Safe to Hope

Season 6: Episode 14 - The Rescue Story

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Carya’s rescue didn’t begin with a manual—it began with love, prayer, and a community willing to bear witness. In this conversation, “Lynn,” the trusted friend who helped orchestrate Carya’s exit from harm, shares how faith, patience, wise counsel, and practical safeguards came together to make safety possible. This is not a how-to guide; it’s a testimony of God’s steady care through ordinary people who chose to stay.

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We value and respect conversations with all our guests. Opinions, viewpoints, and convictions may differ so we encourage our listeners to practice discernment. As well, guests do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of HelpHer. It is our hope that this podcast is a platform for hearing and learning rather than causing division or strife.

Please note, abuse situations have common patterns of behavior, responses, and environments. Any familiarity construed by the listener is of their own opinion and interpretation. Our podcast does not accuse individuals or organizations.

The podcast is for informational purposes and is not a substitute for professional care, diagnosis, or treatment.


Ann Maree  

This particular season of the Safe to Hope podcast is extremely difficult to hear. The 2025 season is for mature audiences only. We advise listeners to apply an abundance of caution and discretion, and we warn those who might be significantly triggered. This story includes childhood sexual abuse, rape, sex trafficking, satanic cultish and ritualistic abuse. For more information about how to even process this story, please listen to episode 4 and episode 6 on the Safe to Hope podcast. 

We’ve asked our storyteller to describe the details she thinks will be helpful so the audience will understand the terror she endured. While this story is hard to listen to, living it was horrific. We bear witness as we listen. These stories are disturbing and may even be confusing. One of our goals throughout this series is to help the audience understand specifically, knowing good from evil, but also to have compassion, exhibit empathy, and acquire the ability to minister to those in need. While this type of abuse is less common than others, we listen for two good reasons. First, it is a reality that we need to be prepared to understand and respond to. Second, even if we never encounter a similar situation, this Storyteller’s experience teaches us, in a concentrated way about dynamics that are at work whenever people commit harm against others. 

Today, we’re going to hear from one of the most significant expert contributors to this season’s story. Lynn is Carya’s friend, and with great wisdom and care, she, quote, unquote, planned, and we’ll talk about that in a minute, but then orchestrated Carya’s rescue. I have had the most incredible privilege to get to know Carya over the course of this podcast series, and I could not wait to meet her friend. I knew I would want to get to know her as well, and that I’d be enriched by hearing from her. I am confident our audience will as well. Both of these ladies truly are incredible people, and for this episode today, I want to also add that we are not providing a handbook for how to rescue someone who’s been impacted by SRA or family trafficking or abuse of any kind. I simply want to bring this story to your attention and ask you to listen to Lynn’s posture, how she trusts and has faith in the Lord, and how that guided every step of the way in the rescue. 

Welcome to the podcast, Lynn. 

Lynn

Thank you. 

Ann Maree

So I’m just going to get started with the questions. I had a good list of them. Carya also helped with forming some of these questions with the things that she remembered. But I would like to just start by asking you, Lynn, what were some of the things that you observed in Carya that caused you to be curious to know more about her situation.

Lynn  

I had known Carya for a good 10 years before this, as she says, erupted in her life. She is happily aptly described to the onlooker. She appeared to be a very confident, successful, independent, self sufficient young woman. She’s academically brilliant, well spoken, responsible, humorous, kind. She’s gifted in relationships, and she’s maybe a wee bit driven. Everything I knew about her engendered admiration and respect. As a friend, and through many years in Bible study together, I got to know more about Carya’s life, about where and how she grew up, her love of soccer, about her family, her extended family, and her geeky interests in narrow academic subjects and love for lengthy books on those subjects. So much of what we saw, others would see was strength, health, but they were just little things that maybe nagged at the back my mind. One was that we would discuss from time to time, God’s plan for men and for women, and it was clear that Carya wrestled with her femininity. She felt like it was unsafe, unnecessary and vulnerable. Another piece of her story that always nagged at me was the way she described her immediate family, especially her relationship with her dad. She had very little interaction with him or other siblings. And to the degree that there was a relationship at all, it seemed to me, it was because of Carya. She was the faithful, diligent daughter who went home regularly, called home and made efforts to stay connected. I saw little and heard little that made me think there was any interest or concern on her dad’s part, or effort to learn about her life, to check in, support, encourage her, or cheer her. And that pattern seemed to extend way back into her teen years. She always described it in a way that sounded like she thought that was normal and even healthy. She never described pain or frustration over her dad’s lack of interest or expressions of love and support. Now, of course, as you have to, you clearly know many people have dysfunctional homes that isn’t, I hate to say it abnormal. It was her attitude, in fact, maybe an emphatic defense of her home life as healthy, that made me, as you say, curious.

