Some conservative Christians teach that God puts women in abusive marriages so they can better glorify Him through their suffering. What kind of a god requires the suffering of women and children in order to be glorified?
If you break abuse down to the nitty-gritty, at its heart is something called “emotional childhood.” Abusers think everybody should make their life work. Everyone should cater to their whims. Everybody is responsible for their emotions. For fixing them, moment by moment. They shouldn’t have to do anything. Like a stunted emotional child.
If you’re a wife in this situation, you come to believe that you are supposed to fix your husband. You think you’re the only one who can (and that “fixing” him is even possible).
Any movement to protect yourself, to detach, to assign responsibility to him for HIS OWN LIFE and CHOICES, feels like betrayal and selfishness and just plain gross. Your husband and many religious people would agree.
Which leads us right back to: Am I responsible for fixing my husband? Is detaching from him to protect myself wrong?
I’ve been asked these questions hundreds—if not thousands—of times, so I’ve fleshed out an answer that addresses them AND all those icky rabbit trails in your mind.
And unlike what you’ve been told in church, online, or by your husband, this answer doesn’t require you to throw yourself in a pool to save a person who wants to drown…and drag you under too.
It’s hammer time.
I’ve broken down the problems churches face when abuse victims come forward (along with how churches usually react). Then, I smash through the fallacies their hurtful behavior is constructed on. Finally, I provide the building blocks of how to respond to abuse like Jesus did, so the church can be a tool of healing instead of just…tools.
Cause there’s no point in demoing a building if you don’t intend to build something better.
Here’s how the real church should respond to women begging for help from abusive partners.
This may be controversial for some of my audience. Twenty years ago, I may have unsubscribed, not understanding what this was actually about.
What IS this about? It’s about Who God is. It’s about representing Him well. That’s what Jesus did, and that is our calling, as Christians.
This is about the way we view God and how our view impacts the way we live our lives. We either honor the truth about God’s character or we tell a lie about God’s character.
This is about a lie I used to believe about God.
I don’t have the answers. That’s what makes me different from who I was twenty years ago. Back then, I knew everything. And I told everyone so they could also know everything. And I judged everyone who didn’t know everything. Like I did.
Twenty years later I definitely do NOT know everything. I believe a couple of simple, life-changing things about God, and I run everything through the grid of that simple faith.
And it brings love and peace and joy into my life, and that hopefully touches the lives of those around me.
It’s a beautiful sight, isn’t it?
A grown man throwing a tantrum. Stomping around, calling you names, slamming doors.
Hits you right in the feels, eh?
Or maybe he’s the quiet type of mean. Stonewalling. Sleeping for days. Leaving for hours without warning.
However a husband’s jerky behavior manifests, most Christian wives are taught to respond the same ways:
Assume you’re the problem. Feel shame.
Assume you have to endure his behavior. Feel despair.
Assume you have to make his life work. Feel resentment.
For all these common feelings, I’ve got some uncommon alternatives. And they WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE. Which is a lot more attractive than a grown man acting like a two-year-old.
As the year ends, the darkness grows. Minute by minute.
Just before Christmas is the longest night of the year.
The holidays are celebrations of love and generosity and joy.
But they’re also bleak and painful to many — like women going through separation and divorce.
So how do you cling to the hope of coming light in your blackest hours?
How do you live with the dark as you wait for the dawn?
Here’s my story and what I’ve learned.
Get the first chapter of my book, Is It Me? Making Sense of Your Confusing Marriage, recommended by therapists. That chapter will help you figure out what’s going on in your marriage.
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