Good morning!
I just returned from the American Association of Christian Counselors convention in Branson, Missouri. It was a great time and I appreciate all of your prayers for my time of speaking on Friday afternoon on The Emotionally Destructive Relationship. The room was filled to capacity with standing room only. I was so encouraged to see such interest in this topic. Please continue to pray that church leaders would recognize this devastating problem.
I also want to remind you all that I will be giving a free 3 hour seminar on this topic Saturday morning, October 16th at Calvary Temple in Allentown, PA for Truth for Women. The session starts at 9am and ends at 12:30pm. The doors open at 8am and there will be a question and answer session. You are welcome to invite your church leaders and others you think may be interested. However, you must register in advance, so we have a good head count and have enough refreshments and seats. Please register at www.truthforwomen.org or call 610 866-5715. I would love to meet you all and see you there!
I’ve invited a friend of mine, Carmen Lael to respond to today’s question because she has personally lived the answer.
Today’s Question: When an emotionally abusive person is 'sick' or quite possibly sick (mine has a family afflicted with Huntington's Disease), how can we tell where the emotionally abusive person ends, and the illness begins?
I had tried to allot plenty of leeway over the years for the possibility that some of his anger was organic, but now that he divorced me because of his increasing paranoia, distrust, and his always over-the-top expectations of my behavior, I am at a cross-roads as to how much to be available to him and/or any type/degree of reconciliation. I wanted to stay available to him for emergencies and friendship, but he still uses threats such as "If you intend to stay friends, you wouldn't dare do such-n-such".
I wanted to hold close enough to my vows of being there for him in sickness and in health. Because for the most part he was and is a wonderful man, and we had a beautiful relationship and Christ centered lives. Thank you in advance for any input on this !
Carmen’s Response: This is an excellent question with no easy answers. As a former caregiver of a husband suffering from the myriad of symptoms of Huntington’s disease, I call what you are experiencing the chicken or the egg syndrome.
Philosophers have debated which came first and geneticists are trying to uncover clues that will tell us the definitive order. But creationists have always known that on the fifth day God created "every winged fowl after [their] kind" (Genesis 1:21) complete with the DNA to reproduce that kind, so from a Christian perspective there’s only one right answer to the question.
The answer is not obvious in your question because it is linked to your husband’s DNA. Unlike the healthy DNA mentioned in Genesis, your husband was born with a genetic hand of cards that guarantees him of a slate of increasingly worsening physical and mental symptoms. These symptoms can cause the sufferer to act out of character from their pre-diagnosis self and, sadly, that usually results in some combination of emotional, verbal, physical or sexual abusive.
The person sitting down to a breakfast of fried eggs or enjoying a perfectly grilled piece of chicken doesn’t ponder the chicken or egg mystery and at this point neither should you. At the heart of your question is not if you should excuse bad behavior because of an illness but the appropriate level of availability in which you should engage.
Please remember that we live in a broken world and ultimately there are things we simply can’t control no matter the desire. No one plans a wedding all the while hoping it will end in divorce. No, we believe this is our happily ever after and that we’ll grow old cuddling our spouse, not being a caregiver.
Like you, the anger, paranoia, distrust and jealousy stemming from Huntington’s disease turned my marriage into a battlefield that at times made me feel as if I was losing my mind. Sadly, my marriage also ended in divorce.
Huntington’s will ravage the brain regardless of medication or treatment. If your husband is like the vast majority of sufferers, the paranoia and anger will eventually disappear along with his ability to drive, manage finances, and make important healthcare decisions. But what do you do in the meantime?
You may no longer be legally married but that doesn’t mean you don’t care. Each letter in the following acronym (P.L.E.A.S.E.) can help you as a Christian woman to find balance in trying to be as supportive as possible. For me the answer was and is to please God first and everything else will fall into place.
Pray
Even if your husband says he doesn’t want or trust you in his life no one can stop you from praying for him. Praying for someone has the added benefit of bringing us close to God when we need Him most.
Love
Whether it’s making sure his bills are paid, encouraging family and friends to visit, or cooking meals for him, love is an action verb. Think of at least one thing you can do each day that will help him. Whether he knows you have done it or even accepts it is not the point. Love is sustained by action so be intentional in your love.