Ann Maree  

And then how did you know what she was experiencing? Or maybe, better said, what made you suspect?

Lynn  

As I recall, one summer her father visited. It was after that visit when I began to see minor cracks in her steel defense about her family. The specifics escaped me, but what I recall was that his visit was really disappointing. That he hadn’t spent time with her or engaged her, even though, in theory, he’d come to see her. When she described the visit, I heard in her voice the first time pain and disappointment and I felt a nudge that looking back, had to be from the Lord to press into that tiny fissure and ask her something along the lines of, so when are you going to deal with your dad? What followed made it absolutely clear that there was something wrong there. However, to be honest, what first surfaced seemed like a fairly normal, even though still terribly painful and destructive story of abuse by family and trusted friends. Once God began to open things up for Carya to deal with however, it became fairly quickly clear to her, as well as to Joy our other friend and to me that this was a deep cavern and we weren’t getting out anytime soon.

Ann Maree  

So I mentioned that you planned this rescue, and you have a response to that, and I’ll just tee you up by asking, Did you have a plan B? If Plan A didn’t work?

Lynn  

Well, I’m going to go back and say maybe. Can I just describe this a little bit broadly about what was our plan A, to even respond to her and respond to what we were experiencing. And I’ll be honest and say, I’d be hard pressed to say there was even a plan A, we had absolutely no idea what we were doing. When Carya’s life imploded, we were living through a welter of confusion and pain. It was so painful to watch Carya’s world crumble as the dissociative barrier broke down and the weight of what happened to her began to surface. By God’s grace, I had some experience with a close family member who also had dissociative disorder. I’d already wrestled with the question, How can this be? God had helped me walk that road to learn about how dissociation works and why, and to see God’s healing mercy for people who’ve been shattered and thus needed to dissociate to survive. It was probably also a mercy that we didn’t really know what we were getting into. If we had, I expect I would have been like Moses and said, 
 No, no, really, that’s beyond my capacity my expertise. Don’t you have a trained professional you can assign to this?” Essentially, I think we muddled into a plan, a which was probably shaped by the growing conviction that while we didn’t know what to do and had no idea what the professional protocols were in the situation, that Scripture teaches a lot about love and the power of love. Reading and studying in first down at that time, emphasized to me that in Christ, we’re commanded to love and as 1 John 4:7 says, “dear friends, let us love one another, because love. From God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.” As I studied more, I realized that we are healed by God’s love for us in Christ Jesus, and that powerful love flows through us, every one of us, to one another, and it’s a healing grace. Love also bound us to the journey as Joy and I walked with Carya, we learned more about the deep darkness, how deep that darkness was, of the abuse she suffered at that point, we were too far in to bail. What would she do if we didn’t walk with her? We couldn’t leave her alone or abandon her. We had no other choice at that time but to keep walking forward with her and with Jesus. 

