Betrayed Behind the Pews

I don’t talk about faith anymore—because I don’t have any left.
It wasn’t God I lost first. It was trust.
It was watching the collar stand tall behind the pews, not for the broken, not for the victim, but for the abuser.

That moment shattered something in me that can’t ever be rebuilt.
The silence was deafening. The protection was deliberate.
And the message was clear: image mattered more than truth, power mattered more than people, the abuser mattered more than the abused.

How do you pray when the one leading the prayer shields the monster?
How do you bow your head when the ground beneath you reeks of betrayal?
How do you whisper amen when the only thing holy is the hypocrisy?

I can’t.
I don’t.
I won’t.

Faith is gone. Belief is dead.
There is no “something greater.”
There is only the truth: they chose him over me.
And I’ll never forgive it.