Supportive Resources

Ok, so in this post, I am adding the things that were helpful in my journey towards leaving my abusive husband and after having left him, also losing the support of my church family.

1. The biggest help was Theophostic Ministy.  I am trained in this, and my counselor was trained in it also.  I dealt with a lot of hurt and pain from my past that kept me in fear and bondage to the ways my husband was relating to me.  Once I was able to allow Jesus to help me look at the stuff from my past that was hindering me, and allowing people to treat me poorly, it was easier to deal more appropriately with the more current stuff that was happening with me and my husband.  This website will direct you to a list of people who can help you in this way.  It really helped me.  

2. A Social Worker.  You can ask your family doctor about where to find a social worker to talk to.  They are trained to help families, and can give good counsel, as well as provide options for you, as well as supportive resources in your area.  Because of the gal who helped me, I am now training to become a social worker.  :)

3.  Put a local crisis number in your cell phone for easy access.  Depending on how controlling your hubby is, you may need to put it under another name.

4.  Have a place or two where you know you can go if you need to be safe.  I had some friends who offered to be those places for me.  At the time, I also had a key to my church, and this one night when my husband flew into a rage, I left the house, and locked myself in the church after midnight for a couple of hours and called a crisis line and just talked to someone for a while.

5.  Divorce Care.  This really helped me a LOT.  It's a Christian based program to help individuals understand and cope with the fallout of separation and divorce.  If you're only getting separated, don't be afraid to utilize this helpful program!  It still applies!  :)   They also have a really great devotional book that takes you through a whole year!  You can get it in paperback, or online HERE.


6.  Got kids?  Here are some supports for them!
     
 I took my daughter to the DC4K classes while I attended the adult Divorce Care classes, and man, that really helped alot, for both of us.  :)  It comes with a booklet, and they have snacks and games, but also sharing and stuff.  Admittedly, the vids they use are quite corney, so the kids may do some eye rolling, but, it does educate them about divorce, and reassures them about God loving them, and their parents love them, and it's not their fault and all that.  DC4K

7.  Books, I love books!  Education has been such a helpful thing in my journey through divorce.  Here are a few that have helped me understand how I can be divorced AND a Christian at the same time.  LOL  (Really, it can be done!)

While this book mainly focuses on abuse that happened in childhood, there was definitely a lot that applied to the current situation with my husband in understanding what abuse is, and what the perpetrators of abuse are like, and why, and how it affects a person and why, and how to set boundaries with that.

  This book was really helpful because I found the "biblical" evidence I needed to feel like leaving my husband was ok.  Up till then, it was hard to reconcile the idea of it in my mind...

  I haven't read the whole book, but what I did read really revolutionized some of my thinking.  When I first learned about it in bible college, in a counseling class there, I burst out crying because it was biblical stuff that I NEEDED to know 8 years previously!  Had I learned these things from the pulpit, perhaps I would have left the marriage sooner, rather than trying to carry my cross, martyring myself over and over in a bad situation!

Here is the book review:
IF CHRIST HAD PRACTICED THE KIND OF LOVE WE ADVOCATE NOWADAYS, HE WOULD HAVE LIVED TO A RIPE OLD AGE. We've come to view love as being nice. Forgiving and forgetting. Yielding to the desires of others. Yet the kind of love modeled by Jesus Christ has nothing to do with manners or unconditional acceptance. Rather, it is shrewd. Disruptive. Courageous. And, as a result, socially unacceptable. In Bold Love, Dr. Dan Allender and Dr. Tremper Longman III draw out the aggressive, unrelenting, passionate power of genuine love. Far from helping you "get along" with others, Bold Love introduces the outlandish possibility of making a significant, life-changing impact on family, friends, coworkers-even your enemies. "Bold love is anything by passive," writes Dr. Allender. "It is unpredictable, cunning, and creative. It is a violation of the natural order of things. In many cases it will unnerve, offend, disturb, or even hurt those who are being loved. But in the end it will also compel them to deal with the internal disease that is robbing them (and others) of true beauty." So if it feels like you've turned the other cheek so many times your head is spinning, it's probably time to take a second look at your practice of love. Because there's nothing redemptive about a love that just accepts people for who they are.


Now that's what I'm talking about!!!  :D  


So, it's really ok to allow someone, like, say, your husband, to experience and endure the consequences of being a shitty individual to you.  Really it's ok.  Remember he CHOSE to be shitty.  :)


  I did a book report on this book for the "Marriage and Family" class I took in Bible college.  I was the only divorced person in the class, as you can imagine.  LOL  It was very good.  This author is one of the top 5 biblical scholar authors that were recommended to us when doing a research assignment at Bible college.  It was quite enlightening.  :)

  This helps you understand WHY you might be addicted to trying to make that marriage work.  We can all get addicted to things, and I certainly was addicted in that way, and this book helped me to see it.  :)

There are so many good books out there.  But this will get you started with something.  It's not easy to be a Christian and then try to get yourself out of a bad marriage.  It's really hard, I know.  But there are lots of us out there!  And if you have any questions about anything, please feel free to ask.  I have a BA in counseling from a bible college, and I am also studying to be a social worker.  I am 42, I have 2 teenagers, and I'm no longer a doormat, because I am no longer afraid.  If I don't know the answer, I know where to find it.  Ok.

Hang in there!  And I leave you with one last book... which I feel is kinda poignant...

   Bitch:  In Praise of Difficult Women.  Cuz, it's really ok to be labelled as "difficult".  (See Dan Allender's "Bold Love" book.  LOL)

Submission to Husband, Abuse, and the Bible

For fun, and for curiosity, or maybe it's boredom, I was surfing around this blogging site here, just to see what all is available to me.  I found "Traffic sources".  There I learned how people found my blog, and at the bottom, it showed the specific key words that were used this week: submission to husband, abuse and bible.  So, I am sharing this with the person who did that search and found me.

You are the reason that I went to Bible college, after getting separated from my husband.  My church rejected me, didn't know what to do with me, and certainly weren't there for me when my marriage fell apart.  Simply because I was the one to make the decision to end the marriage.  Well, I didn't actually choose to end the marriage, I chose to separate, in the hopes that he would come around.  He didn't.  So THEN I accepted that and ended it, 2 years after.  His abusive manner got worse after we separated, so that helped me know that I made the right decision.  And although I left for what I would term as "emotional abuse" I later found out that he had been hitting our son too.  I also realize now (because of my education), that violence comes in many forms, and emotional abuse IS a form of violence.

But when you're all solidified in your faith, and because of this you are solidified into your marriage vows, how do you separate that out?  It's hard, it really is, especially when you don't have anyone around you to assure you that you're not a complete sinner for wanting to leave your husband.  I stayed WAY too long with my husband, simply because I didn't have anything "concrete" to make it "OK" to leave him, things like bruising from hitting, or an extramarital affair, or evidence of him sexually abusing the kids.  He didn't do any of that (as far as I knew at the time, I found out later about him hitting our son).  I was praised for hanging in there, and enduring the heavy cross laid upon my back.

I think those people at church were dead wrong.  It's easy to look back and see what I could have done instead, and wish I had done some things differently.  But that is a waste of time.  You can't change the past.  But how does one do what's right for your specific situation, yet remain true to what you believe in the bible?  How do you keep a hold of God when everything else is falling apart around you?

First of all, you need to remember that Jesus is not intimidated by Satan's finest work.  There is nothing new under the sun, He's seen it all.  Think about that, He has seen it all.  No one at your church has seen it all when it comes to what happens behind closed doors at your house.  No one at church can see all the things you've tried to do to honour your husband and family and most of all, God.  God has seen it.  He knows.  He also knows how much denial you've been living in... denial is living a lie, pretending things are ok when they aren't.  I don't think that honours God.  But I also know that to stop living in denial, well that makes a LOT of people uncomfortable.  But think about that... if people are more comfortable with you experiencing abuse, than to stand up against it, those people are not your friends, and they are also not honouring God.  (Just like those pious priests who left the bleeding man on the side of the road).  And while we are on the topic of the Good Samaritan, keep in mind that if and when you do leave, and if your church friends and or family desert you, you may find support from people you wouldn't expect.  Remember that God knows everything, and Has your situation in mind and knows who to send your way.  You can often find the fingerprints of God on people and on situations that will surprise you: (Divorce lawyers, judges, and other seemingly "secular" individuals).  Remember it's all created by Him anyways, and you trust HIM, right?  Remember that living inside the rigid boxes of church doctrine is what has kept you in an unsafe situation for too long already.  Let God lead you to new things.

I am going to post a few more things after I am done this blog.  These are things that have helped me along the way.  You can access alot of it on the internet (if you are afraid of having it around the house).

I hope this has found it's way to you, and to anyone else who is having a similar struggle.  Please feel free to comment or contact me.  And know that you're never alone.  *hugs*