At that time, Joy and I walked with Carya, we could only mimic what we saw Jesus doing for Carya, being with her in her pain, being present, expressing our grief at what was grievous. God helped us come alongside in other practical ways. Joy is intuitive and had a good sense of what was going on with Carya, when to just step in and cover for her by driving or running errands or cooking or distracting with a good movie. God led us in other ways; while we didn’t know what we were doing, he provided good counsel in other people who had experience and professional wisdom. He also counseled us through his Word. As an example, I was struck in reading through the Old Testament how God really led his people in the same way in battle. In 2 Chronicles 20 God leads Jehoshaphat to praise him when they were vastly outnumbered by their enemies, the king instructed the people to believe God, to sing, to praise him and give him thanks, and when they did so, the terror of God fell on their enemies, and they were delivered. This echoes other places, in Psalms, in Romans 1 where we see that praise and thanks is key to spiritual battle, and often we would just simply spend time reading Scripture together, praising God to remind ourselves that he was sovereign, good, faithful over all things, and triumphant over evil and on and on. And that bolstered our souls, and it helped remind us of what God in Christ had done for us. So if there was a plan A It was mostly love and praise. I will say we had hoped to find someone who could step in and be a Carya early on in those first few years, what God provided instead were numerous resources, such as a counselor, Naomi who primarily worked with women who’d experienced similar ritualistic satanic and cultish abuse, and who were willing to let me call and consult. Often the calls would go like this. So this is happening. This seems absolutely crazy to me. Our expert counselor Naomi would say, “Oh no, that’s normal. Well, at least that’s common for people like Carya. That is what cultist abuse is like.” Then I’d ask, so what should I do? And her response was, often ask Jesus. And so we would and when Carya was at her lowest, it seemed like our inexpert flailings to walk alongside her were what she felt was safe, what she felt like was safest to her, and what was God was using as a bridge until she was ready to meet with a professional counselor.

Ann Maree  

I think that’s just a beautiful story, and then maybe we should call it a handbook. Start with praise. How did you know what aspects of Carya’s life might be dangerous in her rescue?

Lynn  

In one of those calls with a counselor, Naomi, I was warned that Carya could never heal if she was continually being accessed and reprogrammed by living in a community where she was surrounded by those involved in the abuse. So we prayerfully made a plan to get her out. Knowing that the parts of in her, parts of her were still reporting to abusers, we were fearful that if we left her in her home until we flew her out. She might report the plan to disappear or be prompted to commit suicide. We didn’t understand why, but we sensed that if we brought her into our home for the interim and then to my parents and prayed over her, that somehow that provided enough shelter and spiritual protection to keep her safe. I think it communicated something to the parts of her that reported back that we were taking responsibility for her, and maybe there was a glimmer of hope that she didn’t have to always be subjective, subject to the abusers. But mostly we were stumbling through this. God prompted us to think of her cell phone as a point of access. So we changed that, and God nudged me to talk with her parts, which sounds weird, but it gets less weird after you do it, to let them know that we were trying to make them safe, and to talk with them about Jesus and how Jesus wanted them to be safe and to live, because some of those who had been so wounded and for whom their job was to take the abuse they didn’t really hear or understand what Carya did about Jesus, we changed her main email password and limited the people that she could email on a new email address, so that line of communication was cut off. I don’t expect that what we did would be a protocol for anyone walking through a similar road, but that’s what we sensed God prompting us to do, or the counsel that he provided to us through others who’d walked a similar road.

Ann Maree  

And so often as advocates, and I said this, I think during the Story series, we are very careful not to take away agency from a person, but in a situation like this, it’s absolutely required, I guess, if you will. And so I just want to clarify. This is, again, this is not a script, and we don’t necessarily always jump in to this degree. And on that note, too, I’m thinking, what about your own safety? What were you thinking about that

Lynn  

I want to back up. And I think if you listen to Carya’s story about the rescue, you’ll hear her describe that we went out for breakfast and we took a long walk, and I described to her the counsel that I’d received and the concern we had. So she did agree. She did in our case, she totally agreed to it. As fearful as she was about the unknown, she agreed to being rescued and talks through the plan that we had developed. 

