She did all of it. That is what nobody seems to remember.
She got herself out. She found somewhere to stay for eleven weeks and then somewhere permanent. She did the paperwork, and the paperwork was worse than anybody warns you about. She told the right people and she got the right things put in place, and she did every single one of those things while working and while three people in her own family were not speaking to her about it.
Twenty months ago now.
And what is happening at church lately is very gentle and it is doing something to her. It is a tone rather than a sentence. It is the way somebody's head tilts when she mentions it, and a woman last month saying that she was praying for her to find real freedom, with a small emphasis on real.
And on Sunday somebody said the actual thing, kindly, over coffee: I just think by now you would be further along.
And here is what she has never said out loud to a single person: she thinks she might be doing quite well, and now she is not sure, and she does not know who is qualified to tell her.
The plain thing, first and without softening
This comes before everything else on this page.
Nothing here asks you back into anything unsafe, and nothing here asks you to make peace with harm. There is no verse in Scripture and no line in this article that requires anybody to hand herself over to be hurt, and getting out was right and it stays right.
If there is still danger, get safe first. Tell one real person who can actually do something: the police, a domestic abuse service where you live, a lawyer, a doctor, a counselor with training. Being safe is not a failure of peace, and it is not a stage you are supposed to grow out of.
You are not required to absorb this, and twenty months has not changed that by one day. This is not encouragement dressed up as a fact. Psalm 11:5 says the Lord's soul hates the one who loves violence, which is His stated position and not an inference, and the Holy Spirit is the one bringing it in now to steady a woman over a paper cup of coffee.
There is no schedule and nobody was given one
Look at the sentence you were handed on Sunday. By now. Further along. Both of those assume a timetable, and the timetable is the whole problem.
Nobody at that church has one. Nobody anywhere has one. There is no passage in Scripture that gives a number of months, and there is no verse that says how a person should feel about somebody in the second year after getting away from them.
What actually exists is a woman who has done a very great deal of hard work and is being measured against a schedule that does not exist and was never published.
You are being assessed against a document nobody has ever seen, and it does not exist because God did not write it. Scripture puts the timing in different hands entirely in Ecclesiastes 3:1, where there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven, and the Holy Spirit is the one who knows which season a person is actually in.
What the psalms do with escape
Here is something worth knowing about the book those sentences are being drawn from. It contains a psalm about wanting to get away, and it is not embarrassed about it and it does not apologize.
I would hasten my escape from the windy storm and tempest.Psalm 55:8
That is David, and two verses earlier he says he wishes he had wings like a dove so that he could fly away and be at rest. There is no rebuke attached, no correction, no note in the margin telling him he should be further along.
The whole psalm is about somebody he was close to, who turned on him, and it is one of the most bitter and honest things in Scripture, and God put it in the book without editing it.
You are in extremely good company, and the psalm that matches your situation was preserved rather than corrected. Psalm 55:8 puts an honest desire to escape inside the book of praise rather than outside it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries that to a woman who has begun to wonder whether she is behind.
Nobody at that church is the enemy. Almost all of them are frightened by what happened to you, and a timetable is a comforting thing to believe in when you are frightened, because it implies that everything resolves if you follow the steps.
That is not cruelty. It is fear wearing a helpful face. And it is still doing something to a woman who was, until Sunday, doing quite well.
> He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds. > Psalm 147:3
Bindeth up. That is a verb for a wound that is genuinely there and takes actual time. You are being tended rather than assessed, and the tending is unhurried in a way nobody at that coffee table is. Psalm 147:3 puts the healing in God's hands and on His pace rather than on a congregation's expectation, and the Holy Spirit is the one doing the binding at whatever speed twenty months of this takes.
Nothing here tells you how you should feel about anybody. That is not this page's business and it never will be. What is being handed to you is smaller and much heavier than reassurance: the timetable identified as fictional, and the measuring put back in the hands of somebody qualified.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, standing where you are. Not in your head. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so the authority to say what is true about your own heart was given to you, and no congregation can issue it or take it back. Scripture is the ground under every word, and the Holy Spirit is what makes it living rather than loud.
Jesus set the measure at a seed, and He did not put it that low to shame anybody with how little she was holding. He put it there because no mountain ever moved on the size of the faith. It moved because somebody opened her mouth at it. So speak, and leave the outcome with Him, because whatever He does with all of them is His and always was.
- Timetable for my own heart, you are not from God and He never issued you. Psalm 55:8 has a man saying out loud that he would hasten his escape from the storm, and God put that in the book without one word of correction. In the name of Jesus I am putting you down.
- Small emphasis on the word real, you have no authority over my Sunday. The Holy Spirit is the one who searches a heart, and 1 Corinthians 4:4 says the one who judges me is the Lord and not a coffee table. I am here as myself today, and I am not absorbing this.
- Lord, You were there for the eleven weeks and the paperwork and every one of the twenty months. I thank You, because Your word binds up wounds at Your own pace and You have never once told me I was behind. Whatever You do with all of them is Yours, and the one step in front of me is mine, and I am taking it today.
Psalm 55:8
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