A glimpse into the madness

Editor's Note: Wisdom from a woman who knows spousal abuse firsthand and who is also a devoted Christian. Please read and share with others. Thanks. - AW

By Anna Grace Wood - Posted at Tamar Weeps:

Have you ever been in a bouncy castle? Yeah? Were you able to stand? To walk unimpeded? To make progress without continuously falling down or stumbling? No? Why? Because the point of a bouncy castle is that it is unstable. You’re supposed to fall down, roll around, and to bounce into the walls and each other. There’s no stability in a bouncy castle because there’s nothing stable about it. With a bouncy castle, all the bouncing to and fro, all of the falling down and getting trounced on is fun. Translated to real life, it’s anything but fun.

Welcome to the life of an abused spouse.

Abusers come in all different flavors, if you will. The fellowship of abusive spouses has among its members the unemployed and the wildly successful, the financially adept and the serial bankrupted, the entrepreneur and the hourly worker, the uneducated and the ultra educated, the atheist and the religious. The members may be rich or poor, country folks or city dwellers, men or, at times, women. The thing that binds them all together is a desire to control someone else, make them do their bidding, and to do it at any and all costs.

Abused spouses usually come in one flavor: The beaten down. Rich or poor, educated or not, it doesn’t matter in the end. Their lives have been hijacked by another and they are reduced to living in the equivalent of a bouncy castle. Their lives are full of swirling craziness. They have no stability. It’s not their fault but, nonetheless, they usually get the blame. By their spouses. By others.

It’s easy enough to stand by doing nothing to help and wonder why she (or he) doesn’t leave or why they put up with it. I’ve heard it suggested that, if an abused wife didn’t like being mistreated, she’d leave. In Christian circles, it’s far too often suggested that she must be “doing something” to cause her spouse (“such a good, godly man”) to lose his patience with her. I’ve heard folks say men who claim to be abused are obviously lying. Believe those things and you are buying into lies.

Comments

  1. This is a truly harrowing post, but there are some things I don't understand about the lady's circumstances. Does her husband know she has a blog and, if so, surely he knows that she is (rightly) exposing the wicked man he is. Perhaps she writes under an assumed name. I don't know. If she attends a church, why has the Pastor and his wife not offered help and a place of refuge? The husband of this woman is obviously a depraved wicked scoundrel who should probably be behind bars. Why is this situation continuing? The lady is a Christian. Surely God does not want her and her children to stay in a place of danger. I do not understand this case at all but I do have enormous sympathy for the lady.

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    1. Thank you for expressing your concern and thoughts. :)

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  2. Thank you, Angela, for posting this.

    To Susan: I am the writer of the post. No, my husband doesn't know about the blog. We are, due to moving, between churches at the moment but have been looking for a new one. Sadly, I've found, as have many other victims of domestic abuse, that the church really doesn't know how to handle allegations of abuse, and isn't really equipped to help victims of abuse. Couples counseling, which is dangerous for abuse victims because the abuser is so good at putting on a mask and twisting the truth and his purposes, is usually their solution. But domestic abuse isn't just about anger, it isn't a normal marital problem and it cannot be addressed like one. I wanted to thank you for your comment and your concern. ~ Soli Deo gloria!

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    1. Thank you, Anna! I will continue to pray for you and your family. Without going into much detail, please know that I've been in similar circumstances, and Praise the LORD!, He changed my husband's heart toward me. May the good Lord bless you and your loved ones. :)

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