This Little Lesson from my Loving Lord is a bit different. It’s quite personal. It’s a hard one to write and share. However, if it helps one person...
I have a lot of emotions this week. Had life gone the way we all hope life will go, there would be a wonderful 42-year celebration this week. But alas, seven years ago, 35 years of silence turned into a scream. “Things we don’t talk about” broke me. Hidden secrets had grown from an occasional hurt to deep wounds that broke me. All the bricks that were built up to ‘protect’ the secrets crumbled. The cycle of broken trust and restoration and broken trust and restoration...finally broke me and my world.
Because “the things you don’t say out loud” allowed people to think I was a different person than I was. The burden and shame I carried ... on another’s behalf ...broke me. I didn’t want to put this shame on others, like extended family including his parents, so I kept so much inside. Those who only saw the sad outcome never saw the years of counseling that should have helped to redeem a marriage and end the cycle of broken trust/restoration but instead enabled the very behaviors that break trust and kill a relationship. They never heard the broken promises and lies that I was told that allowed an early on low level of activity to become an all-consuming lifestyle in the end. They didn’t know the level of manipulation that had me in a place that broke me. They didn’t see that there really wasn’t any room for ME in the marriage. Some may think I took the ‘easy’ way out. They don’t know the prayers I prayed that He would take me Home, so I didn’t have to face the world with the knowledge of this burden. That would have been the ‘easy’ way. Allowing an end to provide room for a new beginning was the hardest decision I ever had to make.
About thirteen years in, I went to a Christian counselor who had told our Women’s Bible study group that her door was always open to us and that whatever we were going through, she had either been through herself, or she had counseled others through it. There had already been so much counseling that did nothing. So, I took a chance. I used the clinical terms for the two big issues that “we didn’t talk about” ... and I had to explain one of them to her. That was the first time I truly felt alone on my journey. I described it as being completely alone on an island. At that moment, I wondered if anyone would ever understand. If anyone would ever understand my journey. If anyone would ever understand why I stayed and fought so hard to keep together whatever was there. If anyone would ever understand enough to help point us in the right direction.
So why say anything now? Well, I heard this song on AGT tonight, “People Don’t Talk About.” (Please go listen to the song.) The family that sings the song lost their mother to “mental illness.” That seems to be the modern euphemism for suicide. A couple of years before the marriage ended, I went through a period of clinical depression. My brokenness could not handle all the secrets anymore. I am confident that had I not maintained a relationship with our Loving Lord through all 35 of those years, I would not be alive today to tell my story.
Are you living with a secret? Are you living with shame? Are there things you don’t say out loud? Are there things you don’t talk about? Please consider rethinking your position. Please consider finding one safe, Christian confidant who can understand your situation and pray and support you. That person may not have all the answers however they may be the one person that reminds you that you are not alone on your journey.
If you are in an abusive relationship, seek help! Abuse is not always physical. Abuse can also be financial, emotional, spiritual, mental, verbal, sexual...
In my journey there were things I could have done differently. I could have said “no” more often. I could have exposed more sooner. I could have left sooner and possibly had a life that did not break me...or that broke me even more. I do not know how those decisions would have impacted my life. What I do know is that our Loving Lord is continuing to protect me and to provide for me and He has given me so many reasons to live!
“But without faith it is impossible to [walk with God and] please Him, for whoever comes [near] to God must [necessarily] believe that God exists and that He rewards those who [earnestly and diligently] seek Him.” Hebrews 11:6 AMP
"He who walks blamelessly and uprightly will be kept safe,
But he who is crooked (perverse) will suddenly fall."
