Ann Maree 
Welcome back for episode three, season five of the Safe to Hope podcast. As we hear from our next storyteller, Charles. As I mentioned in episode one of this season when, when the helper board brainstormed as to who to ask for the upcoming seasons, one of our team members mentioned it would be great to hear from a couple who had reconciled after abuse. Statistically, reconciliation is so infrequent in domestic abuse. So we prayed about it, and we trusted the Lord would send someone our way, and he did. He sent us Charles and Renee. In Episode One, we heard from Renee, and we listened to her experience from her perspective. This time in the episode for the second part of their story, we’re going to hear from Charles, Rene’s husband. In the final story episode, both Charles and Renee will share some of the ways in which God met them in their story, and even maybe some of the ways that they felt lost. But they’ll also have suggestions for people-helpers, for how we might better help couples in this situation. 

But okay, now back to Charles, as I mentioned with Renee. They have been married for 38 almost 39 years. Woohoo. That is astounding. They have three children and seven grandchildren, and I just want to say thank you for being with us here on the Safe to Hope podcast, Charles and your willingness to tell your story. Welcome.

Charles 
Thank you. Ann Maree. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Ann Maree 
Our pleasure as well. The story has such a positive ending, like yours and Rene’s. We do, we find so much help. And Charles I just as I asked Renee, I’m going to start out with you the same way. I want to ask, can you provide a little bit more background information from your perspective about who you are and how some of the ways you were brought up may have impacted who you were and even who you are today, or anything else that you just want to share with us.

Charles 
Thank you. I cannot remember a time in my life when I was not made to feel special. At times, I thought it was due to my parents being so respected in our community. Other times I thought it was truly because of something in me. My mother, in hindsight, was pretty controlling. Her controlling behavior was not something that I thought anything of, and actually probably thought was normal, until after Renee and I were married, and I had to confront my mother about her, how hurtful her trying to control us was both of my parents were judgmental in a number of ways. They would talk about how other people were doing things wrong, and I would try to make certain to not make those mistakes. I always have tried to meet their expectations. I had two older brothers with whom I competed for the attention of our parents. My father, throughout the larger part of my life, was mostly concerned with working the family farm and feed lot. I would have called him a workaholic, very spent, spent very little time doing things as a family. It mostly revolved around work. My oldest brother and I worked together on the farm until the mid 1990s when I was diagnosed with cancer. The day after my doctor found the cancer, Renee and I had traveled over the mountains for appointments with a couple of specialists. My brother came into the shop where I was servicing my car for the drive, upset that I was not at work and that he was having to do the work that I usually would do. He let me know pretty, pretty directly, what he thought about having to do that work. He never asked why I was doing what I was doing, and I never got to tell him why. My oldest brother had type one diabetes from the 10th grade. And from my point of view, our parents catered to him and things revolved around him in our family life. Just before I was diagnosed with cancer, my father decided to retire, and had asked my brother and I to consider taking over the farming operation. That’s the farming and feedlot operation. He would not let either of us on our own take it over. He reasoned that it would have to be both of us, since my brother could not do the business end and the more technical side and scientific side of the farming. But since he was the oldest, and that was his life, what he desired to do, he had to be involved in it, as well as me. My parents had always relied on me to do what the banks required to get the loans that were needed to keep the farm operating. I was also the one that made the decisions on fertilizer, chemical usage and so on. When I left the farm due to the effects of the cancer treatment, it had a pretty big impact on my brother as well as our parents. They ended up selling the land and machinery.

Ann Maree 
Yeah. Wow, yeah. And we’re going to talk more about the diagnosis shortly, but I hear already how your learned behaviors, behaviors potentially or did shape who you are or who you became as an adult. And I find and I’m guilty of it’s the same as many you and many other older adults, myself and you included, and that we’re still trying to please our parents, whether they’re dead or alive, and or any other significant authority structure. There’s such an impact older adults have on impressionable children, we just I don’t think we take that into consideration well enough. So again, I know when Renee and I talked a little bit about the cancer and the devastation due to the treatment and how it upended both of your worlds, and we’ll talk more about that as we go on, but please tell us a bit more about your spiritual upbringing.

