When I watched this yesterday, it deeply impacted me. Not exactly a sermon, it’s more an interview in which a woman tells her remarkable story of dealing with tragedy, suffering, and disability. Yes, the pastor had things to say — in a rather powerful mini-sermon that served as introduction — and her husband spoke as well, but it was her words I found especially compelling.
If you’ve ever asked, “Why did God allow this to happen?” you might not find the exact answer to your question, but I think you will find hope.
I wrote this to myself over a year ago. Here’s hoping it will be an encouragement to someone else.
Chase God. He made you and He wants you. Just because He thinks you’re fearfully and wondrously made doesn’t mean sinful humans (e.g., everybody on earth) will agree. Lots of people think you suck. So what? In Heaven, it won’t matter. Don’t worry about them; they are His responsibility. Don’t worry about what they think about you. Their opinion is so flawed, ignorant, and inconsequential, that it is meaningless. Remember that: meaningless.
They do not know you. They do not define you. They are hell-bound sinners, dying for grace, just like you. You aren’t a step-child. They aren’t ahead of you in line. They can’t make Jesus love you less.
He wants your extravagant worship. They aren’t capable of that. Because they think they haven’t been forgiven much. But you know. Pour it out; don’t be afraid of wasting anything…give…pour…toss it all at Jesus’ feet…tears and blood and brokenness and beautiful scars…don’t be afraid to be scandalous because His grace is scandalous.
They will never get it. Not until they see Jesus face to face, and then…don’t envy them those first moments.
When you see Him, it’s doubtful you’ll need a smackdown. Keep it that way. Look forward to running into the Throne Room and jumping into Abba Father’s lap, but don’t take it for granted.
You have beautiful scars. You are a redemption story. You know reconciliation first-hand. Don’t forget that. Never forget that. Rejoice. Celebrate. Until He comes. Don’t expect them to do it. Do it…and celebrate. Celebrate — with wild abandon…with extravagance…with every breath…
Even though some days I’m still not so sure about not needing that heavenly smackdown…
One would think that, after all the books, articles, and blog posts that I’ve read on the topic of marriage over the years, both faith-based and secular, that I would not be brought up short by something said in passing, something that should have been obvious to me years ago, but sadly wasn’t.
It was at, of all places, a conference on the issue of sex trafficking. One of the speakers, after he was introduced, in turn introduced his wife and proudly announced that they had been married for over 11 months — and he even announced the weeks, days, and hours! He made a few other remarks that, coupled with his obvious joy and enthusiasm, let us know that he not only loved his wife very much, but deeply respected her as well. Then he offered some advice to the unmarried men: “Find a wife who will challenge you to be a better man!”
He went on to give an excellent, dynamic talk, but those introductory words, not even meant for me, hit me hard.
Then, more recently, I saw this:
If I were to die today, I don’t think my husband could say that about me — that he is a better person for having been married to me. I haven’t challenged him. That makes me really sad, and disappointed in myself.
Of course, I could come up with all sorts of excuses and reasons and justifications and explanations for why that is. I could, for example, blame some of the ridiculous books and articles I’ve read. For example, there was the one that insisted that, if my husband made a disastrously poor decision and asked for my advice in how to deal with the terrible fallout, I was to smile sweetly and submissively and lob this passive-agressive insult at him: “Oh, I’m sure you’ll make the right decision, dear!” Luckily, I’m not that passive-agressive, nor self-controlled, nor submissive. But, I read enough of that nonsense, and too much of the not-so-extreme advice that I needed to treat my husband’s ego as some fragile flower, and accept everything about him, that “challenging” him would sinful and disrespectful. In fact, even admitting that he might have room for improvement was questionable!
It’s not just the books. The truth is, I probably wouldn’t have been so taken in by the “my dear Rebecca, you will never live up to the ideal of godly womanhood because you just don’t have what it takes” messages if it weren’t for my own issues and the over-all dynamic in our marriage.
But those are all excuses and the bottom line is, I’m without excuse.
Contrary to all the nonsense out there, no husband — no matter how wonderful and godly he may be — has obtained perfection in loving his wife as Christ loves the Church, nor is he infallible and thus worthy of being submitted to without question. Nor is any grown man so weak and fragile that his wife needs to prop him up and dare not question him lest his precious ego dissolve and he crumple into a little heap on the ground — or whatever it is we wives are supposed to be afraid of happening to the poor dears if we don’t treat them with kid gloves.
