The Journey Started Here

 The journey to freedom started here.  This quiet blog among other missionary women.  Where I could write because I was unknown.

I still wrote very carefully.  Very carefully.

I had already been told I was crazy to suggest my husband was angry, and I hadn't yet had the bravery to admit to myself that it was beyond angry and was abusive.

Ya'll told me that.

A part of me knew it, but it was still a shock.  That other people saw that.  I look back and wonder why it was a shock.... and I think it was because the church/mission/believers had been telling me for years that it wasn't.  I began to believe them and my husband that I was crazy.

I knew I wasn't.  But I also knew I wouldn't be believed if I said what was happening.

But looking back, I see where I first saw it.  I saw those first steps.  And I remember the shock of the first person naming it as "abuse" and suggesting I pray about getting out.  I had prayed I would survive, stay alive longer than him, not be killed, but to pray about getting to safety wasn't something I thought I could do.

I didn't believe that first person who called it abuse, though.  I said to myself, 'no, he's just that angry because......"

I sat a few weeks ago with a young wife who told me that line,  "I know it is only because......... that he gets so angry, but it scares me when he does."  I wanted to grab her from her side of the table and run far away.  She's not ready to name it yet, but I see it, and I know the path she is about to walk on and all I can do is pray for mercy.

I didn't believe it either.  I was trained by an expert in making excuses for his behavior.  He did it all the time.  So did the mission.

When it got really bad a few years ago and I bore the bruises of how bad it got, I was scared to call my organization.  The last time I had done that, they accused me of being a pathological liar.  One day, I will post that letter here - the reality of what collaboration with abuse by enablers looks like.  So I called a friend's mom - a member care person with another organization in another country.  I asked for help in knowing how to cope with the stress in my relationship.  She listened for fifteen minutes, and then interrupted me to ask if I was safe and if I needed help getting out to a safe place.  I paused, and said, "no, I... I'm ok...".  She told me, "in ok relationships, people don't threaten to kill you or say they wish they could."  

It still took a few months before I was able to admit to myself that this was something more than an angry spouse.  It took my pastor telling me to get out, trusted friends telling me for years that this was not safe and I had two counselors asking if I was safe, my kids worrying about my safety when they left the house.... it took a lot.

And yet I was judged later for not speaking up earlier.  Or more - my mission blaming me that I hadn't told them when we applied.  As if I could have in front of him... as if I was even ready to feel safe enough to speak up.  Instead of support when I spoke up, I got judgement.  Again.

Why don't women "just" leave?  Because there is no "just" about it.  It take immense bravery and a lot of support, and it costs deeply.  But that journey started here. 

I owe a debt of gratitude to you all.  My watchers and prayers and truth speakers.

At The End Of Tomorrow, Looking Back

 It's been a long time.  So much has happened.  And where to start?  But I feel the need to write again because there are lessons from this life that I want shared, that I want learned.

There's the basics I could say - this and this happened, and then that, and then that.  And I probably will now.  I am not longer in a position where I can not speak what happened.  I am no longer in a situation in which I can not name the agencies who reacted the ways they did that were perhaps equal to the abuse that I lived in.

The question is whether there is value in that.

The tendency of people when they know what agency is to say, "Oh, them!" instead of question, "Is it me?"  Maybe the reason Jesus initially didn't tell His disciples in the upper room who was going to betray Him that night.  Maybe He wanted them to question their own hearts.

I'd rather leave it unnamed because I don't believe the two mission agencies who reacted like this are an aberration.  I believe they are the norm.  And that is profoundly sad.  And that compels me again to write.  Older.  Sadder. And wiser.  

I will write the lessons I wish someone had written to my younger self.  I will write the wisdom I wish someone had shared with my mission's member care people.  I will write the insights I wish my churches had known.

There's bright spots along the way.  There's learning.  There's beauty.  But there is deep pain, and there is deep error and deep betrayal by the very people who should be speaking loudly and clearly for the God who hates violence.

We can do better.

We must do better.

And to do better, some of us must tell our stories.  And others of us must listen.  So I begin here, at the end of my tomorrow, looking back.  There will be more tomorrows ahead, and I believe those tomorrows will be better, but I am at the end of this one.  

Because I have stepped out of an abusive relationship.