Sexual Betrayal and Christian Communion

And [Jesus] said to them, "This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer."  

Mark 9:29 
'"And he took bread, and when he had given thanks he broke it and gave it to them, saying, 'This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.'”
Luke 22:19

Why do I cry during communion?  I sense that healing will eventually require an answer to this question.  I learned not long along that my husband cheated on me for our entire marriage with regular pornography and prostitutes. At some point I realized that during this journey of healing I desperately needed communion, and needed it often. I am now past the years of trauma awaiting diagnosis, past the radical surgery of divorce. I am awakening from the anesthesia and the numbness that resulted from facing the truth. Perhaps my need for communion is as simple as the fact that valleys make us acutely aware that we are sinners in need of Jesus Christ's healing grace. Communion is also a reminder that when we battle the evil working against us, we are fighting as children of the King and we are humbled to be assigned this task. [1]

 
The night I awoke from a nightmare and prayed, begging God to toss the demons out of my husband, out of our household, out of our marriage, out of the marriage bed [2] I had no idea how wrenching and yet how necessary would be God's great tossing. He answered by driving my husband out of the home and marriage - not at all what I had imagined or hoped for. 

A husband bringing home the diseases of prostitutes or throwing something in my direction is very small suffering compared to what Jesus suffered for me.  Yet it is deeply comforting to be reminded in communion that the Savior who loves and accepts me also suffered abuse and physical brokenness. This fact alone should excise my sniveling, self-pitying heart tendency to wonder if anyone understands what it is like to be betrayed, despised and rejected by a man. [3]  The words of communion remind me that Jesus has been there, done that, and redeemed the heck out of it.

But even more than this amazing gift of His body broken for me, I now find communion overwhelming; often I can hardly swallow. Why is this?

I have written in previous posts that when one spouse is engaged in such a persistent pattern of evil, this opens the marriage and home to the demonic in no small measure.[2]  Like Count Dracula, evil enters when welcomed into the house by one, but affects everyone in the household.  But let me be even more graphic than the authors I cited: sexual unfaithfulness opens the wife's body to evil. The wife of a sex addict takes the "dis-ease" into herself. Newlyweds join together in many areas of life - finances, households, parenting. But in the marital act, we wives take our husbands into ourselves. The "in-ness" and oneness of intercourse is tangible, symbolizing the "in-ness" of the Holy Trinity and of Christ in us, Christ through us, Christ over us.

In contrast, sexual unfaithfulness is an act of betrayal, dirtying, and disdain. When we hear details of it in any context we want to vomit, or at least take a very long shower. In communion, I experience the jarring contrast between sexual betrayal and Christ's sacrifice.

During communion I weep silently as I swallow the bread and wine. Perhaps taking Jesus' body into myself in communion is the only act of sacrifice, cleansing, and acceptance sufficient to counter the evil acts of betrayal, dirtying, and disdain that comprise sexual unfaithfulness.  Perhaps communion is a symbol of the only thing on earth powerful enough to cleanse me from the inside out.  

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[1] Tim Keller, The Reason For God (unknown page.)
[2] See Blog Post May 15, 2014 " Part 8: Sex Addiction Opens Marriage to the Demonic", citing,  L. Hall, An Affair of the Mind, p. 117, 121, and also citing, Dr. Ron Miller, “Personality Traits of the Carnal Mind” p. 53.
[3] Isaiah 53:3 "He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem."