Written by Patricia Ann 8/6/23
This is for women who are or have been living in an abusive relationship.
I know. I understand. I've been there. There is hope...
Heal me, Lord, and I will be healed; save me and I will be saved, for you are the one I praise.
Jeremiah 17:14
I didn't know I would ever find myself in this place, waking up from trauma and clinging to this feeling that there really is hope in an unseen future.
It has been almost 9 years since I met him. That man who swept me off my feet, appeared to be my soul mate, my best friend and in what seemed like a moment, I found myself married to him feeling deeply in love. I really believed that he felt the same way about me that I felt about him. He said the most beautiful things to me, held me close and his eyes always had a glimmering light, a look of joy and love.
We had an energy together and I felt like God was surely in the midst of this beautiful love. I believed and in my belief that this beautiful love must be from God, I began making excuses for my new husband's unloving behavior towards me. Soon, everything I had confided in him, was being used against me.
This man that I loved, slowly chipped away at my self-esteem. He told me I didn't sing very well and that my voice was more manly than his. I kept singing for a while, but eventually I stopped singing. I had always sang songs in the car, to my kids when they were small, at church, and just doing housework or even to my dog.
I was always singing. I was happy singing.
One day I stopped singing. I didn't sing for four years. He didn't sing either, and when I started singing again,
he still didn't sing. He had plenty of stories, however, of all the churches and groups that he had been a part of singing with. But no, this man would not be singing with me.
He also told me about many other relationships he had had and would actually name them while in our bed. Our intimacy was defiled very early in our marriage.
He told me he was just too stupid to know that it was inappropriate to say those things to me, especially in the bedroom. We hadn't been married 6 months when he was lying to me about a woman at work that he was attracted to. When I confronted him about it, he got mad and slept in the chair all night, mad at me.
Looking back, I know I should have walked away then, but I was trying to be the good and forgiving wife.
Inside, I was so hurt and felt so betrayed and unloved. How could he want someone else? He had just married me.
He would tell me that I was like a gentle lamb, a Proverbs 31 woman.
He brainwashed me early in our relationship. And then I was given little bits of trauma every week, almost always on a Thursday. Out of the blue, there would be cutting words or comments to hurt or reject me and if I responded with a "why would you say that?", he would start yelling at me. I had told him in our beginning that yelling was the one things that hurt me the most after having past relationship where I was yelled at a lot.
I had trusted that he was my safe place and that he would never yell at me. I didn't know that I had just given him the ammunition to begin murdering my very existence. Somehow, he would twist the attention onto himself and said that he had "hooks" that he had the caused him to act that way...to yell at me. Since I was a devoted wife and a Christian counselor, I put my feelings aside, to help him!
As I tried to nurture and help him with his "hooks"... His childhood traumas, I began to lose myself. I became drained. Emotionally and physically, I began to hurt. I cried emotional tears for 7 years. These were intense tears of rejection and I was further traumatized when he would tell me that my tears did not matter to him.
He would tell me that he felt nothing for me. He said that I was the only one he ever treated this way and that he just didn't understand why he treated me so cruelly, either.
As so many people who do not understand this want to know why I didn't just leave, the answer is as simple as it is complicated.
He kept us broke. He kept me broken. I felt increasingly unworthy and I became isolated.
I sat in the car, as he went into the store because my eyes were always puffy from the tears I had cried.
He seemed like such a "nice guy".
This "nice guy" sabotaged my life.
My friendships and family were gone. It was him and me, or should I just say, it was him and a shell of me.
He liked it that way. He was in control. He had managed to have complete control of my being.
Just like I stopped singing, I stopped being creative. He took my creativity, taking paint brushes from my hands on my projects because "he could do them better". I had been a florist. I was creative. I flourished in my creativity. It was like
the essence of God flowed through my fingertips, as I was creating. And one day, I just stopped creating. I stopped making pretty things, probably because I didn't feel pretty anymore. He would call me beautiful, but treated me so ugly.
Then, the one thing that I loved doing more than anything in the world eventually stopped.
I stopped writing. I stopped doing my ministry.
And when I did that, things got so much worse. I just didn't have the focus or energy to do anything, but survive.
I was living in survival mode for several years.
Of course, I still prayed. I prayed more than ever, but I didn't just sit peacefully with my Jesus and write anymore.
I would try to journal and wrote sometimes, but it was hard. It was so very hard and I missed my Jesus and I missed the me that used to be.
I missed writing for my Lord. Like being a florist, when I wrote, the essence and presence of God would just flow with some form of electricity through my fingertips and it was the most fulfilling and joy-filled moments in time. I would read what I had just written, and be in awe of how Jesus was right there in every loving word, every message.
I wondered, "Who had I become and how did I get to this terribly lonely place of living with my abuser in survival mode?"
I wanted answers, but I didn't have any.
One of the saddest things is that nobody seemed to notice. Only one person noticed my tears and gave me a hug with genuine concern. She knew because she had lived what I was living. And I saw her beautiful heart as it shined through the darkness that still tried to overtake her.
Once, when I was on my knees in prayer to God, Jesus met me with the most loving message. This message began a change in me, restoring my broken heart, and I have shared it many times since.
My Jesus met me when I was on my knees in prayer. I could see Him and feel His presence. My Jesus bent down beside me and wiped my tears. He had tears, too! He told me that His tears, along with mine, fall in a puddle at our feet. And He told me that my relationship with Himself is Sacred, and that my relationship with man is not.
Oh, in that moment, I knew that Jesus loved me the Most! My Jesus knew me, my broken heart and every tear.
And my Jesus picked me up!
My relationship with my abuser was not sacred. It never had been. There is no sanctity in an abusive marriage.
There is no love in abuse! This man had never loved me. This man loved control.
He told me once that I was "in love with love." He was right! I was in love with love. I loved him so unconditionally that I allowed myself to be abused. I fell into his trap of twisted words and lies. What a sweet little lamb I was. How lucky he was to have a Proverbs 31 woman.
I began to cry out to God to send me someone in this world to love me.
I truly felt unloved, so unworthy, and so ugly in this world.
As I continued to cry out in my pain, God did send me someone who began to speak life back into my broken heart.
Moment by moment, day by day... I began to feel worthy, beautiful and loved again, unconditionally.
And with that, I began waking up from the years of trauma...and I know that there is hope in an unforeseen future.
Heal me, Lord, and I will be healed; save me and I will be saved, for you are the one I praise.
Jeremiah 17:14
Thank you my Lord
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