The following reflection is based on the story and paintings found in Rebecca J. Craig’s memoir, “Once Upon a Nightmare: Through the Looking Glass of Narcissistic Abuse” available now on Amazon.
“It is in those times of hopeless chaos when the sovereign hand of God is most likely to be seen.”
– Thomas Chalmers
It’s hard being vulnerable. There’s nothing more terrifying than the thought that everyone is going to know all your weaknesses, all your mistakes, all your shameful moments.
So we spend a lot of our time turned in on ourselves, trying to keep the outside world with all its judgment and pain away from us. Yet in the end, we know there is one who sees it all; one who shines a light on all those things we try to keep hidden.
When I set about the task of writing my memoir, “Once Upon a Nightmare: Through the Looking Glass of Narcissistic Abuse,” it started out with the hope that by telling my story of marrying and divorcing a malignant narcissist, I might help others who found themselves in similar situations.
As I began the process of telling my story, I soon began to realize—the only way for me to truly help others was if I didn’t hold back. To publish such a story meant inviting others into some of the intimate details of my life and marriage. It meant revealing an inner world that even some of my closest friends and family were not aware of.
That gave me pause. While writing the story was cathartic—it was also terrifying. I would be laying bare my own vulnerabilities, my own failures, mistakes, and unwise decisions.
I’d taken leaps of faith before in life. Moving to California straight out of college with no job and no connections in the hopes of becoming a screenwriter. Walking away from a lucrative career and home almost ten years later to follow a calling to seminary. I’d always felt back then I was placing myself into the hands of God—ready for whatever molding and shaping was going to take place. At this point in my life I thought this was where everything was revealed. My hurts, my pain, my sorrow, and even my very future was put in his hands; that I was but a mere part of the vast expanse of the cosmos, and yet, still formed by my Creator to be the specific person I was called to be. In order to become a new creation through Jesus Christ, I was placed in the hands of God to be made new each and every day.
Those experiences were a cake-walk compared to what came next. Nothing prepares you for your shaping to take the form of marrying a malignant narcissist. And when that narcissist husband is arrested by Federal Marshals one spring morning only seven months after you are married, you don’t get to just quietly deal with those issues behind closed doors. They’re out there for the world to see. For the world to judge while trying to navigate what I’ve come to call my descent into Wonderland. Because when you’re in a relationship of any kind with a narcissist, it’s a disorienting experience that makes you question the very fabric of your reality.
Still, even though my life and my marriage had become local public fodder, there was a lot most people didn’t know. There was a lot I didn’t want to share out of shame and guilt. It was easier to simply “move on” and go about my life, moving where no one knew me or my past.
Telling my story meant admitting to things I wasn’t sure I wanted to admit to.
On the outside, it looked like I was an ambitious, career-oriented woman. A poster-child for feminist strength. I didn’t need a man to succeed in life or to take care of me. I’d worked in Hollywood, found a modicum of success and…walked away from it. Did that make me weak?
Admitting I had desperately wanted that “fairy tale” life of being a wife and mother felt a bit like I was feeding into stereotypes I abhorred. Yet, at my core, it was what I had wanted more than anything. Disclosing that felt in some ways, shameful. That I was letting other single, professional women down by confessing I would have given up a successful career just to have found my Prince Charming. Yet, also acknowledging that without that career, I could not have gotten out of the marriage I was in, so it literally saved my life.
I would lie awake nights thinking, “Oh my God. Everyone is going to know…everything. Everyone is going to know all the pathetic parts of my life, all the moments I was not proud of my behavior. They’re going to discover—I’m really not that strong. I’m really not as put together as some think. They’re going to judge me, and find me wanting.”
Now that it’s out there for the world to see and judge, I’ve found myself humbled by the stories of those it has touched, those whose lives it has changed. I’ve been privileged enough to see the fruits of my labor.
Like the woman who walked in off the street on the day of my book signing. She couldn’t stay for the signing and presentation, but she did pick my book up from the display that had been set up, flipped it over and read the back cover. After a moment, she walked up to the counter with tears glistening in her eyes and immediately recognized me as the author from my picture. She pushed the book toward me and said, “Would you sign this and make it out to my sister? She’s going through this right now. I came in here looking for something that might give her hope…and here you are.”
Or the mother of a woman I knew only via social media. When she heard her mother was engaged to a man she was certain was going to be abusive, she gave her a copy of my book. The mother broke off the engagement and sent me a private message thanking me for helping her dodge a bullet, and likely saving her life.
The man who told me how it helped him realize why he’d had so many problems with a previous employer that had devastated his career.
Of the colleague who posted on her social media that she would “be returning again and again to the last chapters containing insightful words of redeeming healing and forgiveness; eloquently expressed for every heart to grasp.”
And the countless both men and women who have thanked me for helping validate what they experienced in their own lives and relationships.
I have no illusions everyone will resonate with my story. Or that those who will are ready to read its contents. I’ve simply placed it out there for those who need to hear it, who need to find solace, solidarity, healing, and, ultimately, forgiveness. For themselves, and for those who hurt them.
Art was an integral part of my healing process. When words failed, images and symbols did not. In this painting I hold in tension the realities of being both saint and sinner. Of how we exist now, and what God has promised to do in the future. How we come before God vulnerable and turned in ourselves, trying to hide all the ugly parts of our lives, not wanting to face what swirls around us. That this curled up ball of shame, sorrow, pain and agony is placed In God’s Hands.
This is how we live in the here and the now, living into the reality of our pain and suffering. Of getting through the difficult times.
But God’s not done. God’s creative power in the universe is still at work. That life sprang forth billions of years ago and God was active and creating then—and God intends for there to be new life and new creation both now and in the future. That we are currently being renewed—and we will be fully renewed and resurrected in the future.
This life is not the end. There is resurrection, renewal and new creation…in both this life and the next.
It’s what it means to be “In God’s Hands.”
