Healing from Abuse

When a man and woman marry, the two become one, and that means that in some way, the traumas of our past become a part of our shared experience as a couple. That's what Bill Ronsheimer experienced when his wife shared with him about her childhood sexual abuse, and they began a process that led to a deep healing in both of their lives.

Bill says that can be a reality for any couple. God is going to take you on a journey. You're going to learn more about your wife than he ever knew, but more importantly, you're going to learn more about yourself and more about God than you ever knew before. And he's going to teach you some things that he would never be able to teach otherwise.

He's going to test you, but out of this, he's going to develop something that can be really rich for your marriage. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson. I'm Bob Lapine.

You can find us online at familylifetoday.com. Sometimes there are events from our past that we'd rather just ignore, wall them off, and try to forget about them. Bill Ronsheimer says when you go down a painful path, you'll find it leads to deep joy. We'll talk more about that today. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.

Thanks for joining us. We've been talking this week about a tragic and maybe a hidden story. Very important to talk about. The issue of sexual abuse. And you were saying you feel like the enemy is at work trying to keep this in the dark.

I do. And I get pretty passionate when I hear stories, even when my sister brought her abuse out and shared it with my mom and my grandmother. Their response, and they didn't know, they didn't know how to respond, but their response was a shaming response of, well, you better not do this again. In other words, saying it was her fault. When I shared my story for the first time publicly, a woman came up to me and she said, you glorified Satan today.

And so I thought, oh, that's the last thing I want to do. I want to bring this to the light so people can be set free. And then I was plagued with, did I glorify Satan?

Should I not have shared my story? And so I do think that Satan is on the war path to keep this in the darkness because he can work in the darkness. Well, we're trying to bring it appropriately to the light as we're talking about it this week. And we've got some friends who are helping us. Bill and Pamela Ronsheimer joining us again. Welcome back, guys. Thank you.

Great to be here again. This is a part of your story that you have brought to the light. And we've shared this week how you experienced sexual abuse when you were in elementary school at the hands of a teacher. You shared it with your parents and with friends, but they didn't know what to do with that. You thought, OK, I just will keep it compartmentalized. Never told your boyfriend who became your husband.

Right. It was ten years into your marriage. And Bill, you're a pastor. You've got two kids ten years into your marriage, and this comes out at a pastor's retreat. You still weren't sure what to do with that or how to process it. Eight years later, you're starting to have an emotional breakdown, Pamela.

And you wind up in the psych ward at a hospital. Clearly, this scar, this—and as you said earlier, it's not really a scar. It's an infection that is still in your soul. This is when it begins to be dealt with. And Bill, you said you were starting to realize she's not the only one who has stuff that needs to be dealt with. Correct. God's starting to take you to the woodshed and say, we've got some issues here that you as a pastor, as a husband, as a follower of Christ, things you need to repent of, things you need to address.

Yes. You know, we all know how in marriage there's a complementary relationship between husband and wife. Well, our dysfunctions can be complementary as well. So, for areas where life is a bit distorted for Pamela, for example, in what sexuality is because of having been abused, well, my life was distorted as well in many of my perceptions of what it is to be the head of the home, what it is to be pure.

In regard to human sexuality, you know, there was distortion that was there for me. So, right, God needed to work in my life. I was enjoying being king. And I was his little queen.

Yes. And all of a sudden the queen's coming in and saying, we've got some things to talk about, and you go, wait, what's happening here? And she didn't even need to say that. I tell you, by this time the Holy Spirit is shouting at me, you know, and God has a way of just grabbing our lives, and he may be shaking us, but he's doing it with pretty loving arms. Pamela, we talked about the fact that the healing from this was a matter of years of counseling and therapy. Why does it take years? Because our psyche is so damaged, and as physicians in the last 10 years have been able to map brain activity, that explains a lot of why it takes so long.

