Kevin Blair Guy
Testimony
Growing up, I was a happy little kid. I loved being outside, being with my family, being with friends, and I loved coming to church! I was raised in a Christian home and I became saved as a very young boy. This was the testimony that I would tell anyone who asked me about my faith. On June 16th, 2010 my testimony changed.
To tell you the truth it has been the same testimony I should have been telling everyone for the last 7 years but I felt so much shame and embarrassment from things that I had to go through, I didn’t want people just seeing me for what I have been through but to see me for who I really am! It is not just that I told a couple of people but didn’t want a lot of people knowing, absolutely no one knew about what I went through. Not my family, friends, teachers, people from church, I couldn’t even be completely honest about it with myself or God. It is something that is very hard for me to talk about but I know that if I do not talk about it then I will never fully heal from it!
In the summer of 2003, I was 10 years old. Not even old enough to go to the pool by myself. I knew a lot of the life guards and it was less than a 3 minute walk from my house so I went anyway. My mom would drive me a lot of the time to make sure I would get there ok but I would walk over sometimes if she wasn’t home so I could still go. I went everyday that summer because I thought that I was independent and I thought I was cool for being there without my big brother and sister or my parents. Even if my friends weren’t there I would still go. Towards the middle of the summer the freedom I felt by going to the pool turned into a burden and the fun I had there turned into fear. I was being molested by a man that was in his 40’s. From what I can make myself remember it happened about 7 times. I didn’t want it to happen, who would want that to happen to them!? Some people do not understand why I kept going back to the pool. That is even something that I struggled with for these last 7 years. The mind games this man would play were worse than the things that he would actually do to me. Thinking that maybe one night I’m going to wake up and he is going to be in my room. That is why I kept going back. It was my way of taking control of the situation because I didn’t think that there was anything else that I could do.
People ask, “why didn’t you just tell your parents!?” I don’t think a lot of people know what shame and embarrassment comes with being molested. The first thing that I couldn’t understand was why out of everyone it had to be me! He had gotten into my head and controlled me. He even tried to tell me if I told my parents they would be mad at me because I obviously wanted this to happen if I kept coming back to him. I thought at 10 years old that I had to protect my whole family from the pain of knowing what was going on because I thought it would be too much for them to handle.
While everything was happening to me, I would be screaming in my head for God to help me. I would pray the whole time I was walking to the pool or be driven by my mom that he wouldn’t show up. I even sometimes wished that I would walk into the pool and see him getting arrested because someone found out or even wishing death upon him. I would pray every night for God to take me out of the situation and it never happened. I became very bitter towards God because of that. I would yell at him saying, “if you are really my father how would you ever let anything like this happen to me!?” From 6th Grade through all of middle and high school I was not the same person that I was before everything happened.
For my graduation party leaving high school my sister Jennie made a big board of a bunch of pictures of me. You can actually see that before everything happened I was genuinely happy. I was such a happy kid and I smiled 24-7. At my 5th grade graduation my teacher announced me as Kevin Smiley Guy. After that, when I started 6th grade, my smile went away for a long time. Even when it came back it was not the same as it was. It was a forced smile and I wasn’t happy at all. I was still mad at God for putting me through everything that happened. I didn’t realize that he had a plan for me. I didn’t know that I was going to turn out ok.
I told my family about what happened to me 7 days after my high school graduation on June 16th 2010. At first I felt a massive burden lifted off of me and everything felt great. But then I saw the pain that they were going through. When I told my parents they became angry that they were not there to protect me, my brother shut down a little bit because he didn’t know what to say because he didn’t want to upset me, and I held my sister while she cried in my arms after I told her. Even Joey’s girlfriend Olivia was affected. She told me that she is not great with things like this but she wrote me a long note that was very special to me. I was mad at myself for telling them because now it is not just me dealing with this. It is my entire family. I felt even worse because of how good I felt because I got everything out in the open. My mom would ask me “how you can act like nothing is happening when you just told us about this a couple days ago!?” And I would tell her, “I have been acting like everything is ok for the last 7 years, now that I know everything is going to be ok it makes me feel good.” I was still angry at God because now it wasn’t just me suffering but my whole family. My mom would talk to me about how I need to work it out with God because I don’t know what he has planned for my future. I was mad because I felt like it was like a Doctor who broke my arm and then told me that I should come to them and they will fix it. I thought that God ruined my life and now he expected me to turn around and ask him to help me out of it!? The song “Before the Morning” by
says exactly what I felt. It says, “Do you, Wonder why you have to, Feel the things that hurt you, if there’s a God that loves you where is He now!”
I didn’t start to realize how God was working through this until I went to Prague Prague
I have seen God working in my life through all of the people that are close to me. God always seems to have the people say exactly what I need to hear at the right times. My brother is more comfortable about talking to me about things and it really helps to see that he cares because I have looked up to him my whole life. He also wrote me a long note telling me how much he loves me and respects me for being strong enough to work through this.
