Once upon a time, I was a twenty-three-year-old missionary sitting in a 900-year-old French cathedral, staring at stained-glass Jesus. His face, distorted by hundreds of years of weather, was broken up by the molten lead that held him together: “He isn’t who I thought he was.”
And I wasn’t who I thought I was either. Who knew I had it in me to enrage someone to the point of striking me, spitting on me, kicking me black and blue? Who knew I was such a coward I wouldn’t tell? Who knew I was the kind of woman who could get good enough at makeup to hide bruises and could smile no matter what the hour before church had been like? (And still play the piano, lead the children’s time in the service, and teach Sunday school.)
The hard part of telling the truth is that you have to be ready to lose it all. You lose face. You lose friends. You lose the hope that things will ever turn out like you know they should without anyone having to know how bad they really were.
The best bite of food I’ve ever had in my life was a red currant tart that God bought me on the worst day of my life (at least, it was the worst at that point). I had walked out of my apartment in the lower French Alps, with no destination in mind, through a mountain footpath for miles until I arrived at the village of the church I was a part of planting (oh, the bitter irony). It was the day after I told our supervising missionary the truth.
There were no funds for counseling, no thought of not sending me back to the roof I shared with someone who hated me enough to hurt me and blame me for it. The mission board bought us plane tickets home, scheduled for the same flight, same day, with adjacent seats, within 24 hours of me telling the truth. I had packed my few belongings, utterly bereft at all I was losing after fighting so hard to keep it. That would become the refrain of those twenty-something years.
But there, at the beginning of telling the truth and then hiding it, I walked those cobblestone streets around and around the walled city, afraid to go back to the apartment. There, in between those rocks worn by all the glad and grief-filled steps of over a thousand years, I found a ten-franc coin between the stones. I walked into a French patisserie and bought that perfect tart. I sat by myself in a courtyard while old men in berets played bocce ball and tourists took photos in every direction, because, truthfully, it was that beautiful. And I ate the perfect bite on the saddest day. Sweet French pastry cream, the delightful sugared red currants, and a butter crust salty like these tears I feel streaming down my cheeks as I remember it. I feel silly every time I weep at the memory of that woe-filled perfect bite, but I was Hagar, running and hiding, and God said, “I see you.”
October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. I am aware. Aware I never would have gotten safe if I’d known how brutally hard it would be. Aware I should have done it so much sooner and so much better. Aware the long shadow of those years might never go away until the Light comes and stays. Aware I am so desperate for that Day. Aware I’m honored to walk with those who are still finding their way.
Stained-glass Jesus broke my heart when I realized he wasn’t real. Bad things do happen to girls who try to be good. Suffering isn’t always caused because someone doesn’t take their duty to God seriously enough. Sometimes God says, “no” to prayers that you think you’ll die if He doesn’t say yes to. And, sometimes, you do. Thousands of deaths over thousands of days.
But what I learned in and out of the maze of all the abuse and all the cover-up and all the mess along the littered way is that the real Jesus is standing behind that stained-glass window, and the best thing that ever happened to me was for it to break and for me to see Him as He really is. The real Jesus is beautiful. The Father said, “No,” to His beloved Son too, and it did kill him. But that’s why I’m alive today.
Post Tenebras Lux.
A Note About This Story
These words reflect my experience as a woman who had not yet found safety. Some of what I say may sound like self-blame or hopelessness. Those thoughts and feelings were part of my experience.
Feeling responsible for the abuse is not the same as being responsible for it. And feeling trapped does not mean there is no way forward.
It can be difficult to understand from the outside what domestic violence does to a woman's sense of herself, her circumstances, her options, and her other relationships, including her relationship with God.
I share this story not because every conclusion I expressed in it was true, but because the experience it portrays was real. And in the midst of all that confusion, the things I was learning about Jesus were true. His character, His presence, and His care for me were not dependent on my ability to understand my circumstances or find my way out of them.
Sometimes we need to listen carefully to a woman's experience before we can begin to understand what she needs, what she has been led to believe about herself, and what safety might look like for her.
If you would like to learn more about domestic abuse and some of the misconceptions that make it harder to recognize, you can also read my article, Detecting Abuse in Marriage: Setting Aside Myths and Seeking Hope.
Resources on Domestic Abuse
The resources that helped me identify and understand the destructive patterns in my life were Brad Hambrick’s blog series (now also available as a booklet), The Chronically Self-Centered Spouse; Leslie Vernick’s, The Emotionally Destructive Marriage: How to Find Your Voice and Reclaim Your Hope; and Lundy Bancroft’s Why Does He Do That?
The kind of book I once hoped I would survive to write was written by Darby Strickland. Is It Abuse?: A Biblical Guide to Identifying Domestic Abuse and Helping Victims, is a tremendous gift to the church and to hurting women.
Other resources I recommend on domestic abuse include: When Home Hurts: A Guide for Responding Wisely to Domestic Abuse in Your Church by Jeremy Pierre and Greg Wilson, the group training resources available at Church Cares, and the many trustworthy resources published by the Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation (CCEF).