You couldn’t know when you said yes, all you would say yes to.
There were hints of his dark side, though it’s hard to see the darkness when it’s wrapped in kindness and compliments. He made you feel as if you were only one. There is no one quite as remarkable as you.
He said all the right words, so you shared secrets you’d never shared with anyone before him. He listened intently; expressing empathy and hugging you as your words faded into the night. Perhaps if you had looked into his eyes, you would have seen the darkness hidden within.
He pulled you in with sugar and spice and everything nice. Even if you weren’t interested in fairytales, part of you enjoyed the attention while feelings of love and acceptance drew you into his web. What you couldn’t know was that he gave love to gain your trust.
Then he asked you to be his forever wife.
Dazzled with the wedding, riding high on the euphoria of love, you may have missed the shift in the atmosphere. Once your vows were spoken, the reception over, and the hotel room door shut.
Everything changed.
He changed.
What you thought would be a night to remember became one you desperately want to forget. It set the pace for the rest of your marriage.
Your Christian beliefs may have kept you tied to your husband, shame would keep you from admitting that you made a mistake. Pride said no one must know. You may have wondered if what you were living is considered abuse. You may have begged God to change him, to rescue you, or even to kill you or him.
Only nothing happened. God seemed silent.
Perhaps you prayed for God to restore your marriage, begged your husband to go to marriage counseling, or tried to be a better wife, to be more godly, so he would be a better man.
Kindness and forgiveness gave him more power to control you. It never occurred to you he didn’t change because he didn’t believe he was the one who needed to change.
You may have thought, “Nothing is impossible for God, He could have changed him, isn’t God in control?” Not knowing that God can’t change someone who doesn’t believe they need to change.
This part gets left out of Sunday sermons on Ephesians 5, or in the marriage books you read, which may have done more harm than good. You didn’t know coercive control (domestic abuse) isn’t a marriage problem and can’t be solved with marriage counseling.
You tried marriage counseling only he played the victim, painting you as the crazy unbalanced one, or acted like he was working hard on the marriage, when all the while he was collecting ammo to use against you.
If only the counselor knew the signs of coercive control, he would have recognized how your husband manipulated you. He would have seen the fear in your eyes and known your silence and compliance was your protection against your husband’s backlash when there wasn’t an audience.
You may have gone to your church for help and shared with the leaders what was going on behind closed doors. The pastor may have met with him, even when you asked him not to, and listened to your husband spin a tale of woe—how you did this and that, so he did this to you. Maybe he dismissively declared that it wasn’t as bad as you said it was, and he didn’t do what you said he did. Or perhaps he used another strategy, feigning remorse as he hung his head and muttered, “I’m sorry.”
But he wasn’t.
The pastor may have come back to you, blaming you for exacerbating your husband. After all, your husband is respected in the community and at church, so you must be the problem, can’t be him. Maybe it was suggested that you should do more, be more submissive, give him more sex, pray more and harder, forgive him… if you’re a better wife, he’ll be a better man.
Only he wasn’t
You may have stayed six months, six years, or until the children were grown and gone. Eventually, you realized things weren’t right. In fact, they were very wrong. Now, here you are, alone and shattered. But you are on the cusp of an awakening. You’re beginning to see it’s not you, it’s him. You realize that he just isn’t worth it anymore. That you would rather have God mad at you for leaving your husband, then stay in this fiasco called a marriage.
Slowly it dawns on you that none of what he did to you was your fault, you didn’t bring it on; you didn’t cause it to happen. The drama, the chaos, the abuse—was all his doing. Yet, many of your friends, including your Christian friends may believe him and not you. They may believe his tale of woe as he portrays you as crazy one. He’s not wrong. Because of everything he has said and done to you, you do feel crazy and unbalanced. As they laud him for putting up with you, they may shun you, you may be told you’re condemned to hell for getting a divorce.
You wonder why his words are more valid than yours, you’re wounded to the core. First betrayed by him, then your church. Which means God must be against you, too. Except this doesn’t make sense, but you’re not sure why. You scour the Scriptures to find some kind of hope, desperate for comfort and answers.