Embrace
The time to embrace good memories is in the midst of the chaos of Huntington’s disease. Tuck them away in your heart and your mind and remember that fighting to stay connected to him is important for you as much as for him.
Abandon
The healthiest thing you can do for both yourself and your husband is to abandon the old normal and redefine your role in the new normal of your relationship. That doesn’t mean abandoning all the good from the past, but it does mean that you’ll need to shift your perception of your husband.
Solutions
One of your jobs as a caregiver, and even if you don’t live together you are a caregiver, is to be an advocate. After our divorce I became his legal guardian. In this was I was able to be his medical surrogate and work with his doctors and other medical professionals to find solutions.
Educate
Huntington’s is a complicated disease, and his needs will be ever changing. It’s important to educate yourself about the condition and resources available to help your husband. I found by learning about what to expect, attending support groups, joining online forums, etc. I felt more in control of the situation.
Pleasing God is a great focus for the times ahead. You are only responsible for your own actions and the decisions you make must be healthy, realistic, and based on first being the person God called you to be. It wasn’t until my husband passed away that I could fully appreciate how much striving to please God rather than trying to fix problems had helped us all.
As you are reaching out to your husband don’t forget to be kind to yourself. Curling up with a good book, watching a movie, learning to laugh again and spending time with friends are all wonderful ways to de-stress. Next time you go to lunch with a friend I recommend the quiche.
Guest blogger Carmen Leal is the author of nine books including Faces of Huntington’s and Portraits of Huntington’s. She is the founder or HDCaregivers, an online caregiver only support group for those caring for someone suffering from Huntington’s disease. Visit http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/HDCaregivers to learn more about the group or to join.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Monday, September 20, 2010
How can I help my daughter heal from my inadequate parenting?
Happy Monday everyone!
I have been busy all weekend working on a new presentation I am giving this week at the American Association of Christian Counselors conference in Branson, Missouri on The Emotionally Destructive Relationship. I hear almost weekly from people who have found inadequate counsel when struggling with these difficult and destructive relationship problems. Please pray for me as I have the opportunity to train Christian pastors, leaders and counselors in this very important issue. I will be speaking Friday afternoon, at 1:30.
The more I read, the more I study, the more I pray, the more I am convinced that God wants to deal with this sin in the body of Christ. I am humbled that he has given me a voice. Please hold up my arms as Aaron and Hur did for Moses (Exodus 17:11). Sometimes the battle gets too much for me and I’m tempted to give up. But if there is one cause, one passion that I want to pour my heart into it is how to have healthy relationships and identifying abusive and destructive ones.
This week’s question: I am the mother of 4 children. My 2nd child is almost 19, and we have always had a conflicted relationship. Indeed, she has negative personality traits which inhibit many of her relationships. Looking back, I believe (know) that I suffered with depression when she was less than two, and I believe it significantly impacted her personality development. When she was 9 months old, her dad and I separated. I was pregnant again and my father died.
How do I help her? I believe there was insecure attachment that I failed to recognize and now I see the results.
Answer: It can be very painful to recognize things in ourselves that we wished we had done differently and see the consequences falling on our children. I think every parent has some regrets but it sounds as if you are feeling totally responsible for the person your daughter has become and are now wondering what you can to do help her heal, change and grow.
Probably the biggest question that I have for you is does your daughter recognize her problems and want to heal, change and grow? This may sound like an insane question but no matter how much you regret what happened when she was a kid or how much work you’re willing to do to help her, she has to now assume the responsibility for the actual changes.
Sometimes I find those who have been wounded in childhood stuck in the blame cycle. If only my mom had stayed with my dad. Or, if only she wasn’t depressed………. You know where that goes. Nowhere! You can’t change the past however much you regret it. But you can learn and grow from it as you are attempting to do. But your daughter will need to play an important role in her own healing process if she actually wants to change.
When Jesus asked the man who was paralyzed for 38 years, “Do you want to get well?” it seems like a crazy question (John 5). Who wouldn’t want to walk again? Who wouldn’t want to be whole and healed instead of lame and dependent on others to care for him. Yet I think Jesus knew that healing this man’s legs would only be the beginning of a total life-style change. Was he willing? From now on, he would have to be responsible for himself. He’d be required to work to earn a living instead of beg. He would need to interact with others face to face instead of from on the ground. What other changes would healing bring to his life and his relationships?
