This is the story of Billy and me. It’s not a fun story. It’s a hard story. Some of you will find my actions terrible, and some will think they were not “that bad.” I tend to lean towards terrible. But my hope is that the telling of it can help someone out there avoid making the same mistakes I did. Based on some unofficial (and, admittedly, unscientific) research, I have come to think that my issue is actually far too common in the world of youth ministry.
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I grew up in California in a small town you’ve never heard of that was nowhere near the ocean (Everyone thinks of the ocean when you say “California”). And while I don’t fit the stereotype, I have to admit I still get enjoyment out of being able to tell people that I’m a “California girl.” Most of my life’s story is pretty normal. Mom and Dad loved me, raised me well, and took me to church. I was involved with youth group, Young Life, FCA and similar organizations. At some point I decided that teaching teens about Jesus was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. After high school I attended a Bible college and then headed off to a career in Youth Ministry.
For a female in youth ministry, there are definitely some unique challenges – not the least of which is finding churches open to hiring a female. I’m not a liberal or a feminist. I’m actually pretty conservative in my theology and politics; I just don’t have a problem with women serving in pastoral roles. No one ever told me that this is apparently a rare combination. The job hunt became a national search. I won’t say exactly where I ended up, but it was in the Midwest – the part sometimes referred to as “flyover country.”
It was a bit of a cultural shock. I thought I grew up in a small town, but now I was learning what a small town really was. It was completely normal to run into people you knew every time you went out to eat or even went to the store. In fact, it was more surprising when you didn’t. News traveled fast. The church I worked at was one of the bigger ones in the area, but their youth group was suffering. One of the associate pastors, with little-to-no interest in doing youth ministry, was trying to “get something started.” However, it became obvious their talents were not with adolescences, and so the church decided to bring in a youth director. Enter me, stage right.
I’ve always looked a little older than I am, and I have a pretty professional demeanor, so most people didn’t give me too much flak about my age. I think I got more looks about the fact that I was single. In this sleepy little town, there were still brides as young as 19 and 20 – a huge difference from where I grew up. At first I found the comments funny: “I have a nephew that you would LOVE,” “I need to make sure you meet my grandson when he is back in town,” etc. I would make a joke to avoid the discomfort, “ I am pretty happy for now with Tigger” (my cat).
My first couple of years were really incredible. I was getting used to the denomination (which was new to me), and I was becoming known in the town. The schools became very open to having me visit students during lunches and even asked me to help out with events. The youth group was growing, and I really felt like Jesus was doing something great in the lives of the teenagers there.
But this story isn’t about my successes. This is about where I failed…
Billy was a boy in the youth group. He was just finishing his freshman year when I was interviewed at the church. His family was not a “leadership” family in the church. In fact, I barely remember them attending much more than Easter and Christmas. But Billy was there every week. He was part of the group I called “the four musketeers” – four boys that were very active in the youth group and took on leadership roles. Their small group had incredible discussions (or so I heard – I wasn’t in it since we separated by gender), and they were very welcoming to new students. I really loved all the kids, but Billy and I had a special connection. I didn’t go seeking it, but I also never tried to push it away. Actually, it began before I even started at the church. He emailed me when I was announced as the new director and began asking me questions about faith, God, the Bible, my teaching style, and so on. He told me about the youth group (it’s always nice to hear about it from a student’s perspective and not the adults – normally more accurate). He told me what he thought was great about the group and what needed work. I was hired about a month or two before officially starting, and Billy and I emailed a good bit in that time, and it continued when I arrived.
Billy would always be in the group of us hanging out, and we hung out a lot. I was single and living in a small town. There wasn’t much to do, and I had a lot of time on my hands. Why not spend it with students? I would open up the youth room, and five or six of us would watch movies together. We would eat out all the time (compliments of the church budget, of course). After about a year, the “group” of us hanging out became more and more just Billy and me. He had great questions, and I just loved our conversations. We went shopping together. We saw movies together. He helped plan youth group meetings. I loved the hidden gems that popped up, showing me how much I didn’t really know him. One time we were talking and he mentioned his love for gangster rap, which absolutely stunned me since Billy’s world was about as far removed as a person can get from the “thug life.” Learning that I had zero knowledge of this genre of music, he decided to sit me down and educate me on the amazing world of “why it feels so good to be a gangsta.” He played the songs. I listened. He knew every word. I laughed the whole time pretty much out of pure shock (Looking back, I realize how weird of a moment that really was, especially remembering how sexually explicit some of the lyrics were and how it didn’t bother me at all. I’m appalled to admit to you how ‘normal’ that moment – and many like it – felt to me). It’s crazy to think of how many warning signs there were…
I guess the loneliness just started to sink in at some point. I let Billy fill a lot of the holes in my life – holes he had no business filling. There really were a ton of warning signs. One summer we went on a mission trip to a Native American Reservation. The work was hard, and the days were long. One afternoon I fell asleep on Billy’s stomach. I have absolutely no memory of even laying down near him. I don’t remember how long I was asleep. I just woke up and thought, “Oh no! How many people saw me?” I didn’t really acknowledge that it was a bad thing; just that it would be bad if people saw us.