Back to your question about our own safety. I didn’t often worry that people, flesh and blood, would harm us. I was very aware that in helping Carya walk out of that situation, we were on the front lines of spiritual battle. My husband and I had been learning about spiritual warfare, and we quickly sought to up our game. We read solid books, we sought counsel, we prayed, we prayed more, we sought more counsel, and we grew in our faith. As our faith grew and as we saw more of what Jesus was doing to rescue Carya, fear diminished significantly. We grew confident that what Jesus had accomplished in his life, his death and resurrection to defeat the enemy. We also grew confident that he had delegated authority to his followers, and we are his followers. As Colossians 2:15 says he triumphed over the enemy. 1 John 3:8 says that Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil and Ephesians 1 says that Jesus is at the right hand of God, far above every ruler and authority, power and dominion, and we’re in him. We would remind ourselves of these we would quote them often and out loud, so when fear would nag, we would find ourselves repeating these truths to remind ourselves of Christ’s power and God’s work on our behalf, we also didn’t become complacent. We asked the Lord to help us be aware of spiritual attack. And sometimes it’s in the subtle things, like weaknesses of our own flesh, like pride that can destroy relationships, or even weariness that makes me want to throw in the towel, things that might not look like spiritual battle.

Ann Maree  

You’re teaching me, and I might be asked. I’ll have to check back with you about some of those solid sources that you are reading. I know you have shared some with me. And love, love, love, Psalm 91 so that’s one solid resource. So were you ever afraid? And if you were, what did you do with it? And if you were, did Carya sense it?

Lynn  

Yes, yes, I tried not to show Carya how I was feeling, much in the way that we protect our children from things that are scary. Carya is an incredibly strong person, but at that time, she was very fragile, and she needed me to be the strong one. I wanted to be real with her and to maintain the mutuality of our friendship by living out a two way street where she would encourage and support me and I her. But in those days, it was maybe asking her to pray for my work situation or for my kids. In this fear of what we called her stuff, I didn’t want her to perceive that it was too much for me, too much to ask, or that I would bail on her at that time and at the same time Joy, Carya and I were walking this road together, so if we got into something that felt really heavy, where I might have felt overwhelmed or fearful, I’d just drive into prayer and praise. And perhaps she had a sense that in that moment of vulnerability, but I hope that what she recalls was that we were running to the bedrock of Christ. 

Ann Maree  

Yeah, it’s a wonder how strong her faith is to this day. Okay, so how did you know that your parents home was going to be the safest place for Carya?

Lynn  

We needed a place where people would know enough about spiritual battle that they could protect Carya and themselves with their prayers, which my parents did. It also needed to be a place where they had some familiarity with dissociation, so they wouldn’t be thrown into the deep end all at once, and for her sake too, that they could see her situation and understand that what she was experiencing was a result of the abuse, that they’d love her and be patient with her and think that the best of her, even in her fragility. I also cared so much for Carya that I wanted to be a place with people I absolutely trusted, and where I had the ability to make that kind of a big ask, and it was a big ask. I didn’t understand at the time how big it would be, but as my parents say, God knew. While I verbally made the ask, they prayed about it and sought God’s leading. Was he asking them to do this? They sensed that he was and that confidence that he had led them, buoyed them through some of the darker days when Carya was at some of her lowest, lowest points.

Ann Maree  

I wish we had them on our podcast too. Thank them. Thank them on behalf of all of us, okay, so we’ve talked about dissociation. Some of our audience may be unfamiliar with it, and I would advise reading any of Dr Heather Gingrich’s Shattered books that are in our show notes that would be helpful, but you recognized DID Lynn, and that is like I’m saying, very unusual in the typical lay person member in a church. So can you share a bit more about how you, as an untrained professional, were able to identify it in Carya?

Lynn  

When we started to hear some of Carya’s story, I noted how she talked about it, and picked up what seemed to be like a veil between the Carya I knew and the part of Carya that was telling me about what had happened. As I mentioned, I’d learned from a family member that this can be how children process extreme trauma. I’d also read a little bit about how it works from other abuse survivor stories, and I wondered if that’s what was happening here. So I began to ask simple questions of Carya, careful not to ask leading questions, but some questions that would point to parts holding on to some of the pain or the memories. In her case, there was a quick response. It became obvious that some of her parts wanted her to be aware that they were there. I’ll be honest that when it was evident that we were dealing with dissociation, I was a bit overwhelmed. I felt like we had jumped into the deep end.