Charles
Well, I was raised in the Mormon church by my mother, grandmother and an uncle. In 1985 just before my senior year of college, I married the girl that I had started dating in high school almost five years earlier. Renee was a believer in Jesus, but was not very active in her faith during that time, about that time. About the time that our oldest daughter was born, she became active in her church, and would talk to me about it. I was not very interested in what was important to her, that being her faith, that caused some tension between us. The amount of time that farming took me from our young family was also something that was coming between us, as well as my drinking, smoking and cursing. I trusted in Jesus as my Savior in the early 1990s This was after my wife quit trying to save me and left me in God’s hands. My life changed dramatically at that time. I stopped doing a lot of the things that I had been doing and started attending church as often as I could. I thought that since the Lord had taken away the desire to smoke, drink and curse that I was good to go. I also had thought that I had let go of my pride. I had tried to talk with my mother and older other brother about the Lord and what he had done in me. They were not interested in my Lord, and seemed, seemed to end up going deeper into Mormonism. This has culminated with my father accepting Mormonism about 15 years ago.

Ann Maree 
Right? And as Renee also mentioned, finding Christ is wonderful and powerful and life transforming, but there remains the ‘not yet’ as far as our growth in holiness is concerned. Definitely, having accepted Christ was huge. Talk now, though about a few of the other stressors, especially because of cancer that you were dealing with over these years.

Charles
When I was diagnosed with the cancer, it seemed that the world was revolving around me and my needs. In the working world, I ended up leaving the family farm to take an eight hour day job at the association that delivers irrigation water to the valley in which we live. I found that the treatment given to prevent the cancer from returning prevented me from being able to do the kind of hard work that we did on the farm. We had to move from a house owned by the farm into a house owned by the irrigation water provider. I even had to work the day that my family and friends moved us to the new house. My family and I changed churches during this time as well. I ended up being elected in the new church to a position of leadership. This tended to cement the thought in my head that I was doing the correct things. I was being looked on for advice and as a leader in the church. In the first year after being diagnosed with cancer, I had an eye removed, and then went on a form of chemotherapy that gave me chronic fatigue during that season. I was told by my boss that another employee of the Association had requested that I be fired for not working hard. I. Asked for the chance to continue with the Association for a time to prove that I could do the work. Once I was taken off the medication, we ended up out working the other employee that had complained about me, and in time, this other employee became my boss, and we ended up having a pretty good relationship, you might say, we ended up being friends. Adding to my stress, my mother and the brother that did not help with the farming did not see any point in me being so miserable, physically and mentally while on the treatment, they expressed, on a number of occasion, their opinions about the uselessness of the treatment. In fact, what would happen is I would spend all week going down into depression just to go to church on Sunday and to be lifted out of that deep, dark pit. And I don’t know any what other way to put depression is, other than a dark pit, and I believe it was by the Spirit of the Lord, listening to his word and attending those services, and then I would just do the same thing all over the next week. I’m sure it seemed to them that my life was useless and a waste while I was on that treatment, as I saw it and experienced it, it was the Lord providing the grace that I needed to get through each week, and that the treatment was a hope to me to be able to live a long, productive life. Yet during all this time, I thought that the stress my marriage was under was not due to any of my faults. My wife and I were having quite a few arguments over a lot of different things. I don’t remember what all the arguments were about specifically, but I do remember the financial stress. It was during this time that I was becoming increasingly self centered and demanded that Renee get a job outside of the home to take some of the financial burden off my shoulders. I thought that the financial pressure that led to my wife having to go to work, her having lost an aunt to cancer, and her undergoing a life changing surgery herself, was to blame for a lot of our problems. I would often raise my voice to the point of yelling and doing things to try to get her to listen to what I what it was that I was saying. You can take that to mean that I was pounding the table, or would throw something against the wall, etc. I was sorry for myself, and would often complain about my situation. 