There was one time after youth group that I sat on his lap – and I don’t even think he wanted me to. I basically forced it. Right as I sat down, his mom came in the room. She didn’t make a big deal out of it in the moment, but I heard later that she asked him about it.
There was a leader named Patty in our group. She was a little younger than me, but we never really hit it off as friends. Most of the students loved her. She was funny. She was attractive. She was a great leader. She gave fantastic lessons. Her small group always went well. She was very talented (she was a music teacher in one of the local schools). I really struggled with jealousy around Patty, especially when she and Billy would be chatting. And she had lived in the town most of her life, so she had deeper connections with some of the families in the church, including Billy’s family. She would be invited over to dinner at Billy’s house, and I would get upset.
Like I said, there were warning signs…
And are you ready for something really pathetic? Billy actually called me out on all of this. He called me and said we were getting too close and that it wasn’t right. He stopped the phone calls and the emails. He even cut down on youth group attendance. The teenager told the youth director that things weren’t right. Eh…there were a lot of signs.
Billy graduated and went on to a big college on the other end of the state. It was good. Safe distance. All was well.
Then I met Kenny. Kenny was everything a girl can ask for in a boyfriend. He was tall, smart, attractive, and was studying to be a doctor. Oh, and he loved Jesus. The ladies out there call that “the whole package.” He made me laugh. He bought me things. My head fit perfectly into the space where his neck met his shoulders. We went places together. The question was less, “Do I want to marry him” and more, “When can I get him to propose?” We even did the oh-so-serious-road-trip to meet each other’s families. There was a lot about my relationship with Kenny that was good. Unfortunately, there was a lot that was bad, too. I remember telling Kenny that he had to meet Billy and get his approval. I remember the look on his face when he asked, “Are you serious? I need to be approved by a teenager?” And the truth was… I wasn’t really kidding. I tried to laugh it off, but in reality, Billy’s approval was important to me. I remember when they met and how hard we all tried to pretend it wasn’t awkward. I remember how hard I tried to convince myself that moments like that were normal.
My relationship with Kenny ended poorly. All of my (and his) emotional baggage came out and instead of dealing with it, we argued a lot and found ourselves going way too far physically. At this point, on top of the baggage I was carrying, I was processing significant guilt and shame. The relationship didn’t just end – it exploded.
Just a few weeks after the breakup, I was speaking at a retreat not too far from Billy’s college. I don’t remember if I called him or if he called me, but I ended up in his dorm room. He showed me around the campus, and we grabbed a bite to eat. I told him everything about Kenny. I took a nap on his bed and woke up with him next to me – almost like the mission trip from years before. We talked about how we felt about one another. The conversation ended with Billy asking me out. He could see I wasn’t ready to answer, so he handed me a mix CD for my drive home, gave me a hug, and told me he loved me.
I arrived home and a long email from Billy about how much he cared about me and that even if we didn’t end up together, we would always be friends.
I said “no” to Billy. I wish I could tell you it was out of a sudden burst of conviction, the simple truth was that he would have treated me wonderfully, but I didn’t want that. I felt like trash, and I wanted to be treated like trash. I wanted someone to use me. I wanted to use someone. But I couldn’t do that to Billy. I think a little voice in my head even pointed out that I had already used him enough.
We slowly fell out of touch. At some point he even blocked me on the different social networking sites we were connected on. I heard through some channels that he started helping out with the youth ministry at the church he was attending at college, and through that he realized just how screwed up his and my relationship was. He even got some counseling. Strangely, I was kind of relieved to see things go this way. I knew I wasn’t healthy and that I didn’t help Billy much. I was a scar on his life and his faith. I think he would have been better without me. So it was for the best.
