Some thoughts about abuse, marriage, and divorce

What is marital abuse?  Lundy Bancroft defines abusers as "men who chronically make their partners feel mistreated or devalued" -- a general term that refers to a wide range of controlling, devaluing, or intimidating behaviors.  This isn't that great of a definition -- Bancroft goes into far more detail to define abuse through description and anecdotes in his book.  A more specific definition is Leslie Vernick's in The Emotionally Destructive Relationship:  "relationships in which one person continually seeks power over the other and uses abusive tactics (whether physical, verbal, sexual, or economic) to control and intimidate" (28).  My own personal definition as I lived it is:  "control over another person, justified by an innate feeling of entitlement, and maintained by emotional, psychological, verbal, physical, and sexual actions showing disregard for the other person's well-being."

Here are Bancroft's statistics on domestic violence:
"2 to 4 million women are assaulted by their partners per year in the United States.  The U.S. Surgeon General has declared that attacks by male partners are the number one cause of injury to women between the ages of fifteen and fifty-four.  The American Medical Association reports that one woman out of three will be a victim of violence by a husband or boyfriend at some point in her life.  The emotional effects of partner violence are a factor in more than one-fourth of female suicide attempts and are a leading cause of substance abuse in adult women.  Government statistics indicate that 1,500 to 2,000 women are murdered by partners and ex-partners per year, comprising more than one-third of all female homicide victims…Experts estimate that 5 million children per year witness an assault on their mothers…Abuse of women has been found to be a cause of roughly one-third of divorces among couples with children and one-half of divorces where custody is disputed" (7).

People are horrified by these statistics on partner violence, but the victims of emotional abuse far exceed these numbers.  Bancroft asserts that "even among women who have experienced violence from a partner, half or more report that the man's emotional abuse is what is causing them the greatest harm" (7).  At the support group in the abuse shelter where I went for counseling, in the support group there was a strong assertion made, and a general murmuring of agreement, that the "ones who get hit are the lucky ones" -- because then the state might take notice and someone might intervene for you.  I don't think this is true (I doubt there is any woman who is being hit who is escaping emotional abuse, so they basically are both physically and emotionally abused), and I don't include that to belie the absolute seriousness of physical abuse, but rather I mention that because it highlights the damage behind emotional abuse, which could go on ignored for decades.  Even when the victim reaches out for help, often people don't take her seriously enough to intervene -- because he's not hitting her.

With the divorce rate within the church keeping close step with secular society's divorce rate, we in the church must acknowledge that marital abuse is happening within the walls of the church, even among leaders, going largely unacknowledged and unaddressed.

Looking at the rising divorce rates, I recently wondered about something.   Why is the divorce rate rising?  We in the church usually assume that it's the increasing flippancy with which people marry and divorce today, based on false expectations of romantic love, and certainly that is a problem.  But what if it's also increasing because women are not tolerating abuse any more, but trying to escape?  The number of abusive men is probably not changing -- which means that as many men, if not more (considering the rising status of women in society) were abusing their wives back then as they are today.  Given the high percentage of divorces that cite abuse as a cause today, what percentage of those new divorces happening today represent women escaping abuse -- women who in a previous era would have endured, to the death, decades of abuse because divorce was not an option?  I imagine myself in an intolerant society with nowhere to run and no economic prospects out of staying with my abusive husband.  I might have been one of those that stayed, simply because I had no other options.  Recently I was deeply sobered by the responses of many Korean women in my mother's generation who, rather than condemning me as I'd expected for getting divorced, applauded me for "getting out while I could."  It took me a while to digest the emotional background from which such comments came -- women who wished they'd lived in a time and place where escaping their husbands' abuse had been possible.  Now, after decades, and with kids and grandkids around, it simply feels too late for them.

If the rising divorce rates are somehow correlated with abused women being empowered to leave, I am actually thankful for the increasing ability of women to divorce their husbands -- not because I celebrate divorce, but because I decry abuse.  An abusive marriage that stays together is nothing to rejoice about -- it's no better than a divorce, and perhaps for the well-being of the woman and any children involved, is likely to be much worse.  I pray that the rising divorce figures because of abuse will bring the church to attention that we need to do a better job addressing abusive attitudes in men and in young boys who otherwise would grow up to be abusive partners.  If our common goal is Christ-centered, mutually respectful and loving marriages, then we should be on the same page about this.  Our goal shouldn't be blind statistics of people staying together regardless of what names are shouted and what plates and vases -- and souls -- are getting shattered behind closed doors.

In general, though, the church interprets rising divorce rates as a product of increasing immorality, rather than of women changing their responses to abuse, and you can see that interpretation in how the church reacts.  I think the church is doing its best to address the sacredness of marriage -- everywhere I look there are resources on saving your marriage, a Weekend to Remember, Love and Respect, etc. etc.  But most of those marriage resources will do nothing for an abusive marriage -- in fact, many of the principles taught for nonabusive marriages are lethal for abusive ones (such as male leadership and female submission), as they arm an abuser with spiritual weapons to further abuse and subjugate his partner.  If abuse is truly an issue that affects marriage within the church, church leaders and teachers need to be aware of how their teaching affects an abusive marriage, and to make sure that we aren't doing more harm than good, for victims.  It could mean life or death for some women and children.

Learned Helplessness and Abuse

I found the below excerpt from a blog post about resiliency.  The series, which doesn't address abuse in particular, seems very helpful for life lessons, but I zeroed in on the description of how abuse coupled with lack of control affects dogs, babies, and adult human beings -- what the author here calls "learned helplessness."  This to me felt like a very good description on what many women experience in abusive marriages where they feel that divorce or separation is not an option because of societal disapproval or their religious beliefs, and there seems to be no legitimate way out.  Some in desperation murder their abusive spouses or kill themselves, or resort to some other 'illegitimate' escape -- drugs, adultery, etc.  But most just stay in the situation like the dogs described in the second group below.

"Starting in 1967, Dr. Martin Seligman began a series of experiments involving 3 groups of dogs. The first group of dogs were given electric shocks, but were able to press a panel with their nose to make the shocks stop. The second group of dogs were given the shocks as well, but had no recourse to make them stop. The third group was the control and received no shocks.

"The dogs in the first and third group recovered well from the experiment. But the dogs in the second group, those that had been helpless to stop the pain, developed symptoms similar to clinical depression.

"In the second part of the experiment, the dogs were placed in an enclosed box separated by a low barrier over which they could see. When the shocks were administered, all the dogs had the opportunity to easily escape the pain by jumping over the partition, and this is what the dogs in the first and third group did. But the dogs in the second group, those which had previously learned that there was nothing they could do to escape the shocks, simply lay there whimpering and took it. They had come to believe that nothing they did mattered; Dr. Seligman called this behavior “learned helplessness.”

"The experiment was repeated with other animals, babies, and adult humans, and the results were the same. Once subjects had been exposed to a situation over which they had no control, they would continue to feel helpless, even in situations where they did have control."

Source:  http://www.artofmanliness.com/2010/02/03/boosting-your-resiliency-part-2-avoiding-learned-helplessness-and-changing-your-explanatory-style/

First of all, this was a horribly inhumane experiment which should never have been carried out.

However, I mention it because I think it's hard for outsiders to understand what it feels like to be in an abusive situation where you feel impotent and out of control, that there is nothing you can do to prevent your spouse from exploding and punishing you.  Many times as a woman is trying to find relief in her situation, outsiders actually push her back into her cage and keep her from escaping.  After years of this, at some point she becomes like the electrocuted dog, limp and helpless in the face of abuse.  I felt this way.  For awhile I felt that death was my only way out -- either mine or his.  I didn't want to die, and I didn't dare wish death on him.  I don't know what would have happened if the Lord had not started to whisper to me that this situation was NOT His will, that there was another way out...that I could be whole and free from abuse.  

Outsiders can be quick to judge an abused woman who is in a state of learned helplessness, not understanding that she doesn't have the strength to help herself.  Many abused women turn to destructive strategies or do something considered sinful to avoid pain, and it's easy to judge that without seeing the psychological, emotional, and physical abuse that drove her to that state.  I'm not saying that we should condone sin, but that we should not ignore abuse just because the victim is not behaving as the saint we think she shound.  I sigh whenever I hear of an abused woman doing something considered sinful in her pain, not because I judge her -- I don't! -- but because I know she'll lose allies and won't be able to escape her abuse, because they will judge her and take the abuser's side.

