TPJ12 | The Dutiful Wife; Shining A Light On Hidden Abuse | 11.20.22

Foreign.

Welcome to the Prodigal Journey, where we celebrate Christ's power through our weakness.

Thank you for joining us today.

If you love the podcast, please leave us a review or a rating to help more people see our content.

Now for today's episode, we are going to talk to my sister Megan, and I just want to say I'm thankful for her willingness to come on the show and just share some of her story about hidden abuse.

This topic is something that is just very near to my heart for a few reasons.

One reason is because I have lived on both sides of this topic.

I've talked several times in other episodes just about how my use of pornography fueled this hidden abuse emotionally and spiritually.

So I have been the perpetrator of hidden abuse, but I have also experienced it from the other side now that people in my family have lived through it as victims.

Not only my sister, but some other family members as well.

And I've had some friends walk through this as well.

So it's also important to me because we just need to talk about it more.

It's an issue that continues to grow, but at the rate it is growing, there's just not enough people talking about it, especially in churches.

So in this episode, though, I want to make it clear that for this episode we are just strictly talking about hidden abuse and not physical.

The difference being that just hidden abuse can be harder to spot and it shows itself in different ways that we will talk about today for this episode.

But I would encourage you, if you are experiencing any type of physical abuse, to call someone right away.

Get the help you need to get out of that situation.

We will have some helpful resources linked in the show notes, different books, numbers you can call, etc.

So that will be in the show notes.

All right, let's get into this interview and shine some light on hidden abuse.

All right, Megan, welcome to the show.

How are you doing today?

I'm good.

How are you?

I'm doing well.

It's good to have you on the show.

And also I'd like to introduce a new co host who has made it clear she might not be on every episode, but she will offer some helpful insight on different episodes.

It is my fiance, Dawn.

Hi, how are you doing, Dawn?

I'm doing good.

Good.

I'm glad you decided to join the show as well.

I know she'll be a huge help offering some women's insight to different issues we talk about.

Megan, let's start with a little just get to know you.

What do you do for a living?

I'm a special ed teacher.

And right now I work in an alternative school, so kids that are in trouble with the law are put up for expulsion and kicked out of school.

Okay, now you recently just kind of made that shift from just a regular school setting.

Was there anything that just kind of made you decide you wanted to make that move or.

I had been at my old school for five years, and I just needed a change.

Education in general right now is tough for everybody, and so I just needed to go somewhere else and try something different.

So that was kind of what fueled it.

Okay, and now you also have two boys, correct?

Yes, I have two cats.

They're two years old.

They're brothers, so their names are Sloan and Shepherd.

They're named after Grey's Anatomy doctors.

So there'll be three in May on Cinco de Mayo.

Nice.

Yes.

I've heard they're going to make an appearance at our wedding.

I mean, they've got some bow ties ready to go, and they do have a backpack that can be used, so.

It seems like.

So you and I share storage space on icloud, and I feel like videos and pictures of cats are quickly filling up my space to where I might have to upgrade my storage space.

Yeah, well.

Well, I was put on your shared family plan because I ran out of space, so.

Okay, now let's talk a little bit about just the background with your story a little bit.

I mean, let's just start with how did the two of you meet?

So we actually met in middle school on an online game that we used to play that was pretty common to play back in the early.

Like, early 2000s, mid 2000.

What game was it?

Runescape.

Okay.

Yeah, so we met there and then kind of in the chat room, started chatting and just went from there.

And you two were living in different states at the time?

Yep.

Okay, now, at what point did you guys decide to start the dating relationship and what was that like?

So we talked back and forth kind of through middle school, high school, and then obviously it was.

Since it was an online thing, you know, my parents weren't too keen on that continuing, so we actually stopped talking for a little while until college, and he actually followed me to the school I was going to.

So really it wasn't until college where I guess we actually started dating officially.

Okay.

Yeah, your brothers were not too keen on that either.

Just have to put that out there.

Yeah, I.

Looking back, I, you know, probably should have listened to some of that.

But, yeah, there's 11 years difference between the two of us, so.

Definitely very protective.

And I think even you, from a sense, are very protective over a lot of stuff with us as well.

But, yeah, that's just how families are now.

How long did you guys know each other before you guys got married?

About seven or eight years.

And then in total, we were together probably about 10.

Okay.

Now, when would you say you kind of started to notice that there were some problems?

Did you see different types of behaviors or red flags?

Well, honestly, like I said, the Internet should have been the first red flag, but you know, how.

So I back.

I.

Back then, even though it was not that long ago, but back then, Internet dating wasn't.

There were no dating apps.

I mean, we still use, like, AOL Instant messenger and stuff like that.

So looking back now, it was seems kind of strange to have met somebody on the Internet because that wasn't what people were doing.

So that probably should have been more of a red flag than it was, I guess, dating.

There were not necessarily a ton of red flags that were very clear to me.

It kind of started towards the end of our dating into being engaged, and things would come up that just kind of pushed boundaries with females.

Whether it was like, emotional attachments to females that were inappropriate for being engaged and stuff like that is kind of where it started was.

