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.

my story

I was duped from the start.  During our courtship, all the promises, all the glowing self-description, were lies designed to trap me into “until death do us part.”  The urgency to get engaged and married quickly, claiming passionate love.  It was all part of the plan, after which the promises meant nothing because I was no longer an equal or a person – I had become property.   The permanence of marriage was dangled in front of me smugly when I cried out in misery.  The sanctity of God’s covenant was an iron cage that he taunted me to try to break out of, knowing, believing that I would never do it as long as I believed it God’s will for me to stay.

When I read the book on abuse, all of it came crashing down around me.  My eyes were opened in a way that felt as shocking as the fall from Eden.  The book told the story of my life, clinically, emotionlessly, as accurately as if someone had been silently watching, listening, recording the shrieks and cries of our secret household.  I could not believe that the hapless victim in the book…was me.

I learned -- his every expressed pain had been a strategy.  His every accusation – a clever manipulation to keep me distracted and trapped.  Even the good times, the affection – all part of the plan.   Something in me snapped.  The foolish, blind, trusting, sweet, loving girl I was – she disappeared in a puff and I cannot find her again. 

It was as if the man I believed him to be suddenly vaporized before my eyes and I realized that he had never existed.  The man who had described himself before marriage as kindhearted, gentle, thoughtful and devoted – I had been searching for that man in what I thought was a little boy so scarred by pain that he lashed out blindly, and I had to love him back into wellness – I had thought that was a possibility.  But no, that man had never existed.  I had never had a chance.  He had made up the illusion in words, conjured him up out of imagination, and I had believed.  I had only caught glimpses of the desired one in the fog, and I pursued him in desperation, getting torn and ragged in the chase, as the elusive one struck back at me bafflingly in the darkness before slipping away again.  I cried out to him to wait, to trust me, to come to me, that I would love him and help him.  I stumbled blindly in the dark, weeping and hoping.  But when I finally caught up to him, the veil was torn away:  the image was an illusion and the real him stood there, cracking the whip at me and gloating that I could never, ever get away. 

He had never loved me.  Only loved to control me.  His affection was all conditional upon my complete obedience, and it evaporated the minute I stepped outside his will and expressed my own thoughts, even if it was only to express my pain, because it displeased him. He took all my gifts, everything good and beautiful about me, and used them for his benefit, and when they made him feel bad about his own inadequacies, he punished me for them. He used my every weakness to subjugate me and hurt me, taking what I gave him in trust in the quiet hours to hurt me when he pleased. He accused, he hounded, he neglected, he stifled.  He publicly humiliated me.  When I looked at myself in his eyes, even the best of me was pushed into the dirt and muck.   I became lost, swallowed up, in the whirlpool of his needs, desires, and interests.  By the end I could hardly tell what interests I had and who I was that was not conformed to his will.  

And the church kept telling me to go lower, serve harder, answer his every blow with love, his every cruelty with kindness and mercy.  I was reprimanded.  I was disbelieved.  I was accused.  When I wailed out loud in desperation to them, begging them for help, they clicked their tongues and wrote in their books that I was “overly dramatic” and needed emotional help.  “Temper your reaction,” they told me, “and try to respond in a different way.”

“And unless he hits you or cheats, you can never, ever leave him.”

I was doomed. 

And then God whispered to me – in the airport, in the quiet of the night, in the bitter tears of the morning, as I hesitated over the threshold of my marriage.  Like the moon to a fleeing Jane Eyre, he whispered, “Run, my daughter.  Go.  Quickly.”  He rescued me.  And in a sweet, incredible moment, I was free.

But now he comes back begging again, playing the part of the hurt little boy, pleading with me to come back, telling me that illusion man exists.  It is all the same old talk, the promises, the bargains.  Nothing has changed.  And people rally behind him, telling me I cannot divorce him even if he beats me, telling me that all marriages are hard and this is a problem common to all.  No.  No.  God did not create me to be a slave like this.  No.  Who will see but Jesus?  Who will witness my pain?