18
Learning about Boundaries

The stress of a new business, financial pressure, and our working together created a lot of tension. It seemed like Joel took out his anxieties and frustrations on me. That led to pushing and shoving—and I sensed it was slowly escalating. Nothing I said or did seemed to please Joel. Because of abuse in my background, I didn’t fret too much about his attitude and behavior. I didn’t like it, but I accepted that as the way life worked.

In 2000, we started going to a small church in Miami Lakes. Almost from the beginning, I observed the relationship between the pastors and their wives. I never saw any evidence of yelling or pushing. They treated each other with respect, which seemed strange to me. Maybe it had been the same at other churches, but I hadn’t noticed. Now I did.

Not long afterward, I began attending a Bible counseling class at the larger mother church in Fort Lauderdale. One week the lesson was about abuse—all kinds of mistreatment.

The teacher pointed out the characteristics of domestic abuse.

That’s what I’m living in.

That’s when I began to realize that things weren’t okay. Many, many nights I cried myself to sleep. I was in pain but I didn’t know why. I hadn’t been able to give a name to what troubled me. But when I opened up to him, Pastor John said, “If you’re living in a bad situation, that’s not okay.”

For the first time I felt someone understood.

In that class I could hardly believe what I heard. I hadn’t known what I’d experienced was abuse, even when it came to our sexual relationship. Sometimes I didn’t feel like having sex, and despite my saying no, Joel forced me. I later found out that where verbal abuse exists, there is often sexual abuse and rape in marriage. Today we call that marital rape.

By then we had been married eleven years and our relationship never improved after that. I told Joel that I wanted him to see a counselor, but he refused and my self-esteem started to dip.

Probably because of my persistence, Joel finally agreed for us to see a counselor at the larger church. In our first meeting, I told the counselor about several episodes, such as how angry Joel had gotten when I gave a needy boy a pair of sneakers and how Joel had verbally abused me in front of our kids. Joel told him what a terrible mother I was because I spent eleven dollars on a pair of shoes that I gave away. Then I related instances when Joel pushed me, slammed doors, and yelled in anger.

The counselor listened and finally told me, “You’re not submitting to your husband. That’s the reason this is happening to you.” He quoted 1 Peter 3:5, which commands women to submit to their husbands, but he never said anything about the husband loving his wife, as in Ephesians 5:25. That male counselor didn’t seem to care about Joel’s attitude or behavior, and he frequently ignored my responses and insisted that I needed to submit.

I was crushed. I had finally gone for help and been knocked down. I felt the church had let me down, and I felt even more condemned. I didn’t know what was wrong with me or why I deserved such treatment. Because of that meeting, Joel seemed to act as if the counselor had given him permission to continue doing as he pleased.

I write this because I want abuse within marriage to come to an end. For many years I didn’t even know there was a law against being raped in my own bed.

I didn’t know any better, so I lived with the situation. The abuse worsened. One time Joel accused me of adultery because I was helping one of the pastors at the church. I only wanted to serve God and to help needy people, and I needed to feel I belonged somewhere. By then I had become a shell of the person that I was before.

People who had known me before I got married realized I had changed. I lost my spontaneity, drive, and extroverted personality and became extremely submissive, shy, and introverted. As a result of constant intimidation, I was afraid to speak up about anything.

I prayed and reminded myself that God was faithful. Many times I thought, There must be somebody in church who understands. I had devoted my life to God and yet, because I was constantly being hammered down, I had no joy or peace in my life. When I’m in such a terrible, painful home situation, how can I serve God?

“I want to be a godly woman who pleases you in every way,” I prayed daily. “I don’t know how to do that when I’m being told I’m worthless and useless.” I remembered the terrible life God had delivered me from and realized that as bad as my marriage was, life was better than it had been before. But I was still miserable.

I lost weight to look good for Joel, but he accused me of having an affair. Nothing I did seemed to please him. I became sad and depressed and didn’t know what to do.

Unable to take any more stress, I became so physically sick I lay in bed for a full week. My head was killing me and I ached everywhere. Finally, I made an appointment with a doctor and Joel went with me, which he’d never done before. Looking back, I believe God wanted him there so he could hear the doctor say that I needed to go to a neurologist.

A woman in our church worked for a neurologist, and she got us in the next day. She was such a busy woman, it was a miracle to get in that quickly.

Again, Joel went with me. After the doctor examined me, she turned to my husband. “If you don’t cut some of the tension out of your wife’s life, she’s going to die. She’s under so much stress that it’s adversely affecting her body.”

The doctor put me on medication to cut down the stress. I continued to cry out to God to help me—not just to be free from tension, but to change my life and make me happy.

About that time I bought several CDs by Dr. Charles Stanley, pastor of Atlanta’s First Baptist Church, whom I had watched and enjoyed on TV. As I listened to the CDs, God seemed to whisper that I needed to get in touch with that church and they would be able to help me.

On the back of each CD cover was the ministry’s contact information. I called and spent more than an hour on the phone with a female counselor. She was compassionate and kind and listened to me pour out my pain. As a result, the woman asked for my address and sent me a large stack of books.

The woman from Dr. Stanley’s church also referred me to a wonderful counselor, Marsha Medders, who had an office at First Baptist Church of Fort Lauderdale. She was truly a godsend and met with me and Joel for three months. At first she met with us together, then separately so she could work with us individually. Because she was nonthreatening, Joel kept going—I think to please me so I wouldn’t leave him.

At one meeting Marsha said to him, “You need to stop abusing your wife—verbally and physically. Stop pushing her and begin respecting your wife.”

After that session, he told me he was finished with counseling. He would not be going again and said I couldn’t either because he wouldn’t pay for it.

I don’t recall what I said, but I prayed a great deal after that. Again, God answered my prayer. I still held a real estate license, and a couple from the church in Miami Lakes told me, “We want to buy a house, and we want you to be our real estate agent.”

Everything worked out, and within two months they moved into their new house and I had the money to pay for the rest of my counseling.

Joel probably sensed that I was changing, because his old methods no longer worked. One fear kept hitting me: if I left my husband I would have to live alone, and I’d never lived alone. I poured out my heart in an email to the senior pastor at the big church. I was still unsure of myself, and those tormenting voices from my past kept telling me I was bad. Whenever I had tried to defend myself to Joel, he always insisted that I was the one in the wrong. I was also afraid that my husband might hit me in the face. Even though I didn’t have any broken bones, I had been bruised and injured both internally and externally many times.

For thirteen years I had minimized the abuse. No one was aware of how bad it truly was because it took place behind closed doors. My kids were aware only of his verbal abuse, although that affected them as well.

The pastor emailed, “Please visit our women’s ministry. See Peggy Banks.” Peggy led the women’s ministry in that church. Later, she earned her doctorate writing on human trafficking and its spiritual effects.

I visited her office, and when I told her about our marriage, she looked right into my eyes and said, “That is abuse.” Then she added, “You don’t need to take it. There are laws to protect you and your children. You need to file a police report. The police will be on your side.”*

That was the first time I had heard there were laws to protect me. I wanted to learn more.

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*Later we worked together because we had so much in common. Peggy Banks is now with an anti-trafficking organization to free sex slaves.