Recently a man posted a video of his wife in the car hysterically screaming because they were supposed to go to the lake with friends and he changed plans on her.  She did not know that he was taping.  The video, sadly, went viral and the world was divided on who was to blame.  Many blamed the wife for her temper tantrum, calling her crazy and spoiled.  I however saw the possibility that he had set it all up to make her look bad, and was deliberately pushing her buttons to get her to act out.  My spouse did this to me often.  There are some key points that make me think the man in the video is psychologically abusive -- why are they in the car if they're not going to the lake?  Did he get her in the car thinking she was going to the lake and then switch gears on her?  Why doesn't she go to the lake by herself?  In their relationship, she is clearly powerless to do what she wants, and he knows it.  She is in utter despair and screaming out of her hurt and pain.  He seems to be nastily taking pleasure in her pain, snickering at her and putting her down, and then publicly posting a video to shame her.  Not the behavior of a loving husband, in my mind.  It looks very abusive to me.  I know how this wife feels because I've been in her shoes -- totally powerless, helpless, in pain, and also blamed for being the unrighteous one.  I'm not saying she's being a good person here.  But he's clearly gaslighting here -- "crazymaking" -- and outsiders are quick to judge her without realizing that he's the one wielding the video recorder and she is unaware.  Of course he's going to look like the sane one on tape.   

What would you do if you were this wife?  Most people are saying she should endure it and be okay with not going to the lake.  But what if this has happened a million times and you know he's doing it just to hurt you?  Some people would say, get the car keys and go yourself.  But what if you know he'll verbally or physically abuse you if you defy him and go to the lake?  Or he simply won't give you the car keys?  Most abused wives are deliberately isolated by their husbands from any supportive community.  A few times being denied your will, everyone has to live with, but what if you live at the total mercy of this person who doesn't care about your welfare and you never get your way?  The human spirit can't live that way.  It gets crushed.  I lived that way for almost six years, being denied my will.  I wasn't even allowed to choose movies for us to watch -- the few times I chose movies and asked him to watch my choice, he verbally put down the movie so much, publicly and privately, that I learned my lesson -- don't choose.  Let him choose.  We lived with a quiet understanding that he called all the shots, he got to choose.  Once I begged him to watch a TV show of my choice and I remember during the show I was so scared he wouldn't like it, I was holding my breath.  Luckily he did like it and I was relieved because I wouldn't be punished.  Only in retrospect did I realize how bad my situation was.  

Today I feel the power of choice.  I am overwhelmed with happiness and strength every time I get to choose something for myself.  Even giving into someone -- I do it because I choose to do it, not because I fear consequences.

Searching the Scriptures for answers, part 1

A few months ago as my marriage fell apart, I approached the Bible with the question, What does God say about an abusive marriage?  Must a victim stay married to an abuser who isn't repentant and isn't changing?  I was surprised by what I found, and it was not because I twisted the arm of the Bible to say what I wanted it to say -- I was truly open to anything the Lord would reveal to me there.   I was surprised to find the same thing leaping out from almost every page I read, something I'd never noticed so much before -- that the Lord is deeply angered by oppression and abuse.  His freeing Israel from slavery, the Mosaic laws protecting the helpless, his condemnation of abuse of the widow, orphan, stranger, and prisoner, his special tenderness for abused women.  As I read, my heart thrilled to the text and I fell in love all over again with this God, who I realized is not just a God who cares about moral matters and religious spirituality isolated from earthly realities.  He cares passionately about the oppressed, he hears their cries of suffering from all over the world, and he rises up to act in justice and righteousness.  He heard my cries when I was suffering and he cared.  He saved me from the darkness.

The result for me was a massive Bible study which started with a simple question:  Can abused women divorce Biblically? and ended up covering topics of greater breadth and depth than I ever dreamed.  I wanted to share a little of this on this blog, to help women who struggle with leaving and divorcing abusive husbands.  I don't write this to say that every abusive marriage must end in divorce -- I am all for staying and fighting for the marriage, for using every tool that God gives and the church supports to keep the marriage alive, if it can be godly.  But a victim cannot save a marriage on her own -- if her abuser is determined to continue his behavior, deflect all blame on her, and refuse to repent and change, then what does the Bible say she should do?  Stay and be destroyed?  I determined to ask that question of God Himself, through the Book He gave us.

A preliminary question:  Must the Bible be explicit on every application of godly standard?

First, let me start out by saying that I fully believe with all my heart that the Bible is "God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work" (2 Tim 3:16-7).  None of this nonsense that the Bible is an irrelevant outdated document that can tell us nothing about how to live our lives today.  HOWEVER, I do believe that the Word is often misused and misapplied by people who don't understand how to read it.  That's why it was used in the past to justify slavery, racism, etc. -- because where the Bible presented things in narrative description, people misread as approval.  You have only to read the book of Judges to know that not everything presented in the narrative is approved by God.

Another misapplication is by holding it to the standard of explicitness, i.e. if the Bible doesn't explicitly allow it, it's wrong.  Or its converse:  If the Bible doesn't explicitly forbid it, it's okay.  

For example, some churches forbid the use of musical instruments in worship because, though instruments are mentioned many times in the Old Testament, under the new covenant in the New Testament musical instruments are never mentioned.  The lack of explicit use makes it wrong in their eyes.

However, most churches don’t do their hermeneutics that way.  Explicitness is not usually the standard we use to interpret the Bible.  A more appropriate way is to get to the heart of the matter and to apply the divine principle.  I have never heard it preached that we must count the number of times we forgive our brother and when we get to 50 times, or 491, depending on how you read that passage, we get to stop forgiving.  Jesus’s point was that a heart of forgiveness isn’t counting and scheming on when we can stop forgiving, but to keep "no record of wrongs" (1 Cor 13:5).

Of course that makes reading the Bible much trickier, as we don’t always know when we are supposed to get to the heart of the matter to apply a principle and when we are supposed to take it explicitly, because certainly when God commands that we are not to make any "image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below...[nor] bow down to them or worship them" you better believe that's literal!

But there are plenty of modern issues that we must interpret divine principles in order to judge rightly -- issues like abortion, the environment, stem cell research, modern fertility procedures, homosexual marriage -- which all came up in time after the Bible was completed.  None of these are explicitly mentioned in the Bible and yet we all (try to) extract divine principles to navigate these modern waters. Even on those issues there is furious controversy on how the Lord is leading us (and I certainly don't want to engage in any of those debates here!).  But my main point is that we don't derive our morality from explicitness alone, but on divine principles that we exegete and then apply hermeneutically to our contexts.  (See here for a definition of exegesis and hermeneutics as we usually apply to Biblical studies.)

A friend of mine also pointed out to me the practice of "proof-texting," which she defines as the "taking [of a] single verse or collection of verses to establish a doctrine, without comparing them to the whole of Scripture."   The example she gives of proof-texting that is explicitly or implicitly refuted elsewhere in Scripture is that of snake-handling in Mark, when considered in isolation from “Do not put your God to the test.”   She writes, "There are churches that actually bring poisonous snakes into the group and the members handle them as proof of their faith. Every now and then someone gets bit. I knew a pastor in north Louisiana who, whenever he went into a snake-infested area, he’d call the pastor of the snake-handling church to clear out the snakes for him."

I'm not a theologian or a scholar, so I'm not going to go into further depth here, but are we agreed there, at least in part?  We don't put the Scripture to the test of explicitness in order for the truth contained within it to be applied to our lives?

Now, to the topic.

Let’s consider some conditions in which divorce is not explicitly allowed by the Bible -- i.e. the Bible does not explicitly say, "If xyz happens, you can divorce."

