In my last post I shared some of the ugly sins God is uprooting in my heart. On top of all of those, God has exposed a twisted root system so deep and dark, it wraps around the core of my being and tries to choke out the light inside. There should be an equivalent to AA for people with my "condition". It should be called "People Pleaser's Anonymous".
...
I had had a great day. That morning I had the opportunity to walk, talk, and pray with a dear friend going through a difficult time. Soon after she left, I got a phone call from a friend with a question about the Bible. We had a great, long chat in which we discussed the Word and praised God together! Shortly after, I put Beulah down for a nap and had the opportunity to send an encouraging e-mail to a friend who was struggling. And then Andy called to see how my day was.
I found myself telling him what a horrible day it had been. I told him that the first friend didn't leave till lunch, then I got the phone call, then... As I'm telling him this and hearing the tone in my voice, I'm asking myself, "Why are you telling him it's been a bad day? It's been a GREAT day! You've had the opportunity to talk about the LORD with three different women this morning and you're saying it's been a bad day?!!"
After some thought and prayer, I realized my reason for reacting the way I did. In my mind, Andy wanted to hear me tell him about all the things I had gotten done around the house so far that day. But, I hadn't gotten anything done, so I felt the need to make excuses. At the root, I wanted to please Andy, and I thought cleaning was what would please him. So, when he called, I reacted in defense of the imaginary expectations I thought he had placed on me (but I had really placed them on myself). I found myself pointing out all the things I had gotten done in hopes of overshadowing the things I hadn't done.
The Counselor (the Holy Spirit) showed me that I had been acting this way ever since I stopped working outside the home and began my job as "stay-at-home-mom". I assumed I knew what Andy expected of me, and it was all about cooking and cleaning. So, when I didn't get those things done, I became grumpy and defensive with him. The only days that were "good" days were ones where I had been productive in our home. It made me so sad to think of the many many times Andy called to see how my day was going and I answered negatively. I realized what a burden this must have been to him, how it must have effected his days, and I wondered why he kept calling! God has blessed me with a patient and loving husband!
As I began to process how my desire to please Andy affected my behavior, God opened my eyes to my unconscious goal to please everyone--to be liked and accepted by everyone. He walked me back through my life and showed me examples of times that I bowed to the idol of others rather than to Him. Throughout my life, I've done whatever I thought people might like in order to gain their approval. When I was 17, that meant drinking and smoking, among other things. (Peer pressure is rooted in people pleasing.) To illustrate my point, I was voted "Best Personality" of my senior class. I also tied with another girl for "Friendliest". ...whatever it took to be liked! After college, my plan was to be a professional dancer. God knew that my deepest desire was to be well known and well liked, so He thwarted my plans by allowing me to break my neck. (Dang, I must have been stubborn!) He protected me from a lifelong pursuit of vain glory!
As an adult, people pleasing has meant being "that friend"...you know, the best friend everybody had. The friend that paid attention to their wants and needs and fulfilled them better than anyone else--the one that said just the right thing to change your life and move you closer to the Lord. My desire to be liked was so great that I would get physically ill if someone was upset with me. I literally couldn't function until I made things right.
As He walked me through my life and revealed the manifestations of my sin, He gave me a vision; I saw it in my mind, not with my eyes. I looked down and could see inside myself. I could see thick, black, gnarly roots twisting into knots around the organs in my abdomen. It was incredibly dark inside, but there was also a great light underneath, where my heart is. Unfortunately, the ugly root system was hiding the light.
I felt overwhelmed by this vision. When I shared it with Andy, I said desperately, "I don't know how to get it out! How do I get it out??!!" I knew it was something I couldn't do alone.
A week or so later was the Eternal women's retreat. The topic just so happened to be "Surrender". We worshipped, talked, and prayed about what things in our lives we needed to surrender to the LORD. As we worshipped on the first night, God showed me that I needed to surrender my people pleasing personality. I wondered who I would be without it. People pleasing has been the core of who I am! Would people like me if I wasn't constantly trying to make them like me? But, then I thought (and I'm not proud of this thought) "hummm...if I surrender my people pleasing personality, then I'll be perfect and everyone will think I'm the best!" I thought, "I'll surrender this, then when I tell everyone what God has done in my life, they'll look at ME and see ME as some highly spiritual person and admire me!" Yikes...and I say again, YIKES.