Ann Maree  

Absolutely. And you know, especially given that we don’t know a whole lot about it, and it can be alarming, I suppose. However, I think there’s enough, I think we can know about it that it doesn’t have to be that way, but you did more than just recognize it. I’m going to play a clip from the last story that we heard from Carya, and then I’m going to ask you a question about that.

Carya  Recording

One day, she gave me a big bag full of children’s books, many of them about God, and suggested that I try reading out loud to my parts. It felt insane, but I did it, and it proved so wise. It helped some of them to start to trust me, and even more importantly, enabled some of them to long for God rather than fear him.

Ann Maree  

And then I just genius. Where did you? Where did you come up with that? Tell us more. 

Lynn  

I’ll totally credit my family member with that one. In her counseling, my family member was advised to read to her parts children’s books, especially for parts that experienced pain when they were little and chronologically still at that age. It was a great way to help introduce those parts to Jesus. Also our counseling friend Naomi, whom I consulted with, encouraged me to find things that Carya could do that would bring her and her parts joy, things that might seem childish, like building with Legos or putting puzzles together, or getting her a stuffed animal. And the council was right, those things were super helpful.

Ann Maree  

Yeah, it just demystifies something very technically confusing, you know, a brain disorder, if you will, a brain broken, and you came up with some very practical ways that you could help and anybody could do these things. And hopefully somebody hearing this, this might be a good help to their loved one, who might be struggling with DID as well. 

Okay, so Carya had said that she was rescued over a period of time, she didn’t know necessarily when it ended, I guess, or maybe even when it began, I think she may have said and then. So given some of the dates that she’s referenced, and she’s also said this, it appears that her abusers still had some access to her, even after you moved her away. Did you know about that? That’s my first question. And if so, what if anything were you able to do for her about shutting down some of those access points?

Lynn  

That was hard. That was hard to be honest. I wanted the move to my parents to cut off access. I hope that that was the case, and when it became apparent that the abuse was ongoing, that was something that Carya learned through her counseling with a professional counselor. I was discouraged, so I reached out to my resource in Naomi again, and she was completely unfazed by that reality. Again, affirming that this is a normal part of the process of healing and getting free. She reminded me that Jesus is gentle and he knows how to untangle the reality of the complex web of cultish abuse. Talking to her reminded me that God was also not fazed by this, that he was in charge. He was in charge of Carya’s deliverance and healing. Trying to intervene, myself, to cut off access. Then seemed foolish. The work of these ritualistic and satanic cults is so complex I could never figure out all their schemes. So it was back to the basics, asking Jesus what to do and following through. And there were some steps that we took based on that we’d pray and ask, for example, like if it was safe for Carya to drive herself. At one point in time, it didn’t feel safe. And a year later, when we prayed and asked the Lord, that changed.

Ann Maree  

Such wisdom there as well, just including Carya in those discussions. Um, and yeah, Jesus, our Sunday School answer, that’s, that’s who’s in charge of deliverance. Um, and also, I think, just backing up to one of the earlier episodes with Dr Heather Evans, when she was talking about sex trafficking, even if it’s not ritualistic, cultish, satanic, there’s a lot of women who go back to it for multiple reasons. So I think that’s just a call to our audience to incredible grace and incredible patience, because it is the Lord’s work, and we are waiting on a very patient God. 

Okay, all the things, wonderful things that you, all in your family, have done, tell me how it impacted you, you your family, your immediate family, but also your extended family, for good or for worse.

Lynn  

Carya is an amazingly beautiful person, and her faith and love have enriched our family, from my parents to my children, extending to my siblings and their families. So engrafting her into our family has been a wonderful blessing. Also, my children have had a front row seat watching Carya go from that place where she was so broken she could barely talk to people hurting, so badly that much of the joy was extinguished, unable to drive or do much for herself, to where she’s flourishing, serving others, leading in the church, restored and renewed. That transformation has increased my children’s faith. They will say that they know there is a God, because what else could bring about such healing and bring beauty out of ashes? Because we were learning spiritual warfare, my children were along for the ride, and they’ve learned quite a bit too. They also somehow just picked up intuitively about the kind of suffering that there is in the world when people abuse others. We certainly didn’t talk about it explicitly with them. But kids have radar. I’m grateful for what they learned about walking with Jesus next to people who’ve been shattered, and pleading with him to bring his healing work and to see his power to transform something the enemy sought to destroy into something beautifully that powerfully represents his triumph. 