• Your spouse goes insane.  
• Your spouse tries to kill you.  
• Your spouse keeps a gun and doesn't actually shoot you, but constantly tells you someday he or she is going to blow your head off.  
• Your spouse murders your child.
• Your spouse commits some other terrible crime, and does not get caught and you can’t prove it to police.
• Your spouse commits a terrible crime and does get caught and is in prison for life.  
• Your spouse repeatedly takes and squanders all your money and leaves you destitute and the children destitute.  (Have you ever read or seen The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio?  If so, don't tell me it didn't make you angry.)
• Your spouse is an addict, refuses to seek treatment, and brings home his habit as well as much criminal influence, which in turn affect the children.
• Your spouse marries another woman against your will – not adultery, but polygamy, claiming it is "allowed" in the Bible.  (Let's assume that the state, which prohibits polygamy, looks the other way, or that you live in some country or state that allows polygamy.)
• Your spouse is in a coma and is stable on life support, but doctors say there is little brain activity and he/she will likely never wake up, but will likely outlive you.  You wait years, but based on his preexisting request and your own respect for life, will never decide to pull the plug.  
• Your spouse engages in gaslighting (crazymaking) and is about to have you committed to a mental institution.  
• You are a victim of child marriage, sold by your parents at age 10, by a man who brutally rapes you.  (True story of Yemeni child bride Nujood -- read her story.)
• Your spouse beats you violently.
• Your spouse beats the children violently.  The state will take the children from you if you stay with him.
• Your spouse verbally and psychologically abuses you and the children.  
• Your spouse is a Satanist and ritually abuses and tortures animals.  

Basically I came up with this list by asking the question, other than adultery and abandonment (the two "conditions" in which many people in the modern church interpret that the Bible explicitly allows divorce), what are some possible scenarios in which your marriage could make your life completely horrible?  I'm sure someone out there could add many more colorful scenarios because there are so many ways to suffer.  As Tolstoy said in Anna Karenina, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

The purpose of this list is NOT for you to say, "Oh yes, you should DEFINITELY divorce in that circumstance."  I don't think that way myself; I deliberately listed scenarios that represent a range of where I think it falls in the "justifiable for divorce" spectrum.  Without more details, how can one tell?  Can the marriage be saved?  Will counseling, medication, intervention help?  How dangerous is the situation?  Are she and the children in a safe place?  Who is helping or not helping in the scenario?

The purpose of the list is to give you pause.  To cause struggle in the heart as one faces the serious suffering of the spouse and children.  For every honest Christ-follower who loves God and people, I believe that there is something seriously wrong if there is no pause, if the immediate answer to each of these scenarios is, "NO.  Divorce in this circumstance is never, EVER allowed.  No discussion.  No struggle.  I don't even need to take this to the Lord to ask."  True compassion as I see in Christ would struggle on behalf of the suffering spouse and children in each scenario.  Put someone you love in each scenario -- a daughter, a sister, a dear friend -- and then tell them that they must live with that spouse forever without a moment's hesitation in your heart, without even a pause to go and think and pray about it.  I don't believe the church is called to be heartless in this matter, to prioritize a piece of paper that legally binds two people together (because in most of these cases, the marriage ISN'T acting out as a true marriage), over the safety of women and children.  That is not the attitude I see in the Lord Jesus.

Every serious Christian must humbly take each scenario, when rooted in reality, not in a hypothetical way (because the details matter), to the Lord and Scripture again.  I don't think God ever intended for our Christianity to be a fruit of the knowledge of good and evil -- once you've taken and eaten, once you've been a Christian for x number of years, once you've read through the Bible a few times, once you've gone through seminary, you've got all the answers and you don't need to talk to the Lord any more to ask for His wisdom.  We dishonor God and the Scriptures when we assume that we don't need to keep dialoguing with the Lord.  Faith isn't something you arrive at -- it's a relationship.  Every new moral question, as we face it, we take back to the Lord and to Scripture.  There is a deep arrogance when we assume we know all the answers before we've really spent time struggling with the questions.

I am also not arguing just yet that in any of these scenarios, divorce is allowed by the Bible.  Each of those scenarios need to be examined specifically and held up against the Word.  In future blog posts I intend to take abuse as my scenario and look at it.  This is just my introduction, so if you feel like I haven't made any argument yet, it's because I haven't.  I'm just setting up the foundation.  I'm asking you to be humble, put down your gloves, and walk with me in this journey of looking again at the Text and admitting to God, "We need Your wisdom.  Speak to us through Your Word.  We don't have all the answers. Show us the way."

So many people who have confronted me with judgment about my pursuing divorce knew very little of the relevant Scriptures (and also didn't even ask me for my story).  They had no idea what the Bible says about divorce, marriage and covenant.  They had just ingested somewhere the idea that marriage was inviolable, and had decided that they needed no more study or searching or asking of the Lord before they came down in judgment upon me and urged me to go back into a destructive situation.  A few who knew their Bible a little better knew about the two "exceptions" of adultery and abandonment.  But very, very few knew what Mosaic law said about it, or remembered the contexts in which Jesus and Paul spoke about marriage.

Church, I'm not asking you to agree with me.  I'm asking you to do your homework before you condemn me and thousands of other abused women who have turned to divorce to escape their abusive spouses.  Part of that means listening to the victim's story, and doing your homework about abuse (I recommend Lundy Bancroft's book Why Does He Do That?).  Part of it means taking it to the Lord and the Bible, and really struggling to do good exegesis.  Part of it is a deep commitment to truth.  Part of it is a deep commitment to compassion and justice.

If I've convinced you to take a second look, I'll see you at part 2.

Somebody that I used to know

Getting out of an abusive situation is like coming alive again.  For years I'd been barely surviving in an emotional warzone, trying my best to heal between fearful explosions after which I could hardly get out of bed the next day, emotionally speaking.  If the interludes lasted days, I'd slowly heal and begin to drag myself around and notice the flowers until the next onslaught flattened me again.  Wound after wound, in the same places in my heart, barely scabbed over before the next devastation came.

The immediate sensation I had after I left him was a sudden relief.  A few days later I wrote a poem that alluded to the hush after nuclear fallout -- a beautiful, freeing silence.  And then I realized -- I'm writing poetry again.  If it's true that "I think, therefore I am" it was almost as though I had been a pale ghost of myself all this time, and now I was suddenly coming back into being, starting to think and write and express myself again.  I imagine I'm going to write really angsty, uncomfortably self-aware poetry like a teenager for awhile before I grow up again into something more mature.

Part of that coming back into existence is the enjoyment of things.  I've been rediscovering music, movies, books, poetry...in my marriage I'd still been consuming these things but not really aware of them, not falling into passionate infatuations with certain works of art as I used to.  I thought I had just grown up and you don't swoon over gorgeous tunes or profound lines when you grow up.  But now I realize that I am still that person inside.  That I will listen to a song over and over again and let it deliciously break my heart every time.  This post is about a song I've had on repeat for awhile.

A Facebook friend recently posted a request for the names of modern day laments, adding a caveat: "But not breakup songs."  I, and his other friends, found ourselves at a loss for any secular songs that were true laments but not about a breakup.  Perhaps it's that we in the Western world live such relatively comfortable lives, that the most devastating thing that happens to many people is a breakup.  Or it could be that the Western consciousness is so consumed with romantic relationships that it can only conceive of laments using the language of lost love.

I didn't hear the song "Somebody that I used to know" much at the height of its popularity when people were hearing it ad nauseam, and apparently getting very sick of it, as my musician friends inform me.  So when I discovered it recently, while in the throes of my own breakup, it was new and fresh and so real, so true.  It's definitely a catchy tune, but I think the main reason for its viral popularity is that it captures so brilliantly the raw human emotion -- the mutual resentment, bitterness, loss -- in the breakup of that most intimate of relationships, eros.




I feel like my ex at heart could sing the main lines of the song.  He seemed so bewildered at our final separation and the extremes to which I went to get him out of my life, my bank accounts, social media. etc.  On my part it was a growing realization that he would eventually destroy me, and as time went by I begged and pleaded and brought up divorce in increasingly loud tones over the years, but for him it was sudden because he'd never taken any of those things seriously, had counted on my theology and my good-girl Christianity to keep me bound to him forever.

So I can imagine him thinking most of Gotye's bitter lines:

"But you didn't have to cut me off
Make out like it never happened and that we were nothing
And I don't even need your love
But you treat me like a stranger and that feels so rough
No you didn't have to stoop so low
Have your friends collect your records and then change your number
I guess that I don't need that though
Now you're just somebody that I used to know"

And then I get to say Kimbra's exquisitely bitter lines back to him:

"Now and then I think of all the times you screwed me over
But had me believing it was always something that I'd done
But I don't wanna live that way
Reading into every word you say"

The song is so dead on in the dynamics between the estranged lovers.  He describes their breakup in neutral tones -- a no-fault breakup:

"we found that we could not make sense"
" it was over"

But she clearly has a different story to tell -- her accusations imply a verbally abusive, crazy-making relationship.  Him "screwing her over," then blaming her, playing with her mind until she can't "live that way" any more.  After all, what drives a woman to suddenly cut things off, send her friends to get her things, and change her number?  He's in some massive denial that she did this for no reason. She obviously had a desperate need to get him completely out her life once and for all.

In the music video, they do a good job at the subtleties of these emotional intricacies.  As her voice gradually crescendoes until, as another blogger put it, she's practically "snarling" at him, she moves towards him seemingly to engage.  He closes his eyes at her accusations as if in pain, but refuses to turn to look at her until she is moving away and is gone from him forever.  I know that dance.  It's my own story.

The dysfunctional relationship, the two completely divergent perspectives about what happened, the sudden break and then the painful, gradual fading of that person from your heart and mind...I understand this all too well.  Even when you escape from an abusive marriage, it still means losing someone that was once your everything, and for both the abuser and the victim, there's a deep tragedy that the person you once called the love of your life is now "somebody that I used to know."

Just for fun, I'll include here the Pentatonix remake that I really enjoy, since I love Pentatonix.  Love the beatboxing guy (who's a believer by the way!) and the tenor who makes the intro sound so haunting.



and also the ingenious splicing together of LOTS of remakes, since the song was heavily covered by artists both quirky and talented, cleverly entitled:  "Somebodies:  A Youtube Orchestra."

Reliving Job

In college I had a Job experience, in which I felt like God was stripping away everything of value to me – my family, my friendships, my relationship, my academic career, and my health.  During that time, furious that God would not do what I wanted Him to do, I shook my fist at heaven and renounced my faith.  Eventually the Lord wooed me back to Himself and, when the scales fell from my eyes, I saw how He was always faithful, loving, and good, and that being God meant that He got to call the shots, and my role was to trust Him.

Today, I feel like I get a second chance at that Job experience, but this time to do it right.  Losing everything I care about – my marriage, my ministry, my chances at having a family, my reputation and name, many of my relationships – has been incredibly painful, but today I am armed with the knowledge that I lacked back then – a stronger understanding of who God is, that He is utterly trustworthy, and once I make it through the storm, blind with pain, my eyes will be opened at the end of the day and I will see what He was doing in all this mess.  I’ve learned not to question or throw God away in the pain but to cling to him with the desperate strength of a firm knowledge that He is my only way through it all.  

As I weather the storm, I feel like it’s a training ground.  Constant, blistering pain can be a faithful friend, revealing where my greatest temptations are – temptations to blame others, temptations to run to something less than God to ease the pain.  I told my prayer group the other night that I understand now why people “drunk-dial” others in their pain.  When you’re in great pain and your inhibitions are down, you want to reach out either for vengeance or a drunken night of mistakes.  (I made it clear to them that I’m NOT tempted to drunk-dial people – I don’t even drink – but it’s a metaphor for the kind of temptation that deep pain dangles before a hurting soul.)  It's so easy to run to sin rather than to the Lord.

My constant prayer is, Jesus, please keep me faithful and my thoughts clear and right.  Put a watch over my mouth, over my heart and mind.  I have found that one of my greatest weapons is transparency – no more secrets, no more hiding the ugly things going on in my household as I did all those years of my abusive marriage.  Having a housemate who is open to hearing my confessions is like a healthful tonic.  I notice that when I bring things into the light, God is faithful to vanquish them and there is relief from the temptation.  And it is far better to bring it into the light and kill it while it is still a new sprout, the faintest whisper of a sinful idea occurring in the mind, rather than after it’s taken strong root, grown up over your life, and taken over the heart.

And the exciting part is, if this is a training ground, what does God have for me next?  I have gotten mixed messages from the church – you are wrong, you are right, you are rebellious, you are faithful, you are unfit for future ministry, you are now uniquely equipped for a future ministry.  I’m still waiting breathlessly for God’s call on that last point.   What I do know is that one thing I’ve been told is patently false – that God can never be maximally glorified in my life now, and even though it still cuts me deeply when people say this to me, I’m grateful that the reason I know it’s false is because it doesn’t depend on me but on Him.   Lord, glorify Yourself in my life, let my brokenness shine Your goodness all the more in this fallen world.  My life means nothing if You do not glorify Yourself in it.  My life was made, I was created, for You to glorify Yourself in me.

In the last few months I spent much time being angry with people who were judging and condemning me without even asking me for my story – somehow the word “divorce” awakens a lion of wrath in some Christians, while the word “abuse” seems to evoke mostly compassion for my abusive husband who needs healing – but I realize now that they can’t help but think the way they do.  If they believe divorce is a mortal sin, and that it is always wrong, then wouldn’t they see my life as they do, as a ruined moral grave?   How could they approve anything I do, seeing me as a rebellious Jezebel who does just as she likes regardless of (what they believe to be) God’s law?  I understand where they’re coming from.  I was probably one of them just a few years ago.  It’s my life experience, the bitterness of my suffering, and the way I felt the Lord intervened in that, and then the desperation that drove me to scour the Bible for its every detail on marriage and find my redemption there, that changed my mind for me.  But I can understand how any man, any woman with a kind and loving husband, any single, would be utterly incapable of understanding my situation if they haven’t lived it and cried out to God with the desperation I have, and gotten the answer I got.  And while I don’t agree with them, and I don’t want to stand before them and let them sling mud, I do understand enough to stop judging them.  They are doing the best they can with what they’ve been given.  As am I.

Letter to my abusive husband

Dear Husband,

I wonder if you will ever understand why I left.  It seems to me that you were left bewildered on that final day, even though I'd been talking for months about divorce and my inability to take any more.  Why all of a sudden did I snap, did I refuse to take more?  All along you thought every mention of separation was an idle threat, that I'd never carry it out.  You thought you had me for life.  

I want you to know.  I had to leave you to save myself.  If it were for not my emotional survival, if I were not hanging on by my bloody fingernails and slipping, if I could have sustained it, I would never have left.  I did not enter into marriage wanting it to end.  I wanted a marriage, a partnership, a husband who loved me and who would receive my love.  I wanted to love and serve you unconditonally.  I made treasure hunts for you and threw lavish birthday parties and brought you tubs of warm water to soak your feet.  I hate kitchen work but I would slave over gourmet meals and ask you to rate each dish, and I never repeated a dish that was less than four stars.  When you told me straight out that you would never wash dishes despite your prenuptial promises, I wept over the dishes as I washed them myself.  I bit my tongue in public and let you run conversations, I deferred to you and supported you even when I thought you were wrong.  When you got yourself into a conversational bind by making arguments you could not defend, I would jump to your defense and get you out of the fix by explaining what you meant, to make you look good.  Whenever I was reading a good book and you took it away to read it yourself, I let you.  I gave you a candlelight massage and when, a few days later, you refused to rub my painful feet to help me sleep, I cried myself to sleep but then later forced myself to give you another massage, to continue to love you unconditionally.  When you were sad I counseled and consoled; when you were angry I helped you talk through your anger even as you were lashing out at me.  When you were sick I served you hand and foot.  When you were in sin I prayed for you and read myriad books to try to figure out how best to help you out of it.  I braved your anger to challenge you when you were displeasing to God or destroying your own family with your indifference.  You punished me horribly for it every time, but for your sake I continued to bring it up with you, to help you repair those relationships before you lost them forever.  I left when I realized that there was nothing I could do to help you, that you would kill me before you would change, and that it was time for me to save myself.

You broke my heart into a million pieces.  I did not enter this marriage to fight for my way.  I never wanted to run the show.  I wanted to love you, to be a crown of glory on your head, to be wellness in your soul and in your bones.  I would have given you everything, and taken just enough to live on.  But you would not leave me half, or even a sliver.  You would take it all, by force, and you would fight me to the death to teach me never to ask for more than the crumbs you would throw me.  At my every request, no matter how gently I phrased them, you demonized me, until I would deny myself as much as possible unless I could not bear it.  I could not understand why you were willing to fight me for hours, to reduce your strong, beautiful wife to a miserable huddle of tears and pleas crouching on the ground, rather than concede a small point which would have cost you so little.  I could not understand why you could not accept my apologies but felt you had to punish me to the max and teach me a lesson each time so that I would never, ever cross you in that way again.  I could not understand why you would deny me things that would mean the world to me but cost you so little, and why you would say to me, "I was going to do it for you, but because you're asking me for it, now I won't."  I could not understand why you chose me for being smart and beautiful and strong, only to tell me I was ugly and repellant, that nobody liked me, and try to destroy every good thing in me.  I could not understand why when I was sick, or sad, or in despair, it would rev you up more to attack.  It was like a lion spotting a wounded gazelle on the plains -- my weakness inspiring your aggression.  And even towards the end, when I had the rope around my neck, you never stopped in sorrow and said, "Am I hurting you so much that you would rather be dead? I must stop."  If my death did not mean a negative change in your life -- the loss of your servant and reputation -- I am convinced you would have stood by and let it happen.  

