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My Story - How It Happened

First of all, I didn’t plan to get into an abusive relationship. Does anyone ever plan to get abused?

I was working with Jim and we were together quite a bit. Over time I started to feel like I missed him when he wasn’t there. One day Jim brought up that we each had feelings for the other.

That was the beginning of a very dark chapter in my life that lasted about 10 years. But Praise the Lord, I got out and am now free from abuse and have been happily married to a very nice, kind, genuinely Christian man for over 9 years.

I never wanted to marry Jim. He threatened to leave me if I didn't and I was so scared to be by myself. I had so many fears. Jim used a lot of fear on me to control me.

He was a very smooth talking person from the beginning. He could really get people to like him. He told me lots of things that I wanted to hear and basically gave me my way on everything for awhile.

I welcomed this attention as it satisfied my great selfishness.  I thought Jim really loved me and that was very important to me. I wanted to feel really loved by a man. At that time, I didn’t feel like my first husband, Wayne, loved me very much.

Later, things changed and he used many methods of abuse to control me. If only I knew then what I know now. There's a sign I read recently that said something like, “You get experience after you need it.” Isn't that the truth?

In the beginning, Jim made it sound like he might kill himself if I wasn't with him. He threatened to kill my first husband, Wayne. He told me how he could make it look like an accident on the road.

I was so distraught and, even though I loved Wayne, and because I loved Wayne, I thought that I'd rather for Wayne and I to not be together than for him to be dead. I thought that it would be so terrible to live with Wayne’s death on my conscience. If only I would have trusted God that He wouldn't allow Jim to kill Wayne.

      My First True Love

I really, really did love Wayne.  I loved Wayne with all my heart. I didn’t think it at the time, but I now believe that Wayne really loved me too.       I loved spending time with Wayne. I think what I loved the most about Wayne was his wonderful personality.

He was the man of my dreams. He was the answer to my prayers of many years to find the right husband. Out of all the guys I dated by age 22, Wayne was the only one I ever wanted to marry. God put His true love in my heart for Wayne.

I really put all of my heart and soul into this marriage because I loved Wayne so much. I even sewed my own wedding dress, made my hat, made all the silk flowers, did a lot of sewing on the bridesmaid’s dresses, and wrote my own vows.

Even after I went with Jim, I still loved Wayne. I talked to Jim about Wayne and at times I would feel so down about Wayne and Jim would say something like, “Do you want me to go get Wayne for you?” As if that would work! But that's how sad I was about my divorce from Wayne.

I think I was in mourning for Wayne a lot of my marriage to Jim. I found myself wearing black or dark colors a lot. I just didn't feel like wearing bright colors.

There were many times when I thought about Wayne. Sometimes I would hear “The Rose” in a store playing and it would make me feel so bad. Someone sang “The Rose” at Wayne’s and my wedding. 

I think I masked or numbed the pain of my divorce from Wayne by working hard and keeping real busy with all kinds of things.

If I could change the past I would. I would have never left Wayne. I’m so ashamed of what I did to him. The rejection he felt must have been terrible. As God helps me to more and more fully realize how I hurt Wayne, it’s breaking my heart.

Leaving - The First Time

In 1998 I left Jim for 7 months. I know God wanted me to leave him. I should have never been with him in the first place. Even during my marriage to Jim I know the Holy Spirit was calling me back to God. I went to a couple of different churches and I went to an evangelistic meeting and bought a bunch of tapes

When I left Jim in 1998, I guess I finally felt I wasn't living in sin anymore and was free to come back to God. So in 1998 I started a new chapter in my life. I became a Christian again.

Like I said I never wanted to marry Jim and only a short time after we got married I realized I had made a mistake and I wanted to get it annulled.

I even called the courthouse where the license was issued and asked them how long after the marriage date could it be annulled. Unfortunately, the time had already passed. I should have picked out a few personal belongings and left that place and got away from Jim then.