So here is what you can do to help your daughter. Have a heart to heart talk with her. Pick a good time and place and share from your heart what you have learned about yourself and observed in her. Tell her how sorry you are for things that you did or didn’t do and what you wish you would have done differently.
But, and this is a big BUT...however much you are sorry and are willing to help her, you must help empower her to take responsibility for where she is now. It is HER life and much of how she lives her life will be up to her. So, in this heart to heart talk you can offer to pay for her therapy. You can offer to go to sessions with her if she needs to deal with some hurts with you in a safe way. You can give her some books to read that will help her understand her issues. But ultimately, you cannot make her relationship style change, you cannot change the way she sees things or help her feel any differently inside. Those changes will be up to her and the hard work she is willing to do.
I would encourage you to do your own work so that you do not continue to engage in the conflictual relationship style that you described. Sometimes doing your part encourages and invites the other person to also do the work needed to make relationship improvements.
A book that I’d recommend on the whole attachment issue is called Attachments: Why you love, feel and act the way you do, by Dr. Tim Clinton and Dr. Gary Sibcy
Another good book is Changes that Heal: How to understand the past to ensure a healthier future by Dr. Henry Cloud.
But ultimately all of us have hurts and wounds from others that affect our lives – both in good ways and bad ways. Elizabeth Edwards (wife of Senator John Edwards) quotes the Leonard Cohen song “Anthem” in her new book, Resilience.
Ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.
No one escapes childhood without a few scars. Your daughter can find and develop her strengths and work on her weaknesses. But she will never get to a place where she doesn’t have any. Yet, Paul reminds us that when we are weak, He is strong (2 Corinthians 12:10). His light shines brightest through our cracks.
I have been busy all weekend working on a new presentation I am giving this week at the American Association of Christian Counselors conference in Branson, Missouri on The Emotionally Destructive Relationship. I hear almost weekly from people who have found inadequate counsel when struggling with these difficult and destructive relationship problems. Please pray for me as I have the opportunity to train Christian pastors, leaders and counselors in this very important issue. I will be speaking Friday afternoon, at 1:30.
The more I read, the more I study, the more I pray, the more I am convinced that God wants to deal with this sin in the body of Christ. I am humbled that he has given me a voice. Please hold up my arms as Aaron and Hur did for Moses (Exodus 17:11). Sometimes the battle gets too much for me and I’m tempted to give up. But if there is one cause, one passion that I want to pour my heart into it is how to have healthy relationships and identifying abusive and destructive ones.
This week’s question: I am the mother of 4 children. My 2nd child is almost 19, and we have always had a conflicted relationship. Indeed, she has negative personality traits which inhibit many of her relationships. Looking back, I believe (know) that I suffered with depression when she was less than two, and I believe it significantly impacted her personality development. When she was 9 months old, her dad and I separated. I was pregnant again and my father died.
How do I help her? I believe there was insecure attachment that I failed to recognize and now I see the results.
Answer: It can be very painful to recognize things in ourselves that we wished we had done differently and see the consequences falling on our children. I think every parent has some regrets but it sounds as if you are feeling totally responsible for the person your daughter has become and are now wondering what you can to do help her heal, change and grow.
Probably the biggest question that I have for you is does your daughter recognize her problems and want to heal, change and grow? This may sound like an insane question but no matter how much you regret what happened when she was a kid or how much work you’re willing to do to help her, she has to now assume the responsibility for the actual changes.
Sometimes I find those who have been wounded in childhood stuck in the blame cycle. If only my mom had stayed with my dad. Or, if only she wasn’t depressed………. You know where that goes. Nowhere! You can’t change the past however much you regret it. But you can learn and grow from it as you are attempting to do. But your daughter will need to play an important role in her own healing process if she actually wants to change.
When Jesus asked the man who was paralyzed for 38 years, “Do you want to get well?” it seems like a crazy question (John 5). Who wouldn’t want to walk again? Who wouldn’t want to be whole and healed instead of lame and dependent on others to care for him. Yet I think Jesus knew that healing this man’s legs would only be the beginning of a total life-style change. Was he willing? From now on, he would have to be responsible for himself. He’d be required to work to earn a living instead of beg. He would need to interact with others face to face instead of from on the ground. What other changes would healing bring to his life and his relationships?
