Friday, August 15, 2014

One of Those Nights

It's one of those nights.

One of those "will I make it through tonight" nights.

The Internet is presently flooded with commentary about depression, suicide, mental illness, personal choices, seeds of faith and faithlessness, courage and weakness. Robin Williams, beloved comedian and actor, took his life a few days ago. After 63 years of fighting it. A few people think they have the answers. Many others want to share what those few have to say. I feel like they are trying to analyze me at the same time, and each article I read is a reflection of myself.

I don't know his story. I only know my own, and tonight's a night I don't want to own my story. Tonight's one of those nights.

Ten months ago, I sat in my car in my driveway, engine running, alone. I sat for a long time. The garden hose was just outside, sprawled languidly across the front landscaping bed as if no one cared to tidy it up. That's because no one truly did. I saw myself over and over again, with the hose, the exhaust pipe, a cracked window, and me. I know I sat there for most of an hour. I don't remember how I got out, or even why. I just know somehow, after a time, I didn't do what I saw, and I was inside again.

All the TED Talks in the world are not enough to shake it when depression wraps you in its Ring-Wraith embrace. That kind word someone offered three days ago? Gone by now. What do I need to snap out of it?

I know it is different for everyone. Again, my story, not yours. But I need time and purpose, and time is always there, ticking on so very slowly. The awareness of how slowly it moves does nothing to help, but time itself does function to move me through the stage to another side. Just hang on. But purpose. That's a big one. My marriage failed. It was doomed from the start, but nothing I could do could fix it, not even giving myself up completely into it. It never got better. In my head, I cognitively, intellectually know that the problem is a deep pyschological one that is not my own. But the message of all those years is that it was me--not good enough, not lovable, worthless, a disappointment at best and a disgust at worst. A vessel of wrath--wrath poured into me until I cracked and crumbled. Did I make it out alive? I'm still not sure.

And this is one of those nights.

Just the tiniest thing sparked it in me: a suggestion of a way to participate, be useful, be in camaraderie with others, dangled, then taken away again. It was not by ill will that it was taken again, but practicality, but the stool was kicked from beneath my always-so-precarious foothold and the doom descended like an executioner's hood. Why'd that have to happen? You know the answer: useless; worthless; not lovable; not a part of the camaraderie; not a part of the team. Tolerated at best, but never loved.

The whispers are insidious, and persistent, and what my head knows my heart cannot believe. It became too ingrained.

And this is one of those nights.

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Personal Testimony: The Man She Loved Held a Gun to Her Head

Why do we stay?

We think we are the ones chosen to help our very troubled mates. We don't want to give up on the people we love. We think we are alone and will be unsupported.

If you are being abused by your husband or boyfriend, please hear this: You are not alone. One in three U.S. women will experience domestic violence or stalking. But you must get away. You cannot heal your abuser. You must protect yourself.

Leslie Morgan Steiner speaks in this TED Talk about her own domestic violence experience. She, like many, does not look like a "typical abuse victim." Most of us don't. As she says, it happens to everyone, regardless of race, religion, income, or educational levels. It often happens to the women who seem confident, capable, intelligent.

Pay attention to these important pieces of information:
Over 500 women between the ages of 16 and 24 die each year at the hands of boyfriends and husbands. (Do not be one of them! Let's change this number radically!)
There is a pattern: 1) Seduction; 2) Isolation; 3) Threat  

Does he seem too good to be true? Does he act as though you are the ONLY thing he needs? Does he conform himself to all your expectations? This is the seduction phase.

Does he try to draw you away from your community, move you to a strange place, or keep you from going out with others or have others in your life? Isolation is critical for the abuser.

Once he has charmed you and isolated you, the threats and violence can get worse.

Sometimes the three phases occur very quickly or simultaneously, but almost always, all are present.

Finally, keep in mind that separation may not be enough. Once an abuser loses control of his victim, he may feel he has nothing to lose in destroying her completely. At the first instance of abuse, call the police. Enlist others who will support you so that he knows there are witnesses. In this writer's case, enlisting a prominent person in the community who would firmly say to my abuser deserved that he should be in jail and WILL go to jail if any type of threat, intimidation, or contact occurs again has helped to give some additional security. Don't try to go it alone. Police, pastors (the ones who will listen), adult male friends and family members to back you up (though you will probably be called an adultress for having adult male friends), co-workers. Let people know. It is an intensely private issue, but we are not meant to live in isolation. There truly is safety in numbers.

