How Your Relationship Affects Everyone Around You!

Psalm 3:2-6

Many are saying of me, "God will not deliver him."

"Selah" But you are a shield around me, O

LORD; you bestow glory on me and lift up my head. To the

LORD, I cry aloud, and he answers me from his holy

hill. "Selah," I lie down and sleep; I wake again

because the LORD sustains me. I will not fear the tens of

thousands drawn up against me on every side.

"Many of us who have been in abusive

relationships had no idea how our relationship

deeply affected everyone around us. We had all

kinds of excuses for our abuser, and we had all

kinds of reasons why we stayed, but we did not

realize the damage or have an excuse for what it

was doing to our loved ones and our children."

During the 15 years, I spent in an abusive marriage

I had no idea that what I was going through my

struggle in my marriage that my mother was staying

up nights praying for my safety or that she was

having nightmares of someone finding me dead. I

lived across the country, and she had no way

of checking up on me, so all she could do was pray

and trust that God was taking care of me. I was so

surprised after I was up on my feet and living life

again how much people saw from the outside.

I thought I was so clever at hiding the pain and

angry words. I thought I was hiding the abusiveness

with my very well thought out excuses, but you can't

hide the obvious. It can be easy to hide

because no patterns have been set, but slowly it

gets harder to cover it up. My

relationship even reached out to my brothers in a

way that I had never thought. I am the youngest

girl and child number 7 out of eight children.

So I had no idea that they wanted to

protect me as the baby girl and couldn't.

They felt powerless as men

to help their baby sister. They also knew the

struggle that our mother was going through at the

time, and it bothered them that they could not help

her by helping me. A few of them had even

considered coming to rescue me by force but thank

God, my mother's prayers kept that from happening.

I was so caught up in my own little world that I didn't

realize I was causing them to struggle. It was as if

they were caught up in the abuse themselves. I also

realized that it was affecting the few friends I had

left. They were so uncomfortable with how I was being

treated and spoken to that they finally stopped

coming around. The most important people that my

relationship affected were my children. I worked

hard making the home an environment where they

felt safe and loved, but by not seeking help, I was

fostering a secretive hostile environment.

They knew they were loved most of the time, but they still

heard the arguments and witnessed their father call

me stupid and other derogatory names. They never

saw much in the way of affection between us, just

hostility. Because of prayer, my children are not

dysfunctional, but I believe their ideas on love and

marriage have been skewed by what they saw.

If you are in an abusive relationship, please