American author and musician, Jennifer Greenberg, shares her personal experience of suffering abuse as a child
‘I’m sorry,’ I remember my Dad saying. ‘I’m sorry, and I love you.’
He didn’t say what he was sorry for. He didn’t mention the hand-shaped bruises aching up and down my small 11-year-old body. He didn’t seem to understand how afraid and devastated I’d been. But that was the first time I’d ever heard my Dad say sorry, and the relief it brought felt like rain after a drought. In the back of my mind, a little voice said: Don’t trust this. He’s only apologising because Mum threatened to tell Pastor Jim if he didn’t. I shoved that voice down. I smothered my doubts. I had prayed for so long that Dad would change. I had tried to be a good daughter who reminded him of Jesus. His apology, however vague, was hope and a sign that God was working. Or was it?