So here is what you can do to help your daughter. Have a heart to heart talk with her. Pick a good time and place and share from your heart what you have learned about yourself and observed in her. Tell her how sorry you are for things that you did or didn’t do and what you wish you would have done differently.
But, and this is a big BUT...however much you are sorry and are willing to help her, you must help empower her to take responsibility for where she is now. It is HER life and much of how she lives her life will be up to her. So, in this heart to heart talk you can offer to pay for her therapy. You can offer to go to sessions with her if she needs to deal with some hurts with you in a safe way. You can give her some books to read that will help her understand her issues. But ultimately, you cannot make her relationship style change, you cannot change the way she sees things or help her feel any differently inside. Those changes will be up to her and the hard work she is willing to do.
I would encourage you to do your own work so that you do not continue to engage in the conflictual relationship style that you described. Sometimes doing your part encourages and invites the other person to also do the work needed to make relationship improvements.
A book that I’d recommend on the whole attachment issue is called Attachments: Why you love, feel and act the way you do, by Dr. Tim Clinton and Dr. Gary Sibcy
Another good book is Changes that Heal: How to understand the past to ensure a healthier future by Dr. Henry Cloud.
But ultimately all of us have hurts and wounds from others that affect our lives – both in good ways and bad ways. Elizabeth Edwards (wife of Senator John Edwards) quotes the Leonard Cohen song “Anthem” in her new book, Resilience.
Ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.
No one escapes childhood without a few scars. Your daughter can find and develop her strengths and work on her weaknesses. But she will never get to a place where she doesn’t have any. Yet, Paul reminds us that when we are weak, He is strong (2 Corinthians 12:10). His light shines brightest through our cracks.
Monday, September 13, 2010
My daughter's husband has ruined our family. How do I cope?
Morning everyone!
This past Saturday I spoke at a lovely church in Springtown, PA on the topic, Lord I Just Want to be Happy! It was so encouraging to me to see men and women excited to embrace the truths God sets forth in his Word for our emotional well-being and health. I love, love LOVE this part of what I do. The writing part is so hard for me , but when I see people excited about applying God’s word to life, then it’s all worth it.
I want to ask you all a huge favor. My new granddaughter, Amaya is 6 months old. She is sitting up and crawling around and seeing her every week on SKYPE is not enough. She lives in Southern California with her mommy and daddy. But I’d like to see her more often. If you know someone who is involved in a church in the LA area, do you think you could pass on my name for some possible speaking events? Perhaps then I can get some extra time to spend with Amaya. Thanks.
This Week’s Question: My daughter and her husband are coming up on 5 years of marriage. It’s been the longest, painful, 5 years of our life. We have tried everything we know how to help, support, involve them, love them, and he just doesn’t want it. He said right from the beginning, “My goal is to break this family apart!” We are tired, hurt, angry, in pain, suffering from the death of a healthy relationship with our daughter, because he says, “I’m intimidated by you guys.”
We were a very tight, loving family until he and his family came along. We just saw her recently at a family wedding and it tore me up. Right now there is little or no communication. I’m feeling I just need to have her out of my life completely in order to heal. I’m struggling with that. Truthfully, it’s very close to that now. I love her so much, our only child for 12 years, until our other daughter came along. I don’t know where to go with the pain. I’m questioning why God would allow this to happen and whether or not there even is a God. I’m hurting.
I’m still hanging on by a thread but barely. What more could God want me to learn and endure?
Answer: I am so sorry for what you’re going through. It is so hard to trust God when we cannot understand why he allows certain things to happen in our lives. When it doesn’t make sense to us, we’re often tempted with the thought that God is not good or that there must not be a God at all.
I hope you grasp that in addition having to deal with the pain of losing your daughter’s closeness with your family; you are in a real spiritual battle. Like Job in the Old Testament, you are struggling to understand why God would allow such hardship into your life. Please hear me. Theological truths don’t always bring a whole lot of comfort in the midst of our affliction, but nevertheless, they’re important so that we can at least understand a little bit of what might be going on.
