Focus On Healing
Kristin's
health improved somewhat in the slightly cooler and less rainy
climate, but she didn't improve spiritually, mentally or emotionally. She once
had been so focused on healing that she had been willing to fly off to
Togo. But
after five years of being rejected and abused by pastors,
churches
and
"Christian" women in Asia, America and Africa, she was broken and had
withdrawn into a shell. She needed to continue to focus on healing but no longer had the
energy for it.
Furthermore, we were no longer united. The "Kristin" who was up most of the time now was the protector alter who suffers from borderline personality disorder and saw me not as someone who is helping her but as the cause of all of her problems. She continued to claim that all of her disappointments, expectations and issues will be solved if I would just marry her. But I didn't, so I was rejecting her as a woman, which warranted her lashing out. I felt tension, not unity, even when we prayed together or when I read the Bible to her. And when she looked at me, she often looked like she is in pain, as if all she is thinking is, 'He won't marry me ... He is rejecting me as a woman.' My heart desperately wanted to give her what she wanted, but my brain knew that marriage before healing will compound, not solve, the problems.
The town had an expat church run by an American missionary couple and whose website claimed to be evangelical. Could they help her to focus on healing again? We went to their Sunday morning service and found the church to be in the town's bar street. The American missionary couple welcomed us warmly, but when a fog machine began to spew white fog onto the stage, multicolored disco lights began to flash from above, and loud rock music began to blare to start the musical "worship," we walked out.