"Your Dad is so much better!" I told my daughter over the phone. "He is agreeing with the Pastor in our marriage counseling. He is going to church every Sunday and is really excited. He even buys all the sermons and listens to them repeatedly through the weeks." My statements were a blatant lie with disrespect for human life.
Abused wives and partners hear so much advice for "normal" relationships and we make the mistake of applying it to our own warped non-relationship marriages. One piece of advice of this sort is the admonition to restrict comments about your husband to highlight the good, especially as you speak to your children. When we apply this rule to habitually abusive parents we end up teaching our children to be confused about good and evil. Our collusion teaches (in essence) a warped morality, ie.: that Hitler was okay because he stood against a lot of immorality - a "good deed" buys the right to practice cruelty on family members; that repeating "I'm sorry" can enable you to destroy people repeatedly; that your trauma and the children's trauma is not worth consideration; that crime is not crime when committed by a father; that violent people get what they want and gentle people are worthless punching bags; that lying is allowed to protect criminals so they can repeat the crime.
What we should have said to our children were the things that free them from their prison. A home that is the most dangerous and hellish place they know is not a home, but a prison. We join the ranks of those who do not seem to care when we ignore the pain and its cause. Too often these children grow up to find that drugs are less hellish than memories, worthlessness of heart, and warped ideas of marriage. My sin was in the declaration, "Your dad is so much better." I should have said what Jesus said: a whitewashed tomb can be painted all clean, but it is full of death. Jesus did not want those full of death to have His approval on their secret agenda. He wanted His people to recognize blind guides of whom the Lord would say at last, "I never knew you." Jesus' aim was not to just "be mean" but to protect us from evil examples by exposing them: "Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them" ( Ephesians 5:11). How strange are religious policies when they promote the protection of darkness as a means of salvation for those trapped in darkness. The abuser needs the darkness exposed in order to have the chance to see. That is truth.
When I told my grown daughter and my grown son that their dad was "better" I was giving them false hope and binding them to his example, which was frighteningly deceiving and aimed to manipulate. I was taking away their freedom and aiming them for more emotional abuse. It has resulted in emotional abuse of the worst sort and in efforts to destroy their relationship with me. I also said some horrible things about myself and God's children in general by calling him "better". While he was better at public christian acts, he was worse in his private abusiveness. So, I was calling myself and others like me "trash people" because it could be "Christian" to "do church" and then brutalize your wife as a relaxing sport. This was no different than saying Ted Bundy was "better" if he was a glowing church actor even though he could not stop the serial-killing. At the point I told my children that my husband was "better" I knew I was not long for this world and I was glad. I imagined (wrongly) that they needed a parent when I was gone. I did not think about the fact that the Scriptures define "father" in ways that do not include "cruel abuser who really does not feel guilty". My children needed the truth that his heart was empty of real father love and compassion so that they could deal with him from the standpoint of truth. My children needed to turn away from an example of atrocity. Pretending did not help them and it did not help him. "Forgiveness and reconciliation", repeatedly, for decades did not touch his heart. Kindness and mercy and compassion did not touch his heart. Confrontation did not touch his heart - it made him attack more violently. These things did sometimes produce more impressive public mannerisms, but in our bedroom he told me what was really in his heart. My heart may break for such evil in a man, but only God can deal with such a one.
There are good reasons that Jesus said Christians will often need to leave their birth families and make the real church their new family.
"For better or worse" from the marriage vows is a phrase often used to manipulate abused wives to stay married and even to remain together with the abuser. This is a gross distortion of the intention of the marriage vows. The vows are promises of faithful relationship, one to another. They are a picture of two people facing the world together, each standing with the other for the benefit of each: "two are better than one..." The "for better or worse" statement is a picture of the two facing circumstances in life, good and not-so-good outer circumstances, with that stronger and supportive loving togetherness. It is not a clause that buys one partner a free pass to turn into the personal destroyer of the other. It is a hopeful attitude that promises someone beside you to support you when you are weak and to rejoice with you when you are well. It does not require one to enable the other to practice evil. It is two facing the better or worse world together, not two facing each other and attacking.
