Divorce and Your Abuser: Taking the Long Road Home

Divorce is not the short cut society pretends it is.  I am a person who likes to be efficient with my energy so I am always looking for life hacks. But God, despite my preferences, has led me the long way round over and over.  I am currently reading through the Bible through the eyes of John Wesley, truly an exercise in taking the long way. But reading through Exodus 13, I finally understood why it was that my routes through life appear so circuitous.

The Hebrews are preparing themselves for an escape from slavery. They make their preparations and sacrifices. And Jehovah leads them in a puzzling direction.

                And it came to pass when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God led them not through the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, Lest peradventure the people repent when they see war, and they return to Egypt: But God led the people about, through the way of the wilderness of the Red sea: and the children of Israel went up harnessed out of the land of Egypt. Exodus 13:17-18

When I read that particular portion, I had an epiphany. The judge, during my divorce, inexplicably  granted my ex and me 50/50 custody. Our divorce took two long years to finalize and in the end, I went home with my children. Normally a divorce takes six months or maybe a year to accomplish. I struggled for a long time with the idea that God didn’t know what he was doing when it came to my custody battle.

But years later, as I was coming to grips with the gravity of my PTSD with its anxieties and nightmares as well as my tendencies towards dissociation, I began to understand.

As hard as it was for the girls to go back and forth, I know now that I was not ready for the battles in divorce that were to come.

The Hebrews were nowhere near ready for the Philistines that waited on a shorter journey to the Promised Land. They had a large, well-organized army. God could have simply won the battle for them as He did at the parting of the Red Sea. But that miracle just saw them out of slavery. The Amalekites would be waiting for them in the wilderness, disorganized tribes of bandits and thieves.  That would be hard enough for them to face. God knew that the Hebrews did not really understand who they were. Small-time villains would be frightening enough.

I didn’t know who I was either. I really identify with the Hebrews. Just like them, I had experienced slavery. While I was not trafficked, marriage to a narcissist is emotional and mental bondage. I lived in fear every day of my life. I served my ex with the same anxiety and degradation of spirit that I imagine the Hebrews served their captors.

Divorce for me was escaping my captor.

I understand the differences between being in an abusive relationship and being a slave exist. But enough parallels exist for me to identify with those held in captivity by the Egyptians. I, too, wanted to turn back to the ‘safety’ of my marriage. It took me several attempts to leave for good. My ex seemed to me to be unconquerable. I could see no way out. And I earned the money for the family and did all the housework. I actually found life physically easier as a single mother. I only worked one job and my daughters and I worked together to create a nice environment without his criticism and punishment.

By the time the divorce was final, my fear of him had significantly decreased. I left the marriage without much hope that I would escape. He had intimidated me into thinking he was invincible. I had just arrived at a place where I was just desperate enough to risk losing everything to avoid living with him. Like the Hebrews, my hope in the escape was a fleeting thing. My moods were all over the place.

Sometimes we complain (like the Hebrews) that God is taking too long. Now in retrospect, I can see how the length of the divorce had its merit. I was a significantly different person from the beginning of the divorce by the time it was finalized. In the two and a half years of sporadic court appearances, I began to view the process with much less fear.

My ex, like the Amalekites, went for the jugular in the court proceedings.

The Amalekites would hide in the cliffs and ambush unwary travelers. My ex used the ambush strategy as well. He tried to introduce my diary as evidence of my unfitness to be a parent. My journal was filled with prayers and confessions, so I am not sure what it would have accomplished. The judge would have none of it. My ex lined up people he had bullied into testifying against me. None of their testimonies were believable.

I chose to take the high road.  I focused on my relationship with my daughters. I didn’t attack him, though to be honest, it was both from a desire to do right and from fear. But the judge noticed that I wasn’t vindictive. I did not try to destroy my ex, though he exerted much effort and more than one lawyer in the attempt to destroy me.

Sometimes we have to be like the Hebrews in Exodus 14. Trapped between the Egyptians and the Red Sea, Moses tells them that they didn’t have to do anything but wait on the Lord to rescue them. On the day of the final judgment in court, I felt peace surround me. I didn’t have a great lawyer by any means. I didn’t present some horrific picture of my ex in court. At the time I told myself that was because I didn’t want to dishonor the girl’s father. I know now that I was too traumatized to face revealing the horror my ex had inflicted on us.

I walked into the quiet courtroom the day the divorce was to be finalized. My daughters sat with their father and his parents at the opposite end from where I had entered. The actual room is quite hazy in my mind. I knew that my parents were there with me. My lawyer took his seat. I moved next to him while the judge sat watching. All of a sudden, my two-year-old baby girl shrieked, piercing the solemn silence of the room.

Mommy!  Mommy! Mommy!

She sobbed out my name while her grandparents tried to quiet her. They wouldn’t let her come to me. But the judge saw. Instead of taking testimony, he invited my three older daughters into his chamber. They let him know their preferences very firmly. It isn’t supposed to be that children must choose between their parents, but I believe that it was helpful for them to have a voice after two years of suffering. The judge actually apologized and then ruled in my favor, quickly and firmly.

The Red Sea opened and my daughters and I went forth into our long journey of healing.

If you are in this long journey of recovery from abuse, I want to encourage you. Healing isn’t a straight forward journey, like the wilderness for the Hebrews. It took them decades to recover from hundreds of years of slavery. But they did recover. And they did move into their promised land.

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Trusting Yourself Again After Narcissistic Abuse