"Fight for your marriage. Be tolerant and forgiving. Have faith, patience, and forgiveness. When someone smacks one cheek, give them the other so that they may hit it also. If someone demands that you carry them one mile, carry them another."
I have listened intently to some of the most amazing preachers that America has known. Often, they will give lessons on staying in marriage, the importance of remaining together. Be steadfast, they will say. It's true, people become bored or lonely or get those itches and leave their faithful and kind spouses instead of working through their problems. I should know. A much younger, immature, unkind version of me did this once and hurt someone deeply. I truly believe, to this day, that the lessons that followed were either penance or the fiery experience of what I was searching for, or some kind of combination of the two. People say that nobody deserves violence, but I believed that I not only deserved it, but searched it out.
Real conversations are often avoided. These are the moments of truth that I see pulpits steer clear from. Rape. Incest. Violence. Addiction. Denial. Control. Uncle Tommy preying on niece Suzy while Mommy and Daddy are out of town on the couples retreat. A lover wrecking his car with his boyfriend in the passenger's seat. A wife's prayer that her family won't find out that her husband is in drug rehab yet again instead of visiting his family in Houston, like she told them. A man finding excuses so that people won't know what is really going on with his wife. A woman medicating herself with food, unconsciously making her body unattractive to abusers. A woman isolating herself away from others because she's afraid if they get too close, they'll see what's really going on. The thankful prayer that a wife has when he held a knife to her throat or a gun to her head instead of hitting her...because that doesn't leave a mark. Staying busy. Being vague. Self medicating. Avoiding. Overachieving. Denial. Denial. Denial.
As an ICU nurse, I see family violence on the daily. As someone who once fled with her two children in tow, being escorted to a safe house by a uniformed officer, I have a message for preachers...
Preach truth.
Violence is real, and both victims and perpetrators sit in your congregation each Sunday. Victims of violence are looking for hope. "Be steadfast," you will tell them. "Fight the good fight, finish the race, God rewards the faithful. Your day is coming." Victims want to believe that God will fix their abuser. God will heal their marriage. He is greater, He is bigger, He is truth and light and love. These things may all be true, but that might not be her truth. Her truth might be that she is trying desperately to make her reality into her fantasy. She's in love with the idea of the godly family, the godly husband. She sees in him his potential, avoiding the actual. Her reality is that she has neither a godly marriage or a godly husband. What she does have will make her poor and hurt, if it doesn't kill her. Literally.
Perpetrators sit in your congregation because you do a lot of their heavy work for them, feeding their argument. Their spouse needs to be even more patient and steadfast. Stay with them, forgive them, turn the other cheek, walk another mile. Their sins are momentary and forgivable, but marriage vows are eternal. A well-delivered sermon can make the most faithful, most abused spouse feel shame for even thinking about trying to find a way out.
Victims entrusted in your flock need to hear truth. They confuse strength with violence, and do not know how to distinguish between the two. They think that if they just hold on a little tighter, they can fix it...or if they can't, then God will. They listen to you say that it's always darkest before dawn. I've seen more patients admitted with baseball bats to their heads waiting for dawn to come than I care to count. With bloody wounds, they are itching to go back to the person who hurt them. I've seen people admitted with HIV and Hepatitis C, and their girlfriends don't know that they probably now have it, too. I've seen people expose others they claim to love to drug use, hoping to trap them into submission, manipulation, and shame.
From your pulpit each Sunday, you look out onto at least one face who is living this. They need to hear truth, and they need to hear it more than once. When you tell them that, "Nobody is perfect, couples do better who stay together," you are reinforcing their denial. They hear your message that is meant for couples who have the natural, growing pains of marriage and think that you are speaking into them. Your messages need to be clear, distinctive, and specific. You need to address the difficult topics just like you do the easy ones. Vanilla words are meant for vanilla problems, and should not be applied to the complexities of the dark side. And, if you'll remember, it was with the hurting that Jesus broke bread. He wasn't afraid to move among the shadows. And, His words pierced.
