When Past Sexual Abuse Affects a Marriage’s Intimacy
I know. I know because I lived in that torturous prison for many years. Yet today I am free. However, even today, as I read or hear about the pain others are experiencing, my heart is clutched by the enormity of their pain, and to you as well, if that is your experience. How I wish I could take every tear, every fear, erase every painful memory and replace it with only good. But I can’t. It’s not possible because what you are living through is all part of living in a fallen world. People sin; innocent people becomes victimized.
However, what I can do is embrace them in their pain and you in your pain, and breathe words of hope that it IS possible to be released. Freedom IS possible. I know. I live in its grace everyday. Everyday, I thank my God because of the redeeming grace of God, which has been given to me —and is available to you, through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. For this reason, there is hope and release from living life as a continual victim of the abuses of the past. Christ paid the price so sin does not have to imprison us. And I hope and pray that for you.
I don’t know what your journey will be like for you to get to that place of release —a place of being able to open your eyes each day to a new beginning, rather than a rehash of painful memories, which burden you continually. But I can tell you that it will be a journey —different from mine, different from any other, because you are unique, all in your own. God knows this and is willing to help you take this personal pilgrimage.
I remember the day when my journey to healing actually started. I had prayed before that I would be released from painful memories of being abused sexually when I was younger. But it didn’t really start to happen until I was so desperate that I told God that I would do ANYTHING, and I meant ANYTHING it would take to be healed from the torturous thoughts, which seemed to continually rape my feelings.
And just then, a lot like the incident in the Bible in John 5, I sensed the Lord saying to me, “Do you REALLY want to be healed… do you really want to get well?” To that I cried, “Yes!” I knew that this was a pivotal moment for me. Bible teacher, Beth Moore calls it a “defining moment.” A defining moment is one in which we often have to put actions to our convictions. Do we really mean what we say we do, because if we do, there may be more pain involved. It can change the course of our/your life.
Just like it is when we have surgery, if we are going to get to a better place in our health, more pain will occur during the time and for a while after the infection is cut out from our wound. But eventually, if it is done right, we will experience healing and relief from the pain.
When I said, “yes,” it’s at that moment that I heard the words in my spirit, “Then hang onto your hat, because you have a rough journey ahead of you.”
Now normally, someone who is in pain —whether emotional or physical, does not want to hear those words. But somehow I knew that this was a journey where the end result would be worth the extra suffering it took to get there. I sensed peace in my spirit and in my heart.
From that day forward, it seemed like everywhere I turned, there was something I read or something I heard on the radio or TV or a conversation, or whatever, which brought up junk that was buried inside. And I had to deal with it. Often it was in tears. Many people (other than my husband, my partner) may have wondered what was happening with me being tearful so much of the time. And yet I couldn’t share with them what it was that was stirring me emotionally because I knew this was to be a journey in which God was taking me on, where I couldn’t invite others to travel with me, at that particular time.
God worked and continues to work within me to help me to experience freedom and not live like a victim of my past. It’s not that I don’t remember that it happened to me, but just as it is when you see a healed over scar from a past wound, it doesn’t hurt like it did when someone presses upon it. I hope you get to that point.
I remember the first day it occurred to me that I had gone through an entire day and I wasn’t haunted once by what was done to me in the past. It stunned me. I NEVER thought I could go through an entire day without being hurt at least once because of painful memories, which seemed to continually ambush my peace of mind. And yet it happened.
Since that day, I’ve lived days, weeks, and months without my past hurting me. If something happens to stir a memory, it’s not as if I don’t remember it but it no longer hurts. It’s something that happened to me. But it’s not something that is relevant any longer to who I am or how I will live, other than the fact that it has made me more compassionate and caring toward others who have been victimized.
I hope that for you. Obviously, I don’t know what you have been through in your past. But I hope you will reach out for healing wherever it is healthy for you to do so. Not every avenue is safe (as you know from your past). So I encourage you to go with God on this journey, asking Him to be your Wonderful Counselor. At that point, the only pain you suffer will be redeemed in some way and purposeful, rather than just downright hurtful.
He will most likely use many different people (such as a counselor, or more), and many resources and circumstances. And through this healing path, He may allow certain things to happen which may not make sense, such as His silence, or other puzzling circumstances. But I hope you will trust Him as you put your hand into His.
Something else that Bible teacher Beth Moore said, which may help you along the way as you go along is, “God never hangs a veil over our understanding accidentally. He is intentional. There is a reason. And the reason may be that He is calling you to faith.”
She said this in a Bible study I participated in a while back on the book of Esther. It’s titled, Esther: It’s Tough Being a Woman
… and it is. If you get a chance, I recommend you go through this study with the Esther Leader’s Kit: It’s Tough Being a Woman
with other women (if you are a woman). You might really benefit from
it, ESPECIALLY with your circumstances. She discovered her destiny in a
different way than she probably ever dreamed.Below are a few quotes I wrote down, which might minister to you in some way, even if you are a man who is reading this. Just glean through them, seeing what the Holy Spirit tells you personally through each one. She said:
• “God uses the book of Esther during
times when we do not see Him. We can trust Him when there is the
‘apparent absence of God.'”
• “Sometimes God works through miracles and other times through the individual.”
• “When we trust our lives to the unseen
but ever-present God, He will write our lives into His story and every
last one of them will turn out to be a great read, with a grand ending.”
• “You cannot amputate your history from
your destiny. You cannot become the person you’re to become without your
history. God will tie it together —that’s what redemption is.”