What do you mean?

Like, what's an example?

So a lot of it was texting back and forth or snapchatting back and forth with females.

And it was almost like he was an emotional boyfriend to a lot of different women at the time.

And I think he would always say he was trying to help them or, oh, they're having this issue, so I'm being a friend, or, oh, that person's like a sister to me.

But it started off as the texting and the Snapchatting back and forth, and they would contact him with a lot of, like, very personal issues that he would get involved with with them.

And you were uncomfortable.

Yeah.

Were there times where you had had conversations with him about that?

Like, how did he respond?

It was always a.

The.

The phrase she's just like a sister to me was thrown around a lot, which I think now when I hear that phrase even today, it kind of like makes me cringe a little bit.

But he came from a.

Not a great home life himself, and so he kind of tried to turn it around into a.

Well, because I grew up this way, I want to make sure other people don't struggle the same way as me, but just the nature of it and the issues that the females would have were more appropriate for maybe another female to handle.

Let's talk a little bit about how the different types of hidden abuse affected you personally.

Well, first of all, let's kind of talk about what it looked like and how it showed itself, because a lot of times I feel like if you haven't experienced it or had family that have gone through it, like, a lot of people just don't know what it looks like.

And that's why they call it hidden abuse, because it's so hard to spot sometimes.

So what would you say a lot of that, how that played out for you?

For me, in my situation, it was a lot of manipulation and guilt tripping.

And I think the term nowadays is gaslighting, and that's thrown around a lot.

But just the manipulation piece, the emotional and the psychological part of it, even some things as small as if I asked who he was talking to or what their conversation was about, the response was normally, oh, it.

It really hurts me that you don't trust me, and how could you not trust me?

And things like that where you just kind of get to a point where you stop asking questions because it just causes another argument or you're made to feel like you're crazy and what you're seeing and feeling is not valid.

I think that's.

Yeah, that's important that you.

That you're highlighting that.

Because when you were talking about saying that something bothered you, my immediate thought was, would he have, like, if you had given him a choice, it like kind of like an ultimatum, either do this or we're not going to continue the relationship.

How do you think that that would have played?

I think because those conversations did kind of come up, and not from my end necessarily saying, oh, I'm gonna leave or break off the engagement or whatever it was at the time.

But the conversations were had.

You know, this bothers me for these reasons.

And in that time, the response was always, well, you grew up in a really Christian household, and so the world doesn't see things like you do.

Like, the world just doesn't work that way anymore, and so I'm not doing anything wrong.

Then eventually it would always be, oh, you're right, I'm sorry, I'll change.

And then three weeks later, there would be another female.

I think what I'm thinking is like, just a question of can you do this to prefer me?

You know, like, there's the choice of continuing on this behavior or not continuing on that behavior out of preference, out of respect for me.

And it seems like there was never a choice for you.

In that decision process for him.

Is that accurate?

Yeah, I would say that's accurate.

As things progressed and we got married and started having issues after that as well, that is kind of what it came down to.

Just, I want to go help this person over here because they need my help while, you know, your wife sits at home until 2am not knowing where you're at.

So, yeah, there was an element of he didn't value our relationship, it seemed like.

And didn't care enough to protect it.

Yeah.

Because I think, you know, when we're talking about hidden abuse, I mean, it can look like a lot of different things.

And I think for our listeners, more than the actual, I guess, actions of an individual, it seems to me more like it's like you said, it's just valuing the relationship.

Whether a person is doing something that's morally wrong or not.

Like, for example, putting a cap back on a toothpaste or something like that.

Like, I. I prefer for the cap to stay on the toothpaste.

And Ben and I even, like, had this conversation early on because I wanted to know, like, hey, if I like the cap to stay on the toothpaste and you like the cap not to be on the toothpaste, how are we going to resolve this conflict?

And what did you say?

I don't remember my exact words, but I just remember it not being an issue for me.

I mean, I want the cap on the toothpaste.

You don't want a bunch of junk getting in there or the dogs licking the open toothpaste container, you know.

But for me, it wasn't an issue because it was like, okay, like, this is something that's a preference for her.

That even if I did have an issue with putting the cap back on, that's not something that I would be like, okay, I'm not gonna do it just out of spite for you.

So.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

And I guess that's what I'm trying to get at.

There's.

There's this root of preference, you know, I'm gonna do this even.

Even if it puts me out.

I'm gonna do this out of preference, out of respect for the other individual.

Yeah.

And looking back, I feel like I can see where, you know, and again, this is my perspective kind of thinking about everything that's happened since on the back end, almost the idea of, like, he just wanted to be married to say that he had somebody to get the attention from and fuel his needs, but he didn't want to be married in the sense of what you have to do in that relationship, if that makes sense.

Like he wanted that other person there to have a person, but he didn't want to do any of the work that it takes to be in that kind of relationship.

Yeah.

So it was more about what he wanted rather than what he could give to someone else.

Right.

And sacrificing.

Right.

Yeah.

And one of the.

One of the books we're going to link to in the show notes, I think it's.

