I was trembling inside as I walked into the church for my grandma’s funeral. With traumatic memories of church and family swirling through my mind, my children and I made our way into the sanctuary and found our seats. I was going to sit down, but I felt duty-bound to shake off my fear and avoidance, make the rounds, give hugs, and express condolences. Some relatives avoided me, others greeted me. As usual, I felt out of place. My sister had tried to persuade me to visit our grandma before she died, but my grief was complicated, and although I still struggle with the decision, I couldn’t bring myself to see her. From the moment I found out my grandmother’s time was coming to an end until that morning, painful emotions had been resurfacing. My grandma’s last request was for everyone to “forgive each other,” and while, as a mother myself, I understood the emotions behind the request, it wasn’t so simple.
Family Betrayal and the Shattering of Safety
Twenty-eight years ago, when I was an 18-year-old newlywed, my foundation was shattered, and I was plunged into the heart-wrenching process of grieving the loss of family members who were still alive, while struggling to understand how those closest to me could cause such pain. Just three months after my wedding, my uncle’s campaign to undermine my dad’s leadership at our church culminated in a night of emotional turmoil that left deep scars. For months, he had been nitpicking and scapegoating my dad and the rest of our immediate family over trivial matters in a calculated effort to seize control.
It began with a church meeting that fixated on a $69 purchase my dad had made to repair the toilets before weekend services, the “hiring” of my husband as a volunteer youth pastor, and my dad’s public acknowledgment of my grandfather’s abuse, which they wanted buried in silence. The meeting ended in heartbreak, with my sister curled up on the floor, sobbing and saying she wanted to die. We were scapegoated and slandered that night and for years afterward. Even now, nearly three decades later, lies continue to be told, and our every action is still twisted into “evidence” of ill intent. I cannot overstate how deeply this experience impacted me. My large extended family was part of my identity and the reason I wanted a big family of my own someday. But in one night, that foundation was ripped away. It was one of the most painful, disorienting periods of my life. The people I trusted most had turned against us. My safe place was gone. In its place was betrayal, heartbreak, and a deep sense of loss I still carry.
Religious Manipulation and Generational Harm
In the years that followed, forgiveness became a weapon. Responsibility for reconciliation was placed entirely on my dad, while those who had caused the harm escaped accountability. The Bait of Satan by John Bevere, a book often named in religious trauma communities for the damage it has inflicted, was hand-delivered to my dad by his own mother, who had deeply internalized victim-blaming theology. Not long after, the same relatives who split the church orchestrated a hostile takeover of a business two of my uncles had built together. The uncle who led the church and family division engineered the coup, forcing yet another brother out of what they had created together.
Patterns of coercion, spiritual abuse, silencing, and scapegoating have echoed through every generation of my family like a haunting refrain. Forgiveness and family loyalty were held up as sacred virtues, yet too often they became tools of control—subtle, unrelenting pressures to stay quiet and fall in line. The cost was always the same: truth slipped into the shadows, abusers were sheltered, and the wounded were left to carry their pain in silence. These patterns did not end with my grandmother or my father; they quietly shaped the way I came to see my own marriage and my faith, binding me to beliefs that kept me trapped for far too long.
These weren’t isolated events; they were threads in a much larger story. The same patterns that excused my uncles’ betrayal and shifted blame onto my dad were the very ones that kept my grandma bound in an abusive marriage for decades. At the funeral, my relatives spoke of my grandpa as though he had been a great, godly man. The years of violence and control were never acknowledged. Instead, they were quietly erased, leaving behind a polished family image while the truth was once again laid to rest in silence.
Childhood Memories of Abuse
As I sat in the sanctuary listening to my relatives rewrite history, painting my grandparents’ marriage as a fairy tale, describing my grandfather as a great man, and portraying our family as the ideal Christian family, my thoughts turned to a memory from my childhood that remains with me to this day.
I don’t remember the expressions on my parents’ faces. My dad’s reaction has vanished from my mind completely, though I know he must have had one. When I remember that day, it is just darkness pierced by the ringing of the telephone, followed by the frantic sound of my mother’s voice.
“Your dad’s beating your mom again. You have to get down there.”