There is a teaching out there that our role as “helpmeet” is to help our husband fulfill his “vision”. If I had a dollar for every wife who has told me that she would love to help her husband fulfill his vision if he just had one, or who complained that her husband’s vision seemed to be watching as much TV as possible, I could probably finance at least one woman’s vision. (I have a sneaking suspicion that far more women than men have some sort of “vision” for their lives.) But apparently we are supposed to sit around, praying and waiting for our husband to come up with his “vision”. I guess it’s supposed to hit him while he’s busy at work, while he’s commuting, or during a commercial break. Nagging doesn’t seem to help.
If we read the Bible more, we wouldn’t come up with such nonsense, nor would we be taken in by it.
I look at this differently now. There are certain things that the Bible makes clear are what God desires of all of us who want to follow Him. We can challenge — which is different from nagging — and encourage our husbands in their pursuit of God. There are things that are required of husbands. How will our husbands know if they are loving us like Christ loves the Church if we never communicate to them when they succeed and when they fall short?
All too often, we get caught up in marriage as an authority structure or hierarchical relationship. We forget that we are supposed to be “one flesh”. I think that, in many cases, those of us who are wives understand and long for intimacy (as in real intimacy, not a code word for sex) much more than our husbands do. We can either buy into the cultural notion that “guys just aren’t wired for intimacy” and treat our husbands like neanderthals or boys — or we can treat them with respect, like equals, like our other halves, and encourage them to stop fearing vulnerability, to open their hearts to real love, and to become better men. We can hold them accountable to obeying the clear commands of Scripture, and not look the other way when our husbands compromise their integrity or purity. We can challenge and encourage them to become the men God wants them to be, strong and courageous men who allow God, rather than culture, to define manhood.
After thirty years of marriage, I’m finally starting to do what I should have been doing from day one.
This is kind of a goofy post. But it’s me being real, for whatever that’s worth. Quick ADHD moment: I recently watched a video of a Christian speaker whose name I can’t remember and now, as I write these words, I keep hearing her voice saying, “Just keeping it real!” after each hilarious, self-deprecating confession or anecdote. Back to now: this post, however, is not intentional comedy, at least not in that same way. It’s a slightly edited version of something I journaled about recently, and I have no idea why I’m putting it up on the Internet…other than this vague notion that maybe someone somewhere will find something they need in my words. At the same time, it may not make a whole lot of sense to anyone else.
To me, it’s neither silly nor childish. It describes a profound and deep realization that I can’t express in words. It’s like coming home…only to discover home is even more wonderful than you remember.
Enough preamble and disclaimer…
There’s been my lifelong — well, since around age 13 anyway — quest for who I thought of as The One Guy. It didn’t take much time for that concept to become less and less about a boyfriend and more about a friend, until the very idea of romance no longer entered the picture. It became all about The One Guy who would “see me for me”, who would “love me for me”, with no strings attached, no hint of sexual overtones to mess it all up. He would be the perfect BFF, the one person who truly understood me. He would believe in me, bring out the best in me, and together we would conquer the world. I imagined that, since Mums always said to marry your best friend, that this remarkable fellow would have to take at least a year or so to gain my trust and prove himself. Then, once he’d earned the highly coveted (by no one, especially since I alone knew of its existence) One Guy status, it would take an additional two or more years (after he’d fallen in love with me) to persuade me that marrying each other wouldn’t ruin everything. That assumed all went well and things sailed smoothly along. Otherwise it would really be a long courtship.
Of course, nothing remotely like that ever happened.
When I attempted to explain this futile quest to my therapist, he shocked me by — very unlike him — trying to go all Freudian on me and make The One Guy about Daddy, but I knew that wasn’t it. So then I tried to make it about wanting a big brother who was a much better big brother, or something like that. But that wasn’t it either.
Apparently it was just a goofy childhood fantasy I never got over. Silly me.
And then, during a time of worship at a recent conference, it suddenly hit me: Jesus is The One Guy! He’s the one I have been searching and longing for all this time, the Intimate Friend my heart has been seeking…
Really — duh! — it’s quite obvious that my idea of The One Guy was something no human male could fulfill, let alone would actually want. I mean, what would be in it for him? No human is capable of that sort of unconditional, unselfish love, let alone the uncanny mind-reading skills required for him to see “the real me”.
