I saw your wife this morning grab for the pole as the train at Denver International Airport lurched into movement.  She bumped you.  You were irritated.  “I need to hold on,” I heard her explain apologetically.  Out of the corner of my eye I saw movement.  Did you really just flick the fat under her arm with contempt so that it swayed?

No.  You did not.  You couldn’t have.  In this public space no one would humiliate his or her spouse.  My breath caught in my throat.  I did not see that. 

I did see you move to the side of the car and watched as she moved to stand beside you.  I saw the hardness in your eyes.  Did you see the hurt in hers?  I did.  Then I knew it was true.  You had just publicly shamed your wife.

My eyes sought hers in my desire to offer her both mercy and the solidarity of sisterly camaraderie.  We are both women.  We both belong to the same jiggly arm club.   Her eyes did not meet mine.

I could see that you, Man on the Train, are in shape.  You were wearing clothes to highlight the fact.  I could see that your wife is not.  She was wearing clothes to hide the fact.  Did you think that by publicly humiliating her you would motivate her to join you at the gym? Because I can tell you, that is never going to work.  Can you say, “Backfire”?

You will never shame your wife into becoming a woman whose arms don’t wiggle.  You will never motivate her to change along the ways you might desire by mocking her, by not treating her with the dignity she, as a human being, deserves.

But I want to thank you, Mr. Train Man, because I was tired this morning.  I was complacent and weary and your act of cruelty (and that’s what it was) shocked me out of it.  You awakened my passion and my zeal for the world to be right – for people to behave – for human beings to treat one another with the respect they deserve.

Maybe you don’t think it was such a big deal.  After all, you didn’t shoot her.  You didn’t punch her in the face.  No, but you punched her in the heart and by the look on her face it was clear that it was a well-worn path of pain.  It was a Big Deal.

It often feels like the world is going to hell in a hand basket.  I’m horrified by the multitude of atrocities being inflicted by human beings against one another in our nation and around the world.  I’m stunned by the wickedness.  And so I’m sad I didn’t gasp on that train this morning and in some small way let you know how out of line your actions were because the horror starts here.  People, it starts here.  Backhanded blows of bullying and contempt may seem small but in other corners of life explode into racism, sex trafficking, child slavery and untold oppression against the weak, the disenfranchised, the different.  They are actions that are cut from the same contemptuous cloth.  Hatred.  Sin.  Evil.

Forgive me, if I am ranting now but I am indignant.

I am raging against the minor and major assaults taken upon a person’s dignity that cause layer upon layer of harm.

I’m old enough to have witnessed plenty of them, endured my share and doled out too many of my own.  But I do not want to remain complacent and weary, overwhelmed by the ugliness that too often takes center stage on our newsreels and in our neighborhoods and numbs our souls.  I want to change the world. 

There, I said it.  I want to change the world and I want the world to change.  And it starts with me.  It begins with you, too.  It starts here in what feels like an upside down Kingdom way.

It starts with love.  It begins with Jesus.  That’s where the power to change the world comes from.

I want Jesus to live his life through me.  And so, maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t gasp this morning or say out loud, “No, you didn’t!” because rather than validating your wife, Mr., I might simply have joined the parade of human indignities by shaming you.  Even if maybe, I think you deserve some shaming.  OK, I confess I don’t know all that you need but I do know this.

You need a Savior.

Your wife needs a Savior.

I need a Savior.

We have One waiting.  And he understands contempt and callous disregard.  He understands bullying and people not being treated with the dignity they ought.  He is well acquainted with suffering and shame and punches and wounds to the body and to the heart. 

Come to him.  I’m running to him again.  Begging him to COME!  To intervene.  To help us all move in small and large ways to make the world a kinder, safer, better place for gym rats and jiggly arms.  For the abused and the abuser.  For the callous and the cowardly.  For the beaten down, the beaten up and the broken hearted.

That is, to come for me.  To come for you.  To come for us all.

It’s been a while since I’ve been in the presence of a woman who is in an abusive relationship.  Longer since I’ve witnessed it.  Now, I wonder how I missed reading the signs immediately.  Your stance, Mr. Man on the Train, was angry.  You were conveying utter control.  I saw it in your ramrod posture, in your perfectly trimmed beard, in your neatly pressed clothes, in your cowed wife.  She was not in control.  Her clothes were rumpled, her hair unkempt, pulled back into a hasty ponytail.  Her eyes did not register dismay or shock but merely a deserved resignation.  I’m so sorry.

The statistics are that 25% of women in the U.S. are in abusive relationships – physical, sexual and emotional.  One in four.  Reader, if you’re not surprised, it’s possible that either you are in one or have been raised in one.   Or perhaps, like me, you too have grown numb in places you don’t want to be.  Because you should be shocked.  Dismayed.  Gnashing your teeth. 

This is not how it is supposed to be.

Before John, I was in a relationship for three years that became abusive.  I felt trapped.  Hopeless.  Emotionally beaten down.  I had no choice but to stay as my sense of self and self worth had vaporized.  And I am a strong woman.  But if you met the woman I was then, you would not recognize me.  The utter disdain I felt for myself bled into how I treated others including the man I was in a relationship with.  It was ugly.  And still, in the quiet echoes of my soul, God was calling me.  He was insistent and strong.

I would have died had I not heeded his call.  I gave up all friendships, all relationships when I did.  Jesus saved my life.  He is saving me still.

We wonder why women stay in abusive relationships.  I have tasted why they stay.  Fear.  Self hatred.  A spirit so beaten down that leaving is not an option.  For too many, they believe there is no choice to be made.

BUT GOD.

Reader, what is your “But God…” sentence? Do you have one? 

But God intervened.  But God changed my heart.  But God gave me the courage.  But God pursued.  But God turned things around.  But God brought my child home.   But God provided.  But God protected us.  But God forgave me.  But God won.

Because God is mightier.  Stronger.  Better.  God’s love is overwhelmingly powerful.  He is good.  He gives us the free will to choose him and when we don’t he continually presents himself as the better way.  He IS the Way.  The Truth.  The Life.

I choose you today, Jesus.  I pray for that Man on the Train to choose you.  I pray for his wife to choose you.  I pray God for the oppressed and broken hearted that by your fiery love – you break through, break in, break free and do what you love to do.  In Jesus’ Mighty Name.

It looks bleak sometimes friends.  But God.

“He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,

    because he has anointed me

    to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners

    and recovery of sight for the blind,

to set the oppressed free,

    to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”[

Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

Luke 4:16 - 21