For me, I would say by the end of four years, I was teaching a women's study again, doing some things, and I would go two, three years feeling really good. And then I looked at my life sort of like an onion. God would peel back that crusty, crinkly stuff of pain, and then I would feel really better. And I would just think, oh, good, the healing is complete.

And then in his love, he would just peel back a little more, and it would hurt, and it would be hard, and it would trigger. But when we talked about that first 18 years being our normal marriage, oh, my goodness, it's so much better now. And during that interim time from, like, we look at life as before 1991 and after 1991, there was a period after 1991 where our intimacy was completely destroyed. Everything that had been joyful for me suddenly became disgusting. My own body became disgusting, similar to when I'd been the little girl. There had been a time when I'd been in high school where I would not, I couldn't stand to look at my own body, didn't know what was connected to the abuse. I should have been able to figure that one out. It seems so simple now, but I didn't. And so I would not shower, and I'm sure I did not smell pleasing.

I would pretend I'd run the water so I wouldn't get yelled at for not taking a shower, but I wouldn't, because I did not want to see my own body. So, yeah, there were so many distortions, and I really do believe that Satan used people that blamed me for the problem to just further embed the lies that had already begun with the abuse. And then as I was able to just say, well, now I know what truth really is.

God's Word is true. Satan's voice got quieter and quieter. And now he's like background noise, and I would just encourage you, if you are like me, the fight is so worth it. There is never a day where I think, oh, I would have been better not to fight. It's a joy to live now. And yet when you were in that fight, and really it was both, it was a oneness fight together, right?

It was. I'm thinking, Bill, you're a pastor. Pamela, you're at home. You're struggling.

You're panic attacks. I mean, you just described all of that, and I'm thinking, how did you do ministry? Where was your walk with God during that where you were able to overflow that to your congregation? I'm thinking, man, I'm a pastor. I'd be like, I'm either not going to do this or the congregation is going to know what's going on in my home.

So there's that balance. And they did know, and they did love us. That was part of the healing. I mean, the elders who had been with us, they knew.

They just surrounded Bill. I mean, they came and just lifted the burdens from him and allowed him only to preach. It was a turning point for our church as well. Because for me, who had been so closed because I've got this façade, this pride thing going on, as God broke me, finally I could become transparent. It was transparent to the congregation.

Pamela was obviously transparent to the congregation. Our church changed. All along this time, it had been growing in numbers, but now it started growing in depth. And as far as how did I make it through those years, I don't know. I don't know, but I do know that God's faithfulness kept us going. There were times, and we abused this phrase. I felt like I was holding on to God by a thread, but he was holding on to us with strong arms during that whole time.

And as Pamela said, the church was loving us and praying us through this. What would you say—I mean, we've talked about breakthrough moment at 18 years, and yet you've said after that there was still work being done. Can you say you got to a point where you said, I feel like the onion's been peeled, or is it still an ongoing process in your life today? I'd say that the onion has been peeled, and the core is not a stinky little bulb of an onion. Instead, I see it as a diamond. And when I look at myself in the mirror, I don't see the stinky onion anymore.

I see a hard diamond because of the cross. I think that's so beautiful, and I think it's very typical, because I experienced the same thing, in that I thought, oh, I'm healed, I'm good. And then I would be triggered by something or someone else's story, and then it would all resurface, and I'm thinking, what is happening? And I began to realize, oh, that's part of the healing. Isn't God gracious to not dump it all on me at once because I couldn't handle it?

But I would say the same thing. I feel like that onion has been peeled. My sister had been abused for probably 10 years or more, and neither one of us knew that the other had been abused until I was in seminary. She came out to visit me, and I shared the whole thing, as in I'm sharing.

She's sobbing because she said, oh, Ann, I've gone through the same thing. And it was so sweet that God allowed us to heal together. And yet, in that, there was something really precious about God meeting us and really taking us together on that journey. And then Dave came along on the journey as well. And it was hard for Dave, Bill, just as it was for you. And we struggled for quite a long time.

