the person I want to be vs. me

Tonight I saw a really interesting film about the Methodist Church and homosexuality, and while it probably seems like I should talk about that, I'm actually going to talk about something else.

The thing that stuck with me most from the film is the line, "If not me, then who? If not now, when?"

I had a conversation with a friend today about how you can't protect somebody's next victim. But sometimes you can. And sometimes, you're the only person who has the chance to try. It's kind of overwhelming to stare at doing the right thing and doing the easy thing and seeing exactly how much the paths diverge. And the person I want to be is the person who does the right thing.

And that person I want to be is seriously considering waging a long awaited battle against a local church.

Do I want to deal with this? No. In fact, it makes me embarrassed that I was so stupid that I didn't know what was going on/how creepy it was and that several people (whom I didn't even know gave a damn about me) were worried about the situation. I'm embarrassed and ashamed that I didn't have the willpower or the energy to push this harder over Christmas, though I was in the middle of my own personal crisis at the time. And I was and am absolutely sickened that the church could just turn its back on something so wrong and leave somebody who was hurt completely in the dark and then hurt them more.

And sometimes, I still get really upset about this, though very few people know about the whole thing or realize just how disturbing it got.

In some ways I feel like it was stupid, and maybe it wasn't all that bad. It is the smallest of my scars at this point in my life. But no. No man in a leadership position should be kissing on a sixteen year-old-girl, texting and emailing her all the time, etc., to the point that teenage guys are freaking out about what's going on. Admittedly, at the time I was insanely naive, and I never doubted that anybody had good intentions.

But it's been 3 years, and that doesn't make what happened any less wrong, and that doesn't make the lack of response on the church's part any less okay. And that doesn't make not acting on my part any less wrong. Being a victim of a situation seems a poor excuse for not preventing such a thing from happening again.

Leave it to the Protestant Church to claim that the gospels say you should let someone behaving inappropriately towards a minor still have a major leadership position and run off the victim of the situation who already felt like it was somehow her own fault in the first place. Nice going.

(I know I'm being super vague. This is an I'm-figuring-things-out-for-my-own-sake post rather than a oh-hi-ya'll-this-is-interesting-enjoy-this post. My apologies if you're confused and/or bored.)

Goal: Do the right thing (or start heading that direction via email) by Sunday at 11:59 pm.