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.