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Today's episode deals with a very sensitive topic.
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Today we will be talking about abuse.
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If this is a subject that triggers you, I understand.
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I have gone through various forms myself, so I understand the apprehension of not wanting to listen.
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However, however, this is a very powerful episode and I will let you in on a little behind-the-scenes information.
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This episode was originally going to air later in this year, but I decided to move it up to today because of the impact I know it will have on people who listen.
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So I hope that is encouraging enough for you to see that God is moving and God is working through this episode, and I pray that you stay here and listen.
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If you are not able to do that yet, I completely understand.
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Just, please, do not never listen to this episode.
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Pray and ask God to help you find the strength to listen, because this episode has so much information in it to help you or anyone you know who's going through this situation, and there's many different forms of abuse, not just physical.
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You could be going through a situation that you don't even know is a form of abuse, and with what we discussed today, you will be able to find help.
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You will find resources.
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Stacey Womack, my guest today is an amazing woman, so full of love and compassion, and her start in this ministry is going to blow your mind and it's going to encourage you so much to listen to this.
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So I am begging you, please don't write this off completely just because of this trigger warning.
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I understand the significance of it all because I have been there and I still have had PTSD with certain things to this day that happen that people will say or do that trigger me from who I once was and what I went through.
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So I get it.
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I understand, but you have to at some point be brave.
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You have to allow God to do what only he can do, and this episode is a great way of starting that journey for you.
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So make sure you listen, even if you've got to do it in chunks, if you've got to do it in small bits.
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However you do it.
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Make sure you listen to this whole episode because it is very impactful and it hit me in such a way that I knew it needed to be aired earlier than I was expecting.
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I don't usually do that with my episodes, unless I really feel a pull from God that this needs to happen.
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So that right there should show you how powerful this is and how God is going to use it in your life.
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Wherever you are listening, take a moment and allow God to speak into your heart and know that you are loved, that he sees you in the midst of what you are going through.
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Welcome to Honest Christian Conversations.
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I'm your host, anna Murby.
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Let's get to it.
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Before the episode starts make sure you follow the show so you never miss another episode.
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Hi Stacey, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today Before the episode starts.
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Make sure you follow the show so you never miss another episode.
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Hi Stacey, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today.
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I'm very excited to have you on and discuss this very important topic that a lot of people are afraid to talk about, most likely because of the ramifications of what happens when they do or if they're trying to escape, of what happens when they do or if they're trying to escape.
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But you have a wonderful ministry that helps them with this and I want to talk about that.
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But before we get into that, why don't you share your story with us?
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Okay, so my story is probably a little bit unique in the sense that I'm running this domestic violence agency.
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I actually was raised in the church.
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My father was a pastor and I met my husband young and married young, and he had six children very quickly and I homeschooled them.
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Back in the day, when that was kind of a newer thing, people didn't really know what that was, and in the midst of that, that was really my calling at the time.
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In the midst of that, god began to call me to ministry outside of my family, and so I spent a couple of years seeking him and this was a door he opened which was pretty crazy to me, because I thought God would have me sharing something that maybe I knew something about or at least was happy.
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But this was something that God really truly has a heart for, and I can honestly say this was his idea.
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I never would have thought of it or chose it, and when I started Anna, all I was planning on doing was leading a couple groups of women through their healing process.
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Once I figured out how that was supposed to be done and God had a bigger plan.
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So here we are now, national and international, with our women's recovery program.
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It's translated into five languages.
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We've served over 50,000 women.
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We're in seven countries right now with this, but mainly in the US, obviously, and God has just moved in a miraculous way, so I've just been hanging on to the end of the tornado while God's been driving, or wherever he wants it to go.
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Yeah, yeah, that's awesome.
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Sometimes it's funny how God brings us on a journey we weren't expecting, especially if we don't feel equipped, if we haven't gone through it or we don't know anybody who's done something, or and then God just says hey, here you go, you're going to do this.
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I don't feel equipped, what do you mean?
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I're going to do this.
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I don't feel equipped, what do you mean?
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I'm going to do this.
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And I think that's when he does his best.
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Work is when he pulls you and says hey, you're going to do this, and you're saying I don't know how to do that.
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It's almost like he checks the box he goes perfect.
