For Better or for Worse: A Flashback

We woke that morning to a surprise snow. Everything was covered. Not a blade of dry grass poked through the dense new blanket. And it was still falling.

By 10:00am, there was at least eight inches everywhere, more in the drifts. Our suburban street wouldn't see a car that day.

Not a car, no. But moments before dawn he had risen, somehow sensing the night before that the snow might come.

When it snowed, he always left us. I remember once when the oldest child was just a toddler, she proudly shared with another child how she loved to play in the snow with him. I wonder if she remembers at all. It was so long ago, then.

On this day, he was gone before anyone else awoke. Gone in that truck that could handle the mess. Gone to the business park miles away. He would affix a plow blade to the front of the truck and spend hours upon hours driving in circles, pushing the accumulating fluff to the tarmac's edges, clearing the asphalt field for the businesses that would not open that day, for the customers that would not come.

At mid-morning, I helped them all into puffy, down-insulated suits, hats, scarves, tights, socks, boots, and whatever mismatched gloves and mittens I could find, and out into the wonderland they went. It was just our own backyard, but together, they could play until the cold crept through the layers and they needed me, cocoa-provider, to rescue them, peel from them the ice-chip-coated, sopping garments and thrust steaming, creamy mugs into their red hands.

But this morning was different. I was there, at the kitchen window, watching. I turned away for . . . what? Moments? Seconds? Long enough. The adventurous five-year-old had hatched a plan, climbed that quickly to the top of the monkey bars, and found how difficult it was to hold on with the slick mitten surface encumbering her grip. She fell. From the wail, I could tell the injury was not inconsequential. My tough girl didn't cry like that for no reason.

Removing the glove brought even more shrieks and screams, and I knew, but didn't want to know. Her arm was broken just above the wrist. I was as frozen as the terrain outside for a moment as I looked at our road. There was no way I could get out in that.

Fully nine inches of snow covered everything. Even the tracks he had left this morning were completely gone. City streetcleaners wouldn't think of us for two days at least.

I grabbed my cell and called him on his. No answer. Voicemail. I left the message. "Please come home. I need to get her to emergency care." I waited. It was swelling. We packed ice. I gave her pain reliever. I called her doctor.

The after-hours nurse answered. They couldn't make it to work that day either. She was firm and direct with me: "That arm needs to be looked at now. I can't tell you anything else."

Again, the road. The snow. The phone. Another message. No reply. I kept calling. Finally, I reached him. "When can you come?"

"No need," he said. "Everything's closed."

"Hospital isn't, but I can't get there."

"I'll be there when I can," he said.

We waited. Hours. He didn't come. His tiny daughter was becoming sick with pain and nausea from it. The snow kept falling, gently now. Barely adding to the depth, just reminding me of its presence. That morning, so lovely. But now, late afternoon, a menace. A gentle, delicate, persistent menace.

I called again. "I'm still working," he said. Working. That's what he called it. Futile circling and passing by abandoned structures, while her little arm throbbed and ached, and Daddy wouldn't come, even just to give the comfort of his presence.

The father of some of the kids in the youth group I helped with was a doctor. A country-town doctor. Maybe he could help, understand my dilemma, give me advice I could use rather than just chastising me for not being able to get to professional services. I called. He didn't judge me. Over the phone, he told me what to find around the house to make a splint. I measured, cut, secured the tiny arm as best I could, wrapped, praying all the time that my makeshift device would hold well enough to relieve some of her pain. Ice. Ibuprofen. Alternate acetaminophen. All night long.

He came home long after dark. She had finally cried herself to sleep. Hours later, I would do the same.

"Why couldn't you come?" I begged, incredulous.

I didn't appreciate how hard he worked, he said. Everything he did was for us, never him, he said. Nothing was open anyway, he repeated, forgetting, it seems, the standard E.R. I rolled his angry words around in my mind while I took his sodden coveralls to the bathtub, shook and picked the ice from them, and cleaned up the puddles. I gathered his other clothes from the entryway while he showered, filling the room around himself with thick, comforting steam.

