There are women who are STANDING for their marriages. Yes, they are married to disobedient, unfaithful, and difficult husbands [pretty well covers anything and everything a man can do to a woman] but they understand the cost and are willing to obey God instead of listening to those around them encouraging them to take the “easy” way out and get divorced. Several women in the chat room are standing strong in the gap for their husband’s soul and their marriages even though many have told them to divorce their husbands. It is a beautiful thing to witness. Here is one woman who is doing this and encouraging others who have also chosen to stand for their errant husbands:
“You keeping your faith and your testimony is strong, even now. People want to fix the situation; it’s human nature. Most people default to fixing marriage problems by shifting the power from the errant spouse to the hurting spouse, by recommending the hurting spouse use divorce to top from the bottom (regain power and authority over the situation).
“Human sympathy seems appropriate. I always ask people if they’re trying to be more sympathetic than God is merciful. Because that’s really what’s going on: people think that they care more than God does about the errant spouse AND the hurting spouse. ‘Fix this pain!’ cries the flesh. My friends often think I’m completely crazy, or that I must have zero respect for myself for remaining married with things the way they can be.
“What they don’t realize is that they’re not going to be the ones picking up the pieces: they won’t be the ones loading up four children every few days to switch homes and clearing the emotional fallout from that. They won’t be paying to support my children or driving to medical appointments with me alone to help. They won’t be paying the lawyers or therapists; they won’t be training up my children to believe in covenant when they can’t even see it. They won’t be in my home holding babies for me. They won’t be at Court hearings fighting for my children to have stability in the midst of chaos.
“So unless someone’s planning on getting some skin in the game, I just ignore them and smile. Because I’m standing. And I’m standing with YOU!”
— Lori Alexander, The Transformed Wife, Never Encourage Women to Divorce Their Husbands, November 29, 2017
Note:
I know more than a few Evangelical pastors who believe that there is no grounds for divorce; that marriage is until death do us part. Sure sounds to me like these pastors are encouraging women to murder their spouses. Just saying…
Her message is dangerous as well as delusional. I grew up in a family where the mother took very similar “advice” (also religiously-motivated, tho’ another denomination.) Result: continued abuse. And the result of that? Damaged children who have grown up into damaged adults. We grew up in an atmosphere of fear, anxiety and unresolved rage. Dad wouldn’t seek out any help (he was sometimes OFFERED help, which he refused). . .and Mum did what Lori A advises here: she kept “forgiving” him, endlessly.
The comments below this woman’s “advice” also come from a delusional place. How nice for them that they are happily married and wouldn’t dream of divorcing their husbands! And what about women (or men) who are living in misery with someone whom they found out (belatedly) is destructive and unkind? How dare people like this insist that No Divorce is the best thing for children.
Where were these devout Christians when the kids in MY family needed love and stability and therapy?
Rachel, I could not agree more. I’m also a child who grew up in an abusive home and the damage it causes stays with you for life. I guess this All-loving god who knows the damage being done to his innocent children, is smiling down upon them while they endure years of trauma.
This is a great example of why religion is so damaging. It’s worse than the Inquisition; your spouse/parents are supposed to love you.
This woman needs to get her ass kicked on a daily basis just so she can relate to the trauma of what others daily face.
Bless-her-heart….
I have to agree with Rachel.
I think the best thing a woman can do married to a truly abusive man especially for the sake of the emotional and physical welfare of the kids is to separate from him. Sometimes this actually can help bring a man to his senses to seek help.
I also think the church needs to do a lot more to help and support single moms who are in this difficult and heartbreaking situation.
I generally agree with most of the previous comments so far. While I do think there are churches who could do more, there are many more who need to butt out as they actually do nothing more than enable abuse via “counseling.” Unfortunately several churches are incapable of giving good advice on subjects like abuse because they either victim blame or force the victim to forgive the perpetrator instead of actually trying to help the perp stop abusing in the first place. This toxic idea that we have to forgive no matter what and then not get divorced is nothing more than a smokescreen that enables abuse to continue indefinitely and ensure that those abusers remain in power with a get out of jail free card. So while the church could do more, it is more often part of the problem. Until they learn that the bible is not the all knowing advice book they think it is, and then actually go learn the dynamics of abuse and relationships and what drives it, they will never get better.
Disclaimer, While I have painted a broad stroke , christianity is large and diverse and many do not take the bible as literally as their more toxic controlling brethren on the more conservative end.
My parents were both RC converts (they converted before their marriage.) So no Biblical literalism there, tho’ I do accept that Biblical literalism doesn’t help with this issue any more than it does with any other. A big problem in the RC Church is, of course, that a distressed person seeking advice about their marriage is likely to be seeking it from an unmarried person, a priest. And not just unmarried but someone who has chosen very deliberately to never have a marital and sexual relationship with anyone. Basically, there are lots of Catholic priests who have a problem with women, who fear intimacy, have Mommy issues, etc. And even the ones who don’t have these specific hang-ups are still unmarried and unattached; they almost certainly, and inevitably, have an unrealistic view of what married life and family life can be like. That’s even before you look at the theological mindset that sees men as superior to women and that views all women (nuns excepted) as “called” by God to marriage. Yet these are the men my mother turned to, repeatedly, during her marriage to my father. (And who, 7 years after my dad’s death, she still turns to today.)