Instantly, God began to show me how I had been using Him for MY glory. In the past, when I shared what God had done in my life, I had done it in such a prideful way, thinking, "Look at me! Look how spiritual I am!" People pleasing is rooted in pride. I had actually felt proud that people might see me that way. Then God said, "You have been trying to share in MY glory, and it's time to stop. What I do for you should point to ME, not you. It's not about you."
I was so heartbroken by my sin that I sat down while everyone else was standing and began to pray. I asked God to forgive me, and told Him I wanted to die. I felt so much shame in that moment, that all I could say was, "God, kill me! Kill the flesh in me and fill me so full of YOU that there is none of me left. And, then, God, don't even let me be aware that you've done it, because if I'm aware, I'll be prideful and want others to see how great I am!"
I had another vision. I looked down and saw inside myself again. This time, the gnarly roots began to retreat. As they loosened their grip on my core, the light inside got a little brighter and began to overtake the darkness.
Then God spoke through Anita, who was leading the retreat, and reminded me that He had already died for ALL my sins; past, present; and future...including this one! Allowing this sin to remain in my life is like saying that what Christ did on the cross was not enough.
The Spirit brought the verses that I just so happened to be memorizing to my mind.
*Galatians 2:20 "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me."
*2 Corinthians 5:17 "Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come."
I realized that my flesh, the one I asked God to kill, was already dead! I had been crucified with Christ on the cross! But, if that's true, why do I still deal with sin? Within the week, God led me to an article in the May 2010 edition of Tabletalk Magazine. The article titled Being and Becoming, points out that before Christ, we are slaves to sin. But, upon coming to faith in Christ, we are no longer in bondage to sin. Sin was once our master, but now Christ is our LORD. He has overcome sin and the wages of sin, death. Praise Jesus! W. Duncan Rankin says, "...now [we are] able to believe, to repent, to love God, to love God's people, and to love a world in need of a Savior. Now we are able to hunger and thirst for God. Now we are able to loathe sin and fight against it. And fight we must!" He goes on to say, "We fight sin because we love God and want to bring Him glory. But this is not a lonely struggle of our flesh against all the demons that plague us. Rather, it is a deliberate and conscious battling against sin in our lives, but always in union with Christ (Romans 8:13-18). We do not fight alone or even merely in our own strength. Instead, we are one by faith and by the Spirit with our Savior and Head. And so by His grace and strength, we are able to engage in this battle against sin, using all the tools He has provided, because He Himself also fights for us...It is not automatic but something that requires our positive effort...we must therefore strain every nerve to kill the sins that plague us so (Romans 8:13; Colossians 3:5)."
I had another vision. I saw two of me, one inside the other. One of me was actually dead, zombie-like. She was corroded and shriveled with grayish skin, course and brittle hair. She represented my flesh, the one who died when Christ came into my life. The other me was radiant. She glowed with light and radiated love. I named the zombie inside "Gloria", because she was always seeking my glory. She wanted to be praised by others, even if that meant stealing glory from God.
Suddenly, in my vision, Gloria was no longer in me. Now we were standing face to face, and she was u.g.l.y. I hated her. I knew she had no place in me, so I told her she was no longer welcome; she could no longer steal glory from God. In my attempt to put her to rest for good, I (in the power at work within me) chained my zombie in her grave where she belongs. I committed to not give her power in my life anymore, and asked God to make me aware when the chains are loosed and Gloria begins to have influence in my life again. I asked God to help me see her coming and give me the strength to fight her. I pictured myself punching her in the face and chaining her to the ground once again. I committed to the fight.
Then I had another vision. I looked down and saw inside myself once again. This time, the gnarly roots retreated completely and released their grip on me. Like a tree in the dirt, I saw the roots being drug down my right leg and out of my right foot until they were completely gone and my body was filled with light! Glory Hallelujah!!
John 12:24 "I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But, if it dies, it produces many seeds."
...
So, how does my life look different without Gloria (not saying I won't have to fight her anymore)? Honestly, you may not see a difference. The difference is in the stature of my heart. The difference is in how I respond to criticism from others and in who I aim to please. When I'm not worried about whether others will like me, I am free to do what the LORD wants me to do regardless of how they respond. Because, let's be honest, sometimes the LORD asks us to do things that we know others won't like. And, living a Christian life should mean that we look starkly different than the world. People pleasers don't want to be different, they just want to fit in. Without this concern, His power is unleashed within me to affect the world for His glory, not my own.
From the lyrics of a song, "It all comes down to just one thing, knowing Him and making Him known."
