I stayed silent because I thought God wanted me to: The hidden cost of faith and abuse

Christian author and educator Lucy D. Ola knows what it is like to wrestle with the tension between faith, marriage and abuse. Here, she shares how the belief that God wanted her to stay silent kept her in an abusive marriage – and how finding her voice helped her begin to rebuild her life.

I was raised to believe that marriage was holy and came from God. Divorce did not feel like simply ending a relationship; it felt like rejecting something God had created. I feared that God did not approve of divorce, and I believed the only acceptable reason for it was adultery. Abuse did not seem to fit the exception I had been taught. I worried that if I divorced, I would be judged, rejected or even treated as an outcast by other Christians. That fear helped keep me silent and in the marriage.