My abuser went to church. He even taught Sunday school.

For a long time, I wondered what that meant about God.

But the reason I still call Him Father has nothing to do with that man.

It begins somewhere else.

When I was sixteen, my first boyfriend broke up with me.

I cried until I could not breathe. I told my dad. He pulled me into his lap like I was five years old and held me while I cried. He even shed a couple of tears. Not because he wanted to fix it. But because my heart was broken.

The secure relationship I had with my own dad is where my understanding of fathers comes from. The only other Father I have ever known is God. I have always understood Him through that same lens.

Years later, when I was nineteen, I told my parents about the abuse I had experienced as a child. My mother and brother had to talk my dad down from going after the man himself. It would have been reckless. But part of me felt the weight of being worth defending.

Not everyone responded that way.

Some members of my extended family chose quiet instead of confrontation. It was easier not to talk about it. Easier to believe that because I was now an adult, the danger had passed.

It had not.

My cousin would later endure harm from the same person.

I watched what silence can cost.

I did not fully understand my father’s grief until my daughter’s life was marked by her own encounter with sexual violence.

I found a text on her phone.

I was sitting on my bed when I read it. The room felt suddenly smaller. I read the words twice, hoping they meant something else. I woke her and asked about the message. She blinked against the light and tried to answer without embarrassment. I do not think she was ready to talk. But I was already there. And once you see it, you cannot pretend you did not.

She told me pieces that night. The rest came slowly over months. Disclosure is not a single conversation. It is a series of painful openings.

After she went back to sleep, I sat there connecting dots I had missed. Her withdrawal from family time. The distance I had chalked up to adolescence. In that quiet room, I accused myself. I should have seen it.

That night, I sat on the bathroom floor and called my dad. I cried into the phone. It was a familiar sound, but a foreign position. The child’s grief coming out of a mother’s mouth.

There was a long silence on the other end. I recognized it. The same devastation. The same helplessness. The same instinct to wish he could have stopped something before it ever reached his child.

In that moment, I understood him.

I was angry at everyone. At systems. At people. At the cruelty woven through this world.

I was angry at God. Not because I believed He orchestrated the harm. Abuse has no purpose for good. It is a field devoured by locusts. There is nothing noble about that loss. But God is not the locust.

He is the one who stays through winter. The one who stretches what remains. The one who helps replant in spring. The one who restores what can be restored and strengthens what survives.

Still, there were moments when I wanted to see Him fight.

I knew what my father’s fury looked like. Part of me wanted that same visible anger from heaven. I wanted thunder. I wanted unmistakable justice.

What I felt instead was His presence.

Comfort is quieter than fury. It does not kick down doors. It steadies a shaking body. It does not erase evil. It walks with you through it.

I loved God. But I saw clearly how imperfect the church was. Sitting in a pew does not sanctify a person any more than standing in a garage makes someone a car. I still scan a room before I sit down.

If harm ever touches my children, I will not hesitate. I will not protect comfort over them. I will not stay quiet to make other people feel less uncomfortable.

When my kids were harmed at school, I believed them. When systems failed, I pulled them out. When people grew tired of hearing about it, I kept talking. When it was uncomfortable, I stayed uncomfortable.

Not because I am brave.

Not because I am dramatic.

But because I know what silence costs.

There were years when I wrestled with God. I asked why evil runs so freely. I did not rush past those questions.

I have not abandoned my faith.

I still belong to Christ.

I still pray. I still believe Jesus is the Son of God. When I am overwhelmed or afraid, I still reach for Him. I still see Him as Father.

Recently, I was driving over the bridge and saw the sky on fire above the Rock River. It burned against stark trees and frozen ice. Color refusing to be swallowed by winter. It felt defiant. Like beauty insisting on itself. I thanked God quietly for letting me see it.

The way I protect my children is not separate from my faith. It comes from it.

I choose them, not instead of God, but because of the Father I believe in.

My children will grow up knowing this; there was never a time when theology outranked their safety.

I chose them. Every time.

And I still reach for Him.