Hello, my name is Michelle, and I'm a recovering People Pleaser. All glory to God.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Sunday, August 29, 2010
From A Heart of Stone to A Heart of Flesh
I've been reading a lot of Christian parenting books lately, and one particular truth has taken root in my heart. When we live with unconfessed sin, our heart hardens. As I'm learning how this takes place in a child's heart when parents don't lead their children to repentance (and ultimately reliance on God for help in avoiding sin), I'm realizing how this has happened in my life.
I will say upfront that I am incredibly ashamed by most of what you will read here. It's amazing how blind we can be to our own sin, all the while thinking that we're doing OK. But, I am thankful for a LIVING God who is constantly moving in my life to make me more and more like Him. In His power, we can strive to "put off the old self...to be made new in the attitude of our minds." (Ephesians 4:22-23)
...
This past year, on our anniversary, Andy did the most beautiful thing. He asked me to tell him three ways that he could love me better in the coming year. After a couple of days, I came to him with my three things. But, of course, I couldn't walk away without asking him to give me three things as well. I mean, it just didn't seem fair for him to be working on loving me better without me doing the same, right? Through the course of our conversations, I realized how much I had been relishing my role as mother, but ignoring my role as wife. In addition to that, I had equated being a wife with cooking and cleaning, rather than just being a friend, a helper, and a lover to my husband.
I had read and heard about how difficult intimacy can be for a new mom, considering she gets much of her needed "skin time" satisfied by the baby. But, nothing I read really gave me the push I needed to get me past that and move into action. So, we decided to read A Celebration of Sex by Douglas E. Rosenau together. We prayed before we began reading, and halfway through the introduction, our eyes were opened and the first root of our problem was revealed.
Side Note: I want to pause the story here to point out the role that the Holy Spirit, the Counselor (John 14:16&26, 15:26, 16:7), played in all of this. I have been in awe of Him throughout this whole process. And, while human counselors are often necessary for couples to sort through struggles together, I can't imagine a human could have dug into our hearts as deep as He has to reveal the roots that got us to where we are. I am eternally grateful that God does not leave us alone! He gave us the Spirit to mold us and shape us into His likeness, and as a result, we can experience the fullness of life and marriage that He desires for us!! Praise God!!
Resume Story: We traced our problems all the way back to our first year of marriage. During premarital counseling, we took the Myers Briggs personality test. We discovered (as if you couldn't tell after spending 5 minutes with us) that I was an extreme extrovert and Andy was an extreme introvert. I also tend to make decisions based on feelings, while Andy is more logical, a "thinker". When we dated, we loved these things about each other! It is true in our case, opposites did attract!
Recently, a couple shared with us that their premarital counselor asked them to write down five things that they loved about their future spouse. Once finished, they were to exchange the lists. After they read over the five things their partner loved about them, the counselor told them that these were the five things that their spouse would hate about them in five years! Sounds harsh, right? But, it's an interesting thought, because looking back, I can see how Andy and I have tried to change the things that made us different and make each other more like ourselves! For example, I didn't like how quiet and serious he was in groups. I thought he should be more outgoing. At the same time, he was easily embarrassed by my pursuit for attention (because it put him in the spotlight as well), and wished I was more quiet and reserved.
To complicate matters, the Counselor has also showed me how much of a people pleaser I am (more on this in a future post). Looking back, when I realized that I had the potential to embarrass Andy in public, in my attempt to please him, I began to sever the bubbly, outgoing side of myself. And, overtime I forgot who I was. In fact, after we had been married for four years, I took the Myers Briggs test again and scored dead in the middle of extrovert and introvert, and dead in the middle of "feeler" and "thinker". I had become my husband, and I resented him for that.
I liked who I was before marriage. I was confident, independent, fun, funny, charismatic. I felt like he had taken that from me. As a result, I grew to believe that he didn't like me. I never doubted that he loved me, but I was pretty sure he didn't like me. I started believing lies in my head. When he would compliment me, I would say to myself, "yeah right! He doesn't mean that!" Looking back, I am amazed at how many negative thoughts were running through my mind without my notice. And, even though they were unconscious lies, I was believing them and they began to effect our intimacy. It's hard to be "naked and unashamed" with someone you think may not like you.
I was also constantly defensive and harsh in my tone towards him. We had recognized this problem around the time Beulah was born, but I didn't know the source of it or how to change it. I didn't want my children to hear me speak to their father that way, but at the same time, I wasn't remorseful about my disrespect towards him.
