This Is Not What God Promised

Last updated on March 24, 2026

Many women in coercive marriages confuse endurance with love, obedience with devotion, and survival with commitment.

“This is not what God promised,” I said, letting all the air out of my lungs.

I felt so deflated, defeated. In that moment, a dark, cloud-like curtain parted to the right, and the room was filled with light. Little did I know that my heart was, too. This is not what God promised, and He didn’t.

God was trying to tell me, “I did not promise this!”

He was nearly screaming the words out of my mouth, but I no longer recognized them. I no longer knew God’s words or voice from my husband’s, and what I thought was the voice of Satan or the voice of doubt and self-doubt.

This is one of the most damaging effects of spiritualized abuse. When someone uses religion to control you, your internal compass gets scrambled. You stop trusting your own perception. That is not a weakness; it is conditioning.

God did not promise me a life full of fighting and abuse. God did not promise me a life of poverty. No, He said, ‘He came to give life and to give it more abundantly.’

How often do we settle for a pauper’s life, thinking we are suffering for God or sacrificing in Jesus’ name, when He never intended that to be our life.

That is not what God promised. I was beginning to reclaim my moral and spiritual authority. I was no longer accepting someone else’s interpretation of God over my lived reality. I was beginning to realize: abuse is not holy. Poverty is not proof of righteousness. Being diminished is not devotion.

He did not promise me a husband who called me names. A husband who said I was stupid or that I was a worthless piece of shit. God did not promise that my husband would love me simply because I obeyed and submitted to him under all circumstances.

What God desired was that I be loved and feel unconditional love. Love that has peace. The ‘peace that passes all understanding.’

God does not give us fear. He gives us power and a sound, clear mind. Power and strength to overcome and accomplish anything we set our mind to, and love that never fails.

I thought I loved my husband, and that verse (I Cor. 13) perplexed me because I felt as though my love was failing daily.

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But was it?

Because he would say frequently that no one would put up with him and that I deserved better than him.

For the longest time, I did not believe that. I thought I deserved him. That he was who I was supposed to be with the rest of my life.

But did I really love him? Or was I just conforming and compliant?

Many women in coercive marriages confuse endurance with love, obedience with devotion, and survival with commitment. There is a difference.

What is love?

Perhaps the love that doesn’t fail is the love we give ourselves.

Self-love is not selfish. It is recovery. It is the beginning of wholeness.

After years of being taught that self-erasure was godly, I arrived at self-regard. And that matters.

I write not only from personal reflection. But of a theology born from experience. Untangling God from control, faith from fear, and love from submission.