Every compromise, every time you finally gave in to me, you only did it because you had to, because otherwise I would leave and your comfortable life of respect would crumble without me to sustain it.  I saw that.  From my right to have my own opinion in the vote, to stopping the fertility treatments that were destroying my health, to letting me watch TV, to opening the door of my freedom that took you five minutes to fix, to allowing me to use my computer on the bed, you wouldn't give me an inch until you saw that it would cost you dearly to not give in.  I saw so clearly that you never did it for me.  You never cared for the hours and nights and weeks I wept.  You only did it for yourself, you viewed it as losing in battle to a mortal enemy, and you punished me secretly for every battle you lost.  You would have sabotaged my career, my health, my heart, and for what?  For your whims.  Your happiness and well-being were my own goals.  They were never at risk.  I wanted you to be happy;  you didn't have to fight me for that.  But it was for absolute total dictatorial control that you destroyed me.  You destroyed me for the $15 a month it would have cost you to buy me milk and bottled water during my too-short pregnancy, for the 5 minutes it took you to open that door, for the two hours it took you to read the book you promised to read, for the right to drink soda in unlimited amounts and destroy your own health.  For the right to not call your family, for the right to avoid going to the doctor, for the plastic box that you didn't really want but did not want me to have.  I was mostly fighting for your health and happiness.  What were you fighting for?  Such petty little things.  The night I told you, "Can you be extra nice to me today? I'm feeling extra vulnerable right now," somehow you saw that as a battle cry, to assault me with one of the most vicious verbal attacks of our marriage, and to take the secrets of my heart and use them to destroy me.  I still don't know what I did that night to deserve it, the attack that only ended when I ran away into the night to a friend's house.  My last birthday in Tamaland...I don't know why you organized the extravagant birthday surprise for me during the day if you were going to punish me for all the work you did with seven hours of verbal abuse that night, raging at me with your accusations that I was "not grateful enough," until I was utterly broken and said I would kill myself if you didn't stop.  It was at first the happiest, and then the most shockingly heartbreaking, birthday of my life.  I wish you hadn't done anything for me at all and left me in peace.

I lived every day afraid of you, on edge, under stress.  I knew the look that meant it was coming, that I was in trouble.  I prayed day and night that you would change.  I punished myself emotionally for every time I lost control and screamed and wept, but I realized that I never had a chance, because you were pushing me to the edge on purpose.  You wanted me to lose control, and it was a battle during every fight, you pushing me to despair, and me fighting for self-control.  You were my adversary, never my lover.  I endured your touch and pretended happiness, but in my heart I was relieved when you turned away at night and left me in peace.  Towards the end, I began to think that death was the only way out, the only way I could escape from you.  At first I asked the Lord to take me.  I did not want to die, but I was like a tortured animal in a cage, wild for freedom from the pain that was closing in around me with no visible way out.  But when I saw that you would only give me just enough care to keep me bound to you, barely alive, barely sane, the unthinkable happened.  I thought it just once:  a prayer that God would take you instead.  I wished that you were dead and I were free.  And it terrified me so much that I knew that leaving you would be better than that evil in my heart.  Better to leave, better to divorce and commit the act that the church would never forgive me, than to commit murder in my heart.  

Maybe you are angry with me for divorcing you.  Certainly the church is angry.  But I'm angry with you too, that you left me no choice.  You caused this divorce.  I never wanted a divorce.  I would have done anything to make our marriage work.  I would have done anything to not be in the position I'm in right now.  You made it impossible for me to believe you -- all the lies, your repentance, the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde act. You told me yourself that you lie, you retracted your apologies, you changed your story within months, days, minutes, you manipulated outsiders against me and sabotaged all the healing.  I forgave you a million times until I could not deny how obvious it was that you weren't sorry one bit and that you intended to continue your behavior til death did us part.  I never wanted this.  I wanted to believe you.  You sneered at my forgiveness, you spat on my grace, you said to me without an apology, "You know you have to forgive me because of Jesus."  Couldn't you have even lied more convincingly?  I would have stayed with you forever if you could have kept deceiving me that you were really sorry, that you really cared about me.  But you became such a bad liar, or maybe once the scales fell from my eyes there was no turning back to the ignorant, suffering hopefulness that had kept me going so long.  I could see you calculating, how far can I push her, how little can I give and still keep her here.  But you miscalculated, you pushed too far, gave too little, and I saw how petty and selfish your heart was, that you would never love me or want my good.

There was a scene from Shrek that stopped me dead when I saw it because I saw you in it.  The prince announces from the tower that he was going to send out knights to rescue the princess from the deadly dragon on his behalf.  He declares magnanimously, "Some of you will lose your lives in the process, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make."  That's you.  You made that sacrifice of my life and well-being every day for your own pleasure.  I saw that I was not even a person to you; I was property and you were entitled to do with it as you liked.  I'm sorry you did not get your money's worth, that the property could not be perfectly controlled and it kept making demands of you.  That big screen TV you wanted, that you were going to force me to buy against my will, would have been a better investment for you.  I hope you have one now.

You could have been the happiest, luckiest man in the world.  I was ready to make it so.  I don't know why you didn't think we could share it.  Why you had to take it all for yourself.  Did you think that you would enjoy sex less if I did not suffer through it?  Did you think that washing a few dishes was not worth the gourmet meals I would gladly have cooked for you for the rest of your life?  Did you enjoy your video games more because I was banging my head against the wall in despair?  Did you have to have it all, did you have to leave me nothing, did you have to rob me in order to feel rich?  Did you have to see me cry in order to be happy yourself?  

A letter to the lady who confronted me in public

Another email I sent out recently.

Dear ----,

I realize that in order to forgive you, I need to tell you what you did to me.

When I saw you at the [public place] last week, it was very very difficult for me that you brought up my personal circumstance in such a public place and forced me to talk about something that I was not prepared to talk about at that time.  In my email in which I revealed the news, I asked people not to talk to me until they had read the book I had recommended.  You did not do that.  You came up to me and forced me to talk about things in public, to my great shame, as people around us could hear us.  You put me in a very difficult and painful position.  

It seems to me that you know very little about abuse.  You did not ask me about my side of the story before judging me and telling me what to do -- to go back to D, an abusive husband. You don't know what he did to me.  You don't know what his heart is like now and whether he's actually repentant, since he has a history of deceiving.  I felt judged and accused by you but I did not feel that you acknowledged the suffering I have gone through and the deep wrong that has been done to me.  You showed that you felt it was wrong for me to leave D -- yet you never said a word about the wrong D has done against me and how he has destroyed the marriage through abuse and force.  Many people have done what you did -- hold me responsible for the dissolution of my marriage without holding D responsible for what he has done to cause it.  If the church had stood up for me during my marriage, during the many times I appealed to it -- to leaders and Christian counselors -- to ask D to change, if they had recognized the injustice and held him accountable, maybe I would not be in this situation today.  But even now, when the truth is in the open, many people in the church refuse to call D's sin sin.  They only see what they think is my sin.  Like you, they come down hard on me and but dispense grace freely to D in his unchanged state.  Without them stating the words that name D's sin, it is difficult for me as a victim to listen to the church.

I appeal to your sense of justice.  You want me to make D change.  In an abusive situation, do you go to the victim and force the victim to try to make the abuser change? Imagine if it were a child being sexually abused by an adult.  Would you send that child back to the adult before the adult makes any changes, and tell the child that he/she must make it right?    Even if the adult said he's changed, the risk is too great to endanger that child. But somehow it's okay for a wife to be abused.  People have no qualms or hesitation in sending me back to abuse.  And that is what happened for six years.  Every time I left him, people pushed me back to him.  And I continued getting abused.  And nobody did anything to help me.  I was told to submit more and to not leave him.