The challenge that Satan posed to God regarding Job was this. “Job only loves you and serves you because you bless him. Take that away and he will curse you.” (See Job 1 for the story.) I think the same sort of challenge unfolds in many of our lives. When it seems to us that God is good, it is easy to love him, praise him, and trust him. But when life feeds us bitter herbs, we often don’t want anything to do with him and our faith and trust plummet.
It seems like you might be facing this kind of temptation. The enemy’s lies feel so much truer than God’s Word. Jeremiah, a prophet in the Old Testament is a good example of this struggle. In Lamentations 3 he is very angry with God. He feels like God has lied to him and used him and Jeremiah is angry, hurt and faithless. Yet in verse 21 of Chapter 3, he has a remarkable turnaround in the way he sees things. He says, “This I recall to mind, therefore I have hope.” Nothing in Jeremiah’s situation changed. What changed was his perspective but because of this shift, Jeremiah had hope.
I wish I had something to say to you that would turn this situation with your daughter around. I wish I had a way to help you make your son in law feel safe, or trust you or love your family. But honestly, I don’t. But what I can tell you is that your suffering has brought you into the afflictions of Christ. He knows what it feels like to offer love, fellowship, and closeness, and be rejected. He knows what it feels like to long for relationship and to be spurned. Read his heart-felt cry in Matthew when he says, “Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, I would have gathered you together …..but you would not.” (Matthew 23:37).
That said, in the meantime, how do you live with the very real reality of brokenness in your family? I would strongly urge you NOT to break off all contact with your daughter in order to deal with your pain. I understand that seems easier right now but put yourself in her shoes for a moment. She has married a man who does not want her to have a close relationship with her family. That puts her in the middle and in a terrible dilemma. She has chosen to distance herself from you in order to make him feel better. That hurts, but if you turn around and distance yourself from her because of your pain, that only gives him more ammunition to justify his feelings.
I want to give you two other things to think about. In my counseling practice I’ve worked with many young women who needed to take a break from the closeness with their mother. As a mother of a young woman, I know would that would feel like to me so please don’t misunderstand what I’m about to say. But for the young woman to mature into who God made her to be, she needed to separate more from her mother. It was good for the daughter even though it was extremely painful for the mother. Mother’s who were patient and affirming with that separation time, eventually reaped the benefit of a renewed relationship with their daughter. Mother’s that couldn’t tolerate that distance and used guilt, manipulation, and/ or rejection to try to get their daughter to come closer only got more distance.
The second thing I want you to think about is that if your daughter is in an abusive relationship with her husband, his strategy would be to isolate her from her family and support system. If you distance yourself from her because of your pain, then whatever resource you could be for her or source of support you could provide her might be lost. I know it’s very tough right now to accept that you have minimal contact and a superficial relationship but at least you have some contact and that might be crucial for her.
God sees your hurt and Jesus knows your heart. You can go to him and he totally get’s your pain (Hebrews 4:15,16). Satan has already scored a victory when your son-in-law’s fear ruled him. Please don’t give Satan another victory by allowing him to rob you of your faith and your peace. Although it feels like death right now, please choose life! (Deuteronomy 30: 19,20).
Readers: How have you chosen Life when evil threatens to overwhelm you? How have you kept your faith when it feels like God's not there or doesn't care?
This past Saturday I spoke at a lovely church in Springtown, PA on the topic, Lord I Just Want to be Happy! It was so encouraging to me to see men and women excited to embrace the truths God sets forth in his Word for our emotional well-being and health. I love, love LOVE this part of what I do. The writing part is so hard for me , but when I see people excited about applying God’s word to life, then it’s all worth it.
I want to ask you all a huge favor. My new granddaughter, Amaya is 6 months old. She is sitting up and crawling around and seeing her every week on SKYPE is not enough. She lives in Southern California with her mommy and daddy. But I’d like to see her more often. If you know someone who is involved in a church in the LA area, do you think you could pass on my name for some possible speaking events? Perhaps then I can get some extra time to spend with Amaya. Thanks.
This Week’s Question: My daughter and her husband are coming up on 5 years of marriage. It’s been the longest, painful, 5 years of our life. We have tried everything we know how to help, support, involve them, love them, and he just doesn’t want it. He said right from the beginning, “My goal is to break this family apart!” We are tired, hurt, angry, in pain, suffering from the death of a healthy relationship with our daughter, because he says, “I’m intimidated by you guys.”