This set-up is every bit as toxic as any church based on Biblical literalism. The fault is, basically, patriarchy. Which quite a few men take issue with and quite a few women, Lori Alexander, endorse to the heavens. It’s one big reason behind women not seeking divorce even when they are living with violence and cruelty (or feeling guilty if they do seek divorce). And it’s THE big reason why there is so much child sexual abuse and covering up of child sexual abuse. I agree, Trenton, the church (many churches) is often a major part of the problem! And yes, Justine, Lori Alexander IS enabling abuse here; her words can only give great succour to those who abuse their spouses and partners. The kindest possible interpretation of her stance is that she has had a very happy and sheltered life and simply can’t IMAGINE what it’s like to live with an abusive person but really, that is not good enough.
Yes, I agree, Trenton. I’m actually married to a man who had been divorced, so I definitely feel that if a marriage can’t truly be healed divorce is certainly the “lesser of the evil,” and can lead to a much greater blessing.
Churches do need to be educated related to the cycle of abuse. I think very often people can misuse Biblical interpretation to support their own positions. And, I think common sense has flown right out the window in this as well.
How on earth if a woman stays with a man to be beaten to within an inch of her life with her terrified children watching on is Jesus going to be “honored and glorified. ” What blasphemous nonsense this is.
To me, the only thing as bad as an abuser is someone who enables abuse. If Lori Alexander isn’t an enabler, I don’t know who is. I don’t care whether she’s using the Bible, church doctrines, psychology or anything else as her rationale: She’s still abetting spousal abuse.
This is toxic advice and definitely not applicable to each situation. My parents divorced when I was a small child as my father cheated on my mother and was emotionally and verbally abusive to her. She literally feared for our safety. He disappeared from our lives but had a common law wife with whom he had 6 more children, and he kept my existence a secret from them. The kids found out about me from our mutual grandmother. I met them when the oldest was 18 and youngest was 6. This was 2 years after the oldest 2 girls illegally procured a gun and told their mother that if she did not kick our mutual father out of the house they were going to kill him. They had been subjected to years of verbal and emotional abuse as he was a raging alcoholic and drug user. The kids would all hide before he came home and their mom would give them a signal whether it was safe to come out. The oldest 4 kids all suffer from various types of mental illness – all suffer from depression, one is a cutter, another has been hospitalized in a mental institution, one has anxiety disorder. Only the youngest 2 who didn’t live very long with their father are OK as adults (one is a marine and the other is a college graduate and army nurse).
These kids told me I was the lucky one because my mom divorced our mutual father. Too bad their mother didn’t leave him sooner, but she was terrified of him too, and of being alone. They lived on welfare after the split. No, life isn’t easy for a single parent, but at least the children weren’t being verbally and emotionally abused anymore.
Yes, sometimes people get divorced for ridiculous reasons, but there are many, many cases of abuse where divorced is absolutely warranted. I feel for these women who grew up in a culture where they married young, have no education and no marketable skills, feel trapped in a marriage that is ordained by “God” and that may be abusive, and they feel they have no way out, or that they are required to stay in the marriage for economic and religious reasons. This is incredibly sad, and the children suffer tremendously as well.
I left a message below the line under this post on Lori Alexander’s blog the other day; I note that she has chosen not to publish it. Of course she can publish what she wants on her blog but it does indicate that she’s not willing to give any view other than her own an airing.
And she has put up another post on divorce since then, quoting a psychologist who has apparently studied lots of people whose parents got divorced. What she still doesn’t do is acknowledge the increasing body of evidence that shows how badly damaged children are when caught between warring parents who do NOT divorce.
Black-and-white thinking. And she constantly holds wives responsible, referring to the fact that more women initiate divorce than men. She seems completely incapable of asking herself why that might be the case. A real lack of empathy with this one.
Lori is toxic. Whenever a woman asks for advice on her FB page regarding her abusive marriage she will tell her to pray, trust God, and submit more. Then she’ll delete the comment. I’ve seen women state that they fear for their life, in which I have posted information for the domestic violence hotline. Lori’s response is to delete the entire exchange. Lori doesn’t care about women, she only cares about her beliefs. She will not allow any responses on her blog or FB page that do not align with her beliefs.
“There are women who are STANDING for their marriages. Yes, they are married to disobedient, unfaithful, and difficult husbands [pretty well covers anything and everything a man can do to a woman] but they understand the cost and are willing to obey God instead of listening to those around them encouraging them to take the “easy” way out and get divorced. [sic]”
The only thing that they are “standing for” is an abysmal lack of self respect and self worth. But if four decades plus among Bible pounders has taught me anything, it that an abysmal lack of self respect and self worth is viewed as a virtue in their Bizarro World. Not only among women, but among men as well.
In their view, it’s the winsome incarnation of godly humility to bite heartily into any shit sandwich served at the picnic of life, and if you dare to question it, you’re deemed an ingrate or worse. And if you try to improve your lot in life, be it through attending a university, or completing a graduate program, or leaving an abusive husband, well, then you’re ungodly.
Karl Marx noted:
“Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”
In other words: he recognized the necessity of the painkilling wonder drug (as opiates legitimately were in the Nineteenth Century) aspect of religion in dulling the excruciating and unbearable pain of life as it exists. Yet he warned also of the side effect of deadening one’s inclination to fight back and make constructive efforts to remedy those very conditions that create such pain. And Lori here exemplifies the reality that religion (all religions really, but most especially those that offer pie in the sky rewards such as Evangelicalism) thrives upon deadened minds willing to accept the unacceptable in the name of a self created sky- daddy.