But I was so scared. I had so many fears. I remember the day I called Wayne and he said he was getting married again. I was so devastated. It was as if the final door was being closed to the possibility that Wayne and I would ever get back together again.

The Abuse

I paid dearly for my bad choices. Jim was abusive to me. An abusive person may use any and every method they can to control the other person. Before our relationship was over he had given veiled threats to kill some of my loved ones in addition to the previous death threat against Wayne.

Jim also made other threats that put a terrible fear in me. He threatened to get me fired from a really good job. He threatened to burn our house down when I wanted to take the snow off the roof so it wouldn't cave in. He threatened to shoot the tires on my car if I helped with youth group at church.

He did many other really mean things. He traumatized me by driving erratically in traffic, swerving in and out of lanes. And if I said something it would often make him mad and then he drove even more dangerously.

He got to the place where he always wanted me to have the phone on ”speaker phone” so he could hear what was being said. He didn’t want me to be with my friends much.

He stalked me sometimes. One time at the mall I came out to my car only to find it was inoperable. He had been there and was upset with me for something so he fixed the car so it wouldn’t run.

He even stalked me while I was still married to Wayne. He would park down the street from our place and wait for me to go for a walk. I remember telling him once, “You are like the devil to me.”

One time when we were moving Jim thought I wasn’t working hard enough. I was tired and needed a rest. He threatened to leave me right in the middle of the move with the truck partly loaded.

Another time he threatened to throw the couch out into the yard. I think what intensified my fears is that I never knew what he was going to do.

One time he came to the office where I worked and grabbed my purse and dumped all the contents out on the floor. He claimed I was on drugs. I guess he was looking for them. I wasn’t on drugs.

His method to try to find out something was to accuse me of it and see how I would defend myself.

I went back with Jim, in 1998, for about 1 year and 9 months. I thought it was the right thing at the time since we were still married. It was his most abusive treatment of me in our whole marriage. I think he was punishing me for having left him.

He played tricks on my mind. One minute he’d say he loved me and the next he might be tearing me down. I even buried money in the yard in case I needed it.

I used to cry and sing the song, “He will deliver me. My God will set me free” by Bill  Batstone. I got restraining orders on him two different times.

It was worse when I was a Christian because I wouldn't fight back. He wanted me to fight with him. He said he liked me better the way I was before I changed. He also told me I would never “stay” changed but would go back to how I used to be. Praise God he’s been wrong. God did change me and I haven’t gone back to how I used to be.

How I Got Out

God had Jim’s last threat backfire on him. As a means of controlling me, he threatened to divorce me. I know it was just a threat because he tried to get back together with me after we were divorced.

But thankfully it was God's way of getting me out of a disastrous situation. I was very scared though of what Jim might do. I had failed the previous test to trust that God would protect Wayne from Jim’s death threat.

I recognized that God was now giving me the same test that I had failed previously. God will often test us again if we fail the first time. And now Jim had once again made death threats against people I loved. But I had a close relationship with God and I trusted Him this time to protect my loved ones.

God allowed Jim to be tricked in the divorce process. He believed that he had 30 days to reverse the process but the law had been changed. The judge signed it the day it was filed and the divorce was final that day. So Jim's plan backfired on him and I was finally free.

I was trying to do what I thought was right and stay with Jim even though he was so abusive to me. But I prayed and asked God to deliver me from how Jim was treating me. I really thought that God's answer to my prayer would be that Jim would either change or die (he was 67).

I never thought of taking my own life but at one point I did ask God if He could end my life to put me out of my misery. I don't think it crossed my mind that divorce would be God's answer. I was not going to get a divorce myself but when Jim wanted one I could see it was God’s answer to my prayer.

I asked God many times whether I should go through with the divorce with Jim and finally I felt God was telling me to, “quit asking Him this question.” Sometimes the devil will make doing the right thing seem wrong. That’s why we need to test every decision we make by the Bible and pray a lot. The devil will even use family or friends to try to get us to go in the wrong direction.

