To read all previously published parts, click on "Genny's Story" in the labels column at the left. Note that entries appear in reverse order, the most recent on top.
Genny talks about specific actions of her own that helped her recover from experiencing abuse.
Marjorie: You said that several things the counselor suggested were helpful to you in recovery, including journaling. Tell us a little about that.
Genny: I am a Christian, but still, forgiveness was a huge issue for me even though Jim and I were no longer together. I had been really terribly wronged, and I had miserable memories. But I knew I did not want to live with bitterness that would eat up my life. So a very important exercise for me was taking a bunch of note cards and organizing all the offenses I could think of that Jim had committed against me. I actually sorted and color-coded them! The first group was the things that irritate "everybody." Maybe ninety-five out of a hundred wives have a husband who tells them how to drive! Lots of husbands don't know how to sort laundry or they put off getting a haircut. I decided I should just forget those things. In the big picture, they are pretty inconsequential.
The next grouping was of the things that had made living with Jim harder than it had to be, but he had little awareness of how to make life run smoothly. He didn't tune in very well to anyone's feelings—not even his own. Everything was pretty much on the surface where words could get him by. So here I put a lot of things like always being late and not showering often enough and "forgetting" to carry his snack stuff back to the kitchen and making a great deal of noise. I remembered the verse that says "charity covers the multitude of sins," and I thought that's what I should do about these things—just deliberately choose to let love be bigger than they were. They had made life with Jim difficult, but they were not truly damaging.
Then there were the genuine wrongs against me: the control, the harsh words, the unkind comparisons, the deceit and lies, the selfishness and laziness. It was hard, but the only thing I could do about those past offenses was to forgive. "If you refuse to forgive, your Father in heaven will not forgive you." I forgave, and then if I remembered the hurtful thing again, I forgave again. Over and over. I still do.
And the last category was sin against God. I had to come to grips with the truth that some of the things in Jim's life are things that God's Word says He hates. Cursing, lust, lies, anger and evil-speaking . . .
M: And his abuse of you?
[Here Genny was silent for a long time.]
M: Is abuse an offense against God?
G: Yes. It breaks His second-greatest commandment. Love.
M: And what could you do about those wrongs?
G: It took me quite awhile to accept that that there was not one single thing I could do about them. Those are God's business, and I just have to leave it up to Him. His love for Jim is as great as His love for me, although I know He isn't pleased with Jim's choices about how to respond to that love. The choices he made would not have hurt me either, if I had not loved him. That is the risk love takes when we marry. It's the risk God takes all the time with each of us.
M: What would you say was the most difficult for you of all those offenses you listed?
G: I think the hardest was coming to the realization and then the acceptance that Jim had never really loved me.
M: And why do you come to that conclusion?
G: Because love doesn't do the things Jim did. No matter how I look at it, it just doesn't. Read the love chapter in the Bible, and you'll see how love behaves. I tried and tried to come up with some other answer, and as long as I was evading what was obvious truth, I wasn't healing. When I ruthlessly said to myself, "Okay, he didn't love me. Deal with it," I then began to gain control of my thoughts and emotions. That did not ease the sorrow, but you know, truth really does set us free, even if the truth is a terrible thing to face
M: But you said earlier that Jim asked you to marry him because he wanted you in his life. Wasn't that love?
G: No, he didn't actually say he wanted me in his life. He needed me, and I wasn't tuned in to that difference before we married. I believe he wanted my stability, my reputation with people, my active faith, my established home—maybe my steady income too, I don't know! Only later did I realize that he never did say, "I want to try to make your life easier and happier. I want to provide for you. I want to be with you always."
I wouldn't go so far as to say Jim set out to hurt me and make my life miserable. Control me? Yes, but I don't think he deliberately decided to do what would bring me pain. Use me? Yes, but that is just the way he expected the relationship to work. And he may well have thought that marriage would somehow make him different from the man he knew himself to be. He may have believed that a stable home and a loving wife were the answer to his misbehavior and have been surprised to find that it was not. I think he didn't really plan for this to cost him anything, and when he realized that love itself has demands—even though I was not personally making them—he opted out in every imaginable way: emotionally, physically, financially, spiritually. And then blamed me for his inadequacies!
To be continued.
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