by Meredith Hunter

When I was a young lady, I met a young man at church who intrigued me, charmed me, and eventually won my heart. He was gregarious, self-assured, charismatic, engaging, intelligent, driven, fun, creative, romantic, and he was refreshingly passionate about the things of God. Married for over twenty years, on the surface my life looked charmed. I had three healthy children, a husband with a successful business, and a lifestyle that others only dreamed of having. We attended church regularly, were involved in a small home group, participated in ministry opportunities, and enjoyed the blessing of close friends and family. Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? The truth of my life and of my family, however, was something quite different from what others observed. Then one day I made a choice that changed everything.

Raised in a Christian home, I was immersed in a culture that taught biblical truths and principles that created the framework for my life: how I looked on the outside, how I behaved, how I engaged the world around me, how I interacted with God, and, fundamentally, how I thought. Like you, my beliefs and values were shaped by the influences in my life. So, as a young woman, committing myself in marriage to a man, I believed as I had been taught—that marriage was a lifetime commitment, and no matter what challenges life presented, our faith in God’s sovereignty and his power would see us through. I was taught that my husband had ultimate authority in the home, and my role was to support him and defer to his authority when we could not agree. A good wife would meet his needs and by honoring him, she was honoring God. When adversity came, a good Christian would “take up her cross,” suffer in silence and “count it as nothing compared to the sufferings of Christ.” To complain meant you were not “content in all circumstances,” to question or challenge your partner meant you did not “submit to your husband.” My life was to be a reflection of Christ, so I was to extend grace and mercy (undeserved favor), and forgive without limits, just as Christ had done for me. If Christ was willing to die for me, how could I not respond by living a life of selfless devotion?

When I was a child, one of the popular choruses taught in Sunday school—whose words are imprinted on my heart—went something like this: “Jesus and others and you, what a wonderful way to spell JOY. Jesus and others and you, in the life of each girl and each boy. ‘J’ is for Jesus because he takes first place; ‘O’ is for others we meet face to face; ‘Y’ is for you in whatever you do. So, put yourself last and spell JOY!” Do you hear the message? The path of joy, the path of the life abundant, the path to living a life surrendered to Christ meant that my needs were to come last—if at all. I was taught this, my church reinforced it, and I needed to live by it. At least, so I thought.

But it is in our mind, where our thoughts take hold, that choices are made and actions are taken. In order to take different actions, I had to think differently. I could not choose another way without changing my thinking—without believing differently about what God wanted from me as a wife, a woman, a follower of Christ. And yet the implications of thinking differently paralyzed me with fear. I did not just fear the price I would pay in my marriage. I was equally afraid of the judgment and condemnation of others in my faith community and most importantly of God. And so I remained in my prison.

Over the years, fear and all its manifestations had become my companion. Fear went to bed with me at night. Fear arose with me in the morning and fear walked through my days. Yet, you would not have known it. I smiled, I laughed, and I functioned. I performed well. In fact, the reflection in the mirror did not even disclose fear. I hid the truth even from myself. I needed to be what I believed I should be—obedient. What I didn’t know was that my fear was the impact of abuse and that God did not want or need my performance—he wanted my love. But how could I authentically love a God who required that I live a life in denial of my inherent value? Wasn’t that what God required of me? How could God sanction abuse?

It took a very long time for me to understand that I was living with abuse and that God does not sanction it. When I reflect on my relationship with my former husband, I can see the red flags were there, the moments in the courtship that would have caused alarm in a more informed person. In fact, others tried to warn me that there was an inherent problem in the relational dynamic. But I brushed off their concerns, nurtured my dreams, and marched headlong into marriage and committing it to God—just like so many others before me.

Within twenty-four hours of the wedding, however, I came face to face with a person I did not recognize. My life with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde had begun. This person in no way resembled the person I had committed my life to. This was in no way the person I had just given myself to in every sense of the word. This person was a stranger and I felt hurt, betrayed, and fearful. The impact of his words and actions traveled through me like shockwaves. I recall the horror of that moment as if it were yesterday. But the horror of my experience could not drown out the resounding voice of my convictions—that I was committed for life and that my die was cast. I immediately and desperately tried to appeal to the man who I had married to resurface—to reclaim his bride and treasure her the way God had intended. I vowed to myself in that moment to do all I could to never allow that man to return—that stranger who was so threatening to my emotional and psychological safety.

What I did not realize was that his return was inevitable, as my husband’s behavior was not contingent on my ability to be the perfect wife and Christian. For over twenty years, I believed I was in some measure responsible for my husband’s behavior. My Christian culture taught me that if I could just be more patient, more kind, more longsuffering, more forgiving, more gracious, or more selfless, my life would reflect more of what God intended for me. My relationship with my husband would be one of equality, mutuality, and connectedness, and my home would be a place where peace and harmony were the norm and God was honored and glorified in and through it all! It would be a given that if I behaved myself, he would behave himself. Not so. There seemed to be no relationship between my effort and his response.