I now believe that I should not have gone back with Jim in 1998. Just because time  passes a wrong situation does not become right. It was wrong in 1991 to marry him and it was still wrong to be with him in 1998.

There’s a story that helped me a lot with this situation. It is in Ezra chapters 9 & 10. God was angry with His people because they had married heathen women. God wanted them to divorce their wives and send them away. And it wasn’t like they were married just a short time. Some of the wives had children.

Even though time had passed, enough to even have children, God wanted them to divorce these wives and send them and their children away. And that is what they did.

It reminds me of Abraham when he took Hagar as a wife and later had to send her and her son Isamael away. How painful that must have been. But that’s what God wanted. He does not want His followers marrying unbelievers.

I also think I was right, in God’s eyes, to leave Jim because he was abusing me. I don’t think God ever wants people to be abused. But at the time, I thought I had to stay with him.

God knew my beliefs and He worked a deliverance for me based on what I believed. Since God is God, He has the ability to work around whatever people may do.

People may try to stop us from doing what’s right but I’ve learned that God has a million ways to accomplish His purposes and the devil and all his demons can not stop God. Praise His holy name and praise the name of Jesus whose name is above every other name. “If God is on our side, who can ever be against us?”       Romans 8:31

The Turning Point

I had been praying for quite a while to be delivered from this abuse. But the beginning of the end was when I started to obey God rather than Jim in spiritual matters. Prior to this point, I was asking Jim permission for everything I did.

I was trying to follow what the Bible says about, “Wives, submit to your husbands.” I was correct in doing this in all matters except spiritual ones. And when I started obeying God above Jim in spiritual matters, that’s when Jim got mad and started saying he wanted a divorce. Often God is just waiting for us to act so that He can give us the blessing we so desperately seek.

How I Endured the Abuse

I stayed close to God by listening to lots of scripture. I memorized scripture, read lots of scripture and prayed for deliverance. And God answered my  prayer.

How I Could Have Avoided It

If I just would have known then what I know now I could have avoided the disaster. But I didn't. I wasn't close enough to God then for Him to help me through the situation. If I would have been talking to Him, reading the Bible more, and asking Him what to do, like I do now, I would have never made these disastrous mistakes.

It’s a terrible thing to be in the bondage of an abusive relationship. Oh, if only someone, somewhere could have helped me. I hope this webpage can help someone who is being abused.

If I knew then what I know now I would have seen the warning signals. If only I had not lived by my feelings. I can remember it felt like a war was going on in my mind.

If only I had realized that Satan can give us feelings, strong feelings, all kinds of feelings. And they feel very real. If only I had realized that God could have changed my feelings.

Our only hope is in talking to God about them and asking Him to change them, begging Him to change them if necessary.

How I Healed

It’s been quite a few years since I got out of this abusive relationship. It has taken me many years to heal and to be able to talk or write about it without being traumatized. 

I believe God has healed me and that He used my current husband, Mike, to help heal me. Mike has been so kind and sympathetic to my pain. And he’s been a really good listener.

He hasn’t minimized my feelings nor has he tried to offer “solutions” that would supposedly “fix” my pain. He has listened and sympathized and told me things like, “I’m sorry.” And he hasn’t ever said things like, “Don’t tell me about your past life anymore. I’m tired of hearing about it.”

He’s never acted irritated or upset or depressed when I talked about my past life and all the pain. He has never seemed to be bothered when I talk about either of my two previous marriages or mention the names of Wayne or Jim.

In Conclusion

Jim was 30 years older than me. I was 25 when this started. Jim had a lot of life experience and knew how to get what he wanted. He knew how to get people to like him and to get them to do what he wanted. But in the end Jim didn’t get what he wanted because God overruled. Praise the Lord!

Jim was very evil and the devil used him to trick me and to take me away from Wayne. I think the devil was afraid of what Wayne and I could do together for God. I know God is real because He delivered me from Jim’s abuse.

*Some names on this page have been changed.