“Honestly”

 

Honestly

VOTA

Honestly
Can I tell you where I'm at
Honestly
Can I pull the curtain back
Will you run
If you see how weak I am

If you don't see the real me
You won't see what mercy's done
If you don't see my weakness
You won't see what love has won
If you don't see the distance from the darkness to the sun
You won't see
Honestly

Honestly
I'm growing sick and tired
Honestly
It hurts too much to hide
Brokenness that's killing us inside

If you don't see the real me
You won't see what mercy's done
If you don't see my weakness
You won't see what love has won
If you don't see the distance from the darkness to the sun
You won't see

Let the light escape
From these holes inside my soul
When I start to break
Then grace begins to flow
Let the light escape
From this wounded place inside my soul
Honestly

If you don't see the real me
You won't see what grace has done
If you don't see the weakness
You won't see what love has won
If you don't see the distance from the darkness to the sun
You won't see

Songwriters: Jason David Ingram, Douglas Kaine Mckelvey, Bryan David Olesen.

Music video here. 

This song was recently shared with me and I absolutely love it. It speaks my heart and why I share what I do. If I don’t share my broken parts, it doesn’t show what God has done in my life, and my marriage. 

I hid for so long behind a façade of having it all together when inside, I was falling apart; I was lonely, depressed, abused and suffering. I felt isolated and alone. I didn’t have a voice and what I said wasn’t taken seriously. I wanted to run away from God, my husband, and all things “Christian”. 

But God.

I was alone in an abusive marriage. A marriage where my husband abused me in every way-verbally, emotionally, sexually, physically, spiritually, and financially. And I didn’t have a voice. I would cry and tell him how badly his words hurt me (or his hands), and he would tell me I was being a baby, was overly sensitive, and he would leave, telling me he would come back (or I could come to him) when I was done crying. I spent so many hours on the floor sobbing in mental anguish. I would try to stand up for myself and tell him I would not take him treating me that way, and he would tell me I was probably demon possessed and needed to go read my Bible and pray until God worked in me and I was “normal” again. He would grab my arms as I walked away and squeeze and didn’t listen to my cries that he was hurting me. He would smack me if I said something he didn’t like, and even spanked me. He would tell me I was fat, that he would buy me a pretty dress and take me out to dinner if I could reach a certain size, that he liked blondes better, and that even though he loved me, he would like me better if my body was skinnier. He could spend whatever money he wanted but then there was not any leftover for me, and if I went over budget on groceries by any amount, he was mad. He gaslit me all the time and I felt crazy. He knew how to make me look stupid and I didn’t know if I could trust my own perception of how he was treating me. And when I tried to tell people, it just didn’t seem that bad to anyone. 

I felt trapped. And at every turn I read and heard that I just needed to submit more, give more sex, and be meek and quiet and I would “win him without a word”. The issue wasn’t how he was treating me, but how I was responding to his abuse. I knew I needed to be sexually available to him whenever he needed, but I would cry as he had sex with me while our 2 month old baby screamed in the other room, or he would push me to do things I was uncomfortable with or was painful and I was scared of him. Sex often hurt but I grit my teeth and learned how to bear it. He didn’t respect my boundaries in the bedroom at all and made fun of me for trying to have them. I was used and pushed beyond my comfort and yet I didn’t think I had any choice but to comply. After all, sex was supposed to fix all things, and if I didn’t give in he would find it elsewhere and I would be to blame. So I learned to disassociate from myself to endure the trauma of the man who vowed to cherish me hurting me and not caring. I had heard my whole life that if I waited for marriage, sex would be wonderful and I would have a great and happy marriage. And since I had sex (with my husband) before marriage, I believed that this was my punishment. This was my fault. This was my lot in life because I didn’t do things right. This was God’s “second best for me”. 

Pastor’s didn’t take me seriously and didn’t help. They diminished the abuse. Books I read made it worse and basically told me that he was just being a normal man and I needed to be a better wife. I took care of the house and the kids without a word and it was unthinkable of me to ask for help. I was drowning. 