I believe it's called Healing From Hidden Abuse, which has been a huge help for our family.

And I forget the word she uses, but she used some word to talk about how in those moments, like when you would have those conversations with him and he would say, oh, I don't know why, you just don't trust me.

And I forget the word the author uses.

But she talks something about how, like, that person starts to get you to question the realities that you are seeing to make you think that you're crazy.

I don't know if you remember that word, but that made me think of that, that that is how it posed itself.

I know one of the words she used was flying monkeys, but I can't remember if it was.

That was a term she used for something in the book, but I can't remember if it was that or not.

Yeah, the flying monkeys term was more for, like, the people that they bring in to help them, whether knowingly or unknowingly, that help them facilitate the hidden abuse.

That's right.

I need to reread that book.

It.

I remember I read it during the separation process and it was very helpful to help me break away from having contact with him because that's part of what made that process so difficult was trying to communicate to him different things was very difficult during that time.

Yeah.

And I just want to kind of speak to the family piece of it briefly.

I know so many times for family and maybe even for yourself, we always think it's on us because we missed red flags or didn't see things that were happening that we should have and didn't do enough to protect each other.

But I mean, if you don't know what you're looking for or what it looks like, I mean, like I said earlier, that's why they call it hidden abuse.

Because if you don't know what you're looking for, things that may seem normal or a little bit weird could be signs of that happening.

And I know when I look back at different things that were happening, I myself ignored many different gut feelings or intuitions.

And I just kept telling myself, there's no way this could be what's happening, but they ended up being true.

So, like, when I look back on things like him spending like 30 to 45 minutes in the bathroom with his phone, like, I mean, you can't really make judgments, but you're like, is that a red flag?

You know, is he on his phone texting other women?

That's the kind of stuff I look at.

I'm like, so many red flags that I missed.

But I also myself was in the process of coming out a lot of the behaviors I was having, which now has actually helped me be able to identify those things more because they were things in my own life that I was seeing.

And, you know, things like you said, disappearing till 2am in the morning and you're waiting at home having no clue what's going on.

And he says he's sleeping in his car because he just felt so guilty.

Like, now I see those things and I'm like, yeah, that's probably not what was happening.

But yeah, so that's the family piece of it, I think, is it can be really easy to blame yourself and be like, how did.

How did we miss this and not, you know, see any of this.

Did you have moments where you felt like you were kind of stuck and there was no way out?

Yes.

I think a big part of that is just coming from a Christian background where your dad's a pastor and, you know, you are a Christian.

Divorce is not always on the table.

Like, it, you know, it's looked down upon or judged.

And obviously that's not what anybody wants when they get married is to think, oh, yeah, one day this is, you know, going to be over and I'm going to have to go through the divorce process.

So I think that alone made me feel stuck.

But then part of it was almost like I didn't know I was stuck because I was not at a point where I knew clearly what was happening.

So I felt stuck.

But I almost thought that this was just a normal.

These are the issues in marriage type of situation.

Yeah, I've heard that a lot.

And even in.

In some of my own story, too, it's a matter of not knowing what you don't know.

And yeah, and yeah, I mean, that's one reason why I'm glad that we're talking about this today to help other people identify it, to spot it.

If you have that gut feeling of something's not right.

And then the main thing, if someone in a relationship doesn't like something and they're being told that they should like it, that is.

That's a huge red flag.

Yeah.

And then if other people around that individual are saying, oh, no, it's fine.

You.

You should like it.

It's fine.

All these things happen.

I think it comes down to I don't like this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think, too, I hid a lot from my family.

And because you don't want to tell people when things are going wrong, you know, you don't want to say, hey, this is what my husband is doing, or, hey, these are the issues we're having.

And so I know, you know, even going back to the family piece, there was a lot that I just didn't tell them until a lot later.

And they may have noticed or suspected, like Ben said, but they didn't necessarily know everything that was happening.

So family and friends at the time didn't know to tell me that it wasn't normal, I guess.

Yeah, no, I mean, that makes sense because, you know, your trust is being eroded and you have this, like this, you know, am I crazy?

Is this just me?

And then it turns into like, you can't trust anybody but the person who is telling you what you should and shouldn't trust.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which, you know, in turn, makes you constantly question yourself and you don't know what to believe.

And you then, like we said earlier, start to feel like you're crazy and think that you are the problem.

And, you know, he really is this nice guy, and I'm just having this issue that I need to work through.

Yeah.

I've.

I've lived a little while on the planet to know that if someone makes you feel crazy, that's another red flag.

It's like, is.

Am I crazy?

If you have to ask that,.

Yeah.

And I know a lot of this, too, has kind of shifted our beliefs, I would probably say, to be a little more biblical, because there's nowhere in scripture where Jesus says that divorce is not an option in these types of cases.

And, I mean, people argue back and forth about it, but I just don't believe that God would tell people to stay in that type of situation where they're being taken advantage of and abused.

There's just so many different churches from the circles we grew up in where that's the case.

And we even have another family member who years ago were very popular church in that circle, and she was told she had to stay with her husband no matter what, and he almost killed her.