This is a far cry from “Jesus is my boyfriend”. It’s more like, Jesus is the fulfillment of my deepest desires. He is Love Personified. He’s the hero and rescuer I’ve wanted to write stories about. He’s the Best Friend I’ve yearned for. He’s true intimacy and unconditional love and deep acceptance and everything else my heart has ever longed for.
We see it in your eyes: pity, sorrow, pain, cluelessness. You mean well, but you have no idea.
We feel for you, really we do — far more than you realize — but we struggle with impatience at your naïvety and ignorance. We do not have the luxury of burying our heads in the sand. While you may succeed at silencing us because our truth is too inconvenient and too painful for your sensitive ears, you cannot silence the painful screams deep in our souls. You can plug those sensitive ears of yours; we cannot plug ours. You can drown us out or refuse to hear our stories; we cannot escape our pasts.
PTSD brings the past to the present. It makes you indignant. “I am not your rapist!” you protest self-righteously with the same mouth that we have heard make rape jokes and defend those who would hand women over to rapists, the same mouth that has spoken words proving how little our consent means to you, the same mouth that has defended your body’s right to test and push against our boundaries. You expect us to forget your careless words, words that you consider trivial and light-hearted, words you pretend are not damaging or betraying…and you cannot understand why we are so uptight, so unyielding, so humorless. I mean, why is rape such a big deal to us, just because we have been raped? Why are we so weak that we can’t get over it already?
You expect us to pat you on the back, perhaps even applaud you, because you announce, almost as if it were a grand gesture on your part, that you do not blame us for being raped. You act as if this is a great and selfless act on your part, to absolve us from the guilt of causing our rapes. You act as if you cannot understand why we do not fall all over ourselves with gratitude and why we are not overcome with relief that you do not hold us accountable for our rapist’s actions.
You tell us that we are weak and broken. You say this with great patience, as if you are doing us a favor by letting us know that, despite looking down at us from your position of superiority, you nonetheless still choose to grace our wounded lives with your presence. You are the strong, the un-raped, the unbroken, the undefiled. You remind us of this continually.
However, you have no idea that, the further we go on our healing journey, the more we view you as being the broken one, the more we pity you.
You have no idea.
We used to envy your innocence. We may have remembered when we were in your shoes, full of ignorance and clinging to myths. Or maybe we were robbed of innocence so early in our lives that we cannot even identify with you. At any rate, whether we remember it or not, we were once you. You have never been us.
You are weak and untested. We recognize that now, and we no longer envy you, no longer wish to return to your state of denial and cluelessness, no longer wish to be the type of person who prefers personal comfort and fantasy over truth and justice.
We no longer want your life of ease and privilege. It is a jail worse than the one we have broken out of and triumphed over. You find your chains comforting and familiar, even while pretending you are not bound; we have conquered ours, seen them smashed and broken, and have tasted the exhilaration of running into freedom, of dancing upon injustice.
We know victory; you know avoidance and hiding. We wouldn’t trade places with you for anything in the world, not anymore.
We protect you from the truth, knowing you are the weak one, the broken one, the incomplete one.
We pity you…far more than you pity us. You have no idea — and you prefer it that way. We are your shield and your safe haven in the storm. We treat you gently and cautiously. After all, unlike us, you are fragile and weak, and cannot quite handle the real world.
Over the past few years, I have talked with other survivors about our husbands, boyfriends, friends, and family members. Some of these handle our trauma history better than others. What I wrote here is compiled from what I have heard as well as experienced firsthand. This is not about abusive relationships. This is about mostly well-meaning but flawed and clueless people who just don’t know enough, aren’t sensitive enough, and aren’t strong enough. This is about trying to navigate relationships with partners who grew up in rape culture. This is about people who don’t want to face the truth. This is about people who may want to come alongside us, but only as long as it doesn’t force them to be less selfish or step outside their comfort zones. Often, in the beginning of our healing journey, we may have tried to lean on them. As time progresses, we begin to realize that we are much stronger than we had realized, and they don’t really have what it takes to be our allies. We don’t pity these partners and friends for not having experienced trauma. We pity them for not having healed from their own issues — everyone has them — and for not having seized their own opportunities to wake up, learn, grow and flourish.
Prone to wander... 