Yeah, as I read your book and the 10 questions, the first two, man, I was right there. I was like, when do I get our marriage back? Which I thought was so perfect, and then I realized it wasn't ever perfect.

And I don't really even want that marriage now. But at the time, you're like, well, at least it felt like there's not really any conflict. We seem to be happy, and it was all hidden. It was all buried. Normal felt good.

When do I get normal back? And we're saying, no, you want better than normal. And Dave didn't like dealing with conflict anyway, so I'm bringing this stuff up, and he hated it. We're brothers, aren't we?

Oh, yes, oh, yes. You know, we're talking here about process and the surprise at how long the process is. For years, I was praying for, or initially, and it was for years, I was praying for God's instantaneous healing. And one time, this takes me back in years, Leadership Journal was actually a published journal at that time, and there was an article by Archibald Hart in which he said, God sometimes, oftentimes uses the process because he builds more faith into us through the process than he does by granting us the instantaneous healing.

I thought it would be a win-win if it was instantaneous, you know. Look, God, the church would know what you've done, that would be a win for you, and then I get to return to my normal, controlling life, and that'd be a win. And God had better ideas. It makes me think of the blind man in Mark chapter 8 that's brought to Jesus. And Jesus takes him aside, away from the crowd, which is what he had to do with me.

He had to take me into some isolation to break me. And then the text says that Jesus spit into his eyes. I find that really humorous, and then ask him, can you see? And I want to say, well, Jesus, yeah, just a minute, let me get this spit out of my eyes and we'll find out. And then he said, I see, but these people are looking like they're trees walking around.

I'm not seeing perfectly. And then Jesus touched his eyes, and he could see fully. I learned from that that God doesn't answer prayer the way we would expect.

That man would have never expected that Jesus, in the process of healing, would have used spit. And there's a lot of things in our lives like, wow, God, I didn't expect that. But another thing about God is that his work of process is for the purpose of perfecting his healing. So, it may seem alarming when Pamela speaks of years and years of counseling, and it was alarming to me. You know, I thought, I can't tell you how many times her counselor said to me to be patient.

It just irritated me so much. But the whole time, God was perfecting his work that he knew he needed to do in us. You guys have a ministry now to couples who are going through this, Marriage Reconstruction Ministries.

Correct. And we've got a link on our website at FamilyLifeToday.com for those who would like more information about what you're doing. But Pamela, if you were sitting down with a young woman who just said, I've never shared this with anybody, but this was a part of my past, and I've been scared to bring it up, but I heard you talking about it on the radio, and you had the first three minutes with her to tell her what she needs to know, what would you tell her? There is hope that this is not the end of life, to have to feel the pain again. And that it's really important to find someone who is qualified in listening to trauma, someone that knows what to do to help you unwrap your story slowly enough that it doesn't consume you and burn you. I don't typically meet with a person more than once because I am not equipped. I mean, I can recognize that a person is at a breaking point in their story, they should not keep feeling in that moment, but I don't have all of the wisdom and training.

So, find somebody who is trained. Find a couple people who can pray for you. I had a few women that I talked to and I just said, I will not survive this without prayer. Right now, I cannot put two words together, so will you be my prayer warriors?

And they were. Half of the cards that I go through daily are verses that God gave these prayer warriors for me. I found out that I had people praying for me that I didn't even know. And I'm sure that will be for those listeners today, that there will be people, even if you've never heard of Jesus before, that will be brought up by Jesus to be your prayer warriors. And in the ministry that we have, Bill works with the husbands and I am the one who has the privilege of being the prayer person. So, I pray for the wives while he's speaking with the husbands.