For anyone in an abusive relationship who wonders what truth looks like, here it is...
Love is patient. It is kind. It does not envy or boast. It is not proud, it does not dishonor others, it is not self seeking or easily angered. Love does not keep a record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. You will know love by its fruits...joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, self control, and perseverance. If the fruits you see in someone are intimidation, manipulation, humiliation, isolation, harassment, name calling, threatening, stealing, lying, cheating, hitting, blaming, or shaming...then what you are looking at is not love. You only need to see these fruits once, for the fruits of the darkness are easily concealed, they trick and deceive. It is easy to confuse them if you've never experienced real love.
Do not become unequally yoked. If you feel that you are doing the heavy lifting and being taken advantage of, that you are becoming controlled or enslaved, then you probably are. Look inside. Are you a people-pleaser? Have you invited the abuser in with your optimism, your belief that there is good in everyone, that nobody is beyond being saved? God says otherwise. "For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common?" There are people who want to take advantage, they might not posses a conscious. Or, they might be so soul-sick that they do not know any patterns other than the ones they've learned, the patterns that have been reinforced for them repeatedly. Identify these people, heed them. Do not become yoked with them. In psychology and psychiatry, there are terms for them...psychopathy, sociopathy, narcissistic and antisocial personality disorders. The abuser will find their victim, if it's not you, they will move on to another. You will not fix them. Square pegs do not fit into round holes.
Love does not hit. Love does not call you a cunt. Love does not take, or threaten to take away, your family. Love does not have sex with someone else. Love doesn't try to hurt you when you're in a fight. Love does not manipulate. Love does not tell you that they will hurt your family member if they cannot find you. Love does not hold a knife to your throat, a gun to your head, force you to have sex, infect you with disease, expose you to addiction, empty your checking account, or run up your credit card bills. Love does not keep their options open, give their cell number to the chick at Starbucks, hit on your girlfriend, chat with their old boyfriend, or buy you things or be sweet to you after they've hurt you. That is not love. That is the circle of violence.
Love also doesn't try to save others from themselves. Love doesn't try to fix someone who is broken, try to get someone un-addicted, or try to heal the wounds of another that were caused during their childhood. Love doesn't try to get another to become faithful to them. Love doesn't attempt to save people from the consequences of their actions, robbing them of lessons that were meant for them. That is not love, that is the controlling nature of victim-hood. Some people like to live as a martyr, they must find an abuser to do so. Psychology and psychiatry have terms for them, also. A non-abuser won't play that game. Square pegs do not fit into round holes.
Preachers...preach truth. If you were thirsty for water, but all I gave you was wine, have I not done you a disservice? Have I not further dehydrated you and intoxicated you instead of giving you the water of life? This is what your words do when the wrong person gets the wrong message...it feeds the intoxication of their denial. Roll up your sleeves. Get training beyond Seminary, become comfortable with difficult messages and uncomfortable silences. Visit ICUs in trauma centers and see what victims of violence can look like....with bolts in their heads and paper bags on their hands...then write your sermon. Learn to distinguish messages for healthy marriages and unequally yoked ones, and give examples of what love is and what love isn't. Learn how to spot perpetual victims, the codependents. They use language that is easy to pick-up on for the attuned ear, for it is from their martyrdom comes their sense of self-worth, their significance. Learn to spot abusers, a much harder task. Offer your door for free counseling, and get proper training on the circle of violence. Learn that an abuser drains a victim of everything slowly...money, health, credit, free time, friends, family, self-confidence. They trap, isolate, and intimidate. Often, if the female is the abuser, she will make her husband appear to be the perpetrator, for the strength of her abuse does not manifest in the physical, but the psychological. Be perceptive. Ask what is hidden to be made known. Listen beyond what is too painful to hear, for the words you cannot even listen to are their reality. You are not there to fix, you are there to illuminate. This is what it means to be a city on a hill.
Preachers...identify, accept, ask, receive, deliver, wait, watch, and listen. Speak life.
"When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time." -Maya Angelou