We also discovered another problem. Throughout the course of our marriage, I had become lazy and incompetent in housekeeping (more on this in a future post as well). Andy loves to cook and is infinitely better at it than I am. For a while, I was busy with school, so he took on this task for our family. We were both content with that. But, I also found that if I had the slightest problem getting anything done around the house, if I complained about it a little, he would do it for me! So, overtime, he had taken over most of the care for the house. I remember bragging, "Oh yeah, he's the cook, the green thumb, he's a fantastic ironer, he..." With a laugh, I would tell people that I wasn't sure how I contributed to the household, other than through my income each month!
So, there we were. God had opened our eyes to the roots of our problems. But, we didn't know what to do with it. We thought the answer was for me to get back to who I was, to who God created me to be. But, how do I do that? The mountain we faced seemed insurmountable. But, then God reminded me that nothing happens that didn't pass through His hands first. He knew this was going to happen, and He used it to make me who I am today, who He wants me to be.
So...if I don't need to get back to who I once was, how do we get past this? The answer seemed obvious. I needed to learn to trust in Andy's love for me again. I had to begin to pay attention to the negative thoughts passing through my head, take them captive (2 Corinthians 10:5), and replace the lies with truth!
We committed to prayer and open communication. Recognizing the lies and replacing them with truth seemed to help a little. It gave us a reprieve from the heaviness we had been feeling. I began to see that Andy truly did love me, and even believed that he liked me! But, there was still something standing between us, and it wasn't until I read an excerpt from a fabulous book, Feminine Appeal by Carolyn Mahaney, that I realized what it was. In the book Mahaney quotes a woman who had been grievously sinned against by her mom and the men that her mom kept company with when she was a child. She faced quite a hurdle in forgiving them. But, she wrote, "He showed me Calvary once more....I saw the horror of my sin, nailing the Son of God to the miserable cross, torturing Him, mocking Him, spitting on Him. Yet He had forgiven me freely. No one had committed such atrocities against me. How could I do anything less than forgive?"
After I read that, I closed the book. I realized I had never felt the gravity of my sin the way she described. I had never once thought of my sins against God as any greater than (or even equal to!) the ones that had been committed against me. I knew instantly that that wasn't right. I began praying that God would help me to see my sin clearly and even feel the weight of it.
Over the next couple of days, God showed me that I had never truly grieved any sin I had committed. I began to realize that throughout my whole life, I had justified every single sin I had ever committed. I was never afraid to admit that I had sinned, and I could even name the sin...but, I could also tell you whose fault it was that I sinned. "I did ___________ because he did __________." If I wasn't blaming a person, I was blaming society or our culture...or even God for making me this way!!! I was never simply wrong; I always had a reason. Ohhhhh, the ugly pride is deep and rampant!!
I was grieved by this. I was embarrassed before God and could clearly see for the first time how my hideous sins had nailed Him to the cross. I stood in awe of the fact that He could love me that much. Why oh why would He do that?
Then, I walked back through all the issues that had come up with Andy and I. And I started to see all the ways I had blamed him for my neglect, laziness, coldness, disrespect, bitterness, etc.
1. I had been angry at him because I often felt shy, insecure and awkward in groups, when I used to be fun, confident and outgoing. Now I could see that it was MY choice to respond that way. When I realized my extroverted-ness made him uncomfortable, I should have prayed and asked God what of this was legitimate and needed to be sanctified in me, and what of this was Andy's issues that needed to be sanctified in him. Instead, I became the extreme opposite in an attempt to please Andy and left God out of the whole thing.
2. I blamed my laziness on Andy by saying that he enabled me. He wouldn't let me carry heavy things. He didn't want me to do anything if I was tired or uncomfortable, so he did everything for me. Seriously? Can I really blame my laziness on HIM? No!! I was manipulating him! He wasn't sinning, I was! He was only trying to love and serve me, and I took advantage of that! Disgusting!
3. Rather than simply admitting that my lack of love, respect, and affection was sinful, I wanted to blame him for not "liking" me, which was never true to begin with!
When I started owning up to my sin and stopped blaming Andy, I could see clearly how we had gotten to where we were. It was humbling (humiliating, even), to say the least. As I justified my sin through the years, my heart grew harder and harder. But, now that I was facing my sin for the first time, my heart of stone began to melt into a heart of flesh.