We were a very tight, loving family until he and his family came along. We just saw her recently at a family wedding and it tore me up. Right now there is little or no communication. I’m feeling I just need to have her out of my life completely in order to heal. I’m struggling with that. Truthfully, it’s very close to that now. I love her so much, our only child for 12 years, until our other daughter came along. I don’t know where to go with the pain. I’m questioning why God would allow this to happen and whether or not there even is a God. I’m hurting.
I’m still hanging on by a thread but barely. What more could God want me to learn and endure?
Answer: I am so sorry for what you’re going through. It is so hard to trust God when we cannot understand why he allows certain things to happen in our lives. When it doesn’t make sense to us, we’re often tempted with the thought that God is not good or that there must not be a God at all.
I hope you grasp that in addition having to deal with the pain of losing your daughter’s closeness with your family; you are in a real spiritual battle. Like Job in the Old Testament, you are struggling to understand why God would allow such hardship into your life. Please hear me. Theological truths don’t always bring a whole lot of comfort in the midst of our affliction, but nevertheless, they’re important so that we can at least understand a little bit of what might be going on.
The challenge that Satan posed to God regarding Job was this. “Job only loves you and serves you because you bless him. Take that away and he will curse you.” (See Job 1 for the story.) I think the same sort of challenge unfolds in many of our lives. When it seems to us that God is good, it is easy to love him, praise him, and trust him. But when life feeds us bitter herbs, we often don’t want anything to do with him and our faith and trust plummet.
It seems like you might be facing this kind of temptation. The enemy’s lies feel so much truer than God’s Word. Jeremiah, a prophet in the Old Testament is a good example of this struggle. In Lamentations 3 he is very angry with God. He feels like God has lied to him and used him and Jeremiah is angry, hurt and faithless. Yet in verse 21 of Chapter 3, he has a remarkable turnaround in the way he sees things. He says, “This I recall to mind, therefore I have hope.” Nothing in Jeremiah’s situation changed. What changed was his perspective but because of this shift, Jeremiah had hope.
I wish I had something to say to you that would turn this situation with your daughter around. I wish I had a way to help you make your son in law feel safe, or trust you or love your family. But honestly, I don’t. But what I can tell you is that your suffering has brought you into the afflictions of Christ. He knows what it feels like to offer love, fellowship, and closeness, and be rejected. He knows what it feels like to long for relationship and to be spurned. Read his heart-felt cry in Matthew when he says, “Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, I would have gathered you together …..but you would not.” (Matthew 23:37).
That said, in the meantime, how do you live with the very real reality of brokenness in your family? I would strongly urge you NOT to break off all contact with your daughter in order to deal with your pain. I understand that seems easier right now but put yourself in her shoes for a moment. She has married a man who does not want her to have a close relationship with her family. That puts her in the middle and in a terrible dilemma. She has chosen to distance herself from you in order to make him feel better. That hurts, but if you turn around and distance yourself from her because of your pain, that only gives him more ammunition to justify his feelings.
I want to give you two other things to think about. In my counseling practice I’ve worked with many young women who needed to take a break from the closeness with their mother. As a mother of a young woman, I know would that would feel like to me so please don’t misunderstand what I’m about to say. But for the young woman to mature into who God made her to be, she needed to separate more from her mother. It was good for the daughter even though it was extremely painful for the mother. Mother’s who were patient and affirming with that separation time, eventually reaped the benefit of a renewed relationship with their daughter. Mother’s that couldn’t tolerate that distance and used guilt, manipulation, and/ or rejection to try to get their daughter to come closer only got more distance.
The second thing I want you to think about is that if your daughter is in an abusive relationship with her husband, his strategy would be to isolate her from her family and support system. If you distance yourself from her because of your pain, then whatever resource you could be for her or source of support you could provide her might be lost. I know it’s very tough right now to accept that you have minimal contact and a superficial relationship but at least you have some contact and that might be crucial for her.
God sees your hurt and Jesus knows your heart. You can go to him and he totally get’s your pain (Hebrews 4:15,16). Satan has already scored a victory when your son-in-law’s fear ruled him. Please don’t give Satan another victory by allowing him to rob you of your faith and your peace. Although it feels like death right now, please choose life! (Deuteronomy 30: 19,20).