Certainly there. There were times that were hard. The early days were costly in terms of time and emotional energy. I was spending a day a week with Carya and an hour a day on the phone with her. My husband stepped up during those months, and you can probably more like a year, and took care of the kids, the house, the cooking and such. I expect that what was hard for us is what people go through anytime you’re walking with someone in crisis. Love requires us to give sacrificially, and that is counter to my natural bent, which is selfishness. On the other hand, it also brings great joy when we allow God’s power to work in us. Personally, I’d also say, I’d be honest and say that it is very painful when you enter into someone else’s pain, and it should be if we’re bearing one another’s burdens. It’s what Jesus does with us, and it’s hard listening to Carya talk about her abuse was in the rawness, in the confusion of it all, in agony, it ripped my soul apart too. I’d rather live in a Mayberry world, a kind of nice sitcom where parents are good and kids are happy and the neighbors are funny and loving and trustworthy. This kind of abuse is dark, darkness. I wouldn’t choose to go there, even experiencing it only secondhand. Jesus led me to follow him where he’d already been buffered by him, and his grace has been more than sufficient and surprised by how he would take things and just carry them. I could hear her share something horrifically awful and enter the pain of it in that moment. But the details didn’t stick with me. On that note, I think that Carya has said that she was careful not to read about the work of cults, and that’s that’s just good advice. God will give you the grace for what you need to know. But we don’t need to test that grace by reading up on evil.

Ann Maree  

Yes, yeah, very good point. We know evil because we know good, and studying up on good is the method and the methodology, if we’re going to know evil when we when it appears in front of us. 

Okay, will you please address our audience, the people in the church or Christian organizations who may be responding to something similar or parts of some of our story this season, tell them what you would want them to know.

Lynn  

It sounds Sunday school like, but this starting point is it is Jesus. I’m not sufficient, and you aren’t either. But Jesus is. If he asks you to walk this road with someone, he can give you what you need for whatever your part is in the healing that he is bringing about. You’ll also have a front row seat and see more clearly what Jesus has done, who he is and how powerful the gospel is. Maybe that is my biggest takeaway. Many times I have simply sat in awe, wow. I didn’t know that Christ’s work was sufficient for even this. I feel like before I walked with Carya, my understanding of the gospel was limited to salvation, which is huge, huge, to be sure, not meaning to undermine that and that Jesus has the power to heal bodies and sickness and to restore broken relationships. But the kind of things that make our prayer these are the kinds of things that make our prayerless at church, but seeing the horror of what was purposely done to Carya and to shatter her, the inhumanity, the sheer evil to do exactly opposite of what God commands, to program her so that it’d be nearly impossible to get out, to warp the image of God in this broken child. Jesus gently broke through all of that and called her out. Jesus is healing her wounds one by one. I think seeing the evil makes me realize, when we are separated from Christ, that’s that’s the power of what we experienced. So my view of Jesus and his deliverance, of all of us, and of these people who are so horrifically shattered, has grown exponentially. It’s made me realize I’ve only seen a fraction of his kindness, his power, his goodness, his counsel, gentleness, his authority, his wisdom and the list goes on. 

Another thing that I have learned is that God has designed us to be in community. So in walking with Carya, I was always supported by others, such as Joy, who was walking with us, my parents, who’d been praying for us even before they took Carya in, my husband, as I’ve mentioned, served and prayed with me a group of trusted folks. Friends with whom I was able to share some of this and who were faithful prayer warriors. So if you’re sensing that God is opening your eyes to a situation like this, you might start by asking him, who else is on the team? I can’t imagine that someone else could ever come alongside someone who’s experienced this kind of ritualistic cultish abuse as a solo operator. It was also helpful to have those outside voices provide perspective. Perhaps you’ve been in a similar situation where it’s tempting to try to solve the problem and you’re giving too much. Walking with someone through this kind of abuse is a marathon. We’re counting nearly 15 years now. In the early days, I assumed that God would just heal, deliver and we’d done with it, we’d be back to normal. I threw myself into this eager to see Carya whole and healed and freed. I was counseled to slow down, to care for my family and pace myself. I’m now embracing the journey, and I’m often reminded to go back to the basics of listening to Jesus, that as Carya teaches me over and over by her example, that I need him and that he wants to be with me. He’s for me. I can experience Him richly. I’m also reminded in my lay person’s role that I have powerful tools, and I need to avail myself of them. Likely, all the things that you know to do apply here. Pray fast, seek counsel. Look to Jesus, stay connected to him. Study the word. Praise and thanksgiving, and ask God what resources he has for you, and look expectantly for how he’ll answer.