If I could make D change, I would have done so by now.  We have been to counselor after counselor and program after program, me dragging him and begging him and him balking at every step and sabotaging every attempt to improve our marriage. I'm sure there are good programs out there but they will do no good if D is determined not to change.  The power to change D lies only with the Lord and with D himself, not with me or any program.  If you as part of the body of Christ feel responsible for my marriage, why not take it to D instead of me?  Have you contacted D and pushed him the way you did me?  If not, why put a double load of responsibility and grief on me when I have already suffered so much?  Why are you making me relive abuse by pushing me to do something I do not feel safe to do?  Why don't you get Dl to go and do that program and then let me know if he's changed, instead of putting responsibility in my hands, when I have never been able to make him do anything?  

I feel very upset with you for what you did to me in your ignorance and zeal.  You may think that you are doing what is right, but for me there was nothing Christlike about how you approached me.  I felt completely ripped apart at the end of it.  I cried all the way home and spent about an hour being consoled by my housemate at home.  You are one of the many people in my life that has judged me without even asking for my story, causing me to lose faith in the church's power to represent Jesus in both his loving and just nature, to stand up for the powerless and weak, the oppressed woman and child and stranger.   You were not there the nights I ran away from D and shivered in my car and spent the night in seedy motels just to feel safe.  You were not there when I fled to the airport and sat there for hours torn between leaving my marriage and everything that was dear to me and escaping to save myself, terrifed that D would follow and find me and make me come home.  You were not there the countless nights I wept at his cruelty, when I was unable to escape while we were in [ministry place].  Jesus was there and saw.  He rescued me.  

Please do not contact me again.  You did not respect my request to read the book on abuse before talking with me about my situation.  Now I am asking you to respect my request to not contact me any more. There are a few people in my life who still are able to show Christ's love to me, so please entrust me to them.  I ask you to prayerfully consider what I am saying to you, that you spoke too quickly and listened too little, and that you violated the boundary I had asked people to respect.  If you do care about me, you'll pray for me and leave me in peace.  Please understand that I am going through great pain, and I need time and space for healing.   There is no joy in the dissolution of my marriage -- this is never what I wanted.  I have lost almost everything I valued in my life -- my marriage, my reputation, my ministry, my dignity.  I would never have left D if there had been any other way to stay alive and sane.  I begged him on my knees, numerous times, to stop the abuse and he would not.  D has said himself that there was no other way for me, that he knew that his heart was set on never changing.  

Now that I've said my piece, I commit before Jesus to forgiving you for what you have done to me, regardless of whether or not you accept what I'm saying.  You are welcome to be angry with me, you are welcome to feel whatever you like, but please do not contact me. Thank you.

Crooked Talk

Towards the end of my relationship I began to realize exactly how manipulative my spouse was and started calling him on it.  He would not let me use the word "manipulative" though, so we settled on a term "crooked talk."  I said that if he used any crooked talk in talking with me I would call him on it and not let him use those tactics.  In one fight I remember him protesting that I was objecting to literally everything that he was saying.  He was saying that to argue that I was being unfair, but that was when it started to dawn on me that it was true.  Every single sentence he was saying was manipulative and not moving towards a healthy and fair resolution to our conflict.

My counselor would not believe me that my spouse was manipulative, so I made a list of all the tactics I'd noticed at the time.  It's not a complete list, but it's a pretty heavy start.  I include it here so people can see how damaging dialogue can be if both parties aren't really sincere in trying to move towards a mutually satisfying conclusion, but one party is just trying to win at any cost, even the destruction of the partner.

Crooked talk

• Saying he’s really angry about one thing when he’s angry about something else
• Changing what he’s really angry about, switching gears suddenly with no explanation, when I point out how I’m innocent of xyz (i.e. I didn’t do it, or he was the one who actually brought it up, etc. etc.)
• Saying untrue accusations about me (and later admitting they are false and were said just to hurt me)
• Attacking my motivations, saying I want to destroy / emasculate / control him / ruin his life, take away his happiness / identity, etc.  Repeating these things over many days
• Being cold and hostile while I’m weeping
• Saying “I’m just made this way” or “I can’t help it” when I ask for sympathy or compassion
• Avoiding conceding an obvious point by saying “I’m don’t know” or “Maybe” or “I’m confused”
• Not admitting he’s angry (this has gotten better) but instead saying that he’s some other mild emotion – “confused” or “frustrated”
• Getting really, really upset (fake upset?) about something that normally wouldn’t upset him and fixating on that to avoid the real topic (“I’m really angry that you didn’t appreciate me!”)
• Arguing that his rights outweigh my rights, his pain outweighs my pain, and my sins outweigh his sins.  Refusing even to make them equal.  Sometimes ridiculous (him hounding me for 3 days straight telling me I ruined his life, I’m destroying his dreams, etc., is not as hurtful as me saying one simple statement saying to him, “You’re actually the reason we’re staying home from [ministry place].”)
• Jekyll and Hyde – changing completely without explanation
•             He has told me in Jekyll mode that I should discount everything Hyde says
•             But in Hyde mode, he gets very angry that “you don’t believe me”
• When I can prove my point, he does not accept it but instead says angrily, “Fine, you’re right.  You’re always right.”  Then the argument breaks down even further.
• Turning around his own wrongs to be my fault (even if I didn’t do anything yet )
•             “I did this because I was afraid that you would get angry and I would get in trouble”
•             “I broke my promise because you forced me to make the promise in the first place”
•             “I was going to do [what you wanted], but now that you’re asking me to, I don’t want to because you’re controlling me.”
• Making deals and then backing out of his side of the deal, but still holding me to my side
• Wanting exceptions to all the rules for himself, but holding me to the letter of the law
• Being angry for not being praised, thanked, appreciated, empathized with
• Suddenly changing the subject when confronted on his own wrongs
• Untrue causality statements
• Punishing me verbally for the things I did wrong, even if I’ve apologized, often to “teach me” never to do it again
• Claiming that I NEVER apologize or give in, even though I do
• Claiming that I always get my way / control him, even though he mostly gets his way
• Lying that he’s sorry at the very moment that he is afraid to lose me, then retracting
• Suddenly changing his mind when he sees negative consequences
• Saying the only solution should have been that I never brought it up (basically angry that I brought it up and blaming the entire fight on me because I brought up the topic)
• Blaming me / being angry for the time lost in fighting, how long it's taking, or how late it is at night, and fighting about that
• Apologizing for something and telling me he’s changed and he agrees with me, but then later taking it back and reasserting his former statements
• Saying he needs a “long time and many chances to change” but demanding instant perfection from me
• Getting angry at me for my boundaries, and trying to take away my right to leave / be angry
• Bringing up random unrelated bad things I've done in the past to justify his current wrong
• Fixating and harping on one statement or one or two words out of context and using that as a strategy to evade the main point
• Saying things just to push my buttons and not trying to help me not lose my temper
• Egging me on to lose my temper, saying, “You hate me.  Say that you hate me!  You want a divorce. Say it!  Say it!”
• After pushing me to lose my temper and I lose it, suddenly rearranging the whole conversation to focus on the problem of my temper, because “your temper trumps all my sins”
• Trying to blame the fight on an innocuous thing I did early in the conversation and telling me “never to do that again” e.g. never bring up talking about his diet; never bring up anything remotely serious at night, before leaving to go somewhere, in the car, right when he comes home, etc. etc.
• Using verbal strategies not intended to bring the conversation to a solution, but just to score points and “win.”  Trying to push his agenda and not trying to get to the bottom of things.
• Claiming childhood trauma is the cause of everything, and then going into weepy counseling mode and wanting counseling from me – even if I was the one who was hurt in the first place. No matter why we start the conversation we end up with me consoling and counseling him for his pain and trauma.  Nothing is his fault – it’s how he was raised.
• Rejecting any negative emotion from me, demanding that I ONLY say encouraging positive things and never say anything negative – however, not following this policy himself
• Accusing me of “screaming and yelling, blowing up” when I’m talking in a normal voice, upset but still calm
• Accusing me of traumatizing him but not seeing how he hurts me
• Accusing me of things that he is also guilty of, without shame or conflict over his hypocrisy – “You ALWAYS hyperbolize!”
• Demanding that I always speak in a sweet tone of voice, but not watching his own tone of voice.  Refusing to accept things I say in a nonsweet tone.
• Demanding that I never move my hands when I talk. Refusing to accept things I say if I have moved my hands.
• Demanding grace even though he’s not apologizing -- “You are all law and no grace!”
• Immediately cheerful and happy after fights are over and wanting to have sex even though I don’t want to
• Forcing me to be physically affectionate when I don’t want to
• Forcing me to sit on his lap when I don’t want to
• Getting angry with me if I don’t want physical affection, and punishing me eventually
• Not showing guilty feelings about his own behavior except when there are negative consequences for him
• Not realizing he’s guilty about anything without my spelling it out for him, and proving it to him over many laborious hours
• Not accepting my no but bringing up requests over and over again
• Saying yes to my requests but not really listening or doing them.  Sometimes he says “okay” and then immediately does the opposite.  Then gets very, very angry when I react unhappily.   e.g. While he’s drinking from my water bottle, I say: “D, don’t throw away that water bottle when you’re done.  I want to keep it.”  D:  “Ok.”  (Throws bottle away literally five seconds after he’s said ok)
• Will never allow me to say, “I can’t take this any more.”
• Agreeing on something together and then deliberately pursuing something opposite (we agree on a townhouse, he starts looking at big houses, we agree on a price range, he starts looking outside that price range, we agree on a certain house and he rents a totally different house) – then protesting innocence (“Can’t I even look?”  “I wasn’t serious, just curious”) even though he’s done this often in the past and I know that at some point he’s going to start pushing for it for real
• Getting angry when I get upset at him for not listening, and then saying that he is actually physically incapable of remembering what I ask, and that he needs lots of repetition.  Not acknowledging that he’s not listening. 
• Ignoring my repeated requests until I blow up and then getting mad at me for blowing up
• Not recognizing what he’s really angry at and taking it out on me. 
• e.g. He broke a glass in the bathroom and made a mess.  He was upset and came to talk to me about it.  I asked him if he cleaned it up.  All of a sudden we are in a huge fight because he feels I was not empathetic enough and he is furious at me.  I immediately try to be empathetic but it’s not good enough.  A few hours later I am weeping my eyes out and wondering what I did to deserve this.  I believe he made me pay for his bad feelings at breaking the glass.   And I wasn’t even there when it happened!  He sought me out and then took it out on me. 
• e.g. We often had huge fights after working out at the gym.  Finally he admitted that he feels really angry with me for no reason because he feels aggressive and in a bad mood after he works out.  But during those fights he could always find some fake reason to be mad at me, and I wouldn’t be able to understand why he would blow up over such little things, often things I had been doing for a long time.
• Holding onto anger for a long time (up to a year) and then punishing me for them, to "teach me a lesson to never do that again"

