Rage at My Wife’s Abuser

Years have passed since I first learned of the sexual abuse inflicted upon my wife as a young child. All that time I’d felt hatred toward the man who had cut such a deep and jagged wound into my wife’s soul. How could I possibly be at peace with his perversion? He was the dark villain in an ongoing horror movie.

But then we learned where he lived. We met people who knew him. He was within reach. It was now in the realm of possibility to confront this vile creature. Knowing his location created a tangible figure in my mind that unleashed a rage that I had never known before. I was aware of my vague hatred, but never was murder on that list. Suddenly, it was.

As a pastor for over 25 years, I’ve studied enough, preached enough, and lived enough to know about the destructive force of rage. But rage that had lain dormant for so many years was now flooding my mind and soul, creating a force I wasn’t sure I could resist.

The distance from our home to his would involve hours, even days of travel, but that wouldn’t matter. The trip would offer all the more time to salivate over his impending doom. I pictured him writhing in the pain and pleading for mercy. Why would I extend mercy?

Rage that had lain dormant for so many years was now flooding my mind and soul, creating a force I wasn’t sure I could resist.

This man had violated my wife’s personhood and sexuality. My daughters and I experienced a daily trauma as we witnessed her battle to live. I stood by helplessly as I watched my wife be admitted to a four-week stay in a psychiatric ward. I awakened almost nightly to her cries and calls for help as she continued to experience nightmares. Fears overwhelmed me as I witnessed irregular eating habits and her suicidal ideation.

I wanted to tie the guy down and cut him apart, piece by piece. Slowly. Her pain lasted for over 45 years, I wanted his to last at least 45 minutes. The prospect of my inevitable arrest and incarceration did nothing to appease my craving for inflicting pain upon this monster and invoking what I believed to be justice. My fantasy was ruthless and my rage relentless.

It did strange things to my soul. I could not quiet the storm. I was drowning in deep waves from which I could find no rescue. My prayers echoed in empty space.

A rational anger

To be enraged was rational. C. E. Barshinger stated in Haunted Marriage, “Sexual abuse of children is akin to psychic murder.” Injustice is inflicted upon an innocent, helpless, trusting child, an injustice that inflicts a deep injury and permanent wound.

My rage, however, was not limited to the injustice done to my wife. I was enraged because I felt inflicted. I had been robbed too. Robbed of intimacy. Robbed of normalcy. But living with rage is not a good arrangement.

I knew better than to explode at people, but my rage often seeped through when I would express my point. I sought to dominate and maintain control both at home and at work. My occasional visits to a counselor brought relief but not resolution. I was numb to much of the world around me. After years of wolfing down myself, as Frederick Buechner (see sidebar below) describes it, I called out to a few trusted friends, hoping that somehow my cries of despair and their prayers of intercession would reach the ears of God. I became vulnerable before my ministry staff by laying aside my perceived power, letting them see through the window of my soul, and allowing them to pray over me.

Within a few months of the calls for intercession, I sat in a communion service, not expecting much from the devotional being delivered by a pastor colleague of mine, symptomatic of an increasingly cynical heart that seems to accompany unchecked rage. Listening with indifference, I heard the word “forgiveness.” I wondered, I’ve preached plenty of sermons on forgiveness. Is this brief devotional really going to offer me anything new?

Moving quickly through his simple outline, he came to his second point: “Forgiveness means being willing to take the hit for the wrong done by someone else.” The words came as a sledgehammer against my fortified wall of cynicism.

“Jesus took the hit for us when he hung on the cross.” The words of my colleague echoed in my mind. “Forgiveness means being willing to take the hit for the wrong done by someone else.”

As we express forgiveness, we grow more in our understanding of what it was for God to forgive.

The Holy Spirit’s voice began overriding my colleague’s voice. The Spirit’s question came. “Will you forgive your wife’s perpetrator by taking the hit?” The Holy Spirit got very personal. “Will you end the self-pity when her wounds affect you? I took the hit for you on the cross. Will you identify with me in a fuller dimension by taking the hit as a small reminder of what it cost me to take the hit for the perpetrator and for you?”

In that pew, I was Jacob at the bottom of the ladder wrestling with God. I was Isaiah saying, “Woe is me” as I knew the heavy hit that my own sin inflicted upon the Son of God. I became like Peter as Jesus queried into his soul and now mine, several times.

The communion service was nearing its conclusion. I sat in that pew with my muscles aching as I attempted to control my visible shaking. Tears could not be held back. I worked to calm my choking from such a tightly knotted throat.

Finally, I began spiritually stuttering through my prayer of response.

“Lord, my words seem so simple when the turmoil and rage are so overpowering. I’ve called upon people a thousand times to surrender to you. But now, I’m not even sure I know how to surrender. How do I know with certainty that I am responding to you 100 percent? What do I do? Do I just say the words? … Lord, I surrender the rage. I let go of it. You take it. Trying to be as honest as I can be right now. I forgive the perpetrator.”

My words of surrender seemed awkward. But he heard.