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That's exactly what I was looking for.
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Right, he gets all the glory because I can't take credit.
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I mean, every step of the way has been a journey of my own and learning and growing, and yeah.
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So here we are, 27 and a half years later yeah, still doing this work.
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So yeah, that's amazing.
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So you never experienced domestic violence on your own, from your own perspective, not in my childhood.
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And no, my husband and I are coming up on our 45th anniversary.
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Praise God for that.
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With 13 grandchildren, and our first great-grandchild was born just a couple months ago, so you know who would have ever thought that?
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So here, we are, yeah.
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So here's a question Do the women who know this about you, do they appreciate that?
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Or do some of them get a little like who are you to talk to me about this when you haven't gone through it?
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I know some people get that way with certain things, like for me, I've been married three times.
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Who are you to talk about marriage?
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Well, I learned the hard way the correct way to do it, so I got something of value?
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Sure, absolutely, and I believe God doesn't waste anything.
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And I really struggled that first year and I really wasn't doing much that first year, just mostly like some phone support and a couple of small little luncheons.
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And I asked God every single month if I could quit that first year.
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And you know, that was kind of an issue for me because every woman in my church was coming up saying how can you do this when you haven't experienced this?
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And I remember reading an article in a Christian magazine.
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And here is this woman of faith who is very well known who said the same thing.
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You know, I couldn't be doing these things had I not gone through them.
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And I said God, there it is again.
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And I felt like God said to me Stacy, jesus didn't go through everything, but he ministered to everyone.
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And even though I haven't been through abuse, I've been through hard things in my life and God taught me the healing process in those journeys of my own personal life, and so a lot of that's written into the materials, but I don't actually talk about the fact that I am not a survivor of abuse when I'm leading groups and I use terms like me and us and you.
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I include myself in that.
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So unless they ask me, they generally don't know.
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But even because we have lots of groups that are led by lots of volunteers and many of those are survivors of abuse who went to the program years ago and have now become leaders for us.
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And then we have those like myself who haven't experienced abuse.
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But when women find out that the person who helped write the materials didn't actually experience it, and yet it's brought so much life to them, I often hear from them it, and yet it's brought so much life to them.
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I often hear from them how did you do this?
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But God's truth is God's truth, no matter how the pain happens.
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And even women who haven't gone through abuse would be able to sit in a class like this and find value in it and find how God would use it in their own personal lives, because it's just God's truth.
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Yeah, that's really amazing and you're absolutely right.
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I mean, if we waited for people who have been through certain things to create certain things for those who have been through it, where would we be with a lot of different things?
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I mean, if you actually talk to some of the people who come up with certain things and ask them did you actually go through with this?
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I'd be surprised to find out.
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There's some that probably said no, never, you know, and if you wait for somebody who's been through that, you could be waiting for a while because a lot of times they have hurt, they have pain and they don't know how to let it go.
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But what if somebody over here who has never been through exactly what you're going through can help you and can at least have the empathy needed to help you?
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Why are you not going to want to take that?
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It wouldn't make sense to me to say no, you haven't been where I've been.
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So tough took us, go away, it's over.
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My pastor said to me you know, I think it's great that you're doing this Stacey, because you can speak to health.
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And when I can't speak you know, no relationship is perfect I can speak to health.
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Yeah.
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And so we don't only just work with victims and survivors of abuse, but we also work with perpetrators, men and women who have used abusive behaviors.
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But we also work with perpetrators, men and women who have used abusive behaviors, and so that is something I have a lot of passion for as well being able to speak the truth in love with respect to those who've used abusive behaviors and teach them new ways of not just behaving but believing, because our beliefs support our behaviors, and if we don't change our belief systems, then we don't change our behaviors, not for long anyway.
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So, yes, but in our women's recovery program it's free.
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The women can join at any time.
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They can join immediately.
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They don't have to wait to week one and we go through 15 different topics and the women when they come in.
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It's just so amazing to watch them come in and have them say afterwards oh my gosh, this is exactly what I needed tonight, because if they're not starting at week one, you think well, isn't that kind of counterproductive.
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But we just found you know what.
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We just want to remove all the barriers so the women in need can call us.
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They don't have to give us a real name, they can use a fictitious name.