Yeah.

And they said, you know, if he kills you, you'll Get a crown in heaven for it.

Yeah.

So, yeah, it's actually.

And I think it's in 1st Corinthians 7.

I might be wrong, but it talks about if you have to leave and you cannot be reconciled, then to remain unmarri married.

And that verse actually is there for the protection of people who are oppressed.

You know, you have a way out.

It's not there for punishment.

It's.

It's there to.

To say, okay, hey, there are some situations that are not able to be reconciled.

And, yeah, I think that that's an important verse that.

You know, I don't know.

I. I don't know why someone would tell someone they.

They had to stay in a situation that isn't safe, emotionally safe, which oftentimes that's where it begins.

Right.

And then it escalates to physical.

But, yeah, it definitely starts somewhere.

Yeah.

And you, I think, experienced, even from, you know, the side of it, of financial abuse as well.

Like you just couldn't pay bills when they were due and some of that.

Yeah, he was working a pretty decent job at the time when we got married, and he kind of kept moving up in that company, and so he had a pretty good job, and I was teaching, and so I was.

We had two incomes.

But even now I'm dealing with debt that he left on credit cards and stuff like that, because a lot of stuff was spent on what he wanted or frivolous things or.

Yeah, like hundreds of dollars on Pokemon Go and video games where you couldn't get stuff that you needed for the house.

Right.

Or certain websites that are pornographic subscriptions that you can get on.

And then a lot of money went to those.

And so, yeah, there was that piece of.

You know, we couldn't always make ends meet, even though somebody looking in would say, hey, you know, you should be able to pay your bills and do what you need to do.

Yeah, I find oftentimes.

And again, you know, my story, which we're not going into, but yet, if there's one type of abuse, there's typically several more types of abuse.

And oftentimes, if the abuser doesn't have to control someone physically, then they.

But that means they are in other ways, emotionally, even sexually, financially.

What would you say for you is the point where you finally realized that, okay, yeah, this is abuse, and it's wrong.

Did you get any type of counsel or what?

I mean, what was it for you that made you realize you had choices?

So, a few different things.

And as I was thinking about that question leading up to the podcast.

There was a point in time where we changed churches, which I will talk about later.

But when we started going to the new church, which is actually the church I still go to now, he actually applied for a job to work in the student ministry at that church because he had been fired from his previous job.

And the reason he had been fired was for an inappropriate relationship with a younger female that he was over.

And so I remember that period of time where he tried to get the job at the church and lied about why he had left his other job.

And when our pastor reached out to his former boss, his former boss told him what had actually happened.

And so the pastor called him and confronted him.

You know, you lied to me.

And they had a conversation about it.

But that moment was kind of when I started to question more.

And it's the best way I can think to explain it is like I started to see that something wasn't right.

But there was maybe still kind of a fog there.

Like, I didn't see very clearly, but I started to question.

And one of the reasons I started to question at that point was having to tell people that your husband lost his job.

You're not going to tell people, oh, he lost his job because he was involved with a younger co worker.

So I found myself lying for him.

And at the time, I told myself, oh, I'm just trying to protect him and protect our relationship.

But looking back, I realized that it's because I was embarrassed and I knew it was wrong, and that's why I lied and told people, you know, oh, yeah, he quit so he could spend more time at home and, you know, whatever we said.

So that's when I started to question.

And then after that, the church that I'm at now, I started going to a class for people that had family members with mental health issues.

Because a lot of his responses to any issues we were having would be, oh, I'm depressed, or, oh, I have anxiety, which, you know, maybe he really does have mental health issues.

So I started going to this class, and it was 12 or 14 weeks long, one day a week.

And mom actually went with me almost every single class.

She was there with me.

And through that, what I started to realize in talking to other people and talking to some leaders at the church was just that the things that he was doing was not fueled by depression.

Not to say he doesn't struggle with that, but he was not acting that way because he was depressed.

And I remember driving home from the very last class with mom and driving home with her and just looking at her and saying, you know, I don't think this is going to work.

And maybe a week prior to that last class, I got a therapist and started going to therapy for myself because he refused to go with me.

And so I think that combined with that class just made.

Really opened my eyes and lifted that fog that was there and made me see that this really wasn't how a marriage was supposed to work.

Yeah, I'm definitely thankful for.

I feel like it was divine intervention that the new church kind of stepped in and kind of exposed a lot of that to.

To help lift that fog for you.

So can we.

Would you mind backtracking a little bit?

I don't remember if we had talked about this before, actually in the podcast or maybe in a conversation we had previously, but I think some of the advice that you had previously received.

Did we talk about that?

Not yet.

Not yet on the podcast, no.

But we.

We can definitely jump to that part of the interview and just kind of talk through when these things started falling apart.

Let's first talk about how did the church you were at before?

I mean, like, how did they respond?

So at that time, when I was getting advice from my previous church, some of the things that were happening were there was at that time one female that was involved, and he was blowing a lot of our money on paying her cell phone bill and haircuts and jewelry and electric bills and groceries.

And so he was taking care of her financially and being caught with her out in public by other people.

