He beats me at the slightest excuse

Dear Agatha, I am in a very abusive marriage; there is no day I don’t get beaten by my husband so much so, neighbours no longer bother to come in to separate us. Some of them now gossip behind me and I get to hear; they think I enjoy the violence-which they think is a stimulant for me to enjoy having sex better with my husband. Others wonder if I have no family to go to. I don’t blame them at all; in their shoes, I would also be mislead into thinking the same things given the fact that it is something my husband and I do everyday. I am sincerely fed up especially as my son who is just three is beginning to manifest the same kind of violence in his play group at school; he fights and bites his mates. My entire body is adorned with different scars courtesy of my husband whose reasons for beating me vary from money to my attitude. At times, he comes home drunk and that is enough reason for him to pick a fight. The last fight landed me at the hospital; according to the doctor, I was lucky because I had lost a lot of blood before a neighbour found me on the floor in our sitting room. Although, I made up my mind to end the marriage but when my pastor and elders of the church came to preach tolerance and patience, I decided to stay on. According to them it is a phase that will one day come to an end and importantly, that God doesn’t support divorce. I respect my pastor too much to disobey him. He says those who disobey God on this important injunction go to hell. Truthfully, it is becoming harder by the day as my husband appears very determined to kill me. Nothing I do pleases him. He doesn’t care who the audience is, he beats me anywhere his anger overwhelms him including the church. Because of this temper, I lost my job when he came to my office to beat me up for forgetting to drop the key to the house with a neighbour. He traveled, didn’t tell me he was coming back earlier than he told me; that was my offence. He disrupted business at our banking hall that day. It was so bad that security had to be called in to throw him out. I don’t know what to do. My parents are of the view that when I am tired, I will end the marriage as they are tired of asking me to come out of it. His cousin who has on several occasions witnessed our fights has on several occasions told me to leave to avoid being blinded like my father-in-law did to my mother-in-law. I met my mother-in-law once and was told by my husband that she became blind in one eye in an accident. I just assumed it was a motor accident. According to the cousin who stopped coming to our house when my husband fought him for telling me about the real cause of his mother blindness, it was what led to the separation of his parents. My father-in-law banned his wife from ever seeing the children. I met her when I put to bed. She came to the hospital to see the baby and I. I really have lost every respect and love I have for him but I don’t want to disobey God by ending the marriage. What do you think? Lara. Dear Lara, You can only stay married if you are alive. Dead people don’t marry nor have children. I am sure your pastor also told you that suicide is a sin before God. Staying in such a violent marriage is akin to committing suicide. There are no medals for staying and dying in a violent marriage. The God we serve isn’t wicked. Yes, the Bible stresses on sustainability of a marriage to avoid frivolities by couples looking for the slightest excuse to terminate their union. But in this instance, when insanity has blanketed sanity, leaving, is the most viable option. It isn’t the pastor that is being beaten everyday or his children that are being exposed to violence. It is your life and your children’s lives that are being toyed with. This is the time you need to read your Bible so as not to be misguided or carry a needless burden, God hasn’t placed on you. The pastor is only performing his role. The truth is, no pastor or church will ever tell a couple to end their marriage but you, who is wearing the shoes should know when it too tight to walk with. There is no meaningful dialogue or resolution that can take place in this kind of situation you have painted. You are dealing with a very stubborn foundational problem here. The spirit of anger is one that takes the special grace of God to dethrone from a home or one’s life. Your going away isn’t the same as divorce; you need peace to pray your home back into reckoning. Ironically, the same people who are urging you to stay on, would be the same people to perform your burial rites and declare your husband free to remarry if you die in the process of preserving your violent marriage. The Bible is peppered with profound references to wisdom. Without it, we become foolish and blind to various doctrines that becloud our normal senses of reasoning. I am sure God didn’t intend marriage to be a battlefield or a fighting arena. The instructions are clear; a man should care for his wife who is his helpmate. Common sense demands you stay clear of this man until he comes to the full realization of his problems. It isn’t normal for a man to go about beating up his wife at the slightest excuse. Even if you are the causes of his anger, the fact that he is unable to control his reactions invalidates his reasons. You have to stay alive to keep the marriage going. This is what you should emphasis to your pastor the next time he tells you to endure the violence in your marriage. Granted there is no marriage that is problem free but when it becomes the order of the day, there is the need for the wife to consider her life first. Your leaving will provide him with the chance to think and give you both a future to negotiate your options. Both of you can still come back together if you are alive but once dead, you become yesterday’s history. There is also the issue of the children. They are an important factor in this whole matter. As their mother, you have a duty to protect them from this kind of violence you have described. If your three year old child is already imbibing the culture of violence, then you must act urgently else you risk entrenching the legacy of violence your husband’s family is already noted for. Your husband is who he is today because of the examples he grew up with. There is no way a child raised in a violent home, who daily witnessed the battering of his mother by his father would think it abnormal for a man to beat his wife. Don’t allow your son to grow up to become like his father; you owe it to him and the family he would one day raise to protect him from himself. Besides, you owe it to yourself to say alive at all cost. It is your right to live, don’t allow anybody deny you of it. He has already taken away your career; don’t give him the opportunity to take away your life. If the church expels you on account of your decision to be alive, so be it. Your business is with God and not man. If he is truly a Christian, he won’t beat you because the Bible’s instruction to men on how to relate with their wives is very clear. You can only understand and be patient with a man who is reasonable, not one who is deaf and blind to all reasoning. This is not to say you are without your own faults. Even though he now appears to have the major fault because of his lack of wisdom in the handling of domestic matters, be honest in admitting your faults. This is highly important to help in appreciating your own defects as a woman, wife and mother. There is nothing impossible before God. Your husband could change through prayers and become the perfect husband you want him to be. If you remain your old self, chances are your marriage will be far from being the perfect union you want it to be. Importantly, let your motive for any decision you take be clear. If you are leaving, have it at the back of your mind that you are only going away for a while to give your husband time to think and to protect your life and children from needless violence. No matter what, stand in gap for your husband. He needs you now more than ever. Good luck.