Although fairytale fantasies are fiction, we often face some of the same elements in our life. We face difficult people and circumstances, we struggle with fear and self-worth, and we want our happily-ever-after on this broken earth. In our real life, every choice has an effect and consequence. We can’t wish our challenges away or pretend they don’t exist like in a fantasy.
We are one-half of our marriage. If we only commit halfway to our marriage, how can we expect a deep, rich, healthy, happy marriage? Likewise, if we are using an imperfect love design with unhealthy aspects, how can we expect our marriage to be healthy?
The only person you can change is yourself with the help of Christ. Our marriage is like a series of dance steps. When one partner changes a step, the other one will notice even if they don’t say anything at first. When you choose to love your spouse in Christ’s design, the new step is done in his love. Your spouse will choose to react or to respond.
Here’s the big secret you have been waiting to find, and it comes from two verses Jesus tells us.
The top type of abuse that is rarely acknowledged or addressed in marriages is verbal abuse. Verbal abuse speaks in disrespectful, degrading, dishonoring manners to manipulate, control, and overpower their spouse psychologically. No one is immune to this learned form of toxic, abusive communication, not even “Christians.”
Many Cristian marriages struggle with fighting, sarcasm, and painful words. They want their marriage to be happy. However, they’re not taught to recognize the verbal cycle of abuse or stop it with Jesus. Let’s look at the husband’s words and the wife’s words to see how the cycle of destruction and abuse happens.
I loved Jesus and God with my whole heart. However, I hadn’t studied His word, so it wasn’t written and living in my mind. I had used my imperfect knowledge, experience, and faith beliefs about what love was in my relationships, which kept me in the cycle of abuse. Living in my flawed, broken definition of love kept me confused because it was not God and Christ’s pure definition and design of love.
If we are not taught what it means to follow Jesus, we often assume that Jesus will instantly tell us what to say and do to love like him. However, our assumptions are what leads to confusion, frustration, doubts about our faith, and even our salvation. In other words, we want to be a “good Christian,” but we are still acting like the selfish sin-focused world. Our wanting and wishing doesn’t change what we say and how we act. Only working with Jesus Christ every day transforms our hearts, minds, words, and actions into his likeness.
Without knowing God’s true meaning, I interpreted this chapter through the imperfect lens of my broken love experiences. My misguided understanding of love twisted my mindset. I saw love as me giving my all, while my spouse enjoyed it. I didn’t have equal expectations for the way he treated me. In this mindset, I saw the success or failure of my marriage as my sole responsibility. My one-sided and love-starved mindset and misunderstanding of God’s design for love and marriage made me vulnerable to become a victim of domestic abuse.
The primary trap for me was the illusion that my husband loved me, especially since I felt love-starved. The reason I stayed and kept trying to make my marriage work was my commitment to God in my marriage vows. I knew I had to give God and my husband my all. With my twisted understanding of love, I continued to be abused for thirteen years.
I never realized God created the perfect recipe, design, and aspects of love until I was in my thirties. No one ever told me, and I wouldn’t be surprised if no one told you. After several abusive marriages ending in divorce, I began to study the life of Jesus. He showed me his love is not a feeling. His pure love “is” the substance of all of God’s goodness and it “does” everything to honor Him, others, and yourself. Just as I needed the right ingredients to successfully bake mom’s cake recipe, I needed to know Christ’s recipe for love to live in each aspect.
Christ’s characteristics, words, and actions helped me understand what my thoughts, words, attitudes, and actions will look like when I love as he does. It also revealed what a marriage looks like in his design with gentleness, kindness, and selflessness. His love revealed the flaws I had unknowingly created in my definition of love.
One of the hardest things for me to accept and practice was the reality that this list was meant for me to follow and it is also the standards for which I was to receive love from others. God’s second commandment for me to love others as I love myself placed the loving relationship between two people on equal standards.
Abuse is NEVER Pure Love
Jesus NEVER allowed anyone to abuse him until he gave himself to be the sacrifice for our sins. Being Christ-like is to imitate him. We are not called to let people abuse us but to love us in the pure substance of Christ’s love living in and flowing through us.
Living in Christ’s love involves all the aspects of our imperfect human condition filtered and transformed through the pure love of Jesus in us. Loving our enemies or people who profess to love us, doesn’t mean we need to volunteer to let them hurt us. In fact, if they truly love us, they would love us as Christ did with selfless love.