VOICES OF HOPE
KB
Since the beginning of KB’s Facebook tenure, the little box in the “About Me” section has contained the phrase, “I have exactly the life I’ve always wanted.” From time to time, people have asked him what that means. He would tell most of them is that he had a career that fulfilled him every day, a faith that sustained him through the trials of life, a circle of friends that enriched his life in countless ways, a wife whose unconditional love enabled him to go through life’s challenges, and children and grandchildren that brought him joy and pride. At the half-century point in his life, he felt that he did indeed “have it all” in every sense of the word, and anyone who knew him assumed that he did so as well. But what very few people knew was that what “having it all” really meant was that he had triumphed over the burden of a secret that he had harbored for years, a secret that got heavier and more difficult to bear with each passing year–his secret struggle to overcome the effects of sexual abuse and to resolve issues related to same-sex attraction.
Restoration - KB
Sometimes, I had a sense that I was living someone else’s life—a life to which I was not entitled to have—and that, for some reason, I didn’t deserve it. Sometimes, though rarely, I felt I didn’t want this life at all—as good as it seemed—and I just couldn’t put my finger on what exactly it was that I was missing, even though I felt that I was truly “fixed.” It wasn’t until many years later, when it came to the residual effects of the abuse, that I realized that I wasn’t “fixed”—by a long shot. Later, a friend would advise me that working around something as devastating as sexual abuse was not remotely the same as working through it.