I have debated with myself for a couple weeks whether to begin my story with a short summary of my life or just skip to writing things I’ve thought about, questioned, and learned along the way. But as Malcolm Reynolds said in the 2003-2003 TV series Firefly, “You can’t open the book of my life and jump in the middle.” Without some background, some context, I’m not sure if the rest will make sense. So here goes.
I think that breaking free of abuse is a journey, and it happens in phases. Some people grow up in abuse and others encounter it later in life. However, I think that for both, there is a period in which a victim is unaware that they are being abused. That sounds odd, but for a child who grows up in an abusive family abuse can be hidden and/or seem “normal.” An abuser who targets an adult is very good at pretending to be a wonderful person to draw his/her victim in. They remind me of a praying mantis that looks just like a flower, but it’s merely wearing a disguise to attract prey.
There are many different forms of abuse. I write about emotional abuse because that is what I’ve experienced. Emotional abuse is difficult even for the victim to grasp because it is covert, subtle, and leaves behind no physical damage. When victims finally begin to recognize that something is wrong, many will start to seek answers, to educate themselves about abuse, and to seek to free themselves from it, which is what I did. However, it’s not a simple, easy, or short process. Since the problems I will describe in this post began shortly after I made the choice that God offered me, I believe it was then that He began to free me and EJ from abuse. Without Him, I don’t think we would have escaped.
I think that recovery from abuse is very similar to recovery from grief. Both abuse and grief involve the death of a relationship. Both go through stages of shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, testing, and acceptance…and finally restored life. These stages do not progress in a straight line. There are good days and bad days. There are steps forward, steps backward, and steps that are skipped over or repeated. Each bit of growth, I think, has to be fought for.
I grew up as the fifth of six children; one boy (the oldest) and five girls. I thought my family was like The Waltons in the old television series–very close and loving. I was very close to my Mom. She called me “The Caring One” and “The Christian.” She once told me that she and Dad had been discussing their belief that I would do anything to help them…except what I believed was wrong.
When I started dating EJ, both my parents thought he was an awesome guy. However, when I got engaged to him, my Mom suddenly changed. It was as if she was jealous of EJ, as if she was trying to seize control of me and pull me away from him. I don’t intend to spend a lot of time describing this–I’m only skipping over a long story–but it was awful. I was living in my own apartment. I called my Mom once or twice every day and visited her and Dad every week or two, but she accused me of abandoning her; she wanted me to visit every day. Once I refused to submit to her demands, I was never able to please her again. She refused to help me with my wedding, lied about me, falsely accused me, and turned the family against me. When I did something nice, she accused me of ulterior motives. She told me that I was “a Daughter from Hell, the worst daughter a mother could have, the worst Christian she had ever seen.” It was the complete reversal of what she had told me a short time before. My Mom was so difficult that EJ and I ended up having a small “immediate-family only” wedding to save me from humiliation if my family didn’t show up. Our pastor told EJ and me that in his 30 years of performing marriages, he’d never encountered a mother who was as difficult as mine.
I think it’s important to state that I believe that (ideally) parents have an important place in their adult children’s lives, but the relationship changes when a child becomes an adult. Parents can be there to advise and support but not to control, not to punish for “disobedience.” I had never been rebellious, but I have always believed that “a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh.” (Mark 10:7-9) I tried to keep a healthy relationship with my parents, while also setting healthy boundaries with my Mom, but she didn’t respect them. I told her that I loved both her and EJ and I begged her not to force me to choose between them, but she didn’t listen.
This was the point at which I began to learn that my family was not like the Waltons. Underneath the surface, there were dark undercurrents of manipulation, favoritism, jealousy…and hatred? I believe that we siblings were covertly pitted against each other. A couple of my siblings declared that they always knew what was going on and what our Mom was like–and in many ways, they did. They certainly recognized it long before I did. However, I believe they spent their lives seeking the approval and love from our Mom. I think they were glad when I became the new scapegoat of the family.
I loved my Mom (and family) and tried for more than 20 years to restore a relationship with her without giving her total control of my marriage and life, but I was unsuccessful. She said that reconciliation was my responsibility, and mine alone, because “it” was all my fault. I believe this meant that she expected me to prove to her satisfaction that I loved her “enough.” What would that take? I didn’t know but I suspected that it was more than I could give her. I wasn’t going to allow her to be head of my marriage and I wasn’t going to divorce EJ.