“My beloved reached into me to unlock my heart. The core of my very being trembled at his touch. How my soul melted when he spoke to me.”
Song of Songs 5:4 TPT
“The night racks my bone, and the pain that gnaws me takes no rest.”
Job 30:17 ESV
“I waited patiently for the Lord to help me, and he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the pit of despair, out of the mud and the mire. He set my feet on solid ground and steadied me as I walked along. He has given me a new song to sing, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see what he has done and be amazed. They will put their trust in the Lord.”
Psalm 40:1-3 NLT
Your heart soars as you read words that put voice to your sobs. You feel a flutter of hope.
You read every resource you can to discover what happened to you. You discover names and definitions for all you experienced—trauma bonding, love bombing, gaslighting, and flying monkeys. You are 1 in 3. Finally; you find the strength to speak the truth out loud: He’s an abuser and I’ve been abused. The words stick in your throat—you don’t want to be a victim. But you are. And, just when reality feels overwhelming, you discover you’re not alone.
You may be lost in a sea of why’s. That somehow in knowing the cause would make some sense of what happened to you. The answers to why are facts, facts can cause more pain. Why keeps you from hearing clearly from God, he rarely responds to why questions. Not because your questions aren’t valid, but because the answers won’t help.
God is more concerned about your heart.
As you heal the why questions will be answered and you’ll be prepared for the answers.
You’ll realize that you can’t do this on your own, so you reach out for help. You feel alone, your friends tell you to get over it as if you skinned your knee. They don’t understand the betrayal and humiliation; you honestly don’t want to explain it to them, it’s just too much to expose yourself.
Social Media has a plethora of resources about abuse and specifically domestic violence. Women who’ve been where you are now give voice to your pain and all you’ve been through.
Knowing what happened to you doesn’t ease the pain though, it intensifies the pain and humiliation. No one wants to believe that someone they know could be such a monster, yet they would rather believe that you’re the liar.
As time goes by you get stronger, counseling helps you to function as you learn to make choices, though you still struggle to decide where to eat with friends. The pain fades and seems like a distant memory until one day an old wound breaks open. You struggle to breathe, sobs rack your body as you attempt to understand, you try to cope but it’s not working. The trigger may have been a dream—you may have thought you were still married to him, or that he was hunting you down—fear leaves a bad taste in your mouth as you slowly realize it was just a dream, it’s not real even though it felt as though he was in the room.
You try to shake it off as your breathing slows, and you question to your sanity. The triggers come when you least expect and from the most unexpected circumstances or friends. They are a reminder you have more work to do.
You cycle between anger and depression as he moves on as if nothing happened while you’re left to put the pieces of your life back together. You even question why God allowed this to happen, why He didn’t stop the marriage, why God would allow you to be abused. You wonder if it’s your fault, or if the flaw is in you.
Healing isn’t going from point A to point B, it looks more like a toddler’s scribble, there isn’t a pattern to follow, one day you’re up and by the end of day it may feel as though you took 10 steps backward, possibly feeling you failed miserably. Or you may wake up in a funk until you read that one post that encouraged you to keep going and that you’re not alone, you’re not only seen but heard.
Your days may be filled with victories and defeats, possibly within five minutes. It will let up, you’ll find times of rest where you can catch your breath and grow a little stronger. You may think I’m healed. You are, for now.
You’re not sure you can live the rest of your life on this rollercoaster of pain and grief. Some days it’s all you can talk about, friends will distance themselves from the weight of your pain. Some days you’ll sink into silence, pretending it never happened. You’ll struggle to trust God, yet you’ll cry out to Him to stop the pain.
Even though you don’t understand all the whys, you can learn to trust God. You can step into the future that looks like the great unknown filled with uncertainty, anxiety, and ambiguity knowing He is right by your side.
You can’t imagine life different from what your life is today, but that is the thing about the future, it’s something you can’t know and requires hope and trust.
It’s like driving through fog so thick you can’t see out your window. You could look at it as terrifying or as an adventure. A place you’ve never been with unfamiliar sights and experiences, yet with anticipation of new sights and experiences.
