusted.

Maybe I could have told on him, to his wife I mean, but she was just so in love with him and she was such a good woman. She stood by him through all that came against him. She believed in him and fought to keep his ministry alive. She was devoted and took real good care of him.

Sometimes, I felt like she knew what he was feeling for me because several times when I was with my mother we would bump into them at the shopping center or a store and he would look at me as though I was his favorite dish. Then he would walk towards me and try to whisper things in my ears. He would say things like, "I love you" or "you are mine" and she would give him a dirty look and sometimes pull him to her side. As a good wife, I believe she knew his weaknesses and tried her best to save and protect him when possible but the cat was out of the bag and he had shown me his true colors.

For several months I ran from him every chance I had. So much that I ended up leaving his church and going to another. I hear people say that running from your problems is not the solution and I think they are right. Because I found myself in the same situation with one of the church officials and yes, he too was married.

Before leaving the church I went to our advisor and explained what happened. His response left me in limbo, just hanging. He said, "How dumb can he be? He shouldn't have told you in that manner." I was shocked. "He shouldn't have told me at all" I cried. He commented that I needed to understand that any man would have to be crazy if he didn't fall in love with me. He said I was a wonderful young woman and if he wasn't married he would make me his wife.
I left my church and went to the mother church where the representative had come from. About a month later, he followed, stating that it was time for him to come back to his church. I was already in position as the youth leader and would have to wait another eight months before I could leave.

What do you know? Like a magnet, he too began pursuing me. This went on for over a year. I was astonished at myself. All the time I looked up to him like a father; I had a crush on his youngest son; his oldest daughter was my Spanish teacher when I was in elementary school and his wife was like a mother to me.

I even helped to take care of her after a serious back surgery which left her paralyzed for a while. All this and yet, he was confessing his love to me? What was wrong with me? What was I doing to cause this type of reaction in men who were supposed to serve as leaders of the church? How could I make this man fall in love with me if I loved his entire family like my own? Of course, I refused having sex with him but the guilt and shame I felt made me responsible for him wanting me.

He started showing up at my house always bearing lots of expensive gifts. I was afraid to refuse his gifts because he gave them to me in front of my mother. I thought she might think it was because of helping with his wife but even after I sat down with her and told her all that had happened, she did nothing. She said I had to take the gifts because he just loved me a lot.

Once again, I felt alone and helpless. There was no one to neither stand with me nor fight for me. I was not allowed to make my own decisions but when it came to saving me, I was on my own.I didn't know how to tell him that all I felt for him was a love that was pure, that of a father-daughter relationship. It had nothing to do with sex, lust or destroying his family or his marriage. Don't get me wrong. He was quite an elegant man, much older (in his fifties) but handsome. He was a serious person and knew how to appreciate life. I admired and liked many things about him but in no way, shape or form did I think of him as anything more than a father figure.

He was a wonderful father to his daughter and he was more than a father to his sons, he was their friend. He was the perfect father and I wanted to be one of his children.Once I realized my mother was not going to help me out of this, I became an easy prey for the wolf again. I fell right back into my victim mode. That was an area of my life where I was the expert.

I wanted him to be the father to care for me like he cared for his own. Instead, I became his conquest. He was like a child with a new toy and I was just allowing him to do whatever he wanted as long as he didn't cross the line. No sex. This went on for about four years. He touched me and kissed me all the time and I felt ashamed but I just didn't know how to stop him. Actaully, I was hoping that he would get to really love me and in time understand my true needs. I wanted him to stop wanting me and making me feel dirty just long enough to see a daughter in me but it never happened. More and more he was determined to break me.

Thank God that this man was not willing to physically force me to have sex. He tried everything possible and at times I felt he might but he was careful not to rape me. He proposed that we elope to Mexico for a while but I refused and finally told him that I wasn't interested in him like that. He then asked me for one last request. "Let me have sex with you, just once and I'll leave you alone." What?! Was he for real? Talk about being persistent! My answer was “NO”.

For the first time, I was able to look him in the eyes and say, "I don't want anything to do with you again." His request was humiliating and it helped me to understand that there was no love, only lust. My first pastor had been removed and was now at the mother church. Now I had not one but two man after me at the same church and I didn’t know what to do.

I reluctantly spoke to the pastor of the church about the constant harassment I was experiencing from this man who was part of the church leadership and he gave me permission to leave the church. He also explained that I was not the only person he had done this to. There were at least two other ladies who had complained about his sexual advances and improper behavior.

This didn't make me happy but I sighed with relief because all along I was blaming myself for everything that was happening but he had been playing the field for a while.

This situation was really hurtful and disappointing because I thought that with him and his family I could become part of something that was better than the life I had. His lust for me knocked down the safety I thought I had found.
Every time our church went to visit the “mother church” I stayed home. I couldn’t handle seeing either of them. At the same time I loved my ex-pastor’s wife and the family of this other man as well and they loved me too but I had to stay away from them. It hurt so much because these people were offering me what I needed and sought all my life.

The church leader kept coming to my home, still showing up with gifts and expecting me to be nice to him. He insisted that if I gave him a chance, he could make me happy. When my mother was home, I would take his gifts (my sisters had a ball with everything he bought for me) but when my mother was not at home, he would leave with whatever he brought for me. At times I hid and made him think no one was home.

Long after this, he would ask me if I love him and would continue to confess his love for me. Time after time I explained to him that he was like a father to me and that was all I needed of him. I went as far as telling him about the abuse I had suffered, all of it, but he seemed to go absent when I spoke. He could only think of his selfish need to have me.

I am now forty four years old (it is 2007) and up to last year when I visited St. Croix, he was asking me to stay with him. He is now a pastor but I am sure that if I was to say yes, he would give it all up to be with me. It is like a sickness in his mind that has no cure.

I have preached to him, I have opened up my heart to him and I have even tried correcting him about his ways because I fear that his church is lacking because of his condition but I have not been successful in helping him turn away from his old ways.

The fact that I speak to him with authority and that there is anointing in my life makes him more determined to have me in his life. Before he used to love my weaknesses but now he loves my strength. It is like he forgot that two plus two equals four. I know he understands the Word of God and he is a very smart man. So then, how can he love the power of God in me and still want me for himself when he knows that is not the will of God?

The very thing he now says he admires and loves about me, the anointing of God over my life, is the thing that comes against his desires and ways of the flesh. It is the very thing that makes me look at him and feel nothing but pity for his soul mixed with dismay caused by his lack of reverence to his position as pastor and more so to God.

He is now a widower and thinks that because his wife is now dead everything has change to his advantage. What he doesn’t see is that God has other plans for my life that do not include him. He doesn’t understand that just the very fact that all I ever saw in him was a father would never change how I see him and how I feel about him, another father who lost his way.

I have forgiven him and as I mentioned before, I try to help him through the Word of God but I’ve come to terms with the fact that as much as I would like for him to change, it is up to him to want the change.

He has a congregation to feed and to guide into the truth which is God and I pray that despite his ways, God has mercy that his sheep don’t die spiritually but that they are open to allowing the Holy Spirit to lead them.

Sometimes we put our sight on men wanting them to be the example to follow but the truth is that men will always be men (when I say men I include women) and because the work of God is not yet perfected in us, we will err. It is wise that we keep our eyes set on God through Jesus who came as the perfect example that we may follow in His footsteps.