When Love Uses GaslightingSýnishorn

A Trophy For Your Trauma

Dealing with a partner who uses gaslighting can drain your emotions. When it seems impossible to escape the put downs, constant criticism and devaluation, I’ve heard women ask if God is trying to teach them something. That’s a hard pill to swallow to think that you’ve endured pain just to learn a lesson. It makes God sound punitive.

Of course suffering can be a great teacher, but there’s so much more to our struggles than just learning a lesson. The Apostle Paul said in Romans that what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory God will reveal in us later. According to this passage, suffering is supposed to produce a gift!

I love how God illustrates his truth in nature. An oyster that hasn’t been wounded in any way doesn’t produce a pearl. In other words, a pearl is beautiful evidence of a healed wound. Likewise your suffering and wounds are supposed to produce a pearl in your life. Pearls are the plunder from your pain.

Esther’s story is a great example of a woman who held fast to this idea. Thrown into the king’s harem against her will, she had no choice but to wait for her night with the king. King Xerxes dethroned Queen Vashti. She’d refused to honor his command to parade her beauty in front of all of his drunken buddies and those who attended his seven-day wine binge. In order to choose the next queen he demanded all the virgins in the land to be gathered into his harem.

After months of beauty treatments, each virgin was escorted into the king’s chambers for the evening. Depending on how the story is framed, a night with the king can sound romantic, but make no mistake. There was no consent. The virgins were not allowed to refuse his sexual advances. He test drove all the models before he chose the one that pleased him. This self-absorbed king used his power to demand sexual privileges. His actions today would be considered sexual abuse.

How might Esther have endured this kind of abuse? I believe that through prayer and surrender she learned how to trust that God would provide her security. She refused to submit to misery and instead focused on what she considered her kingdom assignment. She understood the purpose in her pain. Even in the face of possible death she refused to believe that she was only made for the king’s pleasure. Her famous words, “If I perish, I perish,” are proof that she was able to trust God with the outcome. Instead, she focused on the King’s plan and allowed God to use her as a pivotal power to change her fate and that of her people.

If you can embrace the promise in your pain, you can rise up out of the victim mindset that power-hungry partners want you to be in bondage to, so don’t stop short of the win. Esther ignored the value others assigned to her and walked away with a trophy for her trauma.

Likewise, when you abandon the victim mindset, Esther’s story can help you understand your suffering didn’t happen to you. It happened for you.