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There's no intake, they just get to start and we ask them to just make sure that they use whatever fictitious name they're using.
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Even if it's Minnie Mouse, they're using the same one every single week so that we can keep track of attendance for grant purposes, because I'm so committed to keeping this program free.
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Yeah, that's a very, very smart approach to it, because there's a lot of people who they want to be free, but they're afraid and they know that they can trust you because you're not expecting them to give them that birth date, where you live, your name, your email, your phone number, all this stuff that everyone is always asking for.
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You're just saying just give us a name and stick with it for the whole time and you're golden.
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I mean, who wouldn't want?
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that they can even bring a female support friend with them if they want.
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And the group isn't set up like a process group, so people don't sit around talking about all the horrible things they've been through.
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And the reason for this is that in a group like that not that they don't have value, but a lot of times hearing other women share the horror stories that they've gone through kicks up people's PTSD and they're having nightmares at night again.
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So this group is one of more listening about God's heart towards them and his heart around this issue, and of course they can ask questions, make comments.
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At the end of it we take prayer requests, so, and then we pray.
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So there's a reason why you're sharing any negative things that are happening in your life is, for right now, prayer requests.
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We encourage them to go to one-on-one counseling so they can specifically talk about each of those events and work through them if they need to do that.
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But the women that have been coming to us for all these years have said that they've gotten more out of one group than they did out of two years of counseling.
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And again, not that counseling is invaluable, it's just that, since this is so specific to abuse and most counselors are not trained in domestic abuse.
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Only about 9% are they're all trained in trauma-informed approach, but that doesn't mean that they receive the 40 hours of victim advocacy training that the industry standard has out there.
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So, pastors, it should be in every seminary, it should be in every social work program, it should be in every counseling program, because this is such a huge issue that a lot of those relationship issues they're dealing with aren't normal relationship conflict.
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They're really about power and control.
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They're about a pattern of behaviors used to gain and maintain power and control in that intimate relationship.
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And it doesn't just happen through physical violence.
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Actually, why physical violence is the number one cause of injury to women in the US, actually in the world, is actually one of the least forms used.
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We talk about abuse in eight different forms.
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We talk about it in verbal, psychological, physical, financial, property, sexual and animal and spiritual I love that spiritual.
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So, anyways, we talk about it in all these different ways because abuse just means a misuse of.
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So anything can be misused.
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Words can be misused, property can be misused, the Bible can be misused to gain control and power in that relationship.
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So we want to address some of those things that have been confusing to women when they come into group and they're like what does God have to say about this, because I have to hear one more person say I just need to pray harder and be more submissive and win them over by my quiet and gentle spirit.
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I'm just going to scream, you know, because God sees this as oppression and I don't believe that he sees domestic abuse as an adult issue.
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I believe that he sees it as a child abuse issue.
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So if your child was being abused and they came home from school they'd been beaten, harassed and their clothes were torn, you wouldn't sit back in your chair and say, pray harder, my child, and win them over by your quiet, gentle spirit.
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And say, pray harder, my child, and win them over by your quiet and gentle spirit.
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You would go down to the school, you would find out what's going on and what is the school gonna do to stop it.
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And if the school didn't stop it, we wouldn't think twice to remove our child from that environment.
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So why would we think a God who loves us more than our own children not want to do the same thing for us?
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See, god would never sacrifice a person for the sake of a relationship.
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But oftentimes the faith community does, and I understand the struggle the faith community has with worrying about divorce.
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Nobody wants divorce.
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God doesn't want divorce either, but God knew it would happen because of the hardness of people's hearts.
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And the verse that's often quoted to women is in Malachi, where it just says God hates divorce.
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But they don't go on to read the rest of it.
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God hates divorce and the man who covers his wife with violence.
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And then it goes on to tell the man so therefore, keep watch that you might not deal treacherously and faithlessly with your marriage, mate.
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So God hates divorce because of the damage it brings to individuals, to couples, to families, to society.
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He isn't saying he hates people who are divorced.
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He himself gives Israel her certificate of divorce twice, as mentioned in the Bible, both in Jeremiah and Isaiah.
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So God has limits and we are also going to have limits around that as well.
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Hey friends, have you joined the Honest Christian Conversations online group yet?
