Real Marriage_ The Truth About Sex, Friendship, and Life Together - Mark Driscoll [68]
Because of God’s protection as a Father, today I can pray for that guy, not be bitter, and trust that God is changing him too. On this, theologian Miroslav Volf said, “We must name the troubling past truthfully—we must come to clarity about what happened, how we reacted, and how we are reacting to it now—to be freed from its destructive hold on our lives. Granted, truthful naming will not by itself heal memories or wrong suffered; but without truthful naming, all measures we might undertake to heal such memories will remain incomplete.”3
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When someone other than the Holy Spirit controls where you go, whom you see, what you wear, and what you do, it’s emotional abuse, and it affects your life deeply. When someone stalks you, is obsessed with you, and threatens you, it’s psychological abuse, and it changes you drastically. When someone makes you have sex, and you continually say no verbally or through body language (nonparticipation, pushing away, clenching your body), it’s sexual abuse and it affects you spiritually. All this had been a part of my past, but it was bringing death to my present and future life. For Mark it answered more of the questions as to why intimacy in our marriage was stuck and had been so hard to experience together. I couldn’t even explain why I would often tell him no to sex, or offer any variety of excuses. I would later realize I was letting fear from my past abuse, instead of conviction of enjoying my husband, rule me. The God-intended beauty of oneness had passed us by, and the lie I had concealed and abuse I had experienced were both at the root.
Defining what constitutes sexual assault is very important. It is a broad term that includes several sexual behaviors against an individual, whether physical, psychological, or verbal. Sexual assault, the current term that has replaced rape legally, is different from state to state in the United States and nation to nation around the world, making it confusing for people who have been harmed by it. In their book Rid of My Disgrace, Dr. Justin Holcomb and his wife, Lindsey, who are leaders at our church, have created a thorough and helpful definition:
There are three parts to our definition of sexual assault: 1) any type of sexual behavior or contact 2) where consent is not freely given or obtained and 3) is accomplished through force, intimidation, violence, coercion, manipulation, threat, deception, or abuse of authority. . . .
When defining sexual assault as any sexual act that is nonconsensual— forced against someone’s will—it is important to understand that the “acts” can be physical, verbal, or psychological. . . . Sexual assault occurs along a continuum of power and control ranging from noncontact sexual assault to forced sexual intercourse. Sexual assault includes acts such as nonconsensual sexual intercourse (rape), nonconsensual sodomy (oral or anal sexual acts), child molestation, incest, fondling, exposure, voyeurism, or attempts to commit these acts.4
For me, sexual assault caused disgrace. In Rid of My Disgrace, the Holcombs wrote,
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Disgrace destroys, causes pain, deforms, and wounds. It alienates and isolates. Disgrace makes you feel worthless, rejected, unwanted, and repulsive, like a persona non grata (a “person without grace”). Disgrace silences and shuns. . . . To your sense of disgrace, God restores, heals, and re-creates through grace. A good short definition of grace is “one-way love.” This is the opposite of your experience of assault, which was “one-way violence.” To your experience of one-way violence, God brings one-way love. The contrast between the two is staggering.5