And Bill, if you had your first three minutes with the husband who has just learned his wife's been abused and he's thinking, I want to help her, sure, so what do we do? I can't tell him that it's going to take as long as God did for us. Every story is unique, but I would say God is going to take you on a journey. You're going to learn more about your wife than he ever knew, but more importantly, you're going to learn more about yourself and more about God than you ever knew before. And he's going to teach you some things that he would never be able to teach otherwise. He's going to test you, but out of this, he's going to develop something that can be really rich for your marriage. You will understand what it is to be in your wife's shoes if you're willing to enter into this journey, as well as remembering, making sure you keep in mind what it is to be in your shoes. You need to do some self-care.

You need to have some self-awareness to know where God wants to develop you. So, know what it is to be in your shoes, but learn what it is to be in your wife's shoes. Pamela, when we met, you said, you introduced yourself. You said, I'm Pamela, not Pam. And that's part of my story.

Yes. I was named Pamela Ruth, and I love that name, but like many names, it got shortened to Pam. And when the abuse started, Pam held all of that pain. And without realizing that I was asking to be separated from the pain, I told my mother, I wish I could always just be called Pamela. But within the family, I stayed being called Pam. When I was in college, I thought, I can start over and I'll be Pamela. Most people shortened my name to Pam. It wasn't until we had been married a few years that I told Bill, I'm going to request of people to call me Pamela. I did not understand even then that my name Pam was holding the pain until I had the nervous breakdown. And suddenly with such clarity, I understood that that little girl, Pam, was holding the pain, and Pamela could live above the pain. And now I don't like to be called Pam.

I feel the pain. It's a visceral trigger, but I don't lose my mind over it. And instead, I picture Pam and Pamela as this little girl that Jesus picks up just like he did the lost lamb, and that he just holds me tight and keeps me safe, and that it doesn't matter which you call me, I'm all one. Pamela, share with us, how did Bill's journey help you in your healing? I suddenly trusted a man, and I had never respected or trusted a man. And in the back of my mind, I kind of knew that I wanted to respect him as my husband, but underneath it all, I really held little respect for men.

I thought I was smarter than they were. I could do anything a man could do and probably do it better. And then as I watched Bill grow, and as he was willing to go to school to learn what it was like for other men to be living with a woman who'd been abused, his understanding of me and love for me was so great and overflowing. And it was different?

Oh, totally different. Instead of it being, I love you and let's have sex, it was, I love you and I want to listen to you. Bill has always told me one of his favorite things is to listen to me talk. Now, I would think he'd get so bored of that, but he likes me to tell my stories of imagining things, how music has color to me, how I love to picture a beautiful sunset and how I would paint it. It's so different than his life, but he loves to listen to those stories. And now he sees that as the heart of me. Sex is still very important, but that was one of the bigger changes. Just his tenderness. When he would put me first, it wasn't, I'm putting you first because you've been such a battle ax.

Today it's the only way to survive. You know, there's just a complete heart difference. And as my heart was completely rebuilt, Bill's heart was rebuilt.

And so we are not the same people. And I have to say, though, there are days where, like yesterday, I wounded Bill. And I wounded him deeply because we've had some difficulties just like everyone goes through with the death in the family. And I was upset, I was overtired, and I made a remark of wishing I had been the one that had gone to heaven. Well, thank you, that was not the right thing to say. And then I told Bill, it took me a day, I told him, I am sorry that that anger that I was feeling really is at my abuser, and I imposed it onto you again. And I'm sorry, I know I wounded you, and you forgave me.

And those things do happen, but not with regularity. And we have words to use now. We've had a counselor that has really helped us to really ask the right questions, and the Holy Spirit is the best. Bill, what would you say? Because I've heard you both say you would not want the marriage you used to have.

And I've heard Pamela explain what she means. What would you say? Because I'm that husband, too, and I want to know how you would articulate the marriage you now have. Why is it better? Because I hope I'm saying this in the right way. It's better because of what God has done in me. Perhaps the first thought of a listener would be, well, hey, Pamela's healed now, it's got to be better.