And so that's kind of a little bit of what was going on at that time.

And a lot of the advice I got from the previous church was just read your Bible more, pray more.

And the biggest piece that kept coming up with them was, you have to show him the love of Christ because he doesn't know what it looks like.

And eventually, if you just keep being a good wife and showing him how Jesus is supposed to love him, that he'll eventually turn around.

Was anyone addressing him?

No.

They did try once, and they even said to me, oh, you know, when he's out at 2am Call us and we'll go find where he's at.

And that never happened.

So they met with him one time, and then after that there was nothing.

And honestly, he hadn't been to church in probably over three months, and nobody even realized that he wasn't there.

So it seems like it wasn't a concern or maybe not their responsibility.

Yeah.

And I think, too, they just didn't know what to do.

Maybe they weren't trained or hadn't come across maybe a situation like that before, but I don't think they knew what to do even if they had tried.

Yeah, this is the part of the conversation that gets me really fired up, and I'll try to keep it contained a little bit, but I just feel like there's this prevailing attitude that somehow a wife can fix her husband, but the advice is always given as her doing things right.

Like she's somehow the neck that turns the head, if you want to say it that way.

I've started to see an increase in this type of conversation and nothing ever focuses on the abuser's responsibility to own their own actions and repent and turn from that stuff.

And I've even started to hear this more as I'm starting to become more attuned to this conversation.

Even on some of our local Christian radio stations here, like when they come on with broadcasts of people talking and, you know, preachers coming on to give their little spiel, I have to just turn it off because even some of those conversations are talking about this kind of thing.

Whereas, you know, hey, do you want your husband to respond and treat you with love?

Okay, then ladies, do this, this or that.

And it just, like, it makes me sick to my stomach.

And just this morning we were talking about a video of a very popular preacher out in California, and there's people who got up and left during his sermon because he was teaching on Ephesians 5.

And right at the beginning, he said something about, like, throughout a wife's lifetime, in her marriage and widowhood or whatever, her role is to submit to her husband and love her husband and to be workers at home.

And I was just like, oh, my gosh, like, I cannot believe.

And people get stuck in that and they don't see, like, it is not the woman's responsibility to be responsible for the man's emotions.

Like, well, it makes.

Yeah, it's just all kind of backwards.

We really don't have that much power over someone else's choices.

And I think.

And it.

And furthers the oppression because then it makes you feel badly because, oh, well, I should do more things.

I should jump through more hoops.

I should love him back to Jesus.

The only person that can choose to love Jesus is that person.

Right.

And I think.

And that's what I was going to say too.

And I think adding on to that, that kind of narrative is very detrimental, I feel like, to your relationship with Christ because it almost presents it as a.

This is A fix all do this and they'll be better, or do this and they'll stop cheating or whatever it is.

And it doesn't work like that.

That starts to make you question, you know, well, God, what are you doing?

Like, you're not helping me.

You're kind of, I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing and you're not doing anything.

So I think it is detrimental to just your relationship with Christ when you align with that.

Yeah.

Because that continues in your mind, the fact that, okay, like, what am I still doing wrong?

I'm being told that I need to do these things to love my husband back to Jesus, and he's not doing anything.

So what?

Where am I failing?

And it just continues, that cycle of abuse, even though they don't realize it.

Yeah.

They become flying monkeys.

Yeah.

And it speaks to a core, like a core issue with women that.

That, you know, like, control.

You know, like we're supposed to be able to control everything.

We're supposed to have everything.

You know, just whip up a dinner right after work and then our husband is satisfied and won't run around.

And.

Yeah.

It's just.

That's.

That those are toxic beliefs.

Yeah.

So we also, we talked about this a little bit the other day, but the last episode I posted for the podcast was about the toxic conversation that all men lust.

And you and I briefly talked about that a little bit.

Why don't you talk a little bit about how that thinking maybe had an effect on your decisions during that time?

Yeah.

So I think part of that, you know, back to the conversation of knowing what isn't is not normal when you are growing up and raised in an environment where you're hearing, you know, women are responsible if a man looks at you in lust because you were probably dressed a certain way, or women are in charge of making sure that the men around them don't fall.

That whole conversation makes a situation like this even harder to see that something is wrong, because obviously I'm responsible again, for my husband.

And so I think they're kind of go hand in hand when you are being taught things like that.

It makes it very hard to see when.

When an issue is a, oh, this is a normal marriage issue that we can work through.

And when an issue is more than that.

Wow, that's a lot of responsibility to have on one person's shoulders.

I can't make everybody else around me sin.

Right?

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

And I guess kind of going along those same lines at our church, you know, they talk about this doesn't negate our own responsibility, but our, you know, my responsibility to.

To submit to Christ first and then I could submit to other people.

I can love other people as Christ has loved me.

That's my responsibility.

That's what I'm supposed to be doing.

And that's like in a marriage.

That's what both individuals are supposed to be working towards and.

And doing.

But if you have one individual that's not doing that, then it's not going to work.

And one of those individuals is.

Is going to, I mean, for lack of a better word, be in.

