You Might Have Better Luck Talking to a Grizzly than to an Abuser Who Refuses to Acknowledge Personal Responsibility
By: Kimberly Dimick
Here's how you know when an abuser is refusing to acknowledge personal responsibility: He dismisses your heart and answers your concerns with attacks, justifications and defenses.
All these are excuses he relies upon to give his flesh/carnal nature free reign in his heart. He has given into the ways of his sin rather than believing God's answer for him which is choose to lay his life down. Laying his life down for a wife IS LOVE. I know you know this.
I personally NEEDED to hear the truth over and over and over again until it broke through the lies I believed or was told to believe. Jesus said, "And I say AGAIN." Jesus knows the truth has to be reiterated so that it goes deep into our spirit, effecting and changing our soul.
Abuse IS abuse and LOVE is love. Abuse never changes its way of behaving. Its characteristics can not be altered or changed until and unless it comes face to face with the Cross. It can not be given any room in our hearts or minds. It has to go and be cut off to stop its effects. There is no other way to deal with sin. It can not be sidestepped or appeased. Abuse can not be allowed to exist in relationship.
When abuse comes then relationship ceases to exist.
Love behaves in a certain way too. Love remains steadfast and faithful no matter what conditions it is put under. One can not give it lip service without following through with actions. It can even pretend to be something it is not. One can appear to have all the right things going for them but if everything we do and say can not be proven out then it is NOTHING.
The PURPOSE of God in marriage was to be convinced over and over again that we are LOVED. How does a woman KNOW she is loved? When she is KNOWN. When she is accepted and understood.
Yes, even understood with her spots, blemishes and wrinkles…..that nothing she could do would ever cause her husband to turn away from her.
It is in the presence of love alone that changes a person.
Jesus never asked us to be able to change to be loved. It is being loved and then responding to this love that gives us the power to change. A husband is loved this same way as Christ is the head and supply and source for the man. He is the bride and the husband!! He takes from Jesus and pours it out to a Bride. There is something about the way God created a man that this would make him feel loved!!
Why, I wonder, are we so questioning of this? We tend to dismiss this longing to love and be loved when God Himself also longs to connect to us HUMAN BEINGS too!! God has called it GOOD. That word means in Hebrew is….His GLORY. Are we surprised then that the human heart also longs to know love with Jesus and each other?
A wife needs to be loved in her imperfections and struggles without having to apologize for being human and feeling this deep need in her heart to connect with another human being and share this life God paid dearly to offer us. This after-all, is how Jesus loves the sinner and turns them into saints. When she can be who she is without all the trappings of self-improvement knowing that Christ's love alone is her Salvation. There is nothing she can add to love but ONLY to accpet it and receive it as a gift.
What is contentious to him is that you are able to clearly see his abuse and call him out on it. Jesus said, "they loved the darkness so that their their evil deeds would not come into the light and be exposed."
His behavior and communication is all about him staying in control, the kind of control that sends you the message to back off and leave him ALONE in the dark.
A man insisting on being ALONE is apart form the help of his wife is antithetical to marriage…from the very beginning. A man's pride is always seen at this point of his wife calling that man to live according to the grace of God rather than staying under the curse. God's intention was that men learn how to love, which has no law against such, so that they may grow and mature In Christ. It is really that simple.The best way to stay in Christ is to walk in love. Joshua and I have found that resisting a wife is always to protect themselves from being EXPOSED. Yet, David said, "When I covered my sin, I did not prosper."
I was concerned when you said, you wanted to try a different approach. As you can now see, not contending against him actually made it worse.
A man whose abuse goes unchecked will always escalate in his abuse.
His fleshly nature is out of control. By not being oppositional (which is great for national protection for Israel as a people) but it is NOT for marriage or relationship. Sin never says enough, and becomes unrelenting in its demands. It is not you that is making demands, my friend, but your husband who is demanding that you leave him to his folly and sin without any responsibility to you or God. That goes back to the first sin ever committed, which is abdicating responsibility to God to watch over and care for his wife. When confronted with this truth a husband will BLAME her for falling short. He wants off the hook when the Cross already let him off the hook for sin and released power to walk out that new life in Christ. We can not make our husbands love the truth more than they love their very own lives.
When husbands communicate this way, it is their way of trying to keep their wife in the dark along with them. Your resistance and opposition to a lie is built into your help-meet role. We are called as wives to NOT allow our husbands to call evil, good and good, evil.
Your help-meet role actually calls you to be oppositional.
She is created by God to oppose everything that is not of love. That is why she is the COUNTER-part. She counteracts SIN with truth. God knew the fall of man would happen as the VERY NEXT verse, in Genesis, introduces God's help for that man after the Fall. A help-meet is God's provision for that man to learn how to walk out God's redemptive purposes.
What you can not do is make him hear you or God.
This is where the utter frustration takes over. Instead of being understood, she is having to explain herself over and over again. A wife is not created to be set aside and ignored. She is the more vulnerable vessel, the weaker vessel in that regard.
Her NEEDS are what are supposed to spur her husband on to lay his life down to meet those needs. God calls that CONNECTING.
After years and years of neglecting her needs, a wife will go into survival mode. That looks different for each woman. Some, die inside thinking that this is her death to self, but it is actually a death to the person Jesus came to love and die for. She loses herself. Other women fight back to try and hang onto some kind of human dignity.
What looks like "acting out" is survival to try and hold onto her sanity by not accepting life on his terms as life on his terms is not the life Christ DIED to give her.
It is one of the hardest choices to make in this life to let go of a husband when you are bonded to him in traumatic ways. Sadly, we learn to do relationship with AB– USE rather than learning to relate to each other in LOVE. This is no different than what the devil does to us. He talks us into bondage because we do not understand true liberty and freedom in Jesus. We opt for what is more familiar to us. The lie comes in to tell us that love is not an option for us so we do what we know.
Everything inside your heart and mind is telling you that there is no way out, not realizing this is the bonding that has taken place because you became one flesh. Then add to this the chemicals that are poured into your system causing you bond to those lies.
The bond has to be torn asunder to break free from it. You have not truly lived or been loved. You have spent your life with him trying to figure out how to stay alive emotionally and spiritually. Your responses to him are really what is true here. Women are not taught to trust the image and likeness of God in her.
I believe that turning (desire) is God's remedy for her when her husband demands she lives under the curse of control or ruling over her.
With love and concern,
Kimberly
Kimberly Dimick and her husband, Joshua Dimick, know how it feels to lose everything: marriage and family, church and reputation, finances and careers, and so much more. Together and separately they have walked the path of Love, a narrow path, a path that is lonely and not well-used.
They intimately understand the soul-shattering pain of separation and divorce and they also know "The Way Home" to a life of choosing unconditional love.
The surprising answers to a happy marriage are shared in her posts, articles, and their book-in-progress.
As you venture on this journey with Kimberly and Josh you will experience how God shines His most brilliant light in her darkest hours. Today their mission is to provide a voice to women suffering in silence, shining the Light of Truth into the dark places.
As you journey with Kimberly and Josh you will witness a true life transformation that will shatter the misinformation and lies commonly fed to women that keep them in false submission.
More Marriage Advice & Letters from Kimberly Dimick
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