In early 2010, my husband, now ex, told me he felt it was time for me to "get right with God". This was part of an ongoing litany of how "broken" and "flawed" I was. He said I needed to untether electronically and get away to really pray about my life, straighten myself out, and learn what it means to be a godly wife. He magnanimously agreed that it was worth a three day getaway out on the Oregon coast for me, myself, and I to spend time with God. So... I went.
Even he noticed it. He effusively praised the changes in my spirit... at first...then it shifted to anger. But then he didn't really understand what had taken place during my little get away that March of 2010.
Let me tell you about that weekend where I walked in bracing winds near Cannon Beach.
Yes I prayed, I cried, I tried hard to get past the noise of all the things I had been hearing about me for so many years.
- You smell - you don't bathe enough, you don't use soap, your towels stink, why won't you take care of yourself.
- You don't do anything right - look at how you left lint in the dryer 20 years ago, you could have burned down the house
- You are fat - you lied to me about your athletics - you said you ran cross country, look at you now, you are no athlete.
- Your hair looks like a mess, get a perm - that perm is smelly and looks terrible, fix your hair!
- You don't take care of the house, so we won't consider new furniture - since it's clear you'll just let it fall into shambles.
- You are a bad mother, how could you dare scream at your two year old (24 yrs old in 2010)....
The list had no end. These tapes played back year over year over year. A good Christian wife would obey her husband and would fix these flaws, but even when changes were made, I was told that it didn't count, that I was still fundamentally bad for all of the would haves-could haves-should haves that littered our world.
I looked at the blowing sands, the clouds scudding across the sky, the line of mist that shrouded the shore line, and I prayed more, I cried more, read my Bible. I sat in the hotel cottage - resting mind and soul, to listen, to ponder, to consider...
And then... I woke up... spiritually, emotionally ... to the LIE. I finally saw that this wasn't about me. This wasn't me that was broken. I was being ABUSED. Beaten and battered by words. Words of destruction, demeaning, tearing me down day by day. I read the passage about "seeing through the glass darkly" and knew that the glass was now clear.
I prayed more, I knew finally that I was a child of God, and that "in Him there is no condemnation" - that the distortions of my identity were the sin, that my character had systematically been under assault as a way to make my husband feel powerful and in control. That this was not how God sees me, nor what He intended for me.
So yes. I drove home, at peace, with clear boundaries defined about who I was, and who I was not, and that NO ONE had the right to demean me, tear me down, or destroy me. I would stop the LIE, I would no longer be a party to it. Either we could move forward, or we could not, but the destruction of my very soul would stop.
Two and a half years later, I stepped over the threshold and started my life over. I walked away from a thirty year marriage, and from the abuse. It took me five more years to stop having panic nightmares of being terrorized and tortured, of trying to protect my children and myself from the never ending onslaught of how flawed I was or they were.
A fellow victim of the same man, later said "I'd been physically abused before, and it left bruises, those healed, even if the injuries left scars, but wow... the psychological abuse is one hundred times worse - in part because the scars are so invisible." She was fortunate. She left him after only 6 months.
I am thankful to be wholly loved, cherished, and adored now. By God, and by a truly good man. It's never too late to stop the cycle.
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