• “The point is not that Esther abstained
but rather was restrained” (which she needed to do, to be a queen in
those days because she had NO rights… her every move was the King’s
call).
• “Maybe God allows ‘Hamans’ (or troubles) to come along so we’ll quit being so at home here on earth.”
• “God will often use something huge to
turn us into another direction —a direction He wants us to head down
(instead of the path we used to be headed down). It will often be a
crisis that God will use to pivot our direction.”
• “Remember, destiny appoints one, but affects many.”
• “God never hangs a veil over our
understanding accidentally. He is intentional. There is a reason. And
the reason may be that He is calling you to faith.”
• “Esther came to what many would call her ‘defining moment.'” It’s important to be on the watch, for what ours is as well.
• “You may be one brave decision away from an important step in your destiny.”
• “Our culture is training us for
impatience (impatience, when it comes to anything we think God should
hurry up and tell us or do for us). If we will not wait upon the Lord,
we will not fulfill our destiny.”
• “If God puts a stay on things, something is up… things in heaven are coming into play with things on earth.”
• “We will lose our strength when we wait upon the event, but our strength will be renewed when we wait upon the Lord.”
• “We can find our significance and satisfaction in the shelter of the Most High.”
I hope these quotes will help you in some way. I hope you can go
through this particular Bible Study to fill in the rest of the richness
of what Beth Moore teaches on this subject.Beyond this, I can’t help you too much more as you work through these issues, except to point you to a few additional resources, which have helped many and could help you.
Whatever you do I encourage you, with every fiber of my being, to reach out for help. Please don’t allow yourself to continue to live as a victim. If you are married, it’s especially important to break free from this bondage of your past. Your spouse shouldn’t have to be victimized by this perpetrator or these perpetrators, as far as being blocked in being able to have an intimate relationship with you. He or she becomes another victim, and doesn’t deserve this victimization either.
For your sake, for the sake of your spouse, for the sake of your marriage, for the sake of others you come across who may need you to be one who is healthy in pointing them toward healing, I urge you to seek help and healing in the ways God shows you, as you seek Him and His guidance.
Below are some additional resources that may help you.
A book that many, many women have found healing is, The Wounded Heart: Hope for Adult Victims of Childhood Sexual Abuse
, written by Dan Allender, published by NavPress. It’s one you may want to read and glean through the help you can gain.Something Dr Allender wrote in this book is something that I certainly found to be true (among many, many other statements):
“There are many options available to the Christian for dealing with past abuse, but the outcome is unappealing: forgive and forget —denial; pressured love —passionless conformity; quick cures —irresponsible passivity. It is not difficult to understand why the Christian who has been abused often chooses either to seek help outside the church or to learn to handle the damage by pretending it does not exist. I strongly believe the Scriptures offer better ways of hope and change.I have to say that when I read his statement about walking through the “valley of the shadow of death” I could certainly relate, because at times it seemed that was the route I was directed to take. It was so very painful at times.
“What is the better path? The argument of this book is that the best path is through the valley of the shadow of death. The crags of doubt and the valleys of despair offer a proving ground of God that no other terrain can provide. God does show Himself faithful; but the geography is often desert dry and mountainous-demanding, to the point that the path seems too dangerous to face the journey ahead.
“…The journey involves bringing our wounded heart before God, a heart that is full of rage, overwhelmed with doubt, bloodied but unbroken, rebellious, stained, and lonely. It does not seem possible that anyone can handle, let alone embrace, our wounded and sinful heart.”
But this type of valley is referred to in Psalm 23:4, where it also tells of the help that is available to us as we walk through it: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”
That’s especially true as I made the decision to trust God’s heart and love for me, even though I had been victimized by humans who claimed to “love” me. But when you reach the end of yourself, and every other road is a dead end, looking up to God and trusting HIS heart is especially the wise way to go. He IS trustworthy.
Dr Allender explains more in his book and then he writes: “With sadness and joy I invite you to join this quest for perspective.”
That is the sentiment of my heart for you too. How much I wish this didn’t have to be such a painful journey to healing, but it is. And yet, please know, that it is not without relief, clearer thinking, and hope on the other side of it. THAT is what I pray for you.
To start you on this leg of your journey, here is a tool to help you can be found below. It is labeled as a “Do-it-Yourself” type of “free and effective” therapy for healing from sexual abuse. This may be truly effective for you, apart from anything else which God uses in your healing, or perhaps one step of many. I don’t know. Often times (as was the case for me) God uses certain therapists to assist in the healing. But if you read throughout the Bible, God heals in different ways, so we can’t limit ourselves to a “one size fits all” approach.
I (and we here at Marriage Missions) encourage you to read through all the material this web site makes available on this issue, and see if this will be what God uses to help you. With this and with any human information you receive, glean what you can use and disregard the rest as possibly being there for someone else.
I believe there is a lot of great help in the following resource. Please see for yourself by clicking onto:
And here is an article, posted on Sheila
Wray Gregoire’s web site, To Love Honor and Vacuum. It’s written by
Paula where she gives insights into actions that spouse’s can take to
help them to progress towards healing:
Most importantly, I hope you can comprehend
that there IS hope that better days can be ahead for you and that you
can experience freedom, despite the feelings of hopelessness and
emotional captivity you may be experiencing.
I encourage you to view the following CBN
video, which features author and counselor Linda Settles telling her
testimony of being held captive and sexually abused for 28 years while
her mother turned a blind eye. She eventually escaped, in more than one
way —both physically and emotionally and spiritually.
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