After finding out that I was suffering all manner of abuse under my husband, a woman who considered herself in a position of spiritual authority over me asked, under false pretenses, "Oh, how can I pray for you?"
I ventured out to trust her, and shared with her a very intimate "secret" that was causing me much guilt and shame. The abuse had become so bad, and I so broken, that I could no longer be intimate with my abusive husband. I thought I was the one who needed fixing. I told her she could pray for me to be able to give myself to him again, because that is what married people do.
But she wasn't really asking about how to pray for me. She wasn't really concerned about me at all. She had prepared in advance a verbal and emotional attack against me and the inquiry was simply a way to get my attention so that she could launch into a tirade against me, telling me it was my fault, that I was causing it, that I needed the accountability of a mature woman (namely her) to keep me in my marriage, that my refusal to give myself physically to my husband was manipulation to try to make him leave the marriage and exonerate myself by claiming abandonment, even that I should count it joy to die in my abusive marriage as a martyr for her view of righteousness.
Kicked when I was down? You bet. Satan worked through that woman that day to take me out again when I thought I could go no further, when I had tiptoed into trusting someone I thought had good intentions. I can still taste blood in my mouth from it, even though she never actually touched me. She might as well have.
There truly ARE appropriate ways to respond to a person who tells you she is suffering abuse. It is so very difficult and shaming to admit to it, and by the time we are forced to tell it, we are usually so incapacitated by its effects that we are approaching death. (My counselor calls it detachment, preparing to die.) We are hopeless in our hurt and sense of being trapped. Yes, Jesus is the only Savior of my soul, but it IS his will to act through his people to save others in a temporal sense, and abused women may just need such a temporal savior too.
Leslie Vernick has some fine bits of advice for the person who hears a cry from an abused person. Knowledge comes with responsibility. You don't have to cross over to the other side of the road from a sense of helplessness. If apathy, then you have to stand before God and confess that. But helplessness can be solved. Read what Leslie has to say. It's not nearly as difficult as it seems to offer real, life-saving, soul-saving help.
Five Things You Can Do by Leslie Vernick.
I ventured out to trust her, and shared with her a very intimate "secret" that was causing me much guilt and shame. The abuse had become so bad, and I so broken, that I could no longer be intimate with my abusive husband. I thought I was the one who needed fixing. I told her she could pray for me to be able to give myself to him again, because that is what married people do.
But she wasn't really asking about how to pray for me. She wasn't really concerned about me at all. She had prepared in advance a verbal and emotional attack against me and the inquiry was simply a way to get my attention so that she could launch into a tirade against me, telling me it was my fault, that I was causing it, that I needed the accountability of a mature woman (namely her) to keep me in my marriage, that my refusal to give myself physically to my husband was manipulation to try to make him leave the marriage and exonerate myself by claiming abandonment, even that I should count it joy to die in my abusive marriage as a martyr for her view of righteousness.
Kicked when I was down? You bet. Satan worked through that woman that day to take me out again when I thought I could go no further, when I had tiptoed into trusting someone I thought had good intentions. I can still taste blood in my mouth from it, even though she never actually touched me. She might as well have.
There truly ARE appropriate ways to respond to a person who tells you she is suffering abuse. It is so very difficult and shaming to admit to it, and by the time we are forced to tell it, we are usually so incapacitated by its effects that we are approaching death. (My counselor calls it detachment, preparing to die.) We are hopeless in our hurt and sense of being trapped. Yes, Jesus is the only Savior of my soul, but it IS his will to act through his people to save others in a temporal sense, and abused women may just need such a temporal savior too.
Leslie Vernick has some fine bits of advice for the person who hears a cry from an abused person. Knowledge comes with responsibility. You don't have to cross over to the other side of the road from a sense of helplessness. If apathy, then you have to stand before God and confess that. But helplessness can be solved. Read what Leslie has to say. It's not nearly as difficult as it seems to offer real, life-saving, soul-saving help.
Five Things You Can Do by Leslie Vernick.
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