In a state of oppression where they are trying to submit and be more like Christ.

But what are they submitting to?

Yeah, you and I talked about this a little bit earlier today before recording, and maybe this is a separate episode to talk about later, just the patriarchal system in our churches and what's being taught from Maybe like Ephesians 5 we talked about earlier, where that passage about husbands and wives only has one command, and that's verse 21, I think it is, where it says, husbands and wives submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

But then some people try to say down in the last verse in that chapter of Ephesians 5 that, oh, it says here that men are to love or, yeah, love their wives and women respect their husbands.

But nobody wants to look at the original Greek language.

And it's not separated there.

And the actual last verse there in the Greek, it's a hina clause.

I'm going to get a little nerdy on you guys right now.

So.

But that last verse there is a hina clause, and it actually says in the original language that husbands love your wives in order that she would respect you.

That chapter has no command for the wife except verse 21, where it's directed at the husband and the wife.

Submit to each other out of reverence for Christ.

And it includes both.

Yeah, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Yeah.

Christ being the main goal there.

Yeah.

So I think that's really helpful to understand and where people just get it wrong a lot of times.

Was there anything helpful that people did for you?

We kind of talked a little bit about some unhelpful things.

But was there anything people did for you that was helpful that really made a difference?

Yeah.

When I moved to the church I'm at now, a lot of those people that I was in community with just kind of stepped up and first of all, just always checked on me whether it was a text message, a phone call, staying maybe 10 minutes after a community group with me and just talking.

And so just having somebody there if.

If I did need them and they helped out off and on financially, if I was in a place where I couldn't pay a bill or anything like that.

And then, honestly, I think some of the times that I remember the most where I felt not better, but that made me feel like I.

My feelings were valid was just when people, you know, would sit with me and maybe go for a cup of coffee or whatever and say, wow, you know, that sounds really hard, and I don't know what it feels like to go through something like that.

But I'm here to sit with you and I'm here to listen to you.

And it's really easy to make a meal when somebody has a baby or make a meal when someone's in the hospital, but it's hard to get involved in somebody's very messy life.

And most people don't want to do that.

And I. I think sometimes it's just.

They don't know what to say when they hear things like that.

When somebody's life is messy, they don't know how to respond.

But sometimes you don't have to respond at all.

Just say, I'm here to listen to you.

And I don't know what that feels like, but I'm here.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like you.

You matter.

Yeah.

When you've been told for so long that your preferences don't matter, like, even the toothpaste gap is something that you need to get over.

And I'm saying you actually pointing at myself, because it's a real.

A real story in my own story.

Yeah.

Oftentimes when we're hurt by relationships, it's actually.

We find healing in relationships when it's the opposite.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's.

That's key, I think.

Yeah.

And I don't.

I don't really know.

I'm saying this.

I don't really know what the answer is for people to start realizing that they don't have to have an answer.

Right.

Because, yeah, it's easy for us to send somebody a sympathy card when something happens in our life, but to have empathy and just sit in that hole with somebody and be like, okay, I'm gonna cry with you, or I'm gonna just be here, like you said, going to coffee or whatever it may be.

We don't have to have some verse to share to, like, answer and solve the.

All the world's problems.

Sometimes, yes, there's scripture to go with that, but sometimes you just need people to sit there and listen and empathize and feel what you're feeling.

Putting themselves in your shoes.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, even Christ didn't tell somebody what to do before he asked them a couple questions first.

Yeah, yeah.

But I mean, he's the king of the universe, right?

Like, he knows what that person should do.

I think oftentimes we.

We are a whole lot more arrogant, thinking that we know exactly what someone needs to when.

Man, if we could fix somebody with all the words that we say, then wouldn't we live in a perfect world now?

Right.

Yeah.

Let's talk a little bit about where you're at in your faith and your journey.

Because even though it's been a little while since, what, like, has it been a couple years already?

It's been a year and a half.

Yeah.

Since everything's been final.

Yeah.

And I would say you're.

I think it would be fair to say that you're still experiencing healing and.

And stuff on your journey.

But let's talk a little bit about how your faith in view of church are separate, maybe.

I don't know if that makes sense.

I mean, I think you've kind of had a struggle with getting back to church, maybe is the right way to put it.

But that doesn't.

Hasn't necessarily affected your.

Your faith and your view of God.

Correct.

Right.

So there were obviously, there was definitely some questioning of God through that whole process.

And, you know, I think whenever somebody goes through something bad or hard, it's natural to question, you know, why is this happening?

And so there was definitely some questioning of, you know, is God still good like people say he is?

And, you know, those kind of typical questions.

But my issues now, I feel like on the.

The end of it and as I'm working through, healing through this stuff, I.

It is difficult still for me to go into church.

And I think just because of the lack of help that I got in the beginning made me untrusting of people in church.

I think it strengthened my faith and made me have to trust God more in a lot of different ways, whether it was financial or just for, you know, the emotions I was going through.

But it was really difficult for me to extend that trust to another human at church when I felt like I had been burned there already.

Yeah.

I mean, that's understandable.

