Let's ask a Different Question written by Bambi Lynn

When you are raised with abuse and see it during your childhood. It really does affect your mind and how you process things throughout your adult life. So much healing has to take place before you can see the trauma for what it was and not make accuses for it. You can grow from it and put it all behind you but, first you have to acknowledge it happened and find a new normal and leave the rest behind.

 I was on a podcast that talk about domestic violence awareness month. I was asked, what is the earliest memory I had of violence in my home as a child? I don't think about these times to often anymore because I feel so far removed from those times in my life. but this memory came to me. I was about four or five years old; my mom had put my sister and myself in the bathtub. Moments later I heard my dad's voice, I knew he had been drinking by the slurring of his words. We couldn't see anything but, could hear the anger in his voice and the rage that was coming out. he was so mad that he tried sliding and picking up the refrigerator and throwing it at my mom. I remember feeling scared and standing up in the bathtub. But my memory goes blank after that.

My second profound memory I had about abuse was when I was eight years old. We had been separated from my dad for a while because of his drinking. We were in a safe place and enjoying our cousins that lived next door to us. We pretended parties in our garage and had walnut wars with the woods people. We played house in the woods and made the little kids eat stuff we put together. We were happy and living what we thought was a "normal" childhood, until that phone call came that my dad wasn't drinking anymore, and he had found Jesus and wanted his family back. I didn't understand all that, all I understood was we were moving, and I was scared and didn't want to. I walked outside where my mom was cleaning our kitchen table chairs, because we would put liver inside of the chairs when my mom wasn't looking when she served it for dinner. I went right up to her and told her I wanted to stay with my grandma and that I wasn't going with them. I didn't want to go back to daddy, I knew in my mind he hadn't changed. My mom slapped me across the face and told me I didn't understand and that I was going. nothing else was said and we packed up and moved to Virginia. We had the best six months with my dad and the rest was a nightmare. I wouldn't understand my mom's statement to me until years later, when I was hit for the first time by a man that promised to love me and cherish me.

Virginia was a time I could remember more because I was older. My dad did try to be sober. He really did put the effort not to be consumed with alcohol. I am sure he wanted a normal life. but his normal from childhood was drinking and being mean to the people you say you love. I remember one time going to my grandparent's house and seeing my grandma with a black eye just cooking a pot of soup as if nothing happened. My grandpa was sitting in his corner chair with a bottle of beer. Looking back, how did I ever think my dad would be different? He was mean and spoke things that hurt me for a long time, even into adulthood. Sitting us on a couch to point his finger in my face, telling me he wasn't my dad. he would lock the doors on us after school, and we would be chased by the bullies that rode our bus. he would spend all his paycheck, and we would have no food for dinner and no new clothes for school. No family time together, that made you feel special. He just wasn't available. The abuse got worse until my mom and grandma came up with a plan for us to leave and never come back. I thought I was done with seeing and being abused until I experienced my own as an adult, mother, and wife.

I heard my mother's voice the first time my second husband slapped me across the face, I heard my mother's voice every time after that. I heard, "Bambi, you don't understand" I heard those words when I stared at the black and blue marks on my shoulders and my back. I heard her in my head, when a police officer asked me about the marks around my neck. I heard her voice when my ex-spit in my face and told me I was nothing but, trailer trash. I heard her words, when my pan of lasagna was thrown on the floor and a pot of sauce was thrown into the sink. I heard those words; you don't understand when I found out my daughter's photo albums and my personal journals were burned and thrown into the dumpster. I heard those words, sitting in the doctor's office trying to find a cure for my terrible headaches, when he told me I had battered woman syndrome. I heard those words in my tears and in the mirror as I looked at myself wondering how I got here.

Why did I stay? Why couldn't I get my mother's words out of my head? Why does anyone stay living with someone that you can't read their moods? Why would anyone choose to live in fear? What is the pull of staying and not going and not running as far away as you can? Little girls don't dream of monsters, we dream of prince charming. How did my childhood dreams turn into this?

