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🧵TW: abuse. #metoo #Awareness This was the last photo ever taken of my family before my divorce. We had already split up, but you wouldn’t know it to look at us. It was Easter. We went to Church, laughed, smiled & celebrated. I never took off that cardigan & nobody asked why. 
About a year later my youngest came home from his dads with bruises around his neck. The marks were identical to the ones I used to hide on my arms and thighs and abdomen. I took him to the hospital to document it and they called CPS.
CPS came to my house to interview all the children separately. Afterwards, the woman sat down with me alone in my apartment living room. She praised me for being strong enough to get away from such an abusive man, she said she knew a lot of women never could find that strength.
The lady said it was obvious that my ex husband was abusing the kids now and that she was so sorry, but there was nothing she could do but document it. Idaho laws are horrifyingly relaxed when it comes to child safety. She apologized over and over.
I don’t know how many times CPS has been called on him. I have never called, I suspect nobody will care what the ex wife thinks. But I know others have and rightfully so. You would be shocked by what has happened, I don’t share a tenth of what goes on regularly.
People think they know this man, who puts on all the charm. Who was taught by his dad exactly how to behave to make people trust him - but these men are duplicitous. They are snakes. If they weren’t good at deception, they would have been caught a long time ago.
When listening to victims, our initial instinct is to trust ourselves, we think, “that can’t be right! I know him. He is so nice!” But that instinct is precisely what abusers exploit. That is how they are enabled to continue doing what they do.
It takes humility and discretion to accept that we don’t know what goes on behind closed doors. It takes powers of observation to notice that she never is seen without a cardigan , and to look beyond her smile and see her hiding puffy, swollen eyes.
If she says everything is ok, if she praises him to high heaven, maybe she is placating him. If the kids are extremely well behaved, maybe that isn’t obedience - it could be fear. You don’t really know.
When I was going to #DouglasWilson’s church, many women came to me - I was one of them. The stories the told me were awful. They trusted me at that time. Men who choked their daughters in anger. Men who r*ped their wives. Men who screamed at their children. Drunken, angry men.
Domestic violence is all around you - it is in your church, it is sitting next you and even preaching behind the pulpit. We must not be like Cain. We are responsible for one another - blood cries out from the ground, hear their cries. #churchtoo
The question for survivors of abuse should not be, “What qualifications do you have to be heard?” ➡️It should be “How can I best hear your story and love you?” ⬅️ Anything less is un-Christlike.
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