HOW I WENT FROM I DO
TO I DON’T
IN LESS THAN 6 MONTHS
I met my husband when I moved into the
apartment next to his. We became friends and soon after started dating. I saw
signs of aggression pretty early in our relationship. Still, since it was never
aimed at me I figured there was no need to make a big deal of it. I guess I had
forgotten that how a man treated others was a good indication of how he would
treat me.
After five months of dating he had
asked me to marry him. I was ecstatic. All I could think of was how I had
longed to be married and have children. It had not occurred to me that I never
knew him well enough and so did not yet know what his goals or plans for
marriage and the future were, and whether these were aligned with my own
thoughts and goals. All I wanted to hear were wedding bells.
A month after the proposal his attitude
changed. He started using derogatory names, swore at me, shouted, slammed his
fist into the door and threw tantrums. Although it made me uneasy, I thought
that this was normal behaviour for people planning a wedding and a future
together. It was only later that I realized that I was making excuses because
these behaviors are not OK. They are clear signs of abuse.
I had decided to leave him but before I
could I learnt I was pregnant. I told him about the baby and he was excited –
so excited he promised that things would be different. They really were. Our
relationships took a 360 degree turn. It was the happiest I had been in a long
while.
Like everything else good about us, the
joy was short lived. I found out he was cheating. I learnt he had been taking
money from my bank account to support her and her child. I was furious. When I
saw him rather than confront him I just told him it was over. He got mad and attacked
me. My neighbor heard my screams and came to my rescue. It was an ugly scene. I
swore I would never again be with this man.
After that I really thought there was
no way I would ever go back to him but then I lost the baby. Since I was not
yet a Christian, I convinced myself that I needed him to get over the pain. We
not only got back together, we also moved in together.
Things got sour pretty quickly. A
couple of months after moving in together I found out that he was still having
an affair. I finally came close to a nervous breakdown when I learnt she was not
the only. What was worse was that he brought someone into our home. I packed my
bags, changed my number, and disappeared.
It was two years before we spoke again.
He called to say he was about to start a new job, had plans to go back to
school, had become a Christian and was now a different man. I was happy for
him, mostly because I had become a Christian too.
We spent quite a bit of time sharing
about God and our Christian walk. We would even pray together from time to
time. Before long I was convinced that he had changed. I felt I could trust
him. A month later we were married.
The honeymoon month was amazing. The
month after was great but we had started arguing. By month four I was walking
on egg shells. Then everything fell apart.
See, neither of us had steady jobs. The
bills were piling up. We both felt overwhelmed. As the days crept on it became
more and more difficult to find joy in the Lord. It was so much easier to
revert to our old selves. We argued constantly. I felt drained and felt too
ashamed to tell anyone what was going on. I felt trapped. I thought I had to
stay because God hated divorce. I thought God would hate me if I left my
husband. It never occurred to me that God is love and wants me to be loved.
Things just kept getting worse. One day
he lost his temper and threatened to kill me. He told me I was lucky he married
me because nobody else wanted me. He told me that I was the worst kind of wife
a man could have. He ranted for close to an hour walked out and vanished for
days.
The first night he left I stared at the
ceiling for hours. All the memories from two years before came flooding back.
Memories of not wanting to fall asleep because I was afraid he would try to
kill me, of feeling ashamed because of the lies he told people about me, of the
name calling and fights. And though I knew it was time to end my marriage I could
not help but think, How will it look? What will people say? How do I explain
being married for less than the time it took to plan my wedding?
When he finally came home we talked and
agreed to go back to counseling instead. As we sat with the pastor and I
listened to my husband, I came to the conclusion that we should never have been
married. It became clear that he believed that submission meant subservience
and in his mind his needs superseded mine. I knew this meant that things would
never change. The next day I told my husband I wanted a divorce.
It has been a year and a half since our
separation. I am restored and I walk in my healing daily. To get to where I am
now involved me making deliberate and strategic moves.
Firstly, I made a
clean break from my husband. I threw away everything that tied me to him, ended
all communication with him, limited my conversations about him, and deleted any
discussions we had since I had no need for them where the courts were
concerned.
Secondly, I filled
the void left by our separation by creating my own routines. I started
volunteering, attended Bible school and hung out with friends every Friday
evening. My routine helped tremendously. Otherwise, too much free time would
lead to me missing him.
All this redirected energy drew me
closer to God. So third on my agenda was recommitting my life to Him. This led
me to a deeper life of prayer, worship and reading of the Bible.
In my prayer time one day the Lord told
me that the friction in my marriage was not just because of my husband. I was
also to blame. I had not prayed enough for my marriage or husband. I was not
submissive. This was a slap in the face because I thought I had done everything
I could to nurture my marriage. So fourth on my list was repenting of the
mistakes I made, and asking God to forgive us and bless us both. (Luke 6:28)
The Lord also showed me that I needed
to renounce every negative word, every curse word, every derogatory word, and
every death word that was spoken over my life, whether by me or my husband.
Finally
the Lord said “You’ve renounced the negative words but you need to replace them
with affirmations.” So I committed to declaring every day, all that God says about
me: I would personalize Scriptures and read them aloud, activating them into
the atmosphere so that my soul and the enemy of my soul would know that I know
who I am. “I am a friend of God” (Exodus 33:11), “I am rooted and established
in Love” (Ephesians 3:17), “I am restored” (Job 22:23), “I am renewed” (Isaiah
40:31), “My soul will prosper” (3 John 2), “My soul is healed” (Psalm 19:7), “I
am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14).
I thank God for what He has done in my
life. I thank Him because He helped me to recover from what could have been the
death of me. Now I use my experience to help others. I conduct talks and
seminars on partner abuse. I believe I have been given a second chance. I have
been given the chance to live again and I am committed to taking that gift to
help others in whatever way I can.
http://triciaanneymorris.wix.com/author