Ezekiel 11:19-20 "I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. Then they will follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. They will be my people and I will be their God."
My next step was to seek my husband's forgiveness. I wrote him a letter confessing the sins that God had shown me. And, as he always is, my husband was gracious. Praise God. As I told him in the letter, he is "tried and true"! He has loved me through it all, and I am humbled by his love for me. Andy has admitted to his own contributing sins along the way, but I'm not here to confess his sins.
We are still on the path to recovery. God is redeeming our marriage! We've joked about how we've always believed (and still believe) that we have a good marriage...if this is good, what does bad look like?! The other night we laid on opposite ends of the couch giving each other foot massages and laughing till I had tears. It was so nice!
I have a purpose for sharing these ugly and embarrassing things about myself. I hope that if you could identify with me in any way, that reading this might bring to the surface anything lurking beneath that has the potential to destroy you. I urge you to pay attention to the thoughts in your head and be aware of patterns in your marriage...patterns in the way you interact with one another (tone of voice, intimacy, ect.), and don't ignore them. Seek (through prayer and Scripture) to uncover the root of the problem, and commit to striving (with the help of the Holy Spirit) to uproot the yuck in your life. If you need to, seek a Christian counselor who is trained to dig deep, and don't resist.
I also urge you to stop blaming others for you sins. See it for what it is. Even if someone sins against you, you have a choice in how you respond. You spiral down into a viscous cycle when you respond to sin with sin. Be aware, and truly grieve your sins.
Matthew 5:3 "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
And, please pray for us as we seek the Lord's healing in our marriage. I desire to remain humble and fruitful. I am working towards being the wife and homemaker that God has called me to be. My husband is fully supportive of that. :) (Poor guy!)
Psalm 51:10 "Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me."
I will say upfront that I am incredibly ashamed by most of what you will read here. It's amazing how blind we can be to our own sin, all the while thinking that we're doing OK. But, I am thankful for a LIVING God who is constantly moving in my life to make me more and more like Him. In His power, we can strive to "put off the old self...to be made new in the attitude of our minds." (Ephesians 4:22-23)
...
This past year, on our anniversary, Andy did the most beautiful thing. He asked me to tell him three ways that he could love me better in the coming year. After a couple of days, I came to him with my three things. But, of course, I couldn't walk away without asking him to give me three things as well. I mean, it just didn't seem fair for him to be working on loving me better without me doing the same, right? Through the course of our conversations, I realized how much I had been relishing my role as mother, but ignoring my role as wife. In addition to that, I had equated being a wife with cooking and cleaning, rather than just being a friend, a helper, and a lover to my husband.
I had read and heard about how difficult intimacy can be for a new mom, considering she gets much of her needed "skin time" satisfied by the baby. But, nothing I read really gave me the push I needed to get me past that and move into action. So, we decided to read A Celebration of Sex by Douglas E. Rosenau together. We prayed before we began reading, and halfway through the introduction, our eyes were opened and the first root of our problem was revealed.
Side Note: I want to pause the story here to point out the role that the Holy Spirit, the Counselor (John 14:16&26, 15:26, 16:7), played in all of this. I have been in awe of Him throughout this whole process. And, while human counselors are often necessary for couples to sort through struggles together, I can't imagine a human could have dug into our hearts as deep as He has to reveal the roots that got us to where we are. I am eternally grateful that God does not leave us alone! He gave us the Spirit to mold us and shape us into His likeness, and as a result, we can experience the fullness of life and marriage that He desires for us!! Praise God!!
Resume Story: We traced our problems all the way back to our first year of marriage. During premarital counseling, we took the Myers Briggs personality test. We discovered (as if you couldn't tell after spending 5 minutes with us) that I was an extreme extrovert and Andy was an extreme introvert. I also tend to make decisions based on feelings, while Andy is more logical, a "thinker". When we dated, we loved these things about each other! It is true in our case, opposites did attract!
Recently, a couple shared with us that their premarital counselor asked them to write down five things that they loved about their future spouse. Once finished, they were to exchange the lists. After they read over the five things their partner loved about them, the counselor told them that these were the five things that their spouse would hate about them in five years! Sounds harsh, right? But, it's an interesting thought, because looking back, I can see how Andy and I have tried to change the things that made us different and make each other more like ourselves! For example, I didn't like how quiet and serious he was in groups. I thought he should be more outgoing. At the same time, he was easily embarrassed by my pursuit for attention (because it put him in the spotlight as well), and wished I was more quiet and reserved.