Well, yeah, but it would be worse if the changes hadn't occurred in me. I can appreciate those artistic things about Pamela. That's what makes our marriage better, whereas before, it was all about me. Husbands who are married to survivors, one thing that we need to get over, we too often think about how we are affected by what's going on with our wives. I had to stop that and think, my goodness, I need to think of how Pamela's been affected by that abuse, not by how this affects me. And we need to grow as individuals as well to realize that those times that were yelled at, yeah, it was wounding the other day, but I realized what my counselor told me, this affects me, but it's not about me. I have to remind myself that there's a battle going on, and that little girl is still hurting in Pamela towards that abuser.

I happen to be in the way at that moment. But I need to grow up and be able to, in the same way that God just embraces us in the midst of our craziness, I need to embrace Pamela in the midst of some of that craziness that's still there. I want to share something here that I'm going to list some words that would depict human experiences. And for those who are listening, whether you are the spouse of a survivor or a survivor, I just want you to think about these words.

You are familiar with them. The first word, the first experience is aloneness. I mean, that for sure depicts the survivor, and it speaks to the spouse to feeling so alone. Who would ever understand what I'm going through? Another word would be shame. Another one, helplessness.

How am I going to get the right help? Another one is loss. I've lost so much. Another one would be abandonment or humiliation or the silence of God.

That for sure. God, where are you? The silence of God. Every one of those experiences describes the experience of Christ when he was on the cross. You know, we emphasize empathy.

Empathy is knowing what it is to be in your shoes while simultaneously knowing what it is to be in our own shoes. That's what Jesus did. That's what God did. In Christ, he empathized with us. In fact, he got into our shoes in Christ, who became man, without losing who he was in his shoes. God, man, Christ continued to be God as he walked among us. It is so reassuring to come back to those truths, and I may yell out to God, or I may not even have the words to cry out to God, but to know that whether it's survivor or spouse, where we are at in the moment, God in Christ has already been there, and he came through it victoriously. And that's the right place to land this conversation, is to remember that we have a high priest who is sympathetic, who knows our frailties, who has experienced this, and who's victorious, and who offers us freedom and hope and liberation. I mean, that's the thing that just jumps off at you two as a couple.

I was going to say that. This joy that is impossible in this situation without Christ. Thank you for sharing your story. Thank you. Thanks for writing your book. I think any husband whose wife has experienced sexual abuse of any kind, this is a book that he ought to read as a gift to her and a gift to himself.

It's not just about how you can be a better husband, but it's about how you can confront, as you've shared with us, Bill, some of your own issues here. We've got copies of the book Bill has written called Help My Wife is a Survivor of Sexual Abuse. You can order the book from us online at familylifetoday.com or call 1-800-FL-TODAY to get your copy. Again, our website is familylifetoday.com. The number to call to get a copy of the book Help My Wife is a Survivor of Sexual Abuse is 1-800-358-6329.

That's 1-800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. One of my favorite scriptures is from the book of Isaiah, where Isaiah is talking about the coming of the Messiah, and he says he'll exchange beauty for ashes. And I think what we've talked about today is just an illustration of how God can bring beauty out of horrible circumstances and situations. The word for that is redemption.

God can redeem what has been broken or destroyed or injured or marred. And here at Family Life Today, we want to be a part of God's redeeming work in the lives of husbands and wives and families all around the world. We want to effectively develop godly marriages and families and to see God bring beauty out of the ashes of broken relationships. And I want to thank those of you who make programs like today's program possible through your financial support of this ministry. There's a team of listeners, a small group of listeners, some of them who for years have invested in the ministry of Family Life Today. They've made today's program possible for the rest of us to listen to. So if you have benefited from today's program, you just need to know there are Family Life Today listeners who made that possible for you.

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Glenn Stanton says there is some truth to that, but maybe not as much as you might think. We'll talk about the myth of the dying church tomorrow. Hope you can tune in for that. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, along with our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas, a crew ministry. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow.