From Pastor’s Daughter to Pastor’s Wife: When Abuse Was Mistaken for Faithfulness

As told by “Colleen”, written by Lauren Rose 

I didn’t recognize the abuse in my marriage because, in many ways, I had been raised .

My dad was a pastor when I was young, and emotional and verbal abuse were part of the example of marriage I grew up watching. When he mistreated my mom, it was often minimized or spiritually bypassed.

So when my own whirlwind relationship – three months of dating followed by a few months of engagement – was filled with emotional highs and lows, I didn’t see red flags. I believed Satan was working overtime to disrupt a holy union.

After all, I was marrying a pastor.

My journals were filled with prayers like, “God, make me a more submissive helper; he is such a good guy.”

Even our premarital counselor suggested our fighting might be caused by sexual tension and that eloping could make things more peaceful.

It didn’t.

The fighting continued after we married. When I sought help, I heard that marriage was hard because it involved “two sinners coming together.” I had grown up being told I was “too emotional,” so once again, I assumed the problem was me.

When I begged my husband to involve church elders, he implied that he was graciously putting up with me – and that other people might think I was “crazy” too.

I kept trying to become a better Christian wife.

At one point, we had five children under six, and my husband was the lead pastor of the church-planting team.

During free pastoral counseling, a counselor suggested I had anxiety. But anxiety was already normal to me. I kept the peace. I people-pleased. I over-functioned.

I had learned that a godly woman should suppress unpleasant emotions, conquer the flesh, and serve faithfully.

Instead of why my husband’s anger frightened me, I blamed myself for being anxious.

He was a strong, charismatic spiritual leader doing God’s work. I had prayed to marry a pastor, and I believed supporting him through the difficulties in our marriage was simply part of the calling.

Even when he was let go from two pastoral positions within two years, I stood by him. After staying home with our children for nine years, I returned to full-time work to provide income and insurance for our family.

Then I began looking honestly at my childhood.

Years later, burned out and still struggling with anxiety, I entered a yearlong counseling intensive.

For the first time, I named what I had experienced growing up: emotional, verbal, psychological and spiritual abuse.

My childhood had me to accept being used and controlled rather than expecting to be cherished as a treasured partner and friend.

“I thought this was the way of the cross. I was supposed to be nothing, so that Jesus could be everything.”

During couples counseling, I began to recognize his name-calling and mocking tone and suddenly recognized it as contempt rather than spiritual leadership.

I told our counselor that, on a scale of 1 to 10, my desire to heal our marriage and grow old together was a 10.

My husband said his was a 3.

As I began questioning what was happening in my marriage, trusted friends expressed concern that what I was experiencing might be abuse. But I still struggled to believe it.

It was during this season that Called to Peace Ministries (CTPM) became part of my story.

Because of generous donors, I received a scholarship to attend the 2025 CTPM Women’s Retreat. At the time, I still didn’t want to believe my marriage was abusive. Receiving that scholarship felt like God was nudging me to go anyway.

Through CTPM, I began to understand that abuse can take many forms while sharing the same root of power and control – patterns that diminish another person’s choices and personhood.

I had been more loyal to my desire for a marriage than to an honest assessment of how harmful it had become.

The crisis in my marriage continued to escalate.

When another Christian couples counselor recommended bringing in pastoral help, I desperately sought support from our church, but my husband canceled our remaining counseling sessions.

Meanwhile, my husband had already hired an attorney. Eventually, he secretly signed a lease and left, taking our four teenage children with him.

The community I had found through CTPM now became the practical hands and feet of Jesus when I needed them most.

When my husband moved out with our children and I suddenly needed to establish a home of my own, women I had connected with through the retreat immediately helped me pack and move. CTPM’s Emergency Fund helped with the deposit on a rental home in my children’s school district as I continued seeking 50/50 custody.

I was also assigned a CTPM-affiliated advocate who has generously given her time to support me as I navigate this incredibly difficult season. Through advocacy, informed therapy, and the CTPM community, my trauma responses have begun to diminish. I am learning to understand my experiences through the lens of truth rather than the narrative that I am “crazy.”

In 2026, through the generosity of donors, I was able to return to the CTPM Women’s Retreat on scholarship – this time carrying a much different understanding of what I had lived through and continuing the healing that had begun.

My story isn’t finished. I am still healing and still fighting for a relationship with my children.

But now I understand something I couldn’t see when I was that young woman begging God to make me more submissive:

What I learned in one generation shaped what I tolerated in the next.

Abuse impacts generations. Healing can too.