Now, I know I talk about abuse a lot, and I will have another blog post asap about abuse, what it is and what it isn’t, the different kinds of abuse and why we should talk about it, but I wanted to give a bit of context as to why this topic matters so much to me. It matters because I have experienced abuse, and I have been alone. I NEVER want anyone to feel like they are alone. It took me seeing posts from friends about abuse, and reading the resources given, to realize that my marriage wasn’t normal and that it was in fact NOT meant to be like that, nor was I expected to simply endure. By enduring the abuse, I was allowing my husband to continue in his sin, unchecked, without accountability. And I was allowing my children to have abuse be their example of what a Christian marriage looked like. 

And then, after God got ahold of him and changed him- a dramatic 180° difference which took years of small changes to come to- into an amazing husband who loves, cherishes, values, and selflessly sacrifices for me, who through the power of the Holy Spirit has done the hard work of repenting and healing and helping me heal- I could not understand why I continually had anxiety attacks and the thought of having sex with the man I loved made me ill or made me panic. He no longer treated me poorly- just the opposite- but my body couldn’t seem to catch up to what my brain knew to be true. This man loves me and would not hurt me. Yet no matter what I did I couldn’t stop the feeling of suffocation and drowning in fear and despair. 

Then I began learning about trauma and the effects it has on the body thanks to FB friends. And the puzzle pieces fell together and it all made sense. The body really does keep the score. It didn’t matter how much I prayed and read my Bible, because trusting God, forgiving, loving my husband, or not having bitterness wasn’t the issue. The issue was that I had been living under a façade of everything being ok. I went from putting on a smile and acting like my broken marriage was normal, to suddenly being happy yet still putting on a front that everything was “fixed”, because I never allowed myself to simply feel. To feel the pain of my trauma, to acknowledge the trauma and abuse as it was, to talk about it and how it affected me, and to be able to mourn the years that had passed that seemed to be taken from me while I suffocated and struggled to breathe. 

I talk about all of this because I know how rare it is for abusers to change. It is extremely rare. And he is no longer an abusive husband, but is quite literally the husband and father that I had dreamed of having, if not better. And God gets all the glory for that. I want people to see what God can and did do. We serve an amazing God. (*disclaimer: this doesn’t at all mean I would advocate that a woman stay in an abusive marriage because God “could” change her abuser. Absolutely not. Just wanted to be clear. I desire to give God glory for what He has done, but don’t desire that my marriage be the standard held up for how abused women should act in the same situation. I would (and do) advise much differently now.)  

I talk about all of this, not because I have some victim mentality, or want attention, but because I know that feeling of screaming for help and being ignored and unheard. I know how it feels to be trapped in a nightmare and not being able to wake up. And I never want anyone else to feel that. I want people to know that they matter to God, that I see them, that I understand, and that they are not alone and unheard and that God sees, hears, and understands them in their pain. I cannot in good conscience let anyone suffer in silence when I can speak up. To not speak is to be apathetic to suffering, and I cannot fathom that. 

Because I speak out, women reach out to me on a semi regular basis to tell me that they have felt alone and they are happy to have someone to hear them. So many women are suffering in silence. And I cannot, I will not, sit back and say “not my problem”. I can educate about abuse and affirm these women that what they are experiencing isn’t God’s plan for marriage and that they aren’t crazy- that there is more and God doesn’t hate women and expect them to just suffer in silence. I can sit with them in their pain and pray for them.

I will use my experience and my voice to proclaim the gospel, because only the gospel has the power to change hearts. And I firmly believe that it isn’t our “broken” families or our lack of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood teaching, but it is our lack of teaching the pure, unadulterated gospel that is causing the downfall of our homes and churches. The law is not the gospel. And we need both the law and the gospel. We need to be crushed by the weight of the law, and given the hope of the good news, the gospel, always. 

And so I share. I share the gospel. I share about abuse and what it looks like and how it affects us. I share my story. I want to bring glory to God, and to love people well. The gospel work in me compels me to love my neighbor, and I do that by sharing hope and light after pain and darkness. All I desire is to glorify God with my past. To have my pain mean something. To not allow it to be for nought. I want God to use my pain and suffering and sin to show what He can do to and with someone as sinful and wretched as I, in hopes that others know that they are not beyond hope. Because no one is beyond hope. God is a God of hope. And my husband and I can testify to that. I want you to know me and know where I am coming from. And so I share. Honestly. 

Soli Deo Gloria. Always. 

~Jennifer Moodie