Yeah.

And I wanted.

I just wanted you to make that distinction because I don't want people to feel the weight of that.

On top of it all, they're.

They're trying to sort through that weight of I'm struggling to go back to church because of this happening and, you know, not getting the help I needed.

And then they feel guilty about that.

Like, that makes them somehow not a Christian or less closer to God because of that.

I think that's important to make that distinction.

Yeah.

Because I think in a lot of people's mind it's, you know, oh, Megan wasn't at church on Sunday.

Oh, she's, you know, walking away from God, and that's not the case.

It's just difficult to be in that kind of setting.

And, you know, even though it is a different church and they were supportive of me, and I am so thankful for the community group that I was in at the time and those people that did come around me, there is still an element of it being difficult.

And I think, too, I know we kind of mentioned this earlier, and I want to.

I wanted to say this because you said something about maybe the church before didn't feel equipped or like they had the right training, but I don't feel like it needs training to reach out and be like Jesus to the people in your church.

And that's.

That was one of the hardest things for me, trying to, in my own mind, figure out why people were not doing that, because, yeah, you might not be able to step into some of the trauma stuff or counsel on that, but that's what therapists are for.

Right.

So I feel like just stepping out and just being empathetic towards the people who are experiencing this would make a huge difference.

Yeah.

And honestly, like, you know, at the time, it maybe wasn't comical, but it's almost comical to me now.

And I know we've talked about this kind of just as a family, like, when everything blew up and got really bad, it was months and months before anybody even realized that he wasn't at church anymore and that I was not at.

At church as often anymore.

And so looking back, you know, it wasn't a huge congregation.

It.

And not only that, is he had put himself in a place where he.

To be very involved in church because he always had to control how people saw him, and he never wanted anybody to see him in a negative light.

So he always put himself in a position to be super involved and act like he was doing a lot.

And so he.

He was very involved in the church.

And so he.

Somehow it was still easy for them to miss him.

After several months, they still didn't notice.

Yeah, I don't want this might be another podcast.

At least you have the next three lined up.

Yes, Right.

See, I knew she was a good addition to this.

Yeah.

My, my background is in training church leaders and a lot of red flags are just kind of going off for me as far as the failure in church leadership.

And this isn't, you know, I don't want to bash the church.

I don't think it's not appropriate.

But there are situations that, that we have to address with our brothers and sisters in Christ, especially if they're in leadership, they're held up to a, a higher standard.

And I just want to say, and this is going to sound like a very heavy charge, but if there is a church leader listening to this, neglect is also a form of abuse.

Yeah, for sure.

But, yeah, I'm glad you pointed that out because we don't, we don't want it to sound like any way attacking, but it's a problem and we just have, we have to get better at how, how we are ministering to people in this area that need it and.

For sure.

Yeah.

And it's tough, It's a tough conversation.

I do know, you know, several pastors who felt like some of the biggest failures of their ministry was when there was a, a person experiencing abuse, hidden abuse that they didn't realize because, you know, she didn't have any marks on her skin.

How can you see the marks on her soul?

So it's definitely not, you know, that can be diagnosed easily, but that doesn't negate the responsibility to press into that.

Yeah.

And I, I think that, that is why I mentioned earlier, like, I think they just didn't know how to handle that kind of situation.

And I, but can I just say, Can I just say for you and all of the other people experiencing abuse out there, just because somebody doesn't know doesn't, doesn't release others of responsibility.

Yeah.

And maybe a lot of that goes back to the View or what you were being told to just, just read your Bible more.

Because I don't.

Maybe somehow that saying that makes somebody feel like that releases them of the responsibility that they have in it to help.

Because if you just read your Bible, it's going to give you all the answers and.

Yeah.

I mean, if you are, I mean, yeah, you will find the answers there, but that's not going to release other people from harming.

Yeah, yeah.

From harming you and make them not harm you.

Yeah, for sure.

Now, what has.

Let's talk a little bit about relationships after divorce.

Let's end on a little bit of.

A,.

I don't want to say comical, but let's talk a little bit about that because, I mean, it's something people look at, you know, on the other side of it.

And for you, what has that looked like for you as you are still kind of healing through some of that trauma?

How has that affected some of your relationships?

Because you've.

You've kind of done some dating since then.

So what.

How has that affected you?

I definitely don't recommend the dating scene like it is nowadays, but so it's very hard.

And part of the reason, obviously, that it's difficult is that trust piece you real.

I mean, you get to a point where you really don't trust anybody.

And it's not even just a, oh, I'm afraid this person is going to cheat on me like somebody else did it.

There's a part that you just don't trust that they actually care about you because somebody said that to you once and it wasn't true.

So the trust piece goes a lot deeper than just trusting that somebody will stay faithful.

The dating world is insane.

I like, it makes me almost never want to date ever again.

But basically, you know, I had gone on a couple dates, at least.

At least not online, at least.

Yeah, yeah, we're.

We're completely done with online dating.

You know, I had gone on a couple dates after the divorce, and it had been several months after that.

I realized quickly that there was still work that I had to do on myself.