Finally, after many years, I heard that my Mom had said that she considered all my efforts to reconcile to be “a mere drop in a teacup” and no matter how hard I tried, she would never forgive me. That was almost a relief to me because if nothing I did would matter, would change anything, then I could stop trying and trying and trying. I accepted her statement and walked away. After my Mom died in 2020 (my Dad died in 1995, less than two weeks after our son was born), I learned that I had been disinherited. It didn’t surprise me and I didn’t mind not inheriting “stuff.” The emotional disinheriting was harder, but I held to the Scriptures that said that God is my Father who has given me an inheritance with Him. This is why I call this blog “Beloved Daugther of the King.”
Listen, daughter, and pay careful attention:
Forget your people and your father’s house.
Let the king be enthralled by your beauty;
honor him, for he is your lord. (Ps. 45:10-11)
EJ’s family is not much better than mine. In fact, EJ says his family is far worse than mine because there were more forms of abuse in his family. When our son was about 8 years old or so, one of EJ’s brothers was going through a difficult time and stayed with us for a month or two. We didn’t know at the time that he had stole, defrauded, and vandalized the property of others. An incident happened between him and our son that alarmed us and he left the next day. Our son said his uncle hadn’t touched him, and we didn’t know about victim grooming back then, so we just quietly cut off contact. Several years later, EJ’s sister learned that we hadn’t had contact with their brother for several years. The first thing she said to me was, “Did [brother] hurt JJ?” But she still went to the other siblings and, as a group, they tried to force us to reestablish contact with him.
When the family began to pressure us, EJ and I each talked to 2-3 different abuse advocates about what his brother had done, how we had responded, and how the family was reacting. Each one told us that this brother had displayed very typical victim grooming behaviors toward our young son. One advocate told me that we had done everything correctly and the only thing she recommended we do was to warn the family to protect the children. I did so, knowing this would enrage the family even further, because I felt that protecting children was more important than being accepted by them. When EJ mentioned his brother’s behavior to his doctor, she was so upset she immediately wanted to call the police. However, he convinced her not to because the incident had happened years before and we had no evidence to give to the police. Yet, despite this, EJ’s sister wrote in our family FB group:
Down here in SC, I am sometimes at a cultural disadvantage. What I mean is that there are things that every Southern lady takes as fact that are completely foreign to me. For example, we are expected to wear lipstick and fix our hair to go to the grocery store. In the same way, many of us take for granted as fact that in [our] family, every terrible crime/negative thing that could happen–physical, sexual, emotional, financial, pure craziness, etc. any drama, you name it, has happened within this group and our universal truth is we work to forgive each other and we stay family…Our mother always insisted we include everyone…But like keeping toe nails polished and wearing lipstick to Walmart, it is what we expect because we grew up with it and is not necessarily what TJ understood to be facts-of-life.
Comparing a predatory brother targeting our son to “keeping toe nails polished and wearing lipstick to Walmart” was/is appalling to me because it minimizes the seriousness of abuse. Furthermore, I don’t consider accepting evil to be an admirable trait. The “facts of life” to me is that if there was even a possibility that anyone, including a relative, was a danger to our son, we were going to protect our son. And, honestly, while their Mom did encourage her children to forgive and not leave others out, she was also many times more outspoken than I am and she had no problem fiercely defending her children against any she believed didn’t treat them well.
Typically, abuse divides families. Most relatives aligned themselves with the abuser because the truthteller tears away the curtain of the “nice Walton family” belief. Out of all our relatives, only one of EJ’s sisters has remained friends with us. EJ and I made the choice to stand against abuse, to stand against what we believe is wrong, even if it cost us. And it did cost us family.
Generally, people assume that problems in a family are mere tiff and they often pressure victims to “forgive.” By “forgive,” most seem to mean to excuse everything an abuser has done without any sort of repentance (changed behavior), consequences, or boundaries. They have no comprehension of the depth of abuse, the damage it causes, and what it costs a victim to finally leave. The decision to leave is not done without heartbreak.
We had lived relatively close to most of my family for most of our married lives but we moved away in 2015. However, even when a person escapes the actual abuser(s) there is a lot of damage that has been done and must be healed. I imagine this to be like a destructive tornado. At first, people just try to survive the tornado but afterward they have to work on recovery from the damage the tornado left behind. EJ and I have made much progress toward recovery. We no longer feel anguished about our families, but have accepted that they are what they are and they can’t be in our lives. We are more peaceful and happy now that we are away from the turmoil. However, we walk with a limp and we still have healing to do–not only from family abuse, but other difficulties we’ve suffered as well. We trust God to help us with this journey we are on.
“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn “‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’ Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.“
(Matthew 10:34-39)
BELOVED DAUGHTER of the King 
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