The Work of Wolves

How the final stages of abuse reveal the craft of predators and the only weapons you have to fight them. Part three on sexual abuse.

Read the rest of this series on healing sexual abuse: Part 1: Stories Hidden in Plain Sight, Part 2: There is No Grooming and Abusers Don’t Exist, Part 4: Your Voice is Your First Hero, Part 5: The Hardest Part of Sexual Abuse Recovery

---

“Streetwise people are smarter in this regard than law-abiding citizens. They are on constant alert, looking for angles, surviving by their wits. I want you to be smart in the same way—but for what is right—using every adversity to stimulate you to creative survival, to concentrate your attention on the bare essentials, so you’ll live, really live, and not complacently just get by on good behavior.” Luke 16:8,9 MSG

We need to talk about wolves. This whole post will be about wolves actually. Because lo and behold, abusers act a lot like wolves. I know, I already told you seeing abusers this way was a bad idea. I am not trying to make you crazy. This is the madness of abuse. Because they literally do not look like wolves and you’ll drive yourself crazy trying to spot them in a crowd of people. But minus the beady eyes and big fuzzy ears, in the later stages of abuse, abusers act very much like predators. There’s a reason they get that name. So today we talk about those late stages. Because if you don’t stay alert for wolves and learn from the ones you’ve met already, you set yourself up to be their prey.

I also blame Jesus for making this confusing.

Right before Jesus sent out his disciples to announce his kingdom, he prepared a speech—you know, like any good military leader staging an invasion. What did Jesus say to his troops? “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves” (Matthew 10:16). Hardly encouraging.

But maybe the point here was to level with them. Jesus is known for this sort of sober talk about life outside Eden. Later, in his very last speech before the wolves kill him, Jesus tells his disciples, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” But for now, here, he says in this world, you will meet wolves in human flesh that want to devour you like sheep. People who abuse are like that.

Jesus did not end his speech here. He went on to charge them to arm up with two specific weapons. “Be shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.” Wax on. Wax off. The only things that can combat wolves are innocence and shrewdness. And I believe they must be our weapons too. We best listen to Jesus here. We confront and recover from abuse with our innocence and shrewdness.

Last post, I fought hard to convince you that your innocent trust does not make you a fool. It makes you amazing. At the end of the day, though this person betrayed you, you trusted a human and nothing could be more innocent and Eden-like than that. We need to see abusers as the real fools. Recovering from abuse must involve blessing your innocent trust as your most primal good instinct. It makes you most human. Blessing this innocence inoculates shame.

But you must also take up another weapon: Shrewdness. “Shrewd as a snake” actually, by which Jesus intended for you to flash back to the Serpent in the Garden of Eden. In fact, the Septuagint, an ancient Greek translation of the Bible, uses the exact same phrase in Jesus’ speech as it does for the scene in Eden. Jesus is saying, “Be as crafty and clever and cunning and wily as evil.” Stir up your inner ninja. Channel your sly warrior self. Click on the bullish*t detector. Here navy seal meets CIA agent. Find whatever picture of cunning most resonates and be it.

We need that person now. Because the final stages of abuse are where the wolves bare their sharp teeth and clawed hands. They become far more crafty and manipulative and the care erodes into confusion and harm. Here is where abuse stands alone as a dark craft.

The Final Stages of Abuse

Most often, an abusing person does not transition from trust and care to abuse all of a sudden. That would expose the craft too openly. Instead, they deploy a transition act or two—often in the form of some seemingly minor boundary crossing. This is the first predator-like behavior. It’s something more innocuous on the surface, almost easy to dismiss or ignore, but wrong enough that it impacts you. It can be positive or negative, a privilege or a punishment. It’s designed to wear you down and test your resolve. Will you speak up or will you let your boundaries be eroded? And by leaving you unsure what to do, it subtly makes you feel that you are participating somehow in your own abuse.

Maybe a neighbor friend invites you to sneak more video game time even when you know you aren’t supposed to. Maybe your stepfather buys you alcohol as a teenager and says it’s our little secret. Or your mother gets you all the expensive clothes you wanted but says not to tell your father. Your friend walks out of the gas station and pulls two stolen candy bars from his pocket—one for him and one for you. What do you do? These can feel like privileges but in a confusing way because they also cross a line.

The boundary violation may be negative too. Your uncle cracks a sexual joke about your body and the more angry you get, the more he laughs and says, “It’s just a joke!” Maybe your father catches you getting home past curfew and in the ensuing argument slaps you. It’s an obvious violation but he apologizes quickly and says not to tell anyone. Maybe your stepfather drinks and drives but you see your mother roll her eyes and so you don’t say anything either. Maybe your older cousin always beats you up at family gatherings but then says, “You gonna go tell on me and be a wuss?” That one kid at school is your friend one day and the next day mocks you. But you put up with it because you both know you have so few other friends.