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If you haven't, you're missing out on a perfect opportunity to grow your relationship with Jesus Christ.
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This is a community for those who want to go deeper in their relationship.
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You can do Bible studies together, ask the questions you have biblically and get the answers that you might need or maybe you're somebody who has answers to somebody else's questions.
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You can leave your praise reports.
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This is a community.
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This is what church is supposed to be, and I am so glad that I finally took that step to make this group so that people's lives can flourish in Jesus' name.
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Also, if you haven't signed up for the mailing list, you're missing out on an opportunity there as well.
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I send out a weekly email chocked full of so much awesome content that I don't have time right now to share it all with you.
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Website honestchristianconversationscom and sign up there, or you can use the links for it in the show notes.
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Yeah, that's a very good reminder and I'm sure some people are going.
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You know you stepped on some toes in that department.
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But my first marriage was volatile.
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My first husband was physically abusive to our child and emotionally to me to the point that my PTSD held on until I was having my fourth child with my current husband.
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And by the time I was pregnant with my fifth child, I said I have to get over this PTSD.
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I want to be able to breastfeed my child and enjoy it and not cry and think everyone's staring at me and feel hate around it and disgust.
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So I had my friends praying over me about it and I was able to breastfeed him 18 months or something, well over my year and I'm like, okay, God, I'm good now.
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Can we be done?
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He's getting older now but I mean that was such a breakthrough.
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But it's tough, especially if the spouse is not willing to change as well.
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Then there's a difference between you.
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Have an unbelieving spouse and the Bible says to pray for them, to love them to.
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Maybe you'll win them over.
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There's a difference between you.
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Just have an unbelieving spouse.
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They're respectful of your relationship.
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They're respectful of your relationship with God.
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They're kind to you, to the kids.
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They don't do anything wrong.
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There's a difference between that and someone who's not a believing spouse, or even a believing spouse, but they're hurting you, they're hurting your children, they're crippling you emotionally, physically, any way.
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That is not a healthy relationship and you aren't necessarily going to win them over that way.
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Maybe you will, by God's grace only and his miraculous intervention of that.
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But aside from that, he doesn't call us to stay in that.
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I don't believe he calls us to stay in such a toxic environment where it puts you in danger of your life, puts your children in danger of your life, because we are stewards of everything he has given us, including ourselves, which are the temple of God, and our children, who we are stewards of, our money, all these things we are stewards of.
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And if we choose to ignore that because we feel like, oh, God hates divorce, what's going to happen to me if I divorce this man who's beating me?
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I think he's got grace for that.
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He sees everything, he sees you, he sees what's going on.
00:20:32.571 --> 00:20:36.660
There's a verse in Proverbs that says a man or woman sees danger and hides.
00:20:36.660 --> 00:20:48.095
So there's a time and a place for that, and in our Her Journey Victim Recovery Program we as leaders do not tell women what to do, because they don't need another controller in their lives.
00:20:48.095 --> 00:20:55.458
We're just there to walk alongside them in their process of seeking God for what he's calling them to do personally.
00:20:55.458 --> 00:20:57.843
So we don't tell women to stay or to leave.
00:20:57.843 --> 00:21:06.474
If we're concerned for her safety, we'll tell her that we're concerned for her safety, but we're not going to try to force someone to leave ever.
00:21:07.215 --> 00:21:18.227
And the reality is that women, even if you do help them, lead a really dangerous situation but they're not ready, they'll go back to that abusers because they have to be at a point of readiness.
00:21:18.227 --> 00:21:20.798
It's not our job to decide when that is.
00:21:20.798 --> 00:21:28.804
It's our job to walk alongside them, pray for them, pray with them and let them seek God for what he's calling them to.
00:21:28.804 --> 00:21:31.178
And that's very empowering for these women.
00:21:31.178 --> 00:21:40.476
They come out feeling, coming from a place of knowing, from a head, knowledge, a place that God loves them, that they have value to believing it with their heart.
00:21:40.476 --> 00:21:54.742
And once you believe it, it changes the choices that you make you start setting boundaries and following through the consequences and you start running after your dreams again, and it's just an amazing thing to watch these women just actually transform before our very eyes.
00:21:54.742 --> 00:21:58.480
That's why I think a lot of our leaders stay with us for so long.