Leslie Morgan Steiner on Why Abuse Victims Don't Leave: A TED Talk

Friday, August 8, 2014

A Voice for the Abused #4: The Gospel Coalition Reviews Justin & Lindsey Holcomb's book

Is It My Fault? Hope and Healing for Those Suffering Domestic Violence by Justin and Lindsey Holcomb
Moody Press. 2014. $14.99 retail.

Voices are gathering in God's church to speak out and recognize how offensive domestic violence is in God's eyes. Scales are beginning to come off. There is hope.

I admit. I have a dream. I have a dream that one day homes will be safe places, as they were intended to be. That one day, men will lead with hearts of service and love instead of power and fists and handguns and threats. I have a dream that one day, if violence and abuse does still occur, churches will feel like safe places for women to run, to tell the truth, to be heard. I have a dream that one day, pastors and church leaders will stand in protection and covering over the abused women in their congregations, rather than putting on their coats and hats and leaving the building to go back to their own lives after telling her just to do better. I have a dream that one day, horrors will end.

These are the steps it takes to get there. Little by little, exposure is happening. God is moving his creation forward. This is progress. Praise him!

The Gospel Coalition's review of the book above can be found by clicking here.

Please read and share. And if necessary, buy the book for your pastor or deacon board, women's ministry group, etc. 

Monday, August 4, 2014

How Should the Church Respond to Reports of Marital Abuse?

Marital abuse is possibly the most difficult form of abuse to expose and receive help for. That is largely because it occurs in very private settings between two adults. Of course we all know that any two people bring their own sin and shortcomings to any relationship, but what must be recognized is that abuse goes FAR and AWAY beyond the normal parameters of regular relational missteps, and it is almost never a response to anything the abused could have done differently to prevent it. Abuse originates within the abuser.

It is NOT simply out of control anger. It is a deep-seated need to overpower and harm another person, and in most cases, the other person is the person most intimately related to the abuser. Most psychologists believe that the reason for this is related to the abuser's own subconscious self-loathing, and so his malicious behavior is enacted upon the individual most intimate to himself--usually his spouse.

Churches simply are not equipped, in most cases, to help abused women. The reasons for this are many. Most Christians have been graciously spared from a personal knowledge of abuse. Many conservative churches lean toward patriarchalism--in which a man can rule over his family any way he sees fit, and women are strongly discouraged from ever speaking out against their husbands in any way, no matter the circumstances. In many of those settings, it is expected that the man speaks for his family, and the woman or children are not even considered to be voices for their own stories. To be so would be to deny the ritualistic external applications of "male headship." Women in these settings fear to speak out. No one wants to be the contentious woman, and every one of us who ventures to ask for help will be labeled as such before any help will ever be offered, no matter the actual facts. It is a knee-jerk reaction to abuse, "If he attacked you, you must have deserved it," and it is a lie. But it is a lie that a woman, already in a broken and weakened, usually paralyzed and debilitated state, must somehow find the strength to face and add to all the other accusations against her if she is ever to have hope to live free of her torment.

If the church is going to be Christ's Body on Earth, then the church simply must wake up to the reality of marital abuse and the slander against God that it carries. God reveals his relationship to his church as one of marriage. If marital abuse is accepted or swept under the rug, what are we saying about God? Would any pastor or church leader, or women's ministry leader, or young woman's mentor ever think of standing before God and calling him an abuser? To justify male abuse in a Christian home as a form of headship authority is to blaspheme the God who instituted marriage and called himself the Groom.

Elisabeth Klein has some valuable thoughts on the matter of what too often does happen in churches and what ought not to happen in churches. Her first-hand experience parallels far too many, including the experience of at least one here in our group. Please read and share this with your church leaders, male and female, even if you are not aware of marital abuse in your congregation. Prepare. Be ready, so that you can recognize the crime and help the wounded. This is the heart of God, to bind up the brokenhearted and to visit the widows (and their children) in their time of need. Do not turn your back on these women as they are being slowly murdered at the hands of the ones who stood before witnesses and God himself and took a vow to "cherish and nourish" her as his own body. Do not support the vow-breaking violation of abuse by undermining the victim.

God stands for justice. He despises the rift in relationship that is divorce when men cover their garments in violence, but he most certainly can still use the legality of divorce for the good of his beloved women when their husbands have sought their harm. Churches must be willing and able to run to the rescue of their women--heirs to the promise of God's grace right alongside men--if they wish to continue to stand in God's favor.


Churches: Wake up to Abuse by Elisabeth Klein
http://www.elisabethklein.com/church-wake-up-to-abuse/

Follow the link above to reach Elisabeth's article and begin to prepare your church to be instruments of mercy and change.