So I took a lot of time trying to heal and work through issues and the way I responded to situations.

I am in a relationship now, and there is almost a piece that you don't know some of the issues you're going to have until you get in a relationship with another person.

Because there are responses that I have to different triggers that I wouldn't have known that I would respond that way until I'm with somebody else and that situation comes up.

And so it takes somebody very patient and very gracious to navigate that situation, being with somebody that's been divorced.

But yeah, yeah, Don and I have talked about that quite a few times through our dating relationship where you're going through the healing process.

But like you said, there's some things you don't know need healing until you're in a healthy relationship and those types of responses or triggers come up, and that's perfectly fine.

Like, people should not feel like they have to be completely healed from their trauma before they can step out into that again, because there.

Yeah, there's some things that you just won't know about until you're in that relationship.

So.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's not to say, though, you know, I think it's great that you realized, you know, kind of in the beginning when you started today.

It's like, oh, wait, there's some things I need to work on myself first before I can.

I think of, like, I've heard this analogy before about, you know, you've got.

You've got an animal who's been.

Their leg has been caught in a TR.

Gap, you know, and.

And people are trying to help them, and they think people are trying to hurt them because they're hurting.

And so, you know, there's that aspect of.

I know for me, a lot of times I even question my own self, like, can I trust myself to know which person is trying to help me and which person is trying to hurt me?

Yeah.

And that's.

That is something that.

That, like, only we ourselves can work on.

And then when we get to a better place, then we can begin to bring somebody else into that and.

And say, okay, I feel a little bit more confident because our trust has been eroded.

Yeah.

We've been told that.

That, you know, our own br.

We can't even trust our own brains.

Yeah.

I. I've had to become very good at communicating in.

In just.

In general.

I'm very much like our dad in that if something is bothering me, I will shut down and not talk about it because I tend to be more quiet.

And you can't do that when you're with somebody in general.

And you especially can't do that when you have a situation like this where you might respond a certain way because of something that was done to you in the past.

You.

You have to be able to communicate those things.

Yeah.

Now there's a lot of people who maybe are on the front end of this and.

Or the middle of it or maybe have come through it already like you.

But I feel like if we can begin to help change this conversation of what we've been told before to be a more healthy conversation, I feel like a lot more people, and I say people.

We've kind of talked about women, and I keep saying people a couple times because it happens on both sides of the spectrum.

There's men who face hidden abuse as well.

So if we can help change this conversation and be a part of that, I feel like people will feel more comfortable getting help sooner than they do.

And I don't know what that looks like, but I definitely know helping change the conversation will help people feel more comfortable to get help more early on.

Because I'm sure if you look back, you probably had wished that you had gotten help earlier, but you didn't know what it looked like or even what you were experiencing was valid.

Yeah.

Or you were made to feel that wasn't valid.

So I definitely feel like that would be helpful.

What would you say as we kind of land this plane?

What is some helpful advice that you would give to someone who's maybe in the middle of it, somebody just looking for some type of hope to hold on to?

Oh, there's.

I feel like there's so much that could be said here, but I think bringing it around to what I've said so many times, I feel like, is.

Don't be afraid to ask, is this normal or is it not?

Don't just assume that it is, because like I have said before, I thought it was normal and just kind of my cross to bear, so to speak.

So don't be afraid to ask somebody, ask a family member, ask a friend.

And then I think, don't be afraid to talk about what's happening.

Like, I stayed quiet for a long time, and I think maybe if I had had a sounding board, even if it was just, you know, mom and dad or you or, you know, my cousin or somebody, that I could have said, hey, this is happening.

Let me run some things by.

You know, somebody probably would have stepped in and said, hey, like, you need to get help or try to get help together.

Which we did, and he refused.

But then that leads you to know that something is wrong.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's good.

I appreciate that.

Well, thanks for being willing to come on the show.

I know it's probably tough sometimes to talk about that stuff, but my prayer is that it would be helpful to other people who might be in the middle of some type of a hidden abuse, and that they would see the importance of needing to get some help and what you just said.

So.

But, yeah, no, I mean, because no matter what level that someone is experiencing abuse, it's abuse.

And everybody's story is important, no matter to what level.

And I know we talked about some of that yesterday because you're like, well, I haven't really experienced physical abuse, but.

But this.

I think this is just as important.

It's abuse and it's abuse.

Yeah.

It's also my prayer that, you know, churches, anybody listening in leadership, would just begin stepping into this issue more and doing their part to help people experiencing abuse, because we just.

We can't be silent on it anymore.

We have been.

And it.

That hasn't gotten us anywhere.

So yeah, I hope your story can be helpful to some other people.

Well, thank you for having me.

And dawn, thanks for being on your first episode and we look forward to more opportunities that I can convince you.

To help you have a whole lifetime.

Yes, thanks for tuning in to the Prodigal Journey, where we celebrate Christ's power through our weakness.

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Also, if you'd like to to reach out, you can reach me ben@theprodigal journey.com that's Ben the prodigal journey.com tune in next time to the Prodigal Journey.

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Sam.