By Her View From Home 
**This post discusses domestic abuse.
Sometimes love says yes after six months. Because you were romantic, and fun, and you loved Jesus.
Sometimes love holds your hand before surgery. Because isn’t that one of the perks of marriage: there’s someone who’s there for you in a hospital room?
Sometimes love moves 1500 miles so you can have a better job. And hopes and prays that in this new town, this new life, you’ll feel better.
Sometimes love forgives and forgets. And hopes and prays again. Because you were sorry, or hurting, or tired. And you bought flowers.
So love goes to counseling with you. And she listens to the pastors. He needs more sex, they say. Stay together, they demand. Read this book, communicate more, go on a date night, they pressure. She dresses up and calls a babysitter and hopes one day you’ll notice. She tries to build a home for you, herself, and most of all, the children. She hopes and believes that you are working on things. And that God will heal you.
And you do seem to get better. You take the classes and go to the groups and write her letters. God heals her too. She has another baby.
Nothing matters to you anymore. Doing the right thing doesn’t matter to you. Your wife’s birthday doesn’t matter to you. When the children are sick, it doesn’t matter to you. You only want what you want, and you want to be angry. You suddenly go completely deaf to the word “no.”
And you break it again (was it ever really mended? Or had she just maintained it all? Had she propped you up too long?). You break her again.
One day, she wakes up and realizes that the children need an alive mother more than they need married parents. She looks around at the many kind faces in her life and thinks, “They would want me to live.” To you, she is expendable. But yours is not the only opinion that matters.
So she stays up Monday night, weeping and praying. Maybe she should’ve done this a long time ago. Or maybe it’s the perfect time—because now, she has the courage.
On Tuesday morning, she walks in the rain to the police station. She tells how you slammed her up against the wall and she tells how you hurt the pets and she tells about what happened in the bedroom. She tells about the broken glass and the threats.
The police chief says something about filing for protection. She realizes in that moment that he might be saving her life. She looks out the window and remembers sometime, somewhere, the police have been called “officers of the peace.” Peace, she thinks. That’s what I want. In my home and in my life.
So she walks next door to the courthouse with her tears and the papers. Only she knows that she’s not alone, and that she doesn’t have to bear the burden of being love right now. Love is the one walking behind her. She cannot see Him, but he’s right there, even as she’s shaking and talking to the clerk. He’s the One she prayed to last night and the One whose book she’ll read when she gets home. He knows what it’s like, by the way, to be wounded.
And they call to tell her it’s approved—and she thanks God. You do care about the safety of women and children. Peace in our home does matter to You. She thanks God that He knows better than all the pastors and all the counselors who pressured her to just stay together.
But tears come again later when she remembers one of her favorite Shakespeare lines: “Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove. Oh no, it is an ever-fixed mark.”
And she wanted to be that for you. She wanted to never alter, never bend. She wanted to keep on baking pies on weekends and watching you give the kids piggy-back rides and dreaming of that trip you’d go on together when there was a little more money. She wanted to be an ever-fixed mark.
But her friend reminded her that her love is still love, it just looks different now. Love is a mama bear making sure the children are happy and safe. Love is a woman taking care of herself—and for once, not out of fear. Love is letting go and letting you finally feel the consequences you’ve earned.
She used to believe in staying married at all costs. Now she believes in life at all costs.
She prays for you. And she hopes that one day, you’ll understand love too. But she can’t wait any longer for you to get better.
Love could worry herself sick about all the things that might happen between now and then. And today, she did. Today, there were moments it was hard to breathe. But tonight, love is simply writing this story, finding something for dinner, and reading a page or two of Aslan to the kids.
Because Love is the One who stood beside her at the courthouse. And He hasn’t let go yet.
by Shelbie Farmer 
by Erika Bradley 