Ann Maree 
Yeah, yeah. I’m sure, very hard, very difficult. And I think I hear you saying not justifying, but difficult nonetheless. And so this is where we can interact a bit with the parts from Renee’s story in episode one in her account, she said at this time she felt like she was to blame for everything. So I guess she’s sensing what you’re actually feeling as well, and even things that weren’t in her control. It didn’t seem to matter. She said, It could be twisted to be her fault nonetheless, and I’m not trying to shame you, Charles, I just thought it was important to bring up this pattern, because it certainly can come across as though it isn’t even close to abusive. You know, we talk about abusive relationships, and how is this abusive? What we need to remember is the goal, the goal of abuse, per se, which is control. And maintaining control in a relationship requires that the abuser cannot be at fault. In the early stages, it could be anyone else who is to blame, and then perhaps, as time goes on, it is increasingly the wife who’s to blame. Failure and or disappointing others is not an option for the person who needs to maintain control in a relationship. And calling out failure is considered as resisting his control. It really is a form of restraint which is similar to physically preventing somebody’s movement. Physical displays of violence solidifies, for the woman, that her husband is serious about harm and demonstrating he can and will cause it.

Okay. So there is a lot of stress in your household, for sure, a lot of really good reasons to be stressed. Can you tell us about some of the other factors that contributed to your state of mind at the time?

Charles
During the summer and fall that I spent on the form of chemotherapy that I was on, I spent all my time when I was physically able cutting firewood and splitting it, that firewood would heat the house for the winter. We could not afford the electricity that that house took to heat in our climate. A fear that I had for quite a few years is that I would fail my wife and kids by somehow becoming homeless, that it was just a fear that I’ve had. So I felt a lot of pressure to succeed. Also, the doctor encouraged the physical activity since the more energy I used, the more energy that I would have. I had a friend that provided a service for the feedlot, which was part of the farming operation that I had left the family operation. He and his family collected a large amount of firewood from the forest service and stock trailer. It was such a large amount that they had to unload half of it at the bottom of the of a pretty, pretty steep hill, their truck could not pull the full load to the top of the hill, so when they got to the top of the hill, they unloaded the half that was in the trailer, went down and loaded the first half that they had unloaded, then went to the top of the hill and again, loaded the second half, and then brought that to my house and unloaded it. And all this time I was asleep, but I would work for the hours that I could, and then I would spend the rest of the day and night sleeping. My wife told me about it the next morning, when I wondered where that would came from and it brings a tear to eye. I do get choked up thinking about what kind of love it took and the amount of work that it took to get us that wood. The manual labor that it took to split the wood gave me the physical strength to make it as long as I did before my body gave up on that, that treatment. After 11 months on that experimental treatment for the form of cancer that I had, I sunk into a depression that by any measure I can only think of it as, as horrible. I was seriously considering suicide as escape from the flu-like fatigue that was debilitating and me and wearing me down. The doctor originally wanted for me to continue on that treatment for three years. I understand now since that time, the treatment has been changed a little. They’ve changed the formulation of the drug, and they only give a portion of the dose that I was giving myself. I would take three doses a week. And now they give only a portion of one of those doses once a month, so they’ve it’s quite a bit more collateral colorable now, but at that time, it was an experiment. I was part of a study, and I guess, to be quite honest, in some ways, I’m thankful that the lead Lord let me go through that time of depression, because I feel like I’m more empathetic with others going through similar circumstances. I don’t judge people for that anymore. What they’re physically able to do.

Ann Maree 
Yeah, sounds like a season of humbling for sure, receiving the gifts from the family that brought you the wood, and just face to face with your own difficulty. It’s so helpful to hear those many factors and the inner story that you’re telling us that you experienced, even during the stressful circumstances. 

And by way of reminder to our audience, we don’t discuss these things as though they are excuses. Again, say this over and over, they’re not excuses for behaviors, nor are they justification for abuse. We’re simply trying to help others understand what happens in the mind of at least one person, Charles, who acknowledges their acts toward their wife were abusive. Hopefully this information will be a help for others who are trying to identify patterns, and as mentioned before, the goal of an abuser is control. Adding insight into the very out of control elements in this story helps us witness the decline imminent in Charles and Renee’s situation. But Charles and we can say this all the time, God was up to something in your circumstances, right? Tell us what was happening with your job and then with your church situation.