We lived in a mobile home on my grandparents’ property at that time. My parents were in their early twenties. I was very young, and that phone call is one of my earliest memories.
As we got older, my father told us how his dad would go out drinking “3 or 4 times a year,” and just about every time he did, my grandma would end up with a black eye. The family would take unplanned fishing trips, not for fun, but to hide out while she recovered. He told us these stories as part of a larger narrative, warning us of the dangers of alcohol and the genetic tendency toward addiction.
My dad was born on New Year’s Eve. When my grandma went into labor, she called her mother-in-law because my grandpa was out drinking. Instead of taking her to the hospital, my great-grandmother drove her laboring daughter-in-law from bar to bar looking for my grandpa. Having a birthday on New Year’s Eve with an alcoholic, abusive father turned out the way you would expect. That day, more than any other, still carries heavy triggers for my dad. It always has. Those triggers increased after my grandpa died before dawn on New Year’s Day. It was less than a month after my first baby, my parents’ first grandchild, was born.
The Legacy of Religious Control
My grandma often talked about a time in her life when she believed God told her she was released from her marriage, but warned her that if she left my grandpa, he would likely wind up in hell when he died. In other words, she believed she was responsible for his salvation.
Later, when my grandpa was in his 50s, my dad and his brothers met him at the door when he returned home drunk, informing him that he could not come back into the home unless he went down to the church to have the pastor pray for him. The myth my family tells is that God miraculously changed my grandfather in that moment, with my grandmother’s loyalty and prayers credited for the “miracle.”
For 22 years, our family narrative kept me trapped in an abusive marriage. When an argument between my husband and my sister ended with him punching her repeatedly in the face, only stopping when he was forced to the ground by my brothers-in-law, I believed he needed help and prayer. When he broke his finger punching our young children’s small television in a fit of rage, when he punched holes in our walls or car window, when he broke our bedroom door into pieces after I locked him out, when he terrified me with verbal abuse, and betrayed me through other forms of abuse … I remembered my grandparents’ marriage. Because he never hit me, I resisted the word “abuse.” Grandma had black eyes – I didn’t, end of story. The miracles that supposedly happened in my grandpa’s life gave me false hope that God would do the same for my husband if I just kept going, kept praying, kept loving. Oppressive language that referred to marriage as an unbreakable covenant, divorce as sin, regardless of the reason, and women as their husbands’ saviors kept me in a marriage that caused devastating harm to my children and myself.
It wasn’t until one of his rages turned life-threatening – when he screamed murderous threats at our son and tried to attack him – that I finally grasped the gravity of what we were living in. My 13- and 18-year-old children and I had to physically hold him back to protect their brother. That night shattered my denial and sent me searching for answers. I began reading everything I could about abuse, desperate to make sense of the chaos and terror that had become our normal.
Reclaiming Truth and Healing
It took years of healing and re-examining my beliefs for me to see clearly. While I believe in miracles, I now recognize that what happened with my grandpa was not one. He stopped hitting my grandma because he feared his six grown sons, not because God transformed him. And I no longer believe the abuse ended there; he just quit drinking and hitting her. While I don’t want to minimize the courage it took for my dad and his brothers to confront their father, their intervention did not redeem the three decades my grandma endured, nor did it erase the lifelong repercussions for her and the rest of our family. And God did not use the threat of hell to keep my grandma trapped in her abusive marriage. It was religious oppression that imparted an insidious message that, for too long, has placed the responsibility for men’s violence and failures onto the shoulders of women and children.
That same message shaped me, too. It convinced me to endure far longer than I should have, believing that my own suffering might one day redeem my marriage and cure my husband. Just as my grandma was told her endurance would save her husband’s soul, I believed that my perseverance would transform mine. Both of us bore the crushing weight of responsibility for someone else’s sins, while the truth – that we and our children deserved safety and freedom – was buried beneath layers of fear and weaponized faith.