Back to my conversation with my daughter, there was another wrong thing that was going on revealed there. The wrong thing is that my abusive husband and I were in marriage counseling. My pastor was aware that our marriage was abusive. Marriage counseling is for relationship problems. Domestic violence or even the worse aspect, emotional abuse, are not relationship problems. They are solely the problem of the abuser, who must deal with the issue alone if there is to be any hope for change and real relationship with God. Our marriage counseling served only to teach my abuser the language of "looking better in public". It taught him to speak the lingo of deception even better. For me, that meant it would be less likely that I could get anyone to believe the hell of my home. The marriage counseling revealed to me as well that knowing the right way did not help my husband to gladly follow the right way. He could not do it. He could not stop the abuse. I finally saw clearly that he loved the abuse process and was miserable when he tried to stop. He felt good the day after the "relief" of abuse. A true Christian has a conscience that recoils at brutality and cruelty. Abusers do not recoil. The abuse in my case became increasingly dangerous and murderous in its overtones and actions. Death became close and I began to be concerned about the children left in the home. I knew that saying "good" things about their father was not good. They were suffering through the long nights of horrible noises. My husband threatened to take them from me if I tried to leave. Thank God that God Himself caused my husband to get caught so that I could start leaving with credibility and some little legal trail.
I started telling my young children the truth. Their hearts gave up trying to please someone who could not truly have love and compassion for them. They realized the good in forgiving with walking away. They became able to feel that they had a right to protection in a loving home. They felt safe to be who they were created to be and personality blossomed at last. They felt safe to process the horror of trauma-healing in a loving home. It still goes on years later, but healing is working. The sad, sad thing in this is the constant pressure from church leaders to manipulate them backward instead of forward. They are pressured to do all the things we tried that did not work for 30 years and that feed the darkness.
Dear sister, Scripturally you have the right to walk away from persistent evil action: family abuse is most evil. You have the right under God to protect your children. You have the right to love yourself just as you would any child of God. You have the right to recognize nullified covenants so that your life has time for purpose, not futility. You have the right to make a way to live to fulfill the Great Commission, which you can't do under the absolute control of the dominion of darkness. You have the right to tell the truth that evil action is not good action, even though you may feel bad for the actor. You have a right to lead your children to follow good and not evil, to forgive without reconciliation with darkness, and to let God be God. You have a right to the life that God gave you to live for Him. For better or worse, the Lord faces hand in hand with you towards the life-road He gifted to you in love. That's the best kind of real better.
Abused wives and partners hear so much advice for "normal" relationships and we make the mistake of applying it to our own warped non-relationship marriages. One piece of advice of this sort is the admonition to restrict comments about your husband to highlight the good, especially as you speak to your children. When we apply this rule to habitually abusive parents we end up teaching our children to be confused about good and evil. Our collusion teaches (in essence) a warped morality, ie.: that Hitler was okay because he stood against a lot of immorality - a "good deed" buys the right to practice cruelty on family members; that repeating "I'm sorry" can enable you to destroy people repeatedly; that your trauma and the children's trauma is not worth consideration; that crime is not crime when committed by a father; that violent people get what they want and gentle people are worthless punching bags; that lying is allowed to protect criminals so they can repeat the crime.
What we should have said to our children were the things that free them from their prison. A home that is the most dangerous and hellish place they know is not a home, but a prison. We join the ranks of those who do not seem to care when we ignore the pain and its cause. Too often these children grow up to find that drugs are less hellish than memories, worthlessness of heart, and warped ideas of marriage. My sin was in the declaration, "Your dad is so much better." I should have said what Jesus said: a whitewashed tomb can be painted all clean, but it is full of death. Jesus did not want those full of death to have His approval on their secret agenda. He wanted His people to recognize blind guides of whom the Lord would say at last, "I never knew you." Jesus' aim was not to just "be mean" but to protect us from evil examples by exposing them: "Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them" ( Ephesians 5:11). How strange are religious policies when they promote the protection of darkness as a means of salvation for those trapped in darkness. The abuser needs the darkness exposed in order to have the chance to see. That is truth.
