Preaching to a man’s punching bag

“Before I open my eyes you better be gone”.

Something about his voice hit a sore nerve.

His wife jumped and pleaded with me to leave.

If I had any doubts about the bruises on her face and arms, they were gone.

“Are you still here?” her husband barked,

“I said get out of my house”.

I stood, hugged the woman I’d just been preaching to and told her to call me.

“You better get out before I slap you”, her husband said as I passed him at the door.

There are a number of things I could have said — or done — but for the sake of his wife who was already on the verge of tears, I only smiled and wished him a good evening.

“You can even talk to me?” he said, coming after me, “I’m talking to you! Come back here!”

I kept walking.

He caught up with me and grabbed my shoulders, “Who do you think you are?”

I turned and, all of a sudden, I was five years old again hiding behind a chair as my uncle beat my older sister for standing up to him as he took his frustration out on his wife who had finally learned to just stay still and be his punching bag.

It’s the reason I became a lawyer.

Today, this man’s wife stood there crying and pleading with him to let me go.

“Who do I think I am?”

He spat out his frustration, threatening fire and brimstone.

“If you lay a finger on this woman again”, I told him, “It will be the last thing you do”.

*****
Three days later, I was poring over files in my office when my phone rang.

I didn’t know the number and I was busy so I ignored it.

But the caller was persistent.

It was the woman I’d preached to.

She’d found the card I’d tucked under her wig when I hugged her.

She was crying and pleading with me to come and pray for her husband.

“Why?” I asked her, “What’s wrong with him?”

Her husband had tried to take his frustration out on her after I’d left their house.

“He held his hand and screamed after he hit me”, she told me, “I ran out of the house and didn’t come back until night”.

They went to the hospital in the morning because the hand was swollen.

They’ve been to three hospitals since then with his condition getting worse because doctors can’t figure out what the problem is.

“He told me to look for you and beg you to come and pray for him”.

“How old are you?” I asked her.

As I wept that day in my office after she told me her story, it was for my aunty who didn’t survive the adopted purpose of being a man’s punching bag. It was for my older sister who became an angry crusader against the institution of marriage. It was for the child in my office who was already far gone on the same path my aunty travelled.

If I called her back, would she hear me?

*****
“What have you done to me?” her husband barked, the moment we walked through the door.

The stench in the house was unbearable.

For a bit, I wondered if it was his essence or the hand that had swollen like an overfilled balloon and was now burst open.

“Sir, you need to give your life to Jesus”, I told him, “It’s the deliverance you need.

He told me he didn’t send for me to come and preach to him and that I should undo whatever I’d done to him and get out of his house.

When I didn’t answer, he said, “You told me if I hit my wife again it will be the last thing I ever do with my hand”.

When I still didn’t answer, he shouted,

“Undo the curse now and leave!”

His wife was on her knees begging me, tending to him, and forgetting to live.

“Believe on the Lord Jesus and you shall be saved”, I told him as I got up to leave, “You and your house”.

I exited to the refrain of frustrated hope camouflaged as bravado.

His wife’s sobbing completed the sound.

“Look to Jesus and live”, I told them.

His wife nodded and I thought I saw a smile as she mouthed “Thank you”.

The refrain continued — without the sobbing this time — as I left that house of judgment

As I closed the door, I wondered how this story might have been different had I not walked through that same door the first time to preach to a man’s punching bag.