These seemingly small boundary crossings are wildly confusing because every relationship suffers little moments where we need to give each other grace. We all walk the broken road of love. We must bear with each other’s shortcomings and struggles. Someone may hurt you without the intent to go further. These small boundary crossings are not proof that someone is planning to abuse.

The major difference here is what happens when you speak up. Someone who loves you will be open to a conversation on these things. It’s not that you always have to speak up about every single little issue. But you can if you need to or want to. A person who abuses will rebuff these conversations—minimize the issue or mock you or maybe apologize before repeating the pattern again and again.

All of this is buildup for the ultimate act of abuse. At some point this person decides to take the violation further and do something that brings them sexual gratification at your expense. You’d think here the abuse would finally be obvious, so out in the open that you’d be left with no doubt. You could finally cry wolf for real. But there is no howl announcing sexual abuse.

It may be an overt sexual act or it could be relational or emotional in nature without any touch at all (I gave examples here). Sometimes recognizing sexual intent is very clear because it’s selfish and indulgent. Other times it’s only noticed much later upon reflection. Most often, the sexual intent and act of gratification are scripted so masterfully by the abusive person that you are dumbfounded by with what is happening. Perpetrators learn how to manipulate both their victim’s nervous systems and arousal structures to their advantage. The smokescreen of shock and body confusion lets them strike then cover their tracks.

Which brings us to the last stage of abuse. To get away with their abuse, perpetrators need to accomplish one ultimate thing: To shut you up.

An abuser may threaten to take your life or just outright punish or injury you. They may manipulate your heart by threatening someone or something else important to you. Your stepdad may beat your mom or sibling if you don’t comply, dividing you between your love and your own pain. A coach says he’ll end your starting position on the team if you speak up. It could be a threat to shame you publicly and blame the abuse on you. It could be a threat to remove some privilege like seeing your friends or beloved grandmother or take away a car or phone or some other extracurricular activity, like dance lessons or basketball camp. And because they’ve already read you, this person knows what will hurt you. They know what is important to you.

But the threat can also be covert. Sometimes an abuser threatens to take their own life, manipulating your sense of care, making you feel like blood is on your hands. They may express remorse and apologize but plead with you to not tell. The overwhelming urge to talk about the harm and get help might falsely feel like you haven’t forgiven. The threat may simply be the communal cost to you. Maybe the perpetrator is the star football player or the beloved pastor. Your story might feel like the grenade that could blow up a whole community. Maybe the threat is an appeal to pity. You know your troubled cousin or unstable sister or depressed father is hurting. You might fear ruining that person’s life if you speak up. Sometimes the threat is just a silent haunting. I have known several abuse victims who said they just carried an unexplained feeling that speaking up would bring destruction.

The agony here is that in the very moment when a victim is experiencing the most shock, confusion, pain, fear, and nausea, he or she will feel pressure to bear the weight alone, to keep it in, to avoid further harm or loss or take care of their abuser in some way. All of this is part of the craft of the wolf, an elaborate act to get away with it.

That’s the abuse cycle: What starts as being seen moves to feeling special moves to little boundary crossings and compromises moves to being sexually violated moves to being threatened to shut up. And round and round this cycle can go. It’s a dizzying, nauseating horrifying spin.

Shrewdness as a Weapon

What can we really do about any of this? How do we pluck a firebrand from the fire and fight off the wolves? Of course all of this is helpful upfront, if you’re still in the early stages of abuse when you can catch on and get away. But what do you do after the fact, where most of us sit, when the damage is done and the suffering is the greatest?

I believe the answer is the same no matter where you are in the cycle of abuse or how long it’s been since. “Be innocent. Be shrewd. I am with you.” You bless the innocent trust and hunger for love that got you here, as I’ve said. And you rally all your inner cunning to name the abuse and tell your story. And the single greatest weapon you have to do that is your shrewdness. And shrewdness begins in your gut.

What does that mean?

Your gut is your intuition, your inner compass of wisdom, your Spidey-sense that something just feels off even before you can explain it. We are made to sense nonverbal, preconscious, even spiritual realm things about people and experiences to help us navigate life. It’s rooted in your actual gut, your body, where feeling states begin. Even your sexual arousal is a form of radar, as I said before. We often think wisdom resides in the mind, in logic, but fail to remember that our whole bodies and beings are sensing instruments that tune into the world and relationships around us. Sure, your gut is not perfect. Your gut is not fail safe. But God gave you this essential tool to discern life.

