I want to revisit a blog post I wrote awhile back, because it feels timeless, especially now, during Mental Health Awareness month.
Scrolling through social media, I came across a post titled Helping Your Wife Heal from Sexual Abuse by Jason Evert. Jason, his wife Crystalina, and I once spoke on the same team at youth events, so I was curious. I remembered she had shared about a date rape experience in high school, and I wondered what Jason might say about her healing.
But when I clicked, it was our friend Chris Stefanik that came on the screen. To my surprise, he shared that his wife had endured childhood sexual abuse. Hearing his message moved me deeply. These are men I know to be grounded in Christ, men who have spent years encouraging youth, especially young men, to live as men of God. And here was Chris, speaking honestly about the heroic, selfless love required when your spouse is carrying wounds not everyone can fully understand.
Rather than dismissing or belittling the pain, Chris spoke about embracing it as part of your own journey allowing it to refine you into the man (or woman) God created you to be. That struck me. Because right now, in the upheaval of my own marriage, this message hits a raw and tender place.
Marriage is hard. Sometimes it feels like sacrifice piled on sacrifice. But it isn’t meant to be unbearable, not when both people are willing to do the work of helping heal one another. The truth is, we’re human. We miss the mark. Wounds get deeper, mistakes are made, and sometimes the damage feels irreversible. Yet God gives us empathy, compassion, and understanding. Forgiveness becomes possible. And while forgiveness doesn’t always lead to reconciliation, it does allow God to step into the pain so we aren’t chained to it forever.
For any marriage strained by the fallout of past abuse, I see you. I’m sorry for what you’re carrying. It’s not an easy road. As Chris said in his video, sometimes the spouse of a survivor must be turned inside out to love heroically. That is no small thing. And if your spouse struggles to rise to that call, there’s no shame in naming that truth. Because the darkest evil in this world is sexual sin against a child, and its repercussions run painfully deep, sometimes for a lifetime.
Here’s the video if you’d like to listen:
https://youtu.be/A0LP8AzZN6s[/embed
If there is a time to show up for who you love, it is now. You are in my prayers and please keep me in yours.
