Letter To My Husband Rhetorical Analysis

The hiss of his voice fills the air as a chilling sensation trickles down your spine. You are standing with hands raised singing praises in the middle of a church service when he leans over and whispers into your ear,

“You need to leave. Move out. And if you don’t, I will take your children. No judge would ever give them to you. You are nothing more than a house wife.”

In that instant, you realize your worst fear has come true. The man you thought you knew, the man who professed Jesus to those around him was nothing more than a Judas.

This letter is for those in church leadership who cast us aside when we needed you the most. For those in leadership who were duped by those who used you the way in which they used us.

You see, they

A need to protect your image and the image of a building prohibited you from doing the hard stuff. From investigating the truth from fiction. And from taking the necessary steps to defend those lost within such a dark situation.

For those leaders who dismissed us as being overly sensitive or one unwilling to submit to the headship of our husband, this letter is for you. For those who accused of us doing something that caused the abuse or by telling us we needed to have more sex with our spouse, this too is for you. And for those who repeatedly told us, “Your spouse is not the enemy. Do not allow the real enemy to destroy your family,” your words only served to aid in the abuser destroying us even more.

Understand, we were fully aware of the true enemy and to this day because we share children, we still face our enemy on a daily basis. You see, for us, our spouse was and remains the enemy. He was a man being used by the true enemy to oppress, berate, demean and abuse. Our spouse spoke the name of Jesus to those he needed to impress but his actions, the actions we witnessed, proved

You did not take the time to visit with us as a family nor did you take the time to spend intimate time with our spouse to truly uncover the heart within. Instead you made assumptions. You listened to gossip and embellished truth without taking the time to do the hard stuff. The important stuff.

For us, it took time to wrap our heads around the truth of our situation. For us, all we could hear were the words of our leaders telling us we were the problem. No matter how many prayers we prayed, questions we asked, counseling sessions we attended, we were not fighting hard enough or praying loud enough. We had to be the problem.

But God! You see, He eventually steps in when others walk away. Truly, He never leaves but because the voices of those around us are so incredibly loud, we often lose track of His voice. But rest assured, when He speaks, He calms the storm and reminds us of who exactly is in charge and just who it was who wrote The Book.

He reminds us that abusers live in a consistent pattern of sin which according to scripture, means they are not Christian. You see, a true Christian is one who struggles with sin but hates it and seeks forgiveness from God. This is not the way of our abuser. There are many passages which speak to this truth. Here are a few. Psalm 50:16-22, John 13:34-35, Romans