God’s Spirit even speaks to people via intuition. Remember, in those first days of the early church in the book of Acts, they made massive decisions about the direction and practice of Christianity based solely on “…it seemed good to us and the Holy Spirit” (Acts 15:28). Which sounds so shaky. But they trusted their guts in communion with God and others and went for it.

Some religious communities teach we can’t trust ourselves and our inner feelings or experience because we are sinful. They often manipulate a section of Jeremiah where he calls the heart “desperately wicked” (17:9). But this falsely equates total depravity, the idea that all have fallen short of God’s glory, with utter depravity, the idea that any and all of God’s original design within us, his image, has been completely obliterated. That is not true. Yes, we need God. But no, we haven’t lost our original design, nor the ability of God to bless our intuition.

In the throes of my own doubt and uncertainty and second guessing about my story, I once saw a therapist named Lottie, a spitfire of a woman, who told me, “What are you going to do if you keep doubting your gut like this? You have to start with trusting your gut no matter what. Sure check it against the facts and discernment with community. But if you start with questioning it and doubting it, you’re closing your eyes, turning off your radar, and flying blind through life.” That changed my life and certainly my healing.

Evil wants to drive a wedge between you and your body, especially the inner wisdom of your intuition because it’s the basis of your shrewdness. So here we fight fire with fire. Not evil for evil, but cunning for cunning. To be wise is to be as wily as evil. Things are not always as they seem. You have to find your inner mafia crime lord. You have to find your inner savvy and shrewd self. She or he is in there. Trust me.

Brave Truth Telling

Here’s your first assignment: It can feel like once the abuse has happened, it’s too late. The damage is done. But in many ways, the war has just begun. The realm of evil would love to convince you there is nothing you can do anymore, and then let trauma and shame slowly erode more and more of your relatedness and aliveness.

For example, men and women who have experienced childhood sexual abuse are 4.3 times more likely to suffer sexual assault in adulthood. That is an awful reality. Why would this happen? I would seem that people with a history of abuse tend to tune out red flags and distrust their own intuition more than those without abuse. Victims downplay the value of their own felt experience and tune out their gut.

So, your mission: No matter how long it’s been, when you suspect you might have a story of abuse, you must let yourself explore the truth. You must employ your gut to speak your experience. You must risk your curiosities and suspicions to recreate the fuzzy scenes in your memory. You must let your intuition tell the story.

This can be brutal work. But there is no expiration date on telling your story or the healing it can bring. At literally any point, speaking up and naming harm reverses the silencing of abuse. It will absolutely set you free and help you heal and recover. We walk the terrain of our story with our inner shrewdness to reclaim our innocence, to heal the wound, and come alive again. More on that next time.

---

Thanks for reading! Know anyone who needs to hear this? I am working hard to grow this community and would love your help. Forward this on to anyone or click the share button below.

Don’t miss our Zoom conversation on this post! These are always amazing discussions. Join us Tuesday, December 30th, at 6:30pm MT/8:30pm ET, for a Zoom conversation exclusively for paid subscribers. I’ll teach a little and answer all your questions. To join us, upgrade your membership (see below) for $5 a month (cancel anytime). The Zoom link will be found here soon.

I’ll say it again because it’s so cool. My book is on a HUGE sale right now! Amazon included The Sex Talk You Never Got in its holiday sale and it’s still going. You can get the paperback for 40% off or less than $12. Click here.

Let’s meet in person! I’ve got two more speaking gigs coming up in early 2026 and would love to meet you there. This first one is not fully in person. On Jan 9 & 10, I’ll be at the Porn Free Man Virtual Conference to teach an experiential session on “Sex Addiction and the Divided Self.” And best of all, it’s free! And on Jan 23 & 24, I’ll be fully in person in Annapolis, MD, leading the Rewire Desire Conference. I would love to see you at both!

A reminder that as a subscriber, you get a FREE Study Guide for my book. Click here. New subscribers will get it in the welcome email.

Help me hit 150 book reviews on Amazon! Nearly 20,000 (WHAT!?!) of have read my book now. That is amazing and thanks for sending your stories my way. If you’ve read my book, would you write a review on Amazon? I am just 4 reviews away from 150. Even one sentence is enough. Here’s a short tutorial video if you need it. And write the review here: Amazon | Goodreads

Find me on: Instagram | Facebook | Threads

Follow my author pages: Amazon | Goodreads