Instead, I lived in a world of confusion and uncertainty, where I walked on eggshells and waited for the next hurtful and destructive encounter. How do I begin to express what it was like to live a life devoted to someone who said he loved me but whose actions betrayed him. I never knew the truth. His actions told one story and his words—his life to the world—told another. Should I hold onto a truth I wanted to believe, or the truth that was being lived out in front of me? More than anything, I wanted to be loved and cherished. I wanted to believe I was an irreplaceable treasure in his life. And sometimes I believed him. I wanted to believe him. That made it even more confusing. There were times where he showered me with love and attention, where my life took on value in his eyes and my contribution to our relationship was honored. But before long, and without any real reason I could understand, his perception of me would shift and I soon found myself being told I was no longer desired, wanted, or loved. Different controlling strategies were employed to have the desired effect so he remained central, superior, and deserving. My needs were secondary to his, his capabilities were greater than mine, and he was deserving of privileges that I was not. Essential to his survival was a need to be in a position of power and control. I neither understood nor valued that need, but I inherently knew it was not in line with my core beliefs and values.

I knew that his anger and rage were highly disproportionate to the conflict. I knew that no matter what I may have done to trigger his rage, I did not deserve the verbal assault or threats that followed. I knew he was making up lies to justify his choices and was requiring me to accept them as truth. I knew that alienating me left me feeling alone, abandoned, and scared. I knew his hurtful, critical words wounded me deeply and eroded my sense of self until I was unrecognizable. I knew his physical size and strength scared me. I knew that having the wind knocked out of me was not nearly as painful as being told I was to blame for all his unhappiness. I knew I was being punished when he slept with another woman. And I knew that forgiveness was not something you could demand from another.

And yet I stayed. And I hoped. I hoped that the God in whom I put my trust would work a miracle. I believed that by choosing anything other than staying in the marriage I was minimizing the power of God and essentially making a declaration of my inability to put my faith in God. I could not do that! That was the greatest obstacle of all. How could I reconcile what I believed about God’s power to transform and a choice to leave my marriage?

After years of well-intentioned counselors and Christian marriage conferences, the day finally came when I met someone within my faith community who understood that what I was experiencing was abuse and that my husband was abusive. Through their counsel, I gave myself permission to think differently, to challenge my understanding of what God intended for me, and to work toward congruence of my beliefs, values, and life experience. In that there was real hope.

Awareness changed everything. I will never forget that day, the day when I felt another horror—the horror of recognition. I was a victim of abuse. I was not battered physically, but I had all the wounds and scars of decades of abuse. Finally, I had some clarity. The fog lifted and I was able to see how my actions would never elicit the response I longed for from my husband. He operated from one set of fundamental beliefs and I operated from another. I recognized that I had been living through cycles of abuse, and I acknowledged that without changing his core beliefs change would never happen. I appealed to my husband to get appropriate counseling. But he could not own his abuse long enough to get the help he needed. I knew that until he recognized that his belief system dictated his behavior and that his behavior in his intimate relationships was abusive, he would not change. And I did not believe that God required me to be a victim of his abuse. I believed that God wanted something much more. I believed that my responsibility to my children and to my God was to create an environment where they felt safe and valued, a context where the individual was honored and respected.

Finally, when an abusive episode occurred that demanded I respond from a place of awareness around abuse and not from a position of fear, I made my choice. His response was to mount a campaign of lies and deception among our children, friends, family, and faith community. The legal process that ensued was a platform for his ongoing need for power and control, and the financial and emotional toll was enormous. How does one begin to tally the losses? They are beyond measure and the grief has been overwhelming. I could never have imagined the degree of loss and grief. The grief of course is not just for the marriage lost but for the hopes and dreams of a lifetime, for the hopes and dreams of my children and for the ongoing struggle of surviving with an abusive co-parent.

Would I ever have thought that some of those who were closest to my painful reality were those who would turn their face from me when I needed their compassion the most? Would I ever have guessed that the church that showered me with support and encouragement when I lost my mother to cancer would not be willing to offer comfort to me when I grieved the loss of my marriage? Would I have thought that people would be so invested in their black-and-white world that they could not imagine a world with shades of grey? Would I have believed that judgment and condemnation were so much easier for people than resurrecting the courage to ask what happened?

On the other hand, would I have known the emancipation of my spirit? Would I have known the liberation of a life congruent with my values and beliefs? Would I have known the intimacy of a love relationship with God that is only possible when you value and love yourself? Would I have known the joy of discovering my “self,” my interests, my strengths, my gifts? Would I have known a life that embraces truth and fosters authenticity in myself and others? Would I have known the richness of friendships that were nurtured and then thrived in a season of drought? Would I have known the unspeakable gift of experiencing God’s grace in the midst of my suffering? Would I have known how I would feel when he made his guiding presence known when I needed it most, or when his love was demonstrated in undeniable ways when I needed to be loved the most? Would I have known the indescribable gift of a life no longer governed by abuse?

I had a choice. I chose to live without abuse and to honor God’s plan for marriage, to no longer be a witness to my own destruction, to honor the value God placed on my life, and to create another reality for my children, where a spirit of entitlement does not predominate but rather a spirit of acceptance and unconditional love.