by Alisa Kaplan
Then I saw a listing that took my breath away: Water of Life offered a special Bible study group—a free, three-month-long session—designed specifically for survivors of sexual assault.
Now, I’d pretty much given up on finding a support group for sexual assault survivors in my area. Even Project Sister, the rape crisis center where I would come to volunteer, didn’t host any. The scarcity of support groups for rape survivors is both a symptom of and a contributor to the shame rape victims feel about coming forward. So many people can’t talk about what happened to them. And then when they’re ready, it’s hard to find a safe place to do it. So when I saw that Water of Life had a Bible Study group specifically for sexual assault survivors, I took it as a sign.
I didn’t sign up for the group right away, but my mom and I knew we’d found our spiritual home on the very first Sunday we attended church. It felt so hospitable and open, in surprising contrast to some of the smaller churches we tried. It seemed congregants would go out of their way to greet us, precisely because we were faces they didn’t recognize. And there were so many things to do. The course catalog read like a Christmas list; I couldn’t decide which programs I wanted to join first. They even offered Zumba on Monday nights.
But the biggest factor in our decision to join Water of Life was Pastor Dan.
Pastor Dan is open about his troubled past; in his sermons, he talks about breaking into houses as a kid, about his drug use and being sent to military school. (A weird part of the story: My mom and aunt knew him in high school. When my mom told my aunt that he was the pastor at Water of Life, my aunt said, shocked, “Danny the druggie?”)
His candor surprised me in those early weeks and helped me feel that I belonged at Water of Life. This pastor wasn’t someone handing down wisdom from up high, but someone who had fought his way out of the devil’s grip. This wasn’t someone who’d always led a cushy, God-filled life, but someone who most likely knew what it was like to wake up in a seedy motel, wondering where the day’s drugs would come from. I know there isn’t a church in the world led by someone who hasn’t sinned, but when Pastor Dan says that God loves us, no matter what we have done or how we feel about ourselves, I can really hear it as true.
Pastor Dan also spoke very freely and honestly about a topic I’d been struggling with since I got clean, which is that staying in your faith can be hard. At all the other churches we’d gone to, it seemed the faithful were having a much easier time than I was. They didn’t seem to struggle with God, to question Him or the path He’d chosen for them. It certainly didn’t seem like any of the people at those other churches had ever yelled at Him, as I was sometimes tempted to do. This had made me feel rotten, like I was a bad Christian, like I was doing it wrong. I was trying my hardest. Why wasn’t it easier for me?
Pastor Dan’s sermons dealt with these issues head-on. He talked about the struggle, the fight to stay committed to one’s faith. He talked about temptation and about failure. He talked about Jacob, who stayed up all night wrestling with God. He talked about Jeremiah, about Job, about Paul. Listening, I began to understand that my pain and turmoil were part of walking with Him. As long as I did not turn away but kept seeking Him, I would be all right.
Going to church gave me the spiritual practice I’d been missing, everyday guidance on how to be restored to a right relationship with God and how to live my daily life walking with Him. I wanted to build a relationship with God, and Sunday mornings felt like quality time with Him. Church gave me a space to express the gratitude I felt and the struggles I still held in my heart, and served as a much-needed reflection.
The sermon for the week invariably blew me away. I’d never studied the Bible in such depth before—in fact, I’d never studied anything in such depth before. I often felt that I’d learned more during the sermon than I had all week at college. And what I learned Sunday morning gave me a context for everything I was doing, whether at work, in my relationships, or in my sobriety.
I learned quickly how much better I felt if I woke up every morning a little early to read the Bible before work. The depth and richness of scripture astonished me. No matter what was on my mind, it seemed that I could find a story or a quote that spoke directly to me. I wore out a lot of highlighters. I felt comforted to discover that everything I needed had always been there.
That said, reading the Bible can be difficult, especially if you didn’t grow up doing it. I had to remind myself to be patient; after all, I was encountering a lot of the stories and ideas for the first time. When I’d first picked up the Bible, in rehab, it was overwhelming to hit dense passages, stories I didn’t immediately understand. But being part of a church community, especially one that puts a lot of emphasis on Bible study, helped me to keep going. It certainly taught me that I can always ask for help. It also taught me that I may have a completely different understanding of a story from one year to the next. I realized that I have a whole lifetime ahead of me to learn what I don’t yet know.
After we joined Water of Life, the terrible loneliness I’d been feeling abated. Partly I think that was because I started to join groups at the church and make friends. Being with other like-minded people of faith felt like a balm to my soul after so much solitude. Losing my high school friends was one of the most painful things that happened in the aftermath of my rape, and it was the one that left the deepest scar. I came to see that I hadn’t had a deep friendship since.