Poem

The dawn after nuclear fallout

Is hushed and beautiful

The silence of sunlight rising from the ash heap

An emptiness that is utterly free

Jesus, I throw myself headlong

Into the waterfall of your grace

The blood like endless waves

Lapping over me like the forgetful sea

The bliss of gore and grime melting away

Into the ocean of your suffering

Your pain erasing mine

And setting me free

The holocaust has taken my all

And in this shadow of death I see you

And only you

You whose shadow is light

I kneel and give you my all, again

7/20/13

Syria, chemical warfare, and marriage

As I read about the whole Syria chemical warfare debacle, it reminds me of my marriage. 

Here's how it sounds to me:

• I promise not to use chemical warfare.
• I didn’t use chemical warfare.  It’s a lie.  The other side used chemical warfare.
• You’re going to take consequences?  What?  No, I didn’t use chemical warfare.  The other side did.
• You’re really going to take consequences?  What?!!  Wait, let me get other big people involved on my side.
• Ok, the big guy is on my side and because of him I promise to hand over my weapons and play nice if you don’t take consequences.  But you won’t really know if I handed over all the weapons or what my intentions are in the future.  But trust me!

[In my marriage, what would come next was my forgiveness, reconciliation, and him saying:  I promise not to use chemical warfare.]

And it all starts again:

• What?  I didn’t use chemical warfare.  The other side did.

…

The similarities between the two situations highlights for me what’s wrong in both relationships:

1) These are not relationships of trust.  Dishonesty about motives, intentions, and future actions make it more of a power play rather than a real relationship. 

2) Both parties are trying to get what they want.  One party is trying to get the other to comply with a previous agreement, and the other party is trying to avoid consequences without having to fully comply with that agreement by appearing to comply.

3) Both parties are eyeing each other, sizing each other up, trying to anticipate each other’s next move.  It’s a nerve-wracking, hair-pulling situation as you try to gauge the sincerity of the other party and how much you can get them to do what you want.

4) The presence of the witnesses (Russia and the U.N. for Syria and the U.S.; counselors and the church for me) doesn’t really help because of #1 – the issue of honesty.  The influence of these witnesses – who knows if they will help or harm, as they try to push actions one way or the other? 

5) It's never about whether the one party intends goodwill, as they clearly don't.  It's more about what you can force them to do.  True trust can never come from this starting point.

I’m not trying to extrapolate and say that whether or not the U.S. should attack Syria is the same as whether or not I should file for divorce against my husband.  But for the first time I appreciate how delicate as well as dirty politics are, because I’m living it.  As an idealistic child I would have said tearfully, “Why can’t we all just be nice to each other?”  But in a world where oppression of others brings clear benefit, why would people be nice to each other when they could be not nice and get their way?  During the breakdown of my marriage I have understood a tiny tiny bit of what it feels like to be an oppressed people under a dictator who will take all your money, your freedom, your dignity, your safety and your lives, without the slightest bit of remorse, and then go onto a public mike and declare how much good he has done for his people.  The hurt and disbelief, the fury and indignation, the unwillingness to trust or compromise any more, the desire to just get that dictator out of there…I understand a little bit of how that feels.  I’m not saying that I support a violent overthrow or the murder of a dictator; I have been horrified at the atrocities that ensue with such a coup.  But I understand the helpless fury, the anger at all the manipulation and the lies, and the inability to trust after trust has been broken so blatantly and remorselessly.  I understand the shaking fists behind the Arab Spring, the "never again, never again."  

Oh, Jesus, please intercede...

What the ending of 50 First Dates tells me

On a whim, I just watched the movie 50 First Dates again.  Although the movie itself contains some unnecessary parts that I don't appreciate, I’ve always loved the ending – one of my top 10 favorite Hollywood scenes of all time.  I love watching Lucy wake up to find herself ensconced in silk sheets on a boat in the middle of an arctic paradise, among majestic glaciers and glistening seas, with an adoring husband, a darling little girl, and her dad contentedly fishing, as the song, “Somewhere over the rainbow,” highlights the fulfillment of all her unspoken dreams.  She gasps, "Oh my goodness," as the wonder of it laps over her soul.

Life can be such a horror, a wreck.  But there’s a dream that someone out there loves you so much that he is going to surprise you, create with his own bare hands a fairy tale dream come true for you, and give you more than you could have ever hoped for.  The character Henry took Lucy’s dead-end life, focused only on surviving and maintaining status quo, and turned it into a daily awe at a happiness that had suddenly descended upon her – a happiness she had no ability to craft for herself.  And there was a gentleness, an attentiveness, in him winning her daily, that highlights the respect for her daily consent.  Love cannot overpower and force, does not trap and then compel by obligation, with the excuse that "in the end this will make you happy."  It woos, every day, and holds back when the time is not right.

    

In the nuclear wreckage of my life, this is my hope.  That my life can be changed from a disappointing dead end to something beautiful and amazing, otherworldly in goodness and joy.  In this life, at some point some people have to concede that the earthly dream of human love and family will probably never be theirs.  Many people never find a human “true love,” never marry, or marry into a sea of hurts and wrecked hopes; never have children, or have children who are ripped away from them far too young or who grow up to curse them and hate them.  And yet their life doesn't have to be a failure.  We here on earth set our sights far too low.  I don’t know if I have any future hopes of love or family on earth.  Some people I talk to insist that it must be still to come -- whether they believe that's with my abusive husband, magically reformed in their minds, or with someone else.  Like the women who could never accept my infertility, would never allow me to express my closure on that path, but insisted that there must still be a baby coming for me.  But for me, it's ok if it doesn't include that earthly happiness.  It would be nice, I guess, but right now I rest my hopes on divine love, that Jesus is the author of my wonderful future, that he can change my outlook, reverse nuclear destruction, and resurrect the dead.  There is an outcome far more surprising, enchanting, life-giving than the one I dreamed of, in His hands, still to come.  I can't wait to see what it will be.