* * *
It was about two years later that I got the letter.
Billy hand wrote it on six sheets of 5×8 notebook paper – front and back. For most of the letter, he was just spewing anger. I couldn’t even read it all in one sitting. It was exhausting to hear what he had to say. He was mad at me. He was tired of the scars that I left on his life. He was tired that I was affecting his current relationships with people and with God. He reminded me of things that I didn’t even remember doing (which speaks to the amount of bad choices made – I couldn’t even remember them all).
In what can only be described as God-ordained series of events, we actually met up again. The short version is that I was visiting my old church (I had since moved to another church in another state). Billy was going to be in the area. One of us contacted the other, and we decided to get together. But please understand that based on what he wrote in that letter, I never thought I would talk to him again, let alone see him.
He suggested we meet at a park and walk the loop. Before getting out of my car I remember praying, “God, there is nothing I can do to make this better. The only redemption here is through You. If it’s Your will, please bring some healing to this.”
So we met… and we walked. We spoke openly and honestly. I didn’t make excuses. I didn’t deny anything (though I did admit that I didn’t remember everything). Through it all an incredible thing happened: forgiveness. We started laughing together. We were enjoying one another. We walked that loop at least four times as we opened up the wounds and talked through things he wrote and said things that we never said before.
Billy even commented that deep down he just really wanted to be heard. Apparently he tried to talk to some people at the church about all of this, and they seemed to brush it aside, which is just so wrong. It was also nice to finally say, “I really screwed this up… I can’t do much about it…but I’m so incredibly sorry.” We also didn’t pretend about our future. Billy said, “This isn’t a new beginning for our friendship. It’s great that we were able to talk today but I have no desire to be in any sort of regular contact.” And that’s where we ended up.
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I’ve always been a broken mess. And anytime I try to put back the pieces on my own, it has been a miserable failure. But when I admit my powerlessness in a situation, I am simply blown away with how much Christ can do when I get out of the way and submit to Him. Maybe this shouldn’t be such a mind-blowing thing for someone in ministry…but it is.
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I had a friend once that had a history with drugs. And I don’t mean that they smoked pot once or twice… I mean they did everything. And I do truly mean everything. She told me that for every level of drug, there was always a familiar saying that people said to justify/prove they didn’t have a real problem: “If I ever drink so much that I pass out, I stay away from it for a week or two. I don’t want to develop a problem” or “I just sniff it… I don’t inject it.” And even, “I would NEVER do heroin before 5 PM… those people are addicts.” I remember thinking how ridiculous that sounded to me. How could you not see the cesspool that you are swimming in? How can you not smell the stentch? How can you look in a mirror and not see the person you’ve become?
Well, it turns out, it’s pretty easy.
In my case, the line was, “But we haven’t done anything!” It was a very effective line. I felt relatively fine about my relationship with Billy while I was his youth minister. And many other people that I’ve talked to actually agreed with this line! It’s as if we somehow bought into this idea that as long as romantic physical contact hasn’t been made, then all is well. I’ve learned that telling yourself a good line can help you feel fine about doing a lot of stupid things.
The reason I agreed to tell my story here was because I suspect that there are a lot of youth minister out there using this same line. I suspect that there are way too many people out there that find my story far too familiar. I’m guessing that men struggle with this more than women. I want to tell you that this is something that you can bounce back from. Most churches I know would like to help you. They would want to see healing and restoration in these types of situations.
I’m guessing that a “Billy” might be reading this as well. And to you I first want to say that this was not your fault, and that we are so incredibly sorry. But I also want to tell you to please go and speak to someone about this NOW. The pastor of your church, your parents, one of the other youth leaders, SOMEONE. Situations like this require a third party to get involved. Something has gone wrong, and it needs to be put right. As I said, people want to see healing and restoration in a situation like this. And the Jesus I worship is all about those two things.
Even if my story doesn’t quite hit home, I know too well that so many youth directors can let students meet needs that they have no business meeting. Our sense of value should never come from our students. Our youth groups should not suffer because of our issues.
If you are one of the many people in ministry that love the idea of finding your value in Christ but just can’t seem to actually put it into practice, find help with that soon as you can. There are already enough people like me… And there are already too many Billy’s.
The post A Cautionary Tale: But We Never Did Anything… appeared first on Youth Specialties.