To complicate matters, the Counselor has also showed me how much of a people pleaser I am (more on this in a future post). Looking back, when I realized that I had the potential to embarrass Andy in public, in my attempt to please him, I began to sever the bubbly, outgoing side of myself. And, overtime I forgot who I was. In fact, after we had been married for four years, I took the Myers Briggs test again and scored dead in the middle of extrovert and introvert, and dead in the middle of "feeler" and "thinker". I had become my husband, and I resented him for that.
I liked who I was before marriage. I was confident, independent, fun, funny, charismatic. I felt like he had taken that from me. As a result, I grew to believe that he didn't like me. I never doubted that he loved me, but I was pretty sure he didn't like me. I started believing lies in my head. When he would compliment me, I would say to myself, "yeah right! He doesn't mean that!" Looking back, I am amazed at how many negative thoughts were running through my mind without my notice. And, even though they were unconscious lies, I was believing them and they began to effect our intimacy. It's hard to be "naked and unashamed" with someone you think may not like you.
I was also constantly defensive and harsh in my tone towards him. We had recognized this problem around the time Beulah was born, but I didn't know the source of it or how to change it. I didn't want my children to hear me speak to their father that way, but at the same time, I wasn't remorseful about my disrespect towards him.
We also discovered another problem. Throughout the course of our marriage, I had become lazy and incompetent in housekeeping (more on this in a future post as well). Andy loves to cook and is infinitely better at it than I am. For a while, I was busy with school, so he took on this task for our family. We were both content with that. But, I also found that if I had the slightest problem getting anything done around the house, if I complained about it a little, he would do it for me! So, overtime, he had taken over most of the care for the house. I remember bragging, "Oh yeah, he's the cook, the green thumb, he's a fantastic ironer, he..." With a laugh, I would tell people that I wasn't sure how I contributed to the household, other than through my income each month!
So, there we were. God had opened our eyes to the roots of our problems. But, we didn't know what to do with it. We thought the answer was for me to get back to who I was, to who God created me to be. But, how do I do that? The mountain we faced seemed insurmountable. But, then God reminded me that nothing happens that didn't pass through His hands first. He knew this was going to happen, and He used it to make me who I am today, who He wants me to be.
So...if I don't need to get back to who I once was, how do we get past this? The answer seemed obvious. I needed to learn to trust in Andy's love for me again. I had to begin to pay attention to the negative thoughts passing through my head, take them captive (2 Corinthians 10:5), and replace the lies with truth!
We committed to prayer and open communication. Recognizing the lies and replacing them with truth seemed to help a little. It gave us a reprieve from the heaviness we had been feeling. I began to see that Andy truly did love me, and even believed that he liked me! But, there was still something standing between us, and it wasn't until I read an excerpt from a fabulous book, Feminine Appeal by Carolyn Mahaney, that I realized what it was. In the book Mahaney quotes a woman who had been grievously sinned against by her mom and the men that her mom kept company with when she was a child. She faced quite a hurdle in forgiving them. But, she wrote, "He showed me Calvary once more....I saw the horror of my sin, nailing the Son of God to the miserable cross, torturing Him, mocking Him, spitting on Him. Yet He had forgiven me freely. No one had committed such atrocities against me. How could I do anything less than forgive?"
After I read that, I closed the book. I realized I had never felt the gravity of my sin the way she described. I had never once thought of my sins against God as any greater than (or even equal to!) the ones that had been committed against me. I knew instantly that that wasn't right. I began praying that God would help me to see my sin clearly and even feel the weight of it.
Over the next couple of days, God showed me that I had never truly grieved any sin I had committed. I began to realize that throughout my whole life, I had justified every single sin I had ever committed. I was never afraid to admit that I had sinned, and I could even name the sin...but, I could also tell you whose fault it was that I sinned. "I did ___________ because he did __________." If I wasn't blaming a person, I was blaming society or our culture...or even God for making me this way!!! I was never simply wrong; I always had a reason. Ohhhhh, the ugly pride is deep and rampant!!
I was grieved by this. I was embarrassed before God and could clearly see for the first time how my hideous sins had nailed Him to the cross. I stood in awe of the fact that He could love me that much. Why oh why would He do that?
Then, I walked back through all the issues that had come up with Andy and I. And I started to see all the ways I had blamed him for my neglect, laziness, coldness, disrespect, bitterness, etc.
