18/12/2020
The Christmas Eve testimony of a woman who fled domestic violence.
Into the Night tells the true story of a woman and children fleeing domestic violence. I know this might trigger some readers. Especially at this time of year, men and women in these hard situations, can find it extremely painful. My hope is that this woman's story will be an encouragement for whatever mountain you are facing this Christmas season.
Advent #4
Into the Night
“For this God is our God for ever and ever; He will be our guide even to the end.”
(Psalm 48:14)
The sanctuary of the small country church glowed with the gentle, dancing light of ivory candles. Crimson holly berries sprung from the cascading evergreens adorning the deep window sills. Beyond the glass the dark winter night was quiet and still. Families, packed shoulder to shoulder in the wooden pews, exuded a mixture of contentment and anticipation. It was a characteristic Christmas Eve service whose yearly ritual of song and story opened the doorway into the season’s gifts of joy and wonder.
As the little kids’ nativity play ended, and they exited the stage, we were introduced to our guest speaker, a local woman who would be sharing her story with us. I was only ten years old, yet already an enthusiastic writer, and I enjoyed hearing about people’s lives. Their experiences fascinated me, especially if I could eavesdrop on conversations I wasn’t supposed to hear.
But, truthfully, church testimonies often bored me. They seemed too contrived, not part of real life at all, and I was looking forward to it all being over so we could go home and open our Christmas Eve gifts. However, the woman at the pulpit, whose name I have long forgotten, was going to tell a story like I had never heard before.
I would remember it every Christmas for the rest of my life.
She was a pretty, petite woman with wispy brown hair and a sweet voice. At first, she read carefully from the concise sentences she had written on a few pieces of paper. As she gained confidence, she increasingly met our gaze in the softly lit sanctuary, and we became intimate companions as the details of her life unfolded.
She and her husband had married young and happy. They had two beautiful daughters and she was a stay-at-home Mom while he worked to provide for the family. Her voice lilted and cracked as she spoke of her children whom she obviously loved very much. She told us a little about their life, where they lived, their hopes and dreams - until finally she faltered, and then stopped all together.
The room grew silent in the expectant pause, the candles flickered waiting patiently, yet quietly urging her on. A foreboding sadness entered my heart.
She could not remember when the beatings started or why. At first, it was hard - no, impossible - to understand what was happening. She took the abuse, coping as best she could, desperately searching for answers to her husband’s altered personality. She protected their daughters from the worst of it by sending them to friends and relatives when things became unbearable. When she could take no more, she prayed and asked God to show her a way to safety. Here she stopped and boldly looked down at her now teenage girls.
“Your Daddy loves you so much and so do I. And I still love your Dad, and so does God.”
Her words rang with hope and conviction. She faced the congregation again.
“I’m not telling this story to shame or hurt him, but to tell of God’s guidance and grace in the real circumstances of our lives. Secular society often scoffs at God, and the church does not like to acknowledge abuse. But abuse is real, and God is there and an ever-present help in it.”
I looked around at the faces I could see from where I sat next to my Mom and Nana. Expressions of compassion and sorrow formed their countenances glowing in the soft light of the sanctuary. A few shifted in their seats and looked away. Even as a child it was not hard to understand this gentle woman’s story was making some people uncomfortable. Long-standing church members, and those who had come only to see their children play shepherds and angels or listen to Christmas carols, had been confronted with the hard reality of abuse. Others hung on her every word. It struck me that this was exactly how it should be. In the middle of these hard things were what Jesus was born into, what He lived through. What He came to earth for. The room seemed to swell with the thought of it, until I almost expected Jesus to walk through the door. She bravely continued.
“After I prayed, God began moving. People came into my life that I could talk to, people that could help me. The Holy Spirit told me what to pack and where to hide my suitcase so my husband would not find it. Then the night came, the Holy Spirit woke me up and told me to call my contact. My husband stayed asleep while I took the suitcase, and the girls, and snuck out of the house where a car was waiting, and we were taken to safety.”
She continued marveling over all the ways God had provided for them. Incapable of comprehending the full gravity of the situation, I still understood something both terrible and miraculous had happened in this woman’s life.
Circumstances had brought her bitter pain, disappointment, and the unwanted heartache and burden of a broken family, but this was not the end of the story. In fact, it wasn’t even her main focus. God was alive and present in her tragedy and had come to rescue her. Her story, as dangerous and sad as it was, was also a beautiful journey, a modern-day Christmas story of fragile human beings stepping out into the night of the unknown to follow Jesus to freedom.
In no way do I wish to minimize or romanticize domestic violence and neither did she. Her family’s pain was palpable. The one who should have brought protection and security instead wreaked harm and havoc upon three defenseless people. Abuse is heartbreaking reality suffered by women, children, and men, too.
What made her story so miraculous was her focus, not on the abuse, but on God’s faithfulness in leading her and her daughters to safety. The extraordinary events were much like the way He led Joseph and Mary to the stable just in time for Jesus’ birth. He brought provision through the Wise Men, and then gave them a dream telling them to go home another way and not tell Herod where the baby Jesus was. God also gave Joseph a dream to escape to Egypt so Herod could not find them. God’s guidance in her escape from abuse added new facet of redemption to the birth of the babe in the manger, probably not the redemption her bride’s heart would have chosen, but the one a perfect, loving God prepared for her because He knew the road that lay ahead. I looked up at my Nana. Though pain was etched into her features, her eyes shone with that light they always did whenever she spoke about Jesus.
In that moment I understood God’s voice was not just for people in the Bible, for the past. It was for us- for now.
“I love my husband so much. I want the same things for him that God gave to me and the girls: a way of escape from his torment. Peace. Joy. These things are available to all of us who believe in Jesus, who came to this earth all those years ago to be with us, our Emmanuel. Today, He is still with us and He wants to be in every area of our lives. If we’ll let Him. He’s the Christmas gift that keeps on giving.” She laughed and folded her papers. “Thank you for listening to me tonight.”
I watched as she stepped down and took her seat in the pew. Her daughters cuddled into her as she put her arm securely around them. I wondered what their Christmas would be like and where her husband was now, and what he would think if he had heard her speak tonight. I wondered, too, at the strange feeling of love I felt toward a man I didn’t know, and the keen hope residing in my heart that her husband would one day turn to Jesus and maybe be able to return to his family. Candles were passed around and lit as if in united affirmation of her powerful, heartfelt story of Christ, the light of the word shining in the dark. We sang the last carol of the evening, Silent Night, which seemed to me, even more solemn and brighter than usual.
As Christmas comes around each year, I pause and reflect on that service, the woman and her family, their story. When the singing falls silent, the children are asleep, and the house quiet, I read the Christmas story and think of what God did in the birth of Jesus. Born in the lowest of places, in hard circumstances, singing His song “You are not alone. You and your circumstances won’t chase me away. This is what I was born for.” God sent His Son to us, The Light that will never go out.
What I see most clearly, what gives me hope, is that the light of Christ shines for every one of us, and in that light is our true identity. In the addict, a grandfather. The homeless, a messenger. In a criminal, a hero. In a band leader, His unity. In a wanderer, His story. And in you, dear reader, a son, a daughter, His dream.
We are all His Somebody.
Into the Night is the final story in my book Somebody's Grandfather: True Stories of Hope and Identity available on all Amazon sites.
Photo by BBC Creative Unsplash
Merry Christmas