The cyclical nature of forgiveness

We are inclined toward quid pro quo (something for something) forgiveness. God, however, does not seek a contractual quid pro quo relationship with us. If God dealt with us as we have so often dealt with him, we would be the most desperate of all.

Rather than a contractual arrangement, God offers to us a covenantal relationship. Scripture depicts covenantal life as receiving God’s life and expressing it, saying, “Freely you have received, freely give” (Matt. 10:8). Forgiveness is about receiving God’s forgiveness and then expressing it to others (Matt. 6:14-15). As we express forgiveness, we grow more in our understanding of what it was for God to forgive, which then opens our hearts to increased receptivity of his redemptive forgiveness.

Forgiveness is not without cost. Forgiving “just as in Christ God forgave” means that we take the hit for the offense just as Christ did for us (Eph. 4:32). In other words, it is to accept the cost of the effects of CSA without continuing to hold it against the perpetrator.

Forgiveness of the perpetrator does not nullify legal consequences established by law, neither does forgiveness mean that the action being forgiven is forgotten, condoned, or tolerated. Forgiveness does not require reconciliation. Forgiveness does not even require encountering the perpetrator; it is a transaction within my own soul.

Steps toward freedom

As I have worked through my own anger, I have seen the steps necessary for freedom from rage.

Admit to your anger and rage, accepting responsibility for your feelings.
Respond appropriately toward the perpetrator. This may include legal action and pursuing justice. Vengeful action, however, fails to alleviate anger or initiate justice. Only because matters are ultimately settled in the highest court of heaven are we able to experience freedom in the inner court of our soul.
Redirect thought patterns of anger. Anger at the sinner for what he or she has done must be redirected to anger at the sin for how it has wounded others. The redirection of anger frees us from the perpetrator’s control over us. In some cases, anger gets misdirected at the survivor. Misguided anger must be redirected toward the injustice/sin that was done to her. This redirection of anger releases our wives from the controlling nature of our misguided anger.
Progress toward forgiveness. Every part of our being fights against this act of grace. It is only as we stand before the Cross that we can extend the grace already extended to us.

From consuming rage to productive pain

The rage is gone. Once forgiveness was granted, I was no longer controlled by the anger, and the perpetrator was rendered powerless over my life.

My wife has gone through years of counseling and has experienced God’s gracious healing. She now mentors other women who are survivors of childhood sexual abuse and delights in sharing her story of God’s faithfulness in and through trauma. She speaks at women’s retreats and leads workshops on the topic of childhood sexual abuse and forgiveness. I am consistently amazed at how God has taken this horrible event in her life and used it as a catalyst for something great.

Do I still feel the pain? Yes, enough to remind me of my commitment to take the hit but more as a reminder of the hit taken for me. For good reason there is still pain. But the raging winds of desire to act on that pain have been calmed. Prior to the day of that memorable communion devotional, the raging ocean of my soul frightened me. Since that day, I’ve been amazed by the extent of God’s gracious gift of freedom.

Bill Ronzheimer is the lead pastor of Alliance Bible Church in Mequon, Wisconsin.

I was curious about the experience of other husbands married to survivors of childhood sexual abuse (CSA). This became the catalyst for me to enter a doctoral program to research husbands’ responses to their wives’ CSA. My eventual interviews with such men indicated that anger could be (a) indulgent, (b) indignant, or (c) unidentified.

There can be rational reasons for anger, but left in its indulgent, indignant, or unidentified state, anger is destructive.

—Bill Ronzheimer

Three Kinds of Anger

Husbands of victims of childhood sexual abuse respond differently.

Indulgent anger. My form of anger was indulgent. Frederick Buechner, in Wishful Thinking, noted the indulgent appeal yet destructive effects of anger. He wrote:“Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back—in many ways it is a feast fit for a king … The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.”

My indulgence in the tantalizing fantasy of revenge neither alleviated the anger nor initiated any form of justice. To the contrary, my indulgence extended the perpetrator’s ravaging wound beyond my wife and allowed it to include my own soul. It exacerbated my own gloom and contaminated my soul.
Indignant anger. For some husbands, anger seethed in the form of indignation towards the perpetrator. Chad’s wife, Barb, was abused by her father for four years. Depression and sexual preoccupation marked her adult life. Chad acknowledged his anger at her father in his statement, “I’m angry at this evil man. To this day, I don’t have any respect. At his funeral I couldn’t speak. There wasn’t anything that was going to get me to go and speak at his funeral.”
Unidentified anger. Research of a husband’s response to his wife’s CSA revealed a negative correlation between his anger and his practice of bottling-up his feelings. The more that husbands bottled-up their feelings the less they perceived their anger. This appeared to be the case for Nelson who had been married to Jan for 27 years. Jan was sexually abused by her father during her teen years. She did not disclose her CSA to Nelson until 23 years into their marriage. Nelson, with his unidentified, bottled-up anger, stated, “I’m not an angry person. I mean I have a temper, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not [angry].” Nelson did not perceive himself as angry unless his anger was visibly expressed.

Though anger can be unidentified by the husband of a survivor, it may be evident to his wife and perceived by her as being directed at her. This perception can distance them emotionally, sabotaging their ability to deal with the real issues together.