Charles
Okay. As a few years went by, Renee and I would disagree about the church where we were members of. I could see some deficiencies, but she was experiencing something much different. But since I was that was not my experience, and I was so self centered, I did not understand that. One of the other leaders at the church was my father in law’s boss. My father in law was getting ready to retire, and this man spoke with me about coming to work for him. And when my father in law retired. I didn’t think about it much at that time, but I did ended up going to work there when my father in law retired, this was over a couple of years time frame. This is how the Lord started to move me to where I needed to be for him to work on me. About the same time I started the new job, I did concede to leaving that church. We attended another church one Sunday, but my heart wasn’t into going there. The following Sunday, as my family and I were sitting at the kitchen table, we were discussing where to go next. As we sat there, I said that I didn’t think that we should go anywhere until God worked in us to get us to go somewhere, and that we should go to him, to him in prayer, which we did. It was not long after that, later that day, that I started do some research on a church where many of our friends attended, included the friend that brought us the firewood. I’d never been introduced to reformed thought and had not considered it when I saw the theme of the sovereignty of God that struck a chord with me. Our children were already attending the youth group of this church, so it wasn’t hard to start attending there. We sooner joined as members. One of the leaders of this church became a friend, and we started to do different things together. Sometimes just him and him and I, but also sometimes our families would join as well. Our daughters ultimately ended up marrying his sons. One of the things that the church sponsored was a Saturday breakfast for the men of the church. This breakfast was attended by fathers as well as their sons. I would often take our son with me. The conversation would revolve something around the church, church, such as this doctrine or that. My experience of church up to that time was of the Armenian belief that God is resistible, that we can resist his grace. That had not been my experience, and which is why I found attending those churches with that belief problematic. The discussion at the breakfasts was very anti Armenian, and included terms with which I was unfamiliar, an undercurrent was present at those breakfasts with which I was at the same time uneasy and also excited by and that being that the man in the house is not just the head of the house, but of his wife also, and that his wife is to honor and obey him period. There were many tidbits such as this that I’d picked up, not just at this present church, but also from past experiences. In retrospect, I was becoming much harder in my heart, both as a husband and as a father, little by little. At this church, feelings were not just to be discounted, but to be brought under some submission to the will. Being led by the Spirit meant being led by the doctrines of the church. I found it very dogmatic. So needless to say, the arguments between my wife and I got elevated by my new knowledge. As time went by, I was adding a huge dose of control to the mix and thought I was doing the correct thing. This went on for over 11 years. 

Ann Maree 
Wow. Yeah, wow. So I started out by saying that this was how God, or I think you said it, started moving you into the situation, a new situation, a couple where he needed you to be. And it just immediately, as you described then, that it got harder in your marriage, especially for Renee, I’m thinking about the Israelites crying out to God from Egypt, asking him to save them. And it says God heard their cries, but then immediately life got way harder, and they were given the task of building with bricks, but not given the straw for the bricks. And I call that the bricks without straw doctrine, if you will. And it’s evident in what you just described. You got to the place where God needed, needed you to be, but it got worse. And thank you for sharing this. And also, I’m just overwhelmed by being an 11 year time frame. That’s a long time to experience a hardening, as you said, as a wife to a husband and children with their father. 

And this is also a pattern that’s increasingly emerging out of dogmatic denominations. I have even risked saying it causes abuse. It’s the perfect climate for encouraging the growth of abusive seeds for one who is predisposed to be authoritarian and controlling. And I so appreciate your recognition that this occurred, and then just honesty and recognizing also its impact. And so, as you said, things escalated. Tell us more about that.

Charles
Our disagreements or arguments were getting way out of hand. We had attended a marriage seminar that was somehow supposed to help our marriage, but it just ended up making things worse. So I think Renee had some unmet expectations as a result of that conference. My wife had long since stopped liking to do the things that I like to do. So we spent a lot of time apart. I was getting very lonely. I started to demand that we start doing things together again, or else. I don’t remember every occasion where things went awry, but I do remember at one point being so angry that I put my fist through the wall. I was trying to control to the point where I would threaten killing myself in order to get my way. I was angry much of the time, blaming it on everyone but me. It got to the point where I was seriously considering moving out or kicking Renee out. My mind went wild with thoughts of how to get justice for the wrongs that I was experiencing.

Ann Maree 
Again, it’s so difficult for some people to recognize that some of these things are abusive, and so I just want to highlight, you know, a couple ways. 