When I told my grown daughter and my grown son that their dad was "better" I was giving them false hope and binding them to his example, which was frighteningly deceiving and aimed to manipulate. I was taking away their freedom and aiming them for more emotional abuse. It has resulted in emotional abuse of the worst sort and in efforts to destroy their relationship with me. I also said some horrible things about myself and God's children in general by calling him "better". While he was better at public christian acts, he was worse in his private abusiveness. So, I was calling myself and others like me "trash people" because it could be "Christian" to "do church" and then brutalize your wife as a relaxing sport. This was no different than saying Ted Bundy was "better" if he was a glowing church actor even though he could not stop the serial-killing. At the point I told my children that my husband was "better" I knew I was not long for this world and I was glad. I imagined (wrongly) that they needed a parent when I was gone. I did not think about the fact that the Scriptures define "father" in ways that do not include "cruel abuser who really does not feel guilty". My children needed the truth that his heart was empty of real father love and compassion so that they could deal with him from the standpoint of truth. My children needed to turn away from an example of atrocity. Pretending did not help them and it did not help him. "Forgiveness and reconciliation", repeatedly, for decades did not touch his heart. Kindness and mercy and compassion did not touch his heart. Confrontation did not touch his heart - it made him attack more violently. These things did sometimes produce more impressive public mannerisms, but in our bedroom he told me what was really in his heart. My heart may break for such evil in a man, but only God can deal with such a one.
There are good reasons that Jesus said Christians will often need to leave their birth families and make the real church their new family.
"For better or worse" from the marriage vows is a phrase often used to manipulate abused wives to stay married and even to remain together with the abuser. This is a gross distortion of the intention of the marriage vows. The vows are promises of faithful relationship, one to another. They are a picture of two people facing the world together, each standing with the other for the benefit of each: "two are better than one..." The "for better or worse" statement is a picture of the two facing circumstances in life, good and not-so-good outer circumstances, with that stronger and supportive loving togetherness. It is not a clause that buys one partner a free pass to turn into the personal destroyer of the other. It is a hopeful attitude that promises someone beside you to support you when you are weak and to rejoice with you when you are well. It does not require one to enable the other to practice evil. It is two facing the better or worse world together, not two facing each other and attacking.
Back to my conversation with my daughter, there was another wrong thing that was going on revealed there. The wrong thing is that my abusive husband and I were in marriage counseling. My pastor was aware that our marriage was abusive. Marriage counseling is for relationship problems. Domestic violence or even the worse aspect, emotional abuse, are not relationship problems. They are solely the problem of the abuser, who must deal with the issue alone if there is to be any hope for change and real relationship with God. Our marriage counseling served only to teach my abuser the language of "looking better in public". It taught him to speak the lingo of deception even better. For me, that meant it would be less likely that I could get anyone to believe the hell of my home. The marriage counseling revealed to me as well that knowing the right way did not help my husband to gladly follow the right way. He could not do it. He could not stop the abuse. I finally saw clearly that he loved the abuse process and was miserable when he tried to stop. He felt good the day after the "relief" of abuse. A true Christian has a conscience that recoils at brutality and cruelty. Abusers do not recoil. The abuse in my case became increasingly dangerous and murderous in its overtones and actions. Death became close and I began to be concerned about the children left in the home. I knew that saying "good" things about their father was not good. They were suffering through the long nights of horrible noises. My husband threatened to take them from me if I tried to leave. Thank God that God Himself caused my husband to get caught so that I could start leaving with credibility and some little legal trail.
I started telling my young children the truth. Their hearts gave up trying to please someone who could not truly have love and compassion for them. They realized the good in forgiving with walking away. They became able to feel that they had a right to protection in a loving home. They felt safe to be who they were created to be and personality blossomed at last. They felt safe to process the horror of trauma-healing in a loving home. It still goes on years later, but healing is working. The sad, sad thing in this is the constant pressure from church leaders to manipulate them backward instead of forward. They are pressured to do all the things we tried that did not work for 30 years and that feed the darkness.
Dear sister, Scripturally you have the right to walk away from persistent evil action: family abuse is most evil. You have the right under God to protect your children. You have the right to love yourself just as you would any child of God. You have the right to recognize nullified covenants so that your life has time for purpose, not futility. You have the right to make a way to live to fulfill the Great Commission, which you can't do under the absolute control of the dominion of darkness. You have the right to tell the truth that evil action is not good action, even though you may feel bad for the actor. You have a right to lead your children to follow good and not evil, to forgive without reconciliation with darkness, and to let God be God. You have a right to the life that God gave you to live for Him. For better or worse, the Lord faces hand in hand with you towards the life-road He gifted to you in love. That's the best kind of real better.
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