Letter to my church leadership

Here's a letter I recently wrote to a member on my church leadership.  He is a great guy whom I respect tremendously.  He didn’t have the whole story of my marriage so I wanted to enlighten him.  I thought maybe it was a good summary of my situation for people who are curious about my side of the story.   

Dear --,

I wanted to respond to some of what you said in the phone call -- there wasn't time at that moment.  I'm certainly open to feedback and advice, but I wanted to give you a little more information to give some clarity. 

It seemed clear to me when you were exhorting me to stay in the marriage and giving your own difficult and now successful marriage as an example, that you did not understand that this is not just a difficult marriage in which I have simply given up because I do not understand the sanctity of marriage in the eyes of God.  This is not the case.

Please understand that abuse and a normal difficult marriage are worlds apart.  In a normal marriage, there are broken expectations, hurt feelings, and angry words said on both sides, and both sides need to forgive, repent and change their behavior to make it work.  In an abusive situation, it is one-way.  I'm not saying that I did nothing wrong in the marriage, but abuse means that the destructive pattern is enforced from one side, to the point that there is nothing that the abused partner can do to make it better (except leave). 

When it benefited him, D deliberately wanted to hurt and destroy me, and no amount of crying and begging on my part ever evoked any compassion in him.  He said when he saw my tears it made him feel more aggressive.  The only way I could get him to stop verbally abusing me (for many hours, often through the night) was to hurt myself physically.  (In [ministry place] I physically could not leave him because I had no money or social power to call myself a taxi and get away.)  However, he would grow immune to the amount I hurt myself, and so it had to heighten over the years.  By the end of our time in [ministry place] I was putting a rope around my neck.  I was not suicidal; I did not want to die.  But after seven hours of verbal abuse that would not stop, I simply did not know any other way to get him to stop.  Unfortunately within a short time suicide threats were not enough either, and he would just yank me violently away from the rope and then continue to verbally abuse me.  I was desperate, beaten down, and when I appealed to counselors and admin, D was a master manipulator to twist the facts and get it to look like it was my fault -- the suicide attempts did not help my credibility.  They did not believe me.  He almost had me diagnosed as borderline personality disorder by a counselor who never asked me my side of the story -- when I confronted the counselor, he quickly retracted that diagnosis.  I probably would have gone into a mental hospital at some point if God did not give me the clarity to begin realizing over the last year that there was something seriously wrong with D, and the resources to discover what emotional abuse was.  (I read a book called Why Does He Do That?  Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men and was shocked at how the depiction of abuse fit my marriage like a glove.) 

The common Christian marriage advice -- to love and forgive unconditionally, for women to submit to their husbands, to give 100% and not look for 50% back from the partner -- were all disastrous for me as D used my faith and goodwill against me to subjugate me.  I was not allowed to spend money or do anything against his will, and he would "punish" me for any infractions of his will even up to a year after I had done them.  Yet he was able to maintain a good front to outsiders -- a front that I helped him keep up since Christian counselors, leaders, marriage resources, etc. had exhorted me not to shame my husband by complaining about him to others.  The book Love and Respect gave him the spiritual vocabulary to subjugate me even further.  I kept waiting for the outcome predicted in the book -- if I respected and submitted to him then one day he would turn and love me back -- but it never happened.  The more I submitted, the more domineering and angrier he became, saying that everything I did that he didn't like -- even what I was wearing or if I cut my hair -- was disrespectful.  But he could easily say the words, "I love you" and so in his eyes he was fulfilling the book.   Normal marriage advice works for normal bad marriages.  It doesn't work for abuse.

Abusers have something wrong in their worldview, making them feel entitled to dominate over their partner completely, and studies show that abusers rarely change, although they do a master job of pretending repentance.  The worst of it is the lies and broken promises -- broken deliberately, without remorse.  I have talked about divorce many times and actually left D a few times during our marriage, and each time he would beg and "repent" and promise to change -- promises which produced a short period of good behavior but then turned into "it was actually your fault" and a deliberate breaking of the promises after a short time.  He would admit afterwards that he lies in his repentance, and he isn't really repentant.  (The way he worded it is that I "forced him to say things he didn't mean" because I wouldn't come back unless he said he was sorry.)  There is no reason for me to believe that he is any different now.

If a child were abused by an adult, would you send that child back to the adult asking her to trust again?  I feel like people hear "emotional abuse" and they don't think it's very serious.  They think it just means that he was sometimes mean to me and didn't know how to control his words.  Abusive men do not need anger management therapy -- they know how to control their anger, since they rarely show that side to outsiders.  They reserve their anger for their spouse and children.  The problem is their belief that the partner is property and they can treat her any way they like.  It's a much more insidious and difficult-to-change, deeply ingrained atttitude. 

I am asking you:  Please do not be so quick to conclude that God wants me to return to him, without listening to the other side.  Please do not try to send me back into a situation of abuse.  I do believe that God has a plan for D, to redeem, restore, and save him.  However, I don't know if our marriage is the context for that to happen.  Historically every time I've gone back to him it's arrested his growth and need to change, because he becomes gleeful that he got away with it again, and then much more hard-hearted the next time.  Unfortunately, there is no way to tell if an abuser will resume abusing until after the partner has returned because they are great liars and on their best behavior until they feel secure in the relationship again.  There is no easy fix, no pat answer, to a situation like this.  Jesus told us to be innocent as doves and wise as serpents.  I think we Christians are good at the dove part but bad at the serpent part -- we are naive and easily fooled by manipulators because we desperately want to believe that they are repentant and changing.

Please know that I am seeking the Lord with all my heart, scouring the Bible with the desire to see what it truly commands, and not trying to twist it for my own purposes. I have committed to do what is God's will when He shows it to me clearly -- and I believe He will do that in the right time.  However, I get confused by pastors and other people who are telling me that I am not allowed to divorce him and that God never could want this marriage to end, without understanding the nature of abuse.  One of my pastors (from a different church) told me that I was technically not allowed to divorce even if he were beating me (he does recommend a separation though -- but is that a marriage?  A marriage on paper only).  I don't agree with that.  My heart breaks for some of the broken women I have met at the domestic abuse shelter -- most of them with children, financially ruined, and their sense of self broken -- and some of them Christians for whom the church did no good in recognizing and helping them out of abuse.  I myself see God as my Rescuer who gave me the exact resource (the book) I needed to pluck me out of that situation.  I also see God as loving to D that he took me away and broke D's illusion that he was a good man and everything he did was right. 

I respectfully disagree with you that God is necessarily going to be more glorified if I stay with him than if I leave.  I think that God will be glorified in the way that He determines, and we don't know what that is until He tells us.  If I go back to D every time and he continues to abuse me, is that glorifying to God?  I know that in your heart you don't want that, you want the abuse to stop and us to stay together.  But what if the abuse doesn't stop -- and studies show that it's very, very rare for an abuser to change?  What if every time I go back he keeps abusing me?  How long until you would say I'm allowed to divorce him?  Are my six years not long enough?  One pastor said to me, "Don't be so quick to leave him."  That hurt me.  It feels quick to outsiders because they have only just heard of it.  But I have struggled with wanting to leave D from the very first week of our marriage, and I've watched him descend into worse and worse cruelty, and I've seen the lies and broken promises repeating themselves for years.  I endured and stayed with him so long for the glory of God and the sake of the ministry, until I realized that it was not improving but getting worse, and God was not being glorified by the lies and unrighteousness.  I paid a heavy cost to leave D -- it breaks my heart that I may never go back to the people I love in [ministry place] -- and I still feel that I did the right thing. 

The book I mentioned above, Why Does He Do That? is an excellent resource.  If you are interested to read it (I know you are busy though), I would be happy to buy it for you.  I also recommended it to my [leadership] and wrote them a guide to which chapters were the most helpful so that they didn't have to read it all.  I remain open to the counsel of pastors at [church], and desire it.  It would help me if I knew that you all had your eyes open to what is really going on by reading this book.  I'm sorry for such a long email.  I also want to affirm that I respect you and [church]'s leadership immensely, and if this email in any way communicates disrespect or disregard for the servants of God, I apologize and say that it was a mistake in my communication, not a true depiction of my attitude. 

Thank you for reading.  I appreciate you.

In Christ,

S.