First of all, she his wife, Charles’s wife was never hit, but when you put a fist through the wall, what that speaks is that you’re willing to hurt, and it’s an intimidation, and it doesn’t take much else to put somebody back in line when they witness something like that happening. But then also threats of suicide, friends, I want to take this so very seriously, and just Charles and I have spoken those those thoughts are no longer there. So taking them seriously when they’re spoken is first of all, one of the most important things we need to be doing. But also, suicide is one of the most abusive things that somebody can do in a relationship. It leaves the survivors reeling, and whether or not they have a good theology of God’s sovereignty and Providence of every day of our lives has been counted, you can have a great grasp of that doctrine and still question, What could I have done differently to have prevented my loved one from killing themselves? It’s a struggle that the survivors have for the rest of their lives, and quite frankly, some family members also commit suicide for just the difficulty of having to navigate those types of thoughts, that they could have done something different. And so I just want to point out that if a husband is threatening suicide, that is a significant thing, and do not take it lightly. 

But this is where our story then starts to change, and that’s so hopeful. So Charles, please tell us what happened.

Charles
Well over a few months, one summer, things seem to have come to a head. Renee and I started counseling with a Christian counselor. Even with the counseling, it seemed to me that our relationship was deteriorating at a increasing rate. A few years prior, I’d been given a book by a friend of mine. We’ll call him Jim. Jim is the same friend that brought the firewood. I started reading that book. Jim has his own testimony of why he gave me that book, but it struck a chord with me. Then Jim called me up, wanting to have breakfast and talk. Renee had been in contact with him, and he knew quite a few things about our difficulties. Simultaneously, there were some things in the book that pricked my conscience, and I ended up confessing to my wife that I’ve been viewing pornography for a number of years. I could no longer live with having any secrets in my life. At the breakfast with Jim, he said that he knew that things were not right and that I was messing up, and I believe those were his exact words. He wanted me to attend a three day retreat, and he would sponsor both myself and my wife. The man’s weekend is held the weekend before the women’s weekend. My wife wasn’t able to attend that fall, but did attend that the following spring. I attended that fall, and at that breakfast in the restaurant, I broke down into tears and confessed to my friend about my habit of pornography and that I was afraid that I was going to lose my wife as a result of that, and my other behavior that I was beginning to see was bad. I was starting to get the idea that I was to blame for the problems in our marriage, rather than deflecting it onto someone else, I was starting to see that it was me. Before the retreat weekend, I planned on going hunting for a nine day season with our daughter’s father in law. It ended up that I was ready to come home after a few days. My heart wasn’t into the hunting, but in trying to put the marriage back together, our daughter’s father in law was also ready to come home because he was having a lot of pain in his back. During the hunting trip, I told daughter’s father in law about our marriage problems and the about my pornography habit as well. He was an elder at our church, and I also remember telling him that I was still in love with Renee, and that my heart still raced in a funny way when I would talk to her. I called Renee and told her that I would be coming home. I didn’t know then, but she had a plan for Jim to be there when I got home, and she was planning on moving out. She had asked him to be there to help keep me in check. It turned out that she decided at the last minute to go not go through with her plan at that time. I confessed to my pornography habit. I moved into a spare bedroom. I started to take responsibility for my actions, but at that time I was not fully aware of all my faults. At that point, God was working those into me as as I was able to take them, and I really was in no shape to ask for forgiveness from her or from the Lord at that time. I just couldn’t believe that the Lord could forgive me for what I all that I was responsible for. Once, at the retreat weekend, I was able to experience a great deal of the depths of the love of Christ in my life through the story of the prodigal son. I was housed on that weekend with a gentleman that was going through much of the same marriage difficulties as myself. Through the weekend and from reading the book from Jim I, I came to understand my wife’s heart, and I found that she is for me, not against me, as I had assumed. I remember coming home from the weekend with a new purpose in my heart to do all that I could to make my wife understand the value that I place on her heart and what God had done in her. I remember coming home and insisting that I wash her feet.

