Recently I’ve been working with Christian clients stuck in abusive marriages and a common factor rings true for why most of these clients stayed in their marriages for so long: the church.

But I won’t talk about them. I’ll talk about me.

If I could order my priorities for much of my young adult life, it was God first, the Church a close second, and everything/everyone else was way below. I thought this was good and right. I LOVED the Church. It was through the church that I found my community, my purpose, my passion. The Church is God’s bride and what a beautiful place to know Him more.

I remember in my 20’s, my pastor then would regularly talk about how the divorce rate is 50% outside AND inside the church. 50% makes sense for nonbelievers, but how horrible that the Church matches that percentage. He would imply how the Church has failed to raise up genuine, transformed people and that was why the divorce rate was so high. I would nod at these statements with an inner battle cry of “I’ll show the world how to marry! I’ll never divorce!” Divorce was for heathens, lukewarm Christians, and the foolish who brought trouble on themselves.

With the best of intentions, I thought I was being passionate and on fire for God. Looking back, I was grooming myself to be like one of Job’s friends. My theology on marriage was so deeply flawed, and sadly mimics what the Church still believes today: that to divorce is due to spiritual failure, and the truly godly persevere in marriage No. Matter. What.

“No matter what” is what kept me in an abusive marriage for 9 years. My husband verbally abused me from the very start of our marriage. The first time was 1 week into our marriage, a couple days after we moved to a new country. I had just taken off my clothes to change, and in my nakedness, he began cursing at me and saying that I was unfocused, selfish, unreliable for the way I had acted at our wedding reception earlier that day. He questioned my integrity and my calling to ministry. He thought it preposterous how I could be so self-centered at our wedding reception, failing to see that it was a ministry opportunity. For context, at the reception, he had said a thank you message to the church members who attended, and when he asked if I wanted to say anything, I said a simple “thank you for coming” instead of relaying a pastoral message to our church congregants because I had just met them that day, and it didn’t feel appropriate. He was livid that I had missed an opportunity to minister. He also raged about my choice to talk to friends who had flown in from other countries instead of solely focusing on talking to the local church members. I had never been spoken to this way before, though I had witnessed our former pastor speak to leaders this way. It felt like my husband was no longer my partner, but this severe leader and judge.

I was mortified by what happened. My husband profusely apologized the next day, saying I didn’t deserve to be talked to that way. I was God’s child and precious to both God and my husband. My husband’s job was to protect me. I really hoped I could believe him. I had called my mentor about it and she had simply said “this is what it is to be married to a man (of our ethnicity)”. Again, I was mortified. This was NOT ok. But God hates divorce, and I’m in this forever, because I love God and I’m also leading the church. I need to set a good and godly example for others. No. Matter. What.

Fast forward 4 years and the abuse got worse and more frequent, with the apologies becoming scarce and more on the grounds of “you shouldn’t have done that”.  While pregnant with my first child, I was leading a local missions trip while hosting another team from another country. During one of the lunches, my husband pulled me away “to help me run errands” only to curse and yell at me about how incompetent I was for all the mistakes I was making. I was an embarrassment and letting down so many people. How could I be so selfish with my mistakes and forcing people to bend over backwards for me? And they’ll never tell me how much trouble I’ve put them through because of their Asian culture. He said I needed to take responsibility for everything I did wrong and explain to everyone on the team how I won’t make that mistake ever again. I missed lunch that day from all the yelling and my own crying. I remember thinking how wrong this was: I was pregnant, I was leading a team and being harangued in public. But God must have a purpose for this I thought. My husband’s treatment is wrong and our marriage is flailing, but God is bigger than this. Abigail stayed with foolish Nabal in the Bible. Hosea stayed with prostitute Gomer. God wants me to be an example for others and endure this marriage. No. Matter. What.

During my second pregnancy, I was on bedrest because of frequent spotting and the danger of losing my child. My bedrest forced my husband to have to care for our firstborn more, and there were many days he would yell/curse at me while in bed for my inability to take care of myself. After my 2nd was born, the cursing got worse where he’d call me a b*tch in public and even abandoned me and our newborn when we journeyed far away from home. He had promised to take me to a nice lunch at a new restaurant. It was about a 30 minute train ride away to a different part of the city. While there, he cursed me off in a store in front of other people and in a rage, stormed away. I remember sitting at lunch, in a new place, crying with my newborn sleeping in the stroller. “God, why aren’t you answering my prayers? When will you heal my husband of his uncontrollable rage? What more can I do?”. At this point, I had done the love dare – committing to never saying a negative thing, no matter how offensive/humiliating it was. Showering my husband with compliments, messages of gratitude, interceding regularly for him. This can’t be ok. I’m not ok with this.  

I need to be clear: I NEVER thought my husband’s behavior was right. But my theology was “Christians don’t divorce”. I had felt so abandoned by God because it seemed like the only way out of this situation was for my husband to recognize his abusive ways and to change. I’m not allowed to leave, so God needs to change my husband. And that’s what the Church unknowingly pushes. Divorce is for heathens, and so if you’re in an abusive marriage, you need to believe that God will make a great story out of this. Just hang in there a little bit longer and be an example of how God can work in a desperate place. I held onto that for 9 years, desperately trying to somehow see the threads of a story of redemption in our marriage.

For the past few months, I’ve been in DivorceCare and one of the other participants was getting divorced due to her husband’s continued infidelity. She shared about her current loneliness from losing her partner. I didn’t struggle with that kind of loneliness because I had always been alone in my marriage. In fact, being married was lonelier for me. The cognitive dissonance of being emotionally and spiritually alone while married is heart-wrenching. But there is a new loneliness I face post separation: it’s the absence of the Church and how safe it used to feel. I’m no longer part of the main-stream congregation. I’m in the margin – the uncomfortable place where popular theology deems my choices as wrong or too complicated. The Church, that I had so loved and given my life for, left me. And this pain is so heavy. Well-meaning people try to convince me to “hang in there” and that “God will do something”, with heavily implied messages that God blesses marriages,  divorces. They don’t understand the soul-crushing and generational impact of abuse. They only understand that divorce is an icky word. And as I am now in that process of divorce, I am therefore icky too. I’m too icky for their comfort. I’m in the margin. And that’s the loneliness I contend with.

I have zero regrets in separating from my husband. I am grateful to God for bringing me to this place. Not only am I in a place of safety and sanity now, but my kids are too. They have access to a healthier mom now, who has more strength to parent them compared to before, when all my energy was devoted to managing their father’s emotions and behavior.

God defeated my no-matter-what. Because the only real “no-matter-what” there is, is God’s unconditional love and forgiveness. God loves me no matter what my marital status is. God loves me no matter who may abandon me or abuse me. God loves me no matter how the Church may judge my situation. God loves me, and I will find my worth in Him, No.  Matter. What.