00:21:58.480 --> 00:22:00.357
We have leaders who've been leaders for two decades.
00:22:00.357 --> 00:22:04.880
That's unheard of in the domestic violence community, because it's such a tough topic.
00:22:05.541 --> 00:22:05.761
Yeah.
00:22:05.761 --> 00:22:12.837
Yeah, I could see how there'd be a high turnover rate for that, when there's so much hope in the work that we do.
00:22:13.862 --> 00:22:26.115
That's why our leaders just keep leading, because it's such a blessing and such an honor to walk alongside people in their healing process and, like I mentioned, in working with the mentee.
00:22:26.115 --> 00:22:35.400
You're right, you know all I can do it's male-female co-pensilitated here in our state and I really believe in that model, and it's a long program and it is a paid-for program.
00:22:35.400 --> 00:22:36.490
It is a process group.
00:22:36.490 --> 00:22:40.960
They have homework and they have books to read and things like that.
00:22:40.960 --> 00:22:43.471
All we can do is present the information.
00:22:43.751 --> 00:22:48.936
The Bible says that only God changes the hearts of men, so we present the information.
00:22:48.936 --> 00:23:04.679
At least the men have opportunity to make change, or the women that we're serving who've used abuse, who also are victims and survivors of abuse, oftentimes in relationships where the primary aggressor, the one who's gaining power and control from their abuse, has used a system against her.
00:23:04.679 --> 00:23:17.319
It doesn't excuse the abuse, though, and we've all used abusive language at times, we've all said things we shouldn't have said, but someone who's using a pattern of behaviors of abuse is really what we're talking about.
00:23:17.319 --> 00:23:25.598
We're not talking about those once in a while times that we all mess up when you've asked your kid a bazillion times to clean their room and they don't.
00:23:25.640 --> 00:23:28.530
And you just start yelling at them Right, right, absolutely.
00:23:28.651 --> 00:23:35.695
So abuse is not okay, period, whether it is at once in a while time or whether it's a pattern of behaviors.
00:23:35.695 --> 00:23:50.387
For those who use abusive behaviors regularly as a way to function in life, it's to deal with their insecurities that they have and also their belief systems that tell them that they have a right to behave this way.
00:23:50.387 --> 00:23:55.520
But I can tell you that most of our men coming in don't recognize their behaviors as being abusive.
00:23:55.520 --> 00:24:11.261
Wow, most men would recognize physical abuse as being abusive, but even at that, depending on what it looked like whether it was posturing or just standing up and getting in someone's face or whether they pushed past them they may not recognize that as being physical abuse.
00:24:11.261 --> 00:24:21.481
Blocking the door or getting right in a space those are all physical forms of abuse that we talk about that are not as obvious as hitting or slapping or strangling.
00:24:22.590 --> 00:24:26.295
I guess it would matter, depending on how they were raised as well.
00:24:26.295 --> 00:24:34.685
I mean, if they grew up believing that that was the norm for a family, then yeah, they might, as they get older, not see.
00:24:35.529 --> 00:24:41.876
We've had a lot of men say you know, I promised myself I wouldn't be like my dad, and they thought they weren't, because they weren't using physical abuse.
00:24:41.876 --> 00:24:48.416
But they're using all the other forms and then they get into it and they're like I'm just like him, I'm just using different behaviors.
00:24:48.849 --> 00:24:58.738
They have the same belief systems and so that's what we work on changing and teaching them what does love look like and using Jesus as a model for that program.
00:24:58.738 --> 00:24:59.452
So here we are.
00:24:59.452 --> 00:25:09.416
We're in Oregon, which is a very liberal state in a liberal area, and yet we are overtly Christian in our approach and we use Jesus as a model.
00:25:09.416 --> 00:25:25.560
We pray in our groups, and yet we are contracted with Community Corrections and the Department of Human Services and have about a 25% voluntary caseload of men who come into our intervention program, usually sent by their wives, other pastors, other counselors.
00:25:25.560 --> 00:25:28.499
They still come in, not thinking they need the program.
00:25:28.499 --> 00:25:30.436
They're mad about being there.
00:25:30.436 --> 00:25:35.928
We're hoping to offer a national virtual option later this year.
