(I'm compiling information for a book on domestic abuse. This is NOT my life now.)
I am trying.
Yes, I know that I am trying,
as some attempting humor would say.
Perhaps I should say attempting.
I am attempting to put into words what women suffer sometimes in marriages or partnerships where feminine hearts and minds and bodies are battered and children are left wondering where their safest place is.
The answer to this question is so deep that there are no depth-finders adequate enough.
Church leaders think it is so easy, so simple.
"God hates divorce" they say.
"If you submit, he will be better," they say.
"If you were the wife he needed, he wouldn't have to look outside the marriage," they say.
"If he's not happy, it's your fault. Are you submitting?"
"Submit."
But God doesn't like murder either, or violence toward women and children, or adultery.
Church leaders forget that.
Why?
Violence isn't just physical.
Violent people target the heart,
the mind,
the psyche of who the person is.
Here is someone's heart cry from late August 2000;
a Christian woman, a wife...
someone who loves God...
She is someone that church leaders say should
try harder.
After all, his response,
the husband's reaction,
for good or bad
is her fault.
Because he's the man.
He should be submitted to,
according to the Bible.
At the end of her rope
of sanity and self-respect,
this once desireable woman
full of life and hope
and laughter and song
and dancing and smiles
and artistic talent
and possibility and fun
and old-fashioned, harmless mischief
for the next 50 years of her life
says,
"This is what I deserve,
This is what I have earned;
to be alone
to be unimportant
to never be first in someone's life
to always wear my heart on my sleeve
just to have it torn off.
Boot in the ribs
axe on the neck
point of sword to the back
on the edge of a cliff...
JUMP!
Dear Heidi, Heidi, Heidi.... I do know. I hope that speaking those words on a page has given some of the burden of the pain to the page - and to we readers. I hope that it resonates with a lot of women in the same place and they find in it a way to chip away at the burden of their pain. You are really something.
ReplyDeleteI read some words by Kristen Heitzmann in her book "Secrets", page 278: "Rese tried to catch Lance's eye, to ward him off that subject, but he kept the conversation there, drawing out details that Star had not shared before, and amazingly she responded without disintegrating. Rese looked from one to the other. It was the same thing he'd done with her, making HER VOICE THE PAIN, SHARING THE BURDEN OF IT."
Galatians 6:2. Love to you sister.
We need to share the burden on of it. If not, it becomes a deadly weight drowning us in the Lake of Despair. Thanks for your post. Your true friend, Me.
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