He Saved My Life
A Story of Faith and Rescue Written by Elisse Cook
I grew up strong in my faith. Church and my testimony were my top priorities. I always struggled to understand why people would ever want to leave God. How could they ever question their faith? I was naive.
In 2011, I received a blessing from a patriarch in my church in preparation for college. The blessing was beautiful and painted an ideal portrait of what my life could be. It spoke so positively about my future husband. Being an overly hopeless romantic, this was a dream come true. Little did I know the man I would meet just two years later would be anything but a dream.
In September of 2013, at the beginning of my Junior year of college, I met “him.” From the moment we met, I was drawn to him. Now, I don’t believe in soulmates, but I felt he was the one. Our relationship was so effortless that it just felt right.
We dated for six months before he proposed, but we talked about marriage much earlier on than that. It was after we got engaged that I started feeling hesitant. He was no longer this go-with-the-flow guy. He was confrontational, argumentative, and easy to anger. There were two moments when I seriously considered calling off our engagement, but I ignored those negative feelings.
Things changed even more when we got married. Almost immediately. I spent a majority of our honeymoon in tears. I longed for the night so I could sleep and finally feel some form of peace. Our honeymoon phase ended before it could even begin.
I distinctly remember finding and reading that blessing I received before college while unpacking our first apartment and crying. Not because of the Holy Spirit it would normally bring, but because the man described in my blessing was not the man I married.
I would go to church where it felt like EVERY SINGLE sermon and lesson was about the beauty of families and how a husband’s duty is to protect and love his wife. But I didn’t have that. Church quickly turned from my refuge to a place that brought pain.
I hated walking through those doors knowing it contradicted my reality. I hated when people told me how amazing my husband was and how good we were together. I hated being asked when we were going to have kids. I hated that every smile and comment I made was fake. This hatred fueled my anger with God.
I had lived my life exactly the way God had asked me to live it. I did everything right. Yet the love I was promised was replaced by severe mental, emotional, and verbal abuse. A loving God wouldn’t allow this. The only explanation I could conjure up was that God did not love me. I mean, how could He if my own husband didn't? My new reality broke me in a way I didn’t think a person could break.
Two years into that marriage and a year after I stopped going to church, we moved to Alaska so he could complete a six month business internship. Together, we managed a retail store.
What many would describe as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity was anything but that. I was isolated. I had no escape from the abuse. The belief that I had any worth diminished. I felt I had nothing and no one.
Suicide seemed like the only answer.
I tried. I failed.
And while I’m eternally grateful that I did fail, at the time I was not.
And then something happened.
The following Sunday, one of the leaders in our local church passed through our store. This was a regular occurrence for him. Instead of a quick hello and goodbye, he walked to the counter where I was standing. He looked into my eyes and said, “Elisse…I just wanted to let you know that I really missed you at church today.”
We lived in a tourist town so every store was open on Sunday’s. It wasn’t odd for most members of the congregation to miss church. He had no knowledge of my shaken faith. The hours I spent wrestling with God and the frustration and anger I felt towards Him. He knew nothing of my marriage and the abuse I consistently experienced.
This man had no idea that he was the first person since I had left my church to notice and say something. He had no idea that at this very moment, I felt loved for the first time since my marriage began. Not only that, but I felt God’s love for me.
It saved my life. He saved my life.
As much as I would love to say I immediately got back to church, I still had a long way to go. But his comment fueled my shaken testimony until I could build it back up.
Overtime, I came to realize that God never left me. He was always there. It was me who left Him. I left Him because it was easier to have someone to blame. I cannot express the gratitude that I feel that He allowed me to blame Him but never stopped loving me.
In the times I felt I didn’t deserve Him, He walked by my side. He has placed an immense number of angels in my life over the last few years. I never thought it possible to have a community like the one I currently have.
Now reading my blessing, I know that God still has a beautiful life planned for me. My blessing tells me I will be made whole again. During my marriage and early stages of divorce, I never thought I could be.
The road to healing was long and, at times, excruciating. In the moments I was curled on the bathroom floor trying to breathe through yet another PTSD attack, I felt His arms circle around me. A quiet but powerful strength helped me to realize that this was the process of being made whole again. My own refiners fire.
This year will mark seven years since I felt God’s love for me again, six years since I reclaimed my faith, five years since my divorce after four years of marriage, and three years since I addressed my trauma.
I’ll be 30 this year. He has loved me every second of those 30 years. But His love for me started much earlier than I can comprehend. Even in the moments I hated Him, He never left me. He was patiently waiting for me to stretch my hand forward. And He was there the second I did.
No matter the suffering we will inevitably face in this life, we will be made whole again. Despite how impossible it seems or undeserving we feel of His grace, He loves us.
He doesn’t love us in spite or because of our struggles, He just simply loves us.