For years, the closest people to me had been a succession of abusive boyfriends and drug buddies. My boyfriends and drug buddies were good at showing up when they needed drugs or money or a place to crash, and sometimes they were even good at showing up for me when I needed those things. Drug addicts are always in survival mode (survival meant drugs) and that often meant that we didn’t have a whole lot left over for friendship. I certainly wasn’t a very good friend when I was using. But I had been lonely—deeply, painfully lonely—much of the time.
The relief I felt when the loneliness lifted was a drink of icy cold water on the hottest day of the year. Ironically, it also meant that, for the first time in my life, I didn’t mind being by myself. I’d always needed to have a crowd around—noise, action, distractions—because I didn’t feel comfortable in my own skin. Suddenly I found that I was perfectly happy to sit quietly with the Bible or a book of daily devotions. I knew that God was right there with me, and His presence allowed me to find some peace. It also allowed me to make some real friendships—and to renew some old ones.
One afternoon, my phone rang.
“Alisa?”
My phone said it was my mom’s cell phone calling. But the voice at the other end wasn’t my mom’s. It did seem familiar, though.
“It’s me, Alisa. It’s Beka.”
You could have heard my scream of joy and delight in Oregon.
I’d tried to find Beka when I got clean, but she’d moved and her number had changed. Then, providentially, my parents had run into her at the hospital where she works as a nurse. She was at work, so we agreed to talk later. And when we did, it was like we were picking up right where we’d left off, ten years before.
Beka hadn’t changed. She still knew all the gossip about everyone; she was still the person who’d throw you a baby shower or organize everyone to come together for your birthday. She was exactly the same—except in one important way.
“You’ll never believe it,” she said. “But I’ve started going to church.”
“Me too!” I exclaimed.
It took about thirty seconds for us to figure out that, although we’d never seen each other there, we were both attending Water of Life. So Beka and I became church buddies. Since my mom and I had joined, I had wanted to go to a program called Pure, a ministry for younger people between eighteen and twenty-nine, but I’d never had the nerve to go by myself. I started going with Beka. And we started going to Zumba class on Monday nights, too.
God had delivered me back to myself. I was finally—finally!—doing the footwork, and it
was as if everything that had been random and chaotic in my life began to fall into place. A whole world was opening up to me, and I felt the comfort that comes from learning that I could, at long last, put down the heavy burdens I had carried for so long.
The little angel I made at that first retreat in the mountains hangs from a lamp in my bedroom.
She’s since been joined by many other little angels, mostly gifts from people who love me, and each one of them is significant in its own way. My little pipe-cleaner angel may not be as lovely as some of the others, but there’s a reason she’s one of the first things I see when I walk into my bedroom.
That little angel reminds me that I am the child of a good and all-powerful God, and that I was created in His image. Most importantly, she reminds me that He has a purpose—a perfect plan—for me on this earth.
The respite I found at church allowed me to begin to explore my calling, the plan God had for me.
Even after I had found my faith and my place in a church community, I found that I still struggled mightily with the many ways that the rape had disrupted my life. Even after so many years had passed, I kept wondering: Why me, Lord, why me? It felt like I was bashing my head against a wall. I knew He loved me. So how could I reconcile that with what had happened to me?
A passage from Isaiah that I read one morning helped me along the way toward understanding:
People of Zion, who live in Jerusalem, you will weep no more. How gracious he will be when you cry for help! As soon as he hears, he will answer you. Although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, your teachers will be hidden no more; with your own eyes you will see them. Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.” (Isaiah 30:19–21 NIV)
That concept was an eye-opener for me. It was only through my suffering that I had truly come to know God. Had He used adversity to bring me closer to Him? Maybe He hadn’t been punishing me with everything that happened, but simply trying to get me to know Him. Maybe He had work He needed me to do.
For years, I had been so wrapped up in my own pain and struggles that I hadn’t been in touch with a fundamentally important part of me: the part that wants—and needs—to help other people. That was what I had loved about being a Girl Scout and why I’d stayed with the Scouts for years. It was why I’d taken such pride in being a good friend as I grew up. But it was also a part of myself that I had completely lost touch with as I sank into depression and drug addiction after my rape.
As my healing progressed, that started to change.
Going to church put the concept of service back where it belonged, right in front of me. Service is huge at Water of Life. There’s an understanding that the most important thing you can do is serve God and help others in whatever way that you can. Pastor Dan is fond of saying, “He doesn’t touch us so that we can be touched, but so that we can touch others.” At Water of Life, you can help by going on a mission to an underdeveloped country, by sending money to sponsor children who otherwise might not have access to the nutrition and education they need, or simply by helping to direct traffic in the church parking lot on a busy Sunday morning.
For me, the drive to serve came from a simple place. I was conscious every day that I’d been given this huge gift—my life!—and I knew I couldn’t squander it; I needed to do something with it. I needed to show my gratitude to God, and to everyone who had helped me, by making my life the most joyful and meaningful one I could.