Triangulation and Generational Patterns
Religious oppression doesn’t easily let go. As long as those who wield it have access, they continue to push for control. It showed up at my grandma’s funeral, when my dad pulled my 20-year-old son aside in the lobby, urging him to “stick to his roots” and warning him not to follow my example. In that moment, he wasn’t just speaking to my son – he was using triangulation in an attempt to send a direct message to me, trying to pass along the same toxic beliefs that had kept his mother bound to an abusive marriage for decades. Just steps from his mother’s casket, he shamed me for “running away” from my beliefs (the same language his dad used about him in their last conversation before my grandfather’s death) and condemned my decision not to attend marriage counseling after my husband threatened our child’s life. The truth is, marriage counseling is generally not advised in cases involving abuse due to the potential risks it poses for those experiencing abuse. My grandma carried that weight for most of her life, and when my son later shared the conversation with me, I mourned the fact that these patterns have continued to be passed down from generation to generation.
I refuse to carry this burden any longer. Each day, I reclaim my freedom, dismantling the chains of fear, obligation, and manipulation that have bound my family for generations. My hope is that others in my extended family will one day find the courage to choose freedom over oppression as well, breaking the cycle that has claimed too many lives and too many marriages.
Speaking Truth, Breaking the Cycle
As painful as it was, my grandma’s funeral was a necessary reminder that silence allows abuse to continue, both in families and in faith environments. My grandma suffered in ways that were hidden, misrepresented, or dismissed. But telling the truth matters, and I refuse to let her story – and mine – be rewritten to fit a false narrative.
Faith should not require women to bear responsibility for men’s harmful behavior, nor should family loyalty demand silence in the face of abuse. These patterns harm men as well: when abusive behavior is excused or minimized, men are denied the opportunity to confront their actions, take responsibility, or learn healthier ways of relating. Enabling abuse allows anger, control, and fear to go unchecked, perpetuating cycles of harm that touch everyone in the family.
I hope that by speaking openly about these generational patterns, religious coercion, and the cost of silence, others can learn to recognize abuse in all its forms, reclaim their stories, and break cycles that have persisted far too long.
Sharing my story has been difficult, but I believe it’s important to speak the truth about generational abuse, religious coercion, and the cost of silence. If you or someone you love is facing similar challenges, please know that you are not alone and you don’t have to carry this burden by yourself. The resources below can help you recognize abuse, reclaim your story, and take steps toward safety and healing.
24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, the National Domestic Violence Hotline provides essential tools and support to help survivors of domestic violence so they can live their lives free of abuse.
Contacts to The Hotline can expect highly-trained, expert advocates to offer free, confidential, and compassionate support, crisis intervention information, education, and referral services in over 200 languages.
Domestic Violence Support | National Domestic Violence Hotline
This page from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) provides a comprehensive directory of resources for survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and related abuse. It offers state-by-state contact information for local coalitions, tribal organizations, and national hotlines, helping individuals find support services in their area. While OVW does not offer direct services to the public, the page serves as a vital gateway to emergency assistance, advocacy, and healing networks across the United States
Guides on creating a personalized safety plan, including steps for leaving an abusive relationship securely.
How to Leave an Abusive Relationship Safely
“Getting out of an emotionally abusive marriage is one of the hardest things you could ever do. But the life and healing it can bring after you have finally left the grip of abuse makes this difficult journey worth it.
In today’s episode, I want to outline a ten-step pathway if you or someone you love is considering getting out of an emotionally and spiritually abusive relationship. Come with me as we climb the ladder out of hell.”
Ten Steps Out of an Emotionally Abusive “Christian” Marriage [Episode 254] –
Diane Langberg’s blog features a collection of her articles addressing trauma, abuse, and the church’s role in healing and accountability. Through deeply reflective writing, Langberg explores spiritual abuse, the misuse of power, and the need for compassionate care within faith communities. Each piece invites readers to confront difficult truths while holding space for restoration, justice, and the image of Christ in caregiving. The page serves as a resource for those seeking insight into the intersection of psychology, theology, and advocacy
This page from CBE International highlights ten essential resources for Christians seeking to understand and respond to domestic violence, especially within faith communities. It acknowledges the silence that often surrounds abuse in churches and calls for active engagement and advocacy. The recommended books and guides offer survivor-centered insights, theological reflection, and practical tools for pastors, caregivers, and individuals navigating abusive relationships. The page serves as both a wake-up call and a compassionate invitation to break the silence and support healing through informed, faith-based action.
10 Resources On Domestic Violence Christians Should Read – CBE International