I was a single mom of four beautiful girls, I was content to go on serving Jesus and being left alone. After my first marriage ended in divorce because of infidelity. My daughters and myself served at the Womens shelter, singing and baking pies for them every week. sharing a message with the women and making crafts with the children. I taught a girl's class at my church and served as an usher. I was healing at the alter every week as God was taking all those broken pieces and setting me free. Then a festival happened at our church on July 4th, 1998, where I met a man that made me laugh, A man I had no idea that I would give my heart to. Even after our first date, when he said, "I was a woman full of walls and he would be the man to knock them down". I realized he was the man that his mom stopped me in the kitchen one time and asked me to pray for her prodigal son. The obligation I felt I had now in being a good example to him. I saw signs right away, that I should walk away but, I didn't. I entangle myself even more in being a wife before I was one with him. I felt it was my mission or responsibility to show him Christ. It is true that hindsight is 20/20. I didn't run, I didn't walk away, I didn't take a step back, and I didn't escape. Instead, I got pregnant with my most amazing blessings that was given to me, that instead of Gods wrath upon me I received his grace.

I know he married me out of obligation and not out of love. When he first found out I was pregnant he threatened to take my babies, to take me to court, to have them when he got visitation. My mind and my motherly instinct said, no way and I did everything he told me to do before he would marry me. We married in a courtroom setting because I was told I didn't deserve a church wedding. The room was full of boxes, like a storage room. No special honey room because we married on a weekend that he had prior engagement of playing the drums for his band.  plus had to get back to nursing babies and prepare for a surgery to get my tubes tide. part of our agreement for marriage.

The marriage wasn't all bad, but, when it was it was really bad. I learned right away how much control he had over me. I learned money wasn't ours but, his, I learned that he was the head really fast and that meant what he said goes, I learned his moods, when to speak and when to walk away, I learned he was different in public than how he was at home, I learned real fast the only woman he really loved was his mother and she could do about anything, like open our mail and walk in on him in the bathroom. I learned saying something was beautiful wasn't the same as saying, Thank you. I got thrown out of the car for that one. I also would learn that I could pay other ways then just being hit. I would pay by worship tapes being broken in half, because as he told my sons submission was important and demanded. I would learn when my daughters photo albums came up missing and finding out he burned them because I needed to be taught a lesson. I learned that he hated me when he didn't protect me from going to jail, for something that the judge apologizes the next day. But my ex told me to use it as a "Paul experience" to praise God in the cell and witness to the inmates. I learned that my birthday was his choice as to what we did because when I disagreed, he left me at the movie theater to find a ride home. In January and living in New York.

I have heard many times and have been asked many times," Why doesn't she just leave?" I wish there was an answer that would make sense to someone and that the understanding of why she stays would give you the bigger picture of her life. I would love for everything in life to be packaged so nicely in a box with a bow on it and no one would ever have to ask or answer that question again.

Looking over my story and understanding with a heart of empathy, to the answer of why I didn't leave. There was nowhere to go from my shame and embarrassment. I couldn't walk away with the words playing in my head, "you made your bed, you now have to lie in it. I couldn't shut the noises and the voices of my pastor preaching, "you win him without a word" I wish I could say, that being a Christian divorced woman didn't play in my decision to stay. but it did. The words spinning in my head that I am trailer trash and nobody would ever want me and that I was lucky to have my ex in my life. The wounds of my past affected me just as the words of my mother did. I got myself in this mess and you need to find a way out. I was told how strong I was, how could I ever tell someone I was falling apart? My faith wasn't strong if I left, and I was responsibly in understanding who he was as a little boy to give him grace as a man. If I left my faith was weak and I wasn't speaking and praying long enough or loud enough to have the abuse stop. I was told sex was spiritual warfare, so to be ready at any moment because the Holy spirit would protect me and help me to win the love of my husband. That day never came and again I was left empty and ashamed.

Domestic Violence carry's so much shame to it. It is full of questions on how a person even got here in the first place. It's a secret that was never to be. This was never the dream that anyone had. When I see the question, "Why doesn't she leave?' I see the wrong question that is being asked. I see like the others see is judgement in this question. I see the person not understanding the depth of the entanglement in the person's mind. I see the conversation that goes on daily in her mind and in my own mind at the time. I saw the consequences of a bad decision that I was going to pay either way. I saw how people looked at me and already knew by the reflection I saw of myself in the mirror what a disappointment I was. but then I realized there was another question that needed to be asked. the one that should have been asked, I realized what my mom was saying to me along. The real question had nothing to do with me in the first place. I wasn't the question at all. The only question that should ever been ask, why did someone think they had the right to hit me in the first place? Let's answer that question instead.