Recently I have talked to two people that have helped me a lot! One of the people is a man that went through what I did. We went to lunch and we talked about what happened to each of us and it helped more than anything because he knew what I was going through. Yeah my therapist knows about it by listening to other people who have gone through it but he never had to live it. This person showed me that I am not in this alone and I have people to talk to for advice about things I may be feeling. The other person I talked to is my best friend Cody. I was scared to tell him about everything that happened because of the stereotypes some people place on those who have been molested. I didn’t want him to think that his best friend was gay or that anything between us or for anything to be different because of what I went through. So one day driving in the Jeep, I asked him if I could talk to him about something. I told him absolutely everything; what I went through, feelings I had after, and how I am doing now. At first he seemed a little uncomfortable probably because I started out by saying, “please don’t think of me any different than you do now and I do not want this to affect our friendship in any way.” I would have been a little uncomfortable if someone started a story be saying that to me. I went into it thinking that I was just going to talk and get it out for a couple minutes then just change the subject. He listened and asked questions and gave me great advice! We talked for almost the whole ride which is 1 hour. I knew that God had to be in that situation for it to work out the way it did. Cody told me, “God doesn’t put people in situations that are not strong enough to work through them. He obviously chose you because he knows that you are going to do great things in your life not because of what you went through but because you were strong enough to overcome it and not let it bring you down.” I have heard that from my parents and counselor but to hear that coming out of my best friend and knowing that he is an 18 year old boy just like me, it made me finally feel like I don’t have to hold onto this forever. I am not Kevin Guy the tainted boy who was molested, but I am Kevin Guy, the man who God chose to do great things despite some obstacles that were put in my way. He also reminded me of a quote that I have written across my whole wall in my room that says, “I can accept what has happened to me but I refuse to let it tear me down.” Even though this is a big thing that has happened to me, it is just an event in my life. It may have changed the way I view things or how I act sometimes but I have more things in my life that are good that I could use to define myself. If I trust in God I may have obstacles to overcome but I will know that I am on the right track leading towards him.
Pastor Colin and I met to work on my testimony on Monday, February 7th. At my work at Bounce U on Tuesday, February 8th, the man who molested me walked in. I was so scared and did not know what to do, I texted Cody. I asked him what to do and he said to call my parents then to call the cops. The weird thing was that my parents were already on their way to my work to pick up a credit card that they needed for school. I was so angry because I thought this was satin trying to stop me from giving my testimony but after thinking about it, I realizes that God chose this time for me to be the perfect time to bring everything out because of how long I have been seeing my counselor, getting my testimony together, and also getting a job offer the same day from Cody’s brother, Casey. This was cool for me to see how God works because I did not want to go back to Bounce U after I saw this man and having that job offer from Casey was a way for me to get away from Bounce U if I wanted to quit.
All my life I have had a huge heart for kids with special needs. I have been working with Matthew Will from our church since I was in 5th grade, almost 9 years. I was also the president of the special education program called best buddies for two years in high school. I remember this man when I was young being with a boy who was autistic. When he came into Bounce U, he was with 3 different kids, all with autism. If he is doing what he did to me with the kids with special needs, and I am the only person that he has done this to that can speak up about it, I feel that God allowed this to happen to me so I could stand up for these kids that can’t speak for themselves, so he will go away and not harm these kids anymore.
The next part of the song “Before the Morning” that helped me understand that I am going to be ok and that I need to trust in God is, “Maybe there are things you can’t see and all those things are happening to bring a better ending, some day, somehow you’ll see, you’ll see. Would you dare, would dare to believe, that you still have a reason to sing, because the pain that you have been feeling can’t compare to the joy that’s coming. So hold on you have to wait for the light, press on you just fight the good fight because the pain that you’ve been feeling is just the dark before the morning. My friend you know how this all ends and you know where you’re going, you just don’t know how you’ll get there so say a prayer, and hold on because there’s good for those who love God, life is not a snapshot, it might take a little time, but you’ll see the bigger picture.”
The picture is becoming more and more clear every step of the way. God is giving me the ability to see his plan for me and walk me through this incredibly hard time in my life. I pray to God to help me, sometimes I feel like I am never going to be ok but then when I get to that point, something happens that shows me that God is with me and guiding me.
My family has been there for me every step of the way. Even before they knew what was going on with me, they could see that something was wrong and they tried to help as much as possible. I do not blame them for anything that happened to me. They did everything that they could to help me with what they knew. I love them so much and would not trade them for anyone in the world.
I could not have done this without God. Maybe he was protecting me the whole time. I could have been kidnapped, completely raped, or even killed. I thank God everyday for putting the people in my life that are in it because if I didn’t have ever person out there that knew about what I went through praying for me I don’t think that I would be the same person I am today. Thank you for your prayers for me and my family and please continue to pray because we all still have some healing that needs to be done.
This is a picture that I drew the day after I saw the man who molested me at Bounce U
(me sitting in a corrner, scared, and feeling hopless, with a man telling me not to speak)
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