Later he would tell about the stories he and a friend shared in a fast food joint that had managed to open due to one employee coming in that day. That employee had given him and the other friend, also a "worker" with a truck with a plow, hot coffee and food all day long. They had sat inside the restaurant, sharing tales, eating and drinking, whenever they wanted a break from their big-boy play. While her arm swelled and bruised and I paced and prayed. The one person who could help her, wouldn't.

She still loves him. Craves him. She always has. It's been more than three years now since that happened. Even that, on top of the brutality he regularly unleashed on me when his inner turmoil had to spew from that churning molten core of fury that he lives with--even that wasn't enough to make me say, "Go." It took years still.

Last night I got a letter from a woman I used to worship with. A long letter. She felt she had to call me to account for abandoning my vow "for better or for worse."

This wasn't what I meant. I am not breaking my vow. I've been through every one of those vows, asking, "What did I say? And what did I mean? What did he hear? What did our witnesses hear? What did God hear?"

I did mean the part about sickness and health--his sickness or health. I did not mean when he caused mine or the children's sickness or loss of health in order to feel powerful. I did mean for better or worse--as terms describing all the unexpected that life throws at us. I did not mean when he was making sure that what could be better was absolutely worse. That wasn't the vow I made. I did mean till death do us part--but a natural death, or an accidental death, or even foul play at the hands of someone else. I did not ever mean that I would stay until the time he determined my death, with brute force instantly, or over long years of wasting and crushing and depriving.

Tonight, that event in the snow came up at the dinner table. The children were remembering. They did not remember that he would not come. But I can remember almost nothing else. He would not come to her. I remember holding her and trying to be a comfort. I remember my helplessness. Her pain. Her sadness then that he wasn't there. "Where is he? Is it any minute yet?" she asked again and again.

I can't answer them. I can't tell them why he can't be better. And I can't fix him. But neither can I depend on him.

I'm all they've got.

Of course, that isn't entirely true. They have a heavenly Father who cares for us, the widow and the orphans, for that is essentially who we are. They have a God who didn't stay away, who came. And he has led me here. It was time. The suffering was long. The hurts reached too far, into their lives. I should have stopped it sooner.

Should have.

There's no use in those words. It is what it is, now. It won't be that way again.

You Aren't Crazy. You've Been "Gaslighted"

Gaslighting is a very effective but often subtle form of emotional and psychological abuse. It is almost always present where other forms of abuse (physical, sexual, financial) also exist.

Gaslighting undermines a person's own sense of credibility. It erodes, so slowly that often one does not notice what is happening. Then, one day, the object of the abuser's gaslighting tactics begins to think she must really be crazy. She no longer trusts herself. She has lost her firm foundation that comes from a sound mind.

Gaslighting is wrong. It is destructive. The National Domestic Violence Hotline describes gaslighting and its effects at this link:

What Is Gaslighting?

Have you been gaslighted? If so, you may need help unraveling the mess it has made of your thoughts and perceptions, but you can become discerning and rational again. Begin with the truth and reject the lies. Trust the good judgment you've been given. Make yourself remember what you once knew with certainty to be true. And know that you truly are a reliable narrator for your own life's story.

These are not new tricks and you are not the first or only person to fall prey to them. Well-meaning women who want to be better partners and spouses, daughters, friends are often the easiest targets for the madness and manipulation of an abuser who uses gaslighting tactics.

A Voice for the Abused #3: Christianity Today

When a major publication such as Christianity Today is willing to claim the Bible makes an "Unequivocal 'No'" statement regarding domestic violence and abuse, we can see that God is working. God who loves his daughters, who refers to his people in feminine terms, will bring justice. Awareness is a first step. Condemnation is a close second, and far superior to the silence that communicates consent.

You must subscribe to CT in order to read the entire article, but if you do, read, share, promote this in your churches. Church leaders are being called to address and no longer avoid the issue. God will rise up and act on behalf of his beloved.

The Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union? . . . "For the man who does not love his wife but divorces her," says the Lord, the God of Israel, "covers his garment with violence." -- Malachi 2, excerpt

The Bible's Unequivocal No to Domestic Violence: Christianity Today