I think there was a selfish aspect to this as well. Being of service is a profound way for trauma survivors to heal. Whenever someone asked the children’s television personality Mr. Rogers how to talk to their kids about scary events happening in the world and on the news, he would say that his own mother used to tell him, “Look for the helpers. There are always people helping.”
I think about that a lot. In my experience, it’s true: There are always people helping. After 9/11, firefighters from all around the country traveled to New York to help in any way they could. So many people lined up to donate blood that the Red Cross had to turn them away. Just the other day, when I was at the mall, I saw an elderly woman lose her footing and fall. In a matter of seconds, there were so many people surrounding her—trying to help her up, offering to reach out to her family or call for help—that it quickly became clear that the rest of us weren’t needed at all.
The helpers had been there for me, too. My parents, my lawyers, Shirley and Tiare, Susan, Tina, the other aides at all the rehabs I’d gone to—they were there, and ready to do anything they could to help me. For a long time, I couldn’t accept the help they were offering. But when I’d been able to reach out and grab hold of the life preserver they’d thrown out to me, those people had pulled me in.
With solid ground under my feet, I felt I might be ready to try to pull someone else to safety. It was very empowering to realize that I was the person who could help—as opposed to the one who needed it.
I was ready to feel good again. It’s a dirty little secret, but being of service feels fantastic. It lines you up with what you believe in, the values and beliefs that light you up. I believe with every fiber of my being that God gave me my specific talents and experiences—all of them—so that I could use them to serve other people. Now that I was back on my feet, I needed to figure out how best to do that.
I started pretty small. If a co-worker needed me to stay late to finish a project, or my parents needed me to do them a favor, I showed up for them. My act of service might be as simple as braking so that someone could pull into heavy traffic in front of me. No matter how insignificant the act seemed, I was always grateful for the opportunity, and I dedicated it to God.
I had also adopted a dog, an Australian and German shepherd mix, a shelter rescue named Daisy. I fell head over heels in love with her, and she quickly became the center of my life.
Daisy had been badly abused and fed more junk food than dog food, which had left her so uncomfortably overweight that she could barely move. I took a tremendous amount of pride in restoring her to a normal weight, not to mention to full health and confidence. When I woke up in the morning, I fed Daisy before I fed myself. When I got home at night from work and school, we went out for a good long walk—and she got to sniff every tree, even if I was so exhausted I could barely stay upright.
One short year before, I’d been in no position to rescue anyone. But after I’d taken Jesus into my heart, it felt right to put someone else’s needs—even a dog’s—before my own.
Helping felt great and somehow natural to me, and helped to build my confidence. These particular acts of service may not have been super-significant in the grand scheme of things, but I used them to get back in shape, to build my good works muscles. I knew that I would feel another degree better once I landed on a way to serve that I could dedicate my life to.
I was still struggling over what I was going to do with my life, professionally. I’d gone back to college a couple of years before. That had been a huge step in the right direction, of course, but I hadn’t been able to make it work for me. I’d been drifting around, taking classes in various areas, but none of them had meant anything to me on a fundamental level, and so nothing had stuck.
I started to pray on it. God had saved my life; what did He want me to do with it? I knew that I wanted to help people. How could I best do that?
I prayed a lot. Then, one morning, reading my Bible, I found myself returning over and over to this line from Corinthians:
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. (2 Corinthians 1:3–4, NIV)
I couldn’t get it out of my head: “so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive.”
I suddenly found that I knew exactly what God wanted me to d
o: He wanted me to comfort others, as He had comforted me. Who better to help women who had been raped or abused than someone who knew exactly what they’d been through?
I picked up my phone and called my own personal angel and victim’s advocate, Tiare. She agreed to meet me at her office to talk about some career options, and I walked out of there knowing I wanted to try to become a victim’s advocate.
That decision galvanized everything in my life. I spent hours paging through the course catalog at the community college I was attending, and I signed up for my next semester’s courses with renewed purpose, taking classes in criminal justice and the psychology of violence. I didn’t have to pinch myself to stay awake in these classes or bribe myself to do the reading. Unlike the history of film, or some random sociology class, these were subjects I already felt intensely and passionately about.
Tiare also suggested that I begin volunteering at a center that helps victims of sexual assault. She even picked the one I ended up volunteering for, Project Sister Family Services, in Los Angeles County. SISTER stands for Sisters in Service to End Rape, which the organization has been working to do since it was founded in the early seventies. The services Project Sister provides include a twenty-four-hour hotline and victim advocacy work, including accompanying victims to their medical exams, interviews with police, and court appearances. There’s an education piece, too, to go along with the advocacy. People from the organization give presentations in schools about sexual assault, offer self-defense classes and an antiviolence program for pregnant and parenting teens, and do outreach with high-risk youth. It was a place I wanted to be a part of.
