Dear Readers, today I am posting a testimony that I will be sharing with some ladies groups over the coming months. It is very long, much longer than a normal blog. Please forgive me this one time. I wanted to post it and ask for prayer. I am praying that this testimony will open up opportunities to share the gospel and to help women who are suffering from abuse. Please pray with me that God will do a great work and the Gospel will be presented. Also pray that lives will be changed for the glory of God. Thank you I appreciate your support.
I feel privileged to share a testimony of the goodness and grace of God. I have known Jesus for more than 40 years. So there are many accounts I could share about my life with the Lord. I decided on this one. This is the story of how God loved me and kept me through my “dark night of the soul”.
After my children had moved out, my difficult marriage became intolerable. I was not sure what to do. After extensive counseling and requests for help from spiritual leadership, things were not improving. They were getting much worse. A counselor told me that she felt that it would be best if I left home for a time until we could resolve some serious problems.
I went to stay at our other home where my daughter was living while she attended college. While living there, I attended church with her. The pastor was preaching through the book of Ephesians. He came to Ephesians 5:22 “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.” I was ready to hear what I needed to do to be a better wife. I was shocked by what I actually heard.
Pastor Kerry said that he could not, in good conscience, teach this passage without first talking about the manipulation and abuse that often occurred by using this verse. As he spoke that day, I sobbed uncontrollably through the service. I even tried to leave more than once, but my daughter insisted that I stay because she felt I needed to hear what the pastor was saying. What I learned that day was that contrary to how I saw myself, I was not a submissive Christian wife. I was an abused woman.
That day my life changed. I started to understand the devastating truth about my marriage. I started to learn about abuse and the devastation that it brings. My life was already very difficult, and I was emotionally struggling. When this realization came, the emotional instability grew. The mental anguish at times felt unbearable.
I started to question God. I was asking why. I felt that I had fallen into a deep dark pit, and I would not ever see daylight again. It seemed that God was not there and not listening. I was praying that things would improve, but things got worse, much worse.
The downward spiral escalated one Wed in June 2009. My husband was out of town on a cruise with his family and friends. I was staying with my parents and working at vacation Bible school. Our memory verse was Isaiah 41:10 “fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” This verse was to minister to my heart that very night and then for the next year it was my hope.
I got a call after I went to bed that night. The caller said my son Ryan was in the hospital with a brain bleed and had lost half of his eyesight. I made the two hour trip to the hospital saying Isaiah 41:10 over and over again, 10 “fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”
During Ryan’s 9-day hospital stay, he had brain surgery to remove a cancerous tumor, and we learned that it was unlikely that he would regain his lost eyesight. Again over and over I repeated Isaiah 41:10.
It is very difficult to see your child suffer. It is even more difficult to go through it without the love and support of your spouse. Rather than help, this situation was complicated by my husband’s abusive tendencies and attitudes, but God got me through. I never went back home to live. I left my house, my friends, my church, and my ministries to get away from the abuse.
About a month, after this, I learned that my husband was gambling excessively. I knew for years that he would lie about gambling and make excuses to leave home so he could go to the casino. I did not know how out of control it was. And of course, he did not want to stop or be accountable for his choices. It was another difficult issue that I felt unable to deal with.
The problems kept coming. It was a year of disasters and tragedies. My 23-year-old niece passed away from spinal meningitis while she was trying to recover from an addictive lifestyle. My parent’s home burned down. My sister betrayed me, causing a rift in my family. My father, not understanding the issues, was unsupportive. Then I found out our family dog had died.
Depression overwhelmed me. But I held tenaciously to the truth that God was with me, and he would help me. The weird thing was, I didn’t have feelings of closeness to God. In fact, I felt that He was remote and distant. Through my friends, counselors, and spiritual leaders, I learned that I was suffering from something that Christians had historically called “The Dark Night of the Soul.”
During this time, I learned so much about God’s love. Although I did not feel God’s presence, I knew He was there. “fear not for I am with you” (Isaiah 41:10) I learned to walk by faith.
“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.” (Romans 5:1–11, ESV)
Although it seemed that my world was falling apart, faith carried me through. Verses like these reinforced what I had known my whole life. God loves me, and he will do a good work in my life. I knew that God, who is able to make reconciliation for sin, was able to reconcile the pieces of my life. He alone is able to transform suffering into hope. He alone is able to pour out love into our hearts when we are consumed by shame and despair.
And I grasped hold of the fact that His love never fails. A familiar passage from Romans 8 became real and tangible. “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, ‘For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:28–39, ESV)
God is faithful, compassionate, and kind. Without His love and care, I am not sure I would have made it through that tragic year. I am sure that I would not have made it through as well as I have. Without Jesus in my life, I would be without hope. But as a child of God, I know that no matter what my future holds, I do not have to be afraid. He is with me. I do not have to be distressed, disappointed or sad because He is my God. He gives me strength, He helps me and He holds me in His righteous right hand.
If anyone has questions about abuse or about the resources I found helpful, please let me know. More importantly, if you do not have a relationship with God, I would enjoy sharing the story of God’s love with you. I would like to tell you the good news of Jesus death, burial and resurrection from the dead and how that makes an eternal difference for all who would believe in Him.