Emotional Abuse

Emotional abuse hides. Rather than manifesting in the outwardly visible parts of a person, damage done through this particular variety of abuse creates an unstable undercurrent that wraps around the personal core, draining life, energy, and hope. People react to what is seen, and emotional abuse does not visibly manifest its wounds. As a result, the infection remains inside to grow and weaken the spiritual identity as a child of God for the individual. Injuries incurred from this variety of abuse sink deeper into the spirit and require much, much longer to heal.

Wounds penetrate beyond protective barriers and alter the core thought patterns, changing the sufferer’s perspective on the world as the mental life becomes more estranged from God’s intended grace. Goodness cannot be trusted, because it has become for one such as this an illusory escape to fuel the daydreams during the Gethsemane experiences that attach themselves somehow to the quietly desperate lives of those who accept emotional abuse as a given in life. The sense of self curls into itself in an figurative fetal position and hibernates in a spiritual slumber. No longer living as a person, simply existing from one moment to the next, these tender ones find the day’s most ardent task to be mere survival. Becoming a person of worth with actual identity simply does not enter the mind as possibility.

Lives such as this create emptiness so severe that when one does come across the opportunity to receive from others, the gift simply cannot be accepted due to the intensity of the unworthiness. Scars and unhealed wounds warp views and tempt the troubled ones to believe that they must hide what they perceive as weakness. Certainly, in a stronger state, or in a different phase of life, they would not have accepted this mode of functioning as normal or healthy. And the ugly truth is that logic has nothing to do with abuse. Perceived judgment is so strong because of internal brokenness. These souls perceive the entire world to be just as distorted as the dysfunctional microcosm in which they function — and so continue onward. Sufferers frequently marry what they know and contribute to enlarging the spiral of malcontent. If emotional abuse is life as usual, comprehension of the healthy world is not present. Beyond the issue of comprehension lurks the issue of comfort level. For better or worse, people find comfort in what they know – the suggestions, the rhythms, the cycles and warning signs. Dynamic undercurrents and messages of the dysfunctional world occupy and guard the mind against plausible hope. Increased performance oriented anxiety levels offer good works without the undergirding grace of knowing that God’s arms uplift and hold.

Praise God for reaching into the mire again and again until His love finally cracks the turtle shell of despair. Humanity’s brokenness functions as God’s platform for mercy, grace, and love. Faith causes a fundamental paradigm shift as it redefines weakness as an opportunity for yielding the self to God in order that His strength, grace, and mercy may be shown in the world. Not that God directs catastrophe into life’s way, but He promises to bring good from all things if there is courage to lean into Him and locate the patience to wait in trust. The weakness and brokenness give the opportunity for the awareness of God’s arms wrapped around His children. Whether the children are able to snuggle into His embrace or continue the fight in their own strength springs from perceptions of what weakness and brokenness signify. Walking through suffering and then gaining the strength to turn and look at the road traveled shows the indelible mark of God’s grace along the way when no one was paying attention at all, except God.

Tags: abuse, emotional, grace, hands of Christ, healing, reach out