Ann Maree 
That’s powerful. Um, just hearing how the Lord was working and how you were responding. Thank you so much for sharing. There’s a principle from Scripture we talk about, both with victims and abusers, and it’s the story about when Jesus healed the blind man in stages. First he spit into his hand and put it on the blind man’s eyes. The man had a bit of sight, and saw men as trees walking. Jesus then touched him again. And then the blind man had full sight. So the important thing to remember here was, we’re talking with Charles about receiving sight. It might come in stages. But also key important to remember is that it is God who removes those blinders. The Lord said to him, in Exodus 4:11 who gave human beings their mouths, who makes them deaf or mute, who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I the Lord? He not only removes but he may also even use blindness and deafness to call us back to himself. And you had a bit of all that happening in your story, Charles.

Charles
Yes, it took me a little over a month to get through all the things that I had done were so hurtful to Renee and to apologize for each one, and I remember how important it was that I specifically named each way that I had been hurtful. And by saying hurtful, I mean the controlling, the abusiveness, each one of those things had to be named specifically because I had come to truly hate my sin, which was each and everything that I had done that was so hurtful to my wife and to our family. The biggest thing that I had to overcome was my controlling nature. I remember during one of our talks after the retreat weekend, telling her not to trust me, but to trust God, if anything was of me, it was not going to last. But if it were of the Lord, then it would have a lasting effect. I truly did not want any part of me to be trusted because I absolutely hated who I was. I did and do love the Lord. I sought to know nothing except for Jesus. If anything is not of Jesus, I did not want any part of it. At that time, I still feel that way. I spoke with each of our daughters and asked them for forgiveness in person for each of the ways that I had hurt them, sinned against them. I called our son, who was in the military at that time, and asked for his forgiveness as well for each of the ways that I had heard and sinned against him. There was a time that came when Renee and I went away for a weekend. We were able to celebrate what God had done in our marriage, in really to celebrate coming back together as husband and wife. I now look at that date as our second anniversary. There seems to be always something that’s difficult in our lives, but with little steps, little exception, stress in our marriage really has not been an issue for the last 11 and a half years.

Ann Maree 
Wow. Praise God, Charles. Praise God. And I’m thanking him for moving your heart and Rene’s heart. We don’t often get to hear the end of the story like this, and immediately, as I say that, I think of the many women who beg the Lord for a similar outcome, but don’t ever experience it. 

In this season, we hope to simply encourage it can happen. It is not for lack of prayer or lack of faithfulness or not enough trust or belief. It does or does not happen, not because of you or what you did or didn’t do. It isn’t because God loves Charles and Renee more than he loves the multitudes of others living in abusive relationships. This is kind of what’s hard about telling this story. I don’t know and won’t try to explain why Charles and Renee are together, and yet other marriages are not. And I know for some of you, reconciliation is the last thing you’d want, but for those of you who have been hopeful, please just know God can and does make it happen.

When we speak with our next expert contributor, Chris Moles on the next episode, I’m hoping to hear more from him about the ways in which he and others are finding hope in dealing with perpetrators in abusive marriages and some of the things that they have been witnessing, happen and how they’ve been helping, helping those marriages. And Charles, I am really looking forward to hearing from both of you, both you and Renee on episode five, when we talk about where God was during all these circumstances, we’ve touched on it a bit here. And again, I am in awe of your willingness to be vulnerable here to share this story that other men may hear and perhaps have their own blinders lifted.

Charles
We look forward to that time as well.

Ann Maree 
Yeah, it’ll be good to have us all together. 

That’s all for today. Join us next time on the Safe to Hope podcast, when, as mentioned, we will talk with Chris Moles. Chris will always hold a special place in our Safe to Hope hearts as he consulted with us and brainstormed some of the very unique structure ideas, which are what eventually made this show happen. More importantly, for this season, Chris will be talking about some of the work that he and others are doing with abusers, in the hope that he has despite current devastating statistics.

For anyone concerned about domestic abuse in their own home or in that of a loved one, and you’re looking for more information, we recommend you go to the Called to Peace website link or ChrisMoles.org link found in our show notes. 

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We value and respect conversations with all our guests. Opinions, viewpoints, and convictions may differ so we encourage our listeners to practice discernment. As well. guests do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of HelpHer. It is our hope that this podcast is a platform for hearing and learning rather than causing division or strife.

Please note, abuse situations have common patterns of behavior, responses, and environments. Any familiarity construed by the listener is of their own opinion and interpretation. Our podcast does not accuse individuals or organizations.

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