The future may be unfamiliar and strange, yet it’s unspoiled and fresh. In the new is where the old is replaced. It’s the land of more where extra, beyond, and exceeding expectations and imaginations live. It’s the land of promise where you may not believe dreams come true. It doesn’t mean life is all good or easy. It’s the land where God brings good out of ugly. It may feel like the land of impossible and it is. It’s the land of hopes and dreams where anything can happen.
You may feel as though God let you down, that He’s not trustworthy, that He didn’t save you from your abuser, that He didn’t stop you from marrying him. But what if none of this is true and you just can’t see or hear right now? Your husband kept you wrapped in his deception, circling in chaos, and believing he was all powerful. The longer you are away from him, the more clear your mind becomes.
This may be where anger bubbles up as the realization of all he did to you, all you put up with smacks you in the face. It’s called grief, it’s cycling between acceptance, denial, depression, anger, and bargaining. There isn’t a hard and fast rule for how grief works and acts or when it will show up or how it will show up. Grief will embarrass and harass you. The good news is that you can win this battle of emotions.
On the other side of all this is freedom, the land of liberation from servitude, slavery, and the prison called domestic abuse and divorce. It’s where you’ll learn how to live free from fear and shame. It’s the land called more. It’s wild and untamed, a place where you’ll grow in confidence and strength, a land where hope grows. A land where God supernaturally provides mana, which is whatever you need. It won’t be easy, it will be eerie and creepy, except the creepy didn’t count on your bodyguard.
“God, you watch carefully over all your lovers like a bodyguard.”
Psalm 145:20 TPT
“Your perfection and faithfulness are my bodyguards, for you are my hope and I trust in you as my only protection.”
Psalms 25:21 TPT
“God will be your bodyguard to protect you when trouble is near.”
Psalms 34:20 TPT
“He becomes your personal bodyguard as you follow his ways, protecting and guarding you as you choose what is right.”
Proverbs 2:7 TPT
What do you do in this land? You choose the next right thing which sometimes can be wrong, but is still right because you chose for yourself! In the land of more you take one step at a time, maybe go in circles, get lost once in a while, but eventually find your way as God goes before you and covers your back. In this land you won’t understand everything, but can you rely on His integrity, strength, and character even when you can’t comprehend what He’s doing or not doing.
Just so you know, He has His own timeline that looks nothing like yours. He’s kind, considerate, and compassionate. So welcome to the land of more, land of unknowns, land of tomorrows. It’s the land where you learn to be you, not a patchwork of the old you, but new, brand spanking new. The you He created you to be before you were born.
It’s okay that you can’t see it yet. Others will see it in you before you see it in yourself. What is the it? It’s what you’re going to discover in the land of more. Some may tell you it’s no-man’s-land, it may be, but then again, you’re not a man.
Wonder Woman saw no-man’s-land as a challenge, a place to battle and wage war against the enemy, only in this land of more your enemy isn’t a person, not even your ex. Your battle is against the fallen one, the devil, the great deceiver, the slanderer, and his cohorts. They will use all their wiles to keep you trapped in the bondage of your history.
They have no power to keep you in the past because Jesus already set you free.
The question is…
will you chose to stay free and live in the land of more?
“Never doubt God’s mighty power to work in you and accomplish all this. He will achieve infinitely more than your greatest request, your most unbelievable dream, and exceed your wildest imagination! He will outdo them all, for His miraculous power constantly energizes you.”
Ephesians 3:20 TPT
You may say, “But how? I’m tired of crazy and chaos, with tiny moments of sanity I can’t hold on to, yet you are asking me to travel into the land you call more. All I see is more pain, more shame, more fear, more yuk.”
BeLoved you no longer are bound by the chains of the past. You can feast at the table of delight Jesus has prepared for you, you can drink from the fountain of joy. You can become someone you can’t fathom. You can change the impact of your history and your legacy.
BeLoved, you are on the precipice, you can take one small step into the land of more by asking Jesus one question… “Jesus what do You want me to do with the pain?”