Ann Maree  

We can hear that relationship in your in your answers, in your prayers. When we pray together, you’ve prayed for me a couple times now, and we’ve talked and I feel like every time I walk away from you, I’m like, I want that. And yet, the way you got that was not, it wasn’t easy, pleasant, fun, all the things, right? 

So my final question, typically is, and I’ll ask you as well, what am I not asking you that I should have, yeah, that I should have.

Lynn  

Maybe something that I haven’t talked about is, you know, the silent player here was my spouse. So for me to jump in, that presumes that my spouse was along for the ride, and we had to be a team. There’s no way that I could have done that without his sacrifice, his support, he had to be a trusted person for Carya as well. So I want to just elevate that and say that was huge, that he was willing to trust God and trust me to jump in, to be willing to walk through this deep darkness, to try to understand it. That was beautiful. So I’m hopeful for listeners out there too, that as God places these people on their radar screen, that God will put them in a team that within their family, their extended family, a few really trusted, good friends that will walk the road with them. That’s critical.

Ann Maree  

I have this book in my mind, maybe somebody I’ll write, called The Waltz. It’s just that’s an obvious, beautiful picture of a team, teamwork, and there’s strength in both partners. And then, when you just described, there is also happening when you watch the walls, you see the lead, if you will. And that’s not a theological statement, but it’s a it’s a thing in dancing, you see that lead help the follow flourish, and you’ve described that here as well. It’s not like one over the other. It’s teamwork. Without it, the steps get messed up and somebody gets hurt. So I appreciate you giving us a real life example of what that could look like, and we are at Help[H]er very much about teamwork, especially abuse crises, because they, as you’ve heard, can absolutely drain support systems. And so when we talk about self care, it’s not exactly, go get your nails done, although it could be, go get your nails done, but caring for yourself in such a way so that the person who needs you doesn’t have like this blip on the screen where the other person helping can’t be there. So very important dynamics, teamwork, support system. Thank you. Thanks for bringing those up. 

Well, that’s it for today. I’d like to just again say thank you, Lynn, thank you, Mom and Dad, and I don’t know all of the family dynamics, brothers, sisters, otherwise, but I just, I look at you all, and I see the church and in powerful ways. And I just want to say thank you for doing that, representing it, but also being the strength behind such a wonderful person in Carya. It doesn’t always go that way, and they and these people don’t always stay walking with the Lord. So well done, good and faithful servants.

Lynn  

Thank you. Ann Maree. I was struck by just thinking about the theme of this series of bearing witness, and you say that often, and I’m so grateful that you are bearing witness to this story and the others who have suffered. And I believe it’s a holy, a holy calling to bear witness.

Ann Maree  

It is and it’s, it absolutely is, and all are invited. There’s many stories to be heard, so come join us!

Next time on the Safe to Hope podcast, we will be talking with Expert Contributor, Dr Dan Allender. Dr Allender is a pioneer of a unique and innovative approach to trauma and abuse therapy. For over 30 years, the Allender Theory has brought healing and transformation to hundreds of 1000s of lives by bridging the story of the gospel and the stories of trauma and abuse that mark so many. In 2011 Dan also co founded the Allender Center, with the support of the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology to cultivate healing and train leaders and mental health professionals to courageously engage others stories of harm. Join us once again on October 14 for episode 15 in this incredibly helpful episode, listening in as Dr Allender interacts with Carya’s story.