He Is Not Cruel And It Still Costs Me Everything

Yolanda has tried three times to write it down and there is nothing to write.

That is the thing that keeps her. She sat down with an actual piece of paper once, at her kitchen table, with the intention of making it real, and she got as far as a heading and then stopped, because every item she could think of sounded like nothing when it was written in a sentence.

He is not violent. He has never raised a hand and never raised his voice in a way anybody would call raised.

He does not shout. He does not drink. He is not unfaithful as far as she knows and she thinks she would know.

He is polite to her mother. He remembers things.

Here is what she would have to write, and read out loud, in order to justify herself to anybody: when I am with him I get smaller, and I have been getting smaller for six years, and I cannot point at when it started or at anything he did to start it.

That is the whole list. Try taking that to a sister.

She has left twice. Both times it was calm. There was no scene either time and nothing was smashed and no one was called, and both times she went back within a month, and both times what brought her back was not fear and not passion.

It was that she could not explain to herself what she was leaving.

If he is not cruel, then what is my reason? And if I have no reason, then it is me, and I am the one who cannot be satisfied.

And here is where I stop talking about Yolanda, because you have tried to make your own list, and it came out looking like nothing, and that is why you went back.

Let me say the first thing carefully, and it is not a judgment about anybody: you do not have to prove a case in order to be free. There is no court, nobody is going to read your list, and the requirement that you produce a villain before you are permitted to change your life is not from God.

He brought me out into a large place

Let me put the true thing down first, because it names the thing your list could not.

You are not too much and you are not impossible to satisfy. What you have been describing without a word for it is the opposite of what God does with a person, and there is a verse that gives it a shape: And it is the Holy Spirit who makes that land in you rather than merely read well.

He brought me forth also into a large place; He delivered me, because He delighted in me.Psalm 18:19

Sit with a large place, because it is a spatial word for something people usually only feel.

There is such a thing as a life with room in it: room to be wrong, room to be enthusiastic about something silly, room to take up space at a table, room to have an opinion that lands badly and survive it. God's work in a person is described as being brought out into that.

And then the reason, which is the part that will do the most work in you: He delivered me, because He delighted in me. Not because she was in danger. Not because a case was made. Delight was the motive, which means the rescuing was about how He felt about her rather than about how bad the situation could be proved to be.

So a life with room in it is what God moves people toward, and Scripture is where I stand that rather than my own judgment of anybody, and God's Spirit is not asking you to file evidence before He will move.

Smaller is a measurement, and it is enough

Now let me deal with the list, because it is what sends you back.

You have accepted a standard that nobody applies anywhere else in life: that a woman may only change her circumstances if she can name a wrong that a stranger would agree with. The Holy Spirit is the one carrying that into the room you are actually in.

Nobody uses that rule for a job. A person leaves a job because it is making them into somebody they do not want to be, and every one of us nods, and nobody demands a written offense.

You have been getting smaller for six years and you can measure it. You know what you used to say at a table. You know which of your opinions have quietly gone out of circulation. You know that you check something in your own head before you speak, and you know when you started doing it and you know you did not used to. It is not the words doing that; it is His Spirit breathing through what God already said.

That is a measurement. It is not a complaint about a man and it is not an accusation and you do not need to prove it to anybody, and it is enough.

Hear this: you are not owned by this, and God's direction for a person is out into room rather than down into smallness. He delights in you, and the delight came before the rescuing and not after it. That is written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes it something you can stand on rather than something you would like to be told.

And the practical half, plainly, because a message without it has failed you. Real help exists and none of it is small faith. A counselor who works with relationships will not require you to produce a villain, and that alone is worth the call. A woman you trust, told in daylight, changes what is possible, because this thrives on being unspeakable. And I will say this too, carefully and without assuming anything about your situation: if anything has ever frightened you, or if you have ever changed your behavior to keep somebody calm, tell somebody trained, and a domestic abuse line will talk with you about things that do not look like anything on a list. That is not an accusation about anyone. It is a door, and it should be named.