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.
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.
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