1. I had been angry at him because I often felt shy, insecure and awkward in groups, when I used to be fun, confident and outgoing. Now I could see that it was MY choice to respond that way. When I realized my extroverted-ness made him uncomfortable, I should have prayed and asked God what of this was legitimate and needed to be sanctified in me, and what of this was Andy's issues that needed to be sanctified in him. Instead, I became the extreme opposite in an attempt to please Andy and left God out of the whole thing.
2. I blamed my laziness on Andy by saying that he enabled me. He wouldn't let me carry heavy things. He didn't want me to do anything if I was tired or uncomfortable, so he did everything for me. Seriously? Can I really blame my laziness on HIM? No!! I was manipulating him! He wasn't sinning, I was! He was only trying to love and serve me, and I took advantage of that! Disgusting!
3. Rather than simply admitting that my lack of love, respect, and affection was sinful, I wanted to blame him for not "liking" me, which was never true to begin with!
When I started owning up to my sin and stopped blaming Andy, I could see clearly how we had gotten to where we were. It was humbling (humiliating, even), to say the least. As I justified my sin through the years, my heart grew harder and harder. But, now that I was facing my sin for the first time, my heart of stone began to melt into a heart of flesh.
Ezekiel 11:19-20 "I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. Then they will follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. They will be my people and I will be their God."
My next step was to seek my husband's forgiveness. I wrote him a letter confessing the sins that God had shown me. And, as he always is, my husband was gracious. Praise God. As I told him in the letter, he is "tried and true"! He has loved me through it all, and I am humbled by his love for me. Andy has admitted to his own contributing sins along the way, but I'm not here to confess his sins.
We are still on the path to recovery. God is redeeming our marriage! We've joked about how we've always believed (and still believe) that we have a good marriage...if this is good, what does bad look like?! The other night we laid on opposite ends of the couch giving each other foot massages and laughing till I had tears. It was so nice!
I have a purpose for sharing these ugly and embarrassing things about myself. I hope that if you could identify with me in any way, that reading this might bring to the surface anything lurking beneath that has the potential to destroy you. I urge you to pay attention to the thoughts in your head and be aware of patterns in your marriage...patterns in the way you interact with one another (tone of voice, intimacy, ect.), and don't ignore them. Seek (through prayer and Scripture) to uncover the root of the problem, and commit to striving (with the help of the Holy Spirit) to uproot the yuck in your life. If you need to, seek a Christian counselor who is trained to dig deep, and don't resist.
I also urge you to stop blaming others for you sins. See it for what it is. Even if someone sins against you, you have a choice in how you respond. You spiral down into a viscous cycle when you respond to sin with sin. Be aware, and truly grieve your sins.
Matthew 5:3 "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
And, please pray for us as we seek the Lord's healing in our marriage. I desire to remain humble and fruitful. I am working towards being the wife and homemaker that God has called me to be. My husband is fully supportive of that. :) (Poor guy!)
Psalm 51:10 "Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me."
Friday, August 20, 2010
Long Time No Blog
So, it's been a few months since I've published a blog post. There are several reasons for my absence.
1. I have been trying to focus on and grow in my role as a wife, mother, and home maker.
2. God has been teaching me A LOT about myself, my family, my new "job" as stay-at-home-mom, and Himself.
3. Our computer's memory got full (*insert sarcasm* Geeze, wonder how that happened?), which slowed everything down and it became a hassle to do anything!
I have written so many drafts over the past couple of months, but feel sure that the focus of so many of them will change in light of what I've been learning. I am so eager to share! However, I am wary of taking time away from my responsibilities at home. So, if you will, please pray with me that I'll be able to find the time to share what God has been teaching me with you without neglecting my devotional and prayer time, my family, my home, and my friends. Love y'all, and have missed you!!
1. I have been trying to focus on and grow in my role as a wife, mother, and home maker.
2. God has been teaching me A LOT about myself, my family, my new "job" as stay-at-home-mom, and Himself.
3. Our computer's memory got full (*insert sarcasm* Geeze, wonder how that happened?), which slowed everything down and it became a hassle to do anything!
I have written so many drafts over the past couple of months, but feel sure that the focus of so many of them will change in light of what I've been learning. I am so eager to share! However, I am wary of taking time away from my responsibilities at home. So, if you will, please pray with me that I'll be able to find the time to share what God has been teaching me with you without neglecting my devotional and prayer time, my family, my home, and my friends. Love y'all, and have missed you!!
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