Readers: How have you chosen Life when evil threatens to overwhelm you? How have you kept your faith when it feels like God's not there or doesn't care?
Monday, September 6, 2010
An Abusers Response to Domestic Violence
Happy Labor Day Everyone
I hope you enjoyed today and didn’t labor too much. What wonderful weather we had this weekend here. I opened my windows and let the breeze blow fresh cool air into my stuffy house. Don’t you wish we could do the same thing with our heart? Just open the window and let God breath in fresh air into the stale and stinky places?
As a matter of fact, that’s just what He promises to do if we let him. Our part is to surrender and submit, his part is the refreshing and restoring. Take a moment just to meditate on Psalm 23 – the first few verses. I’m going to write it in Nan Merrill’s Psalms for Praying that I’ve been using in my own devotional time.
O my Beloved, you are my shepherd,
I shall not want;
You bring me to green pastures
For rest
And lead me beside still waters
Renewing my spirit,
You restore my soul.
You lead me in the path of
Goodness
To follow Love’s way.
Amen!
If you are not on my newsletter mailing list, you’ll want to be. My September newsletter is going out Tuesday (tomorrow) and the topic is A Time to Say NO! You won’t want to miss it.
Plus there a lot of other news, but one of the most exciting pieces of news is that we have 5 new videos on my facebook fan page on women dealing with stress, emotional overload and conflict. My colleagues, Georgia Shaffer and Catherine Hart Weber joined me for a panel discussion, sort of like TV’s The View about these topics.
But being a novice on Facebook, we loaded them wrong, so just look for number #1 first because they are out of order. We discovered once you load them on to your facebook page,it’s impossible to change the order without unloading them.
Over the past few months I have received a slew of questions from women in abusive marriages. Do I need to take him back? How long do I wait for change to show itself? Does God expect me to stay for better or for worse?
So this week instead of answering another reader's question, I'm going to share with you a letter I received from a gentleman who responded to a blog I previously wrote called, A Biblical Response to Domestic Violence. If you'd like to read that blog first, go to:
Society for Christian Psychology Blog
http://christianpsych.org/wp_scp/2009/10/04/a-biblical-response-to-domestic-violence/
Below is his response. It is an open letter to women who are married to abusive husbands. This is what he wrote:
1. Leave - until you leave, the abuse will continue. No matter how much the person protests or promises change, LEAVE! If not for you, then for your children. I learned watching my father beat my mother. It was my choice though to abuse my wife.
2. Get authority involved IMMEDIATELY--police, minister, social worker. As an abuser, the hardest step is taking responsibility, admitting and accepting it was all my fault. Turning myself in set me on the path to salvation.
3. Until you hear the words "It is my fault not yours. You are a God-given gift that I have sinned against and I will never sin against you again" do not believe he has changed. After this is said, you may hope but it took over three years for healing to occur in my case.
4. Never be alone with the person until you feel safe, see an actual change in the person (no enabling, true change not rose-eyed hope!)
5. DO NOT ACCEPT VIOLENCE IN A RELATIONSHIP EVER!
His response says it all. It reminds me of Edmund Burke’s statement, "all that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good men (or women) do nothing".
It is time to say NO to the sin of domestic abuse!
I hope you enjoyed today and didn’t labor too much. What wonderful weather we had this weekend here. I opened my windows and let the breeze blow fresh cool air into my stuffy house. Don’t you wish we could do the same thing with our heart? Just open the window and let God breath in fresh air into the stale and stinky places?
As a matter of fact, that’s just what He promises to do if we let him. Our part is to surrender and submit, his part is the refreshing and restoring. Take a moment just to meditate on Psalm 23 – the first few verses. I’m going to write it in Nan Merrill’s Psalms for Praying that I’ve been using in my own devotional time.
O my Beloved, you are my shepherd,
I shall not want;
You bring me to green pastures
For rest
And lead me beside still waters
Renewing my spirit,
You restore my soul.
You lead me in the path of
Goodness
To follow Love’s way.
Amen!
If you are not on my newsletter mailing list, you’ll want to be. My September newsletter is going out Tuesday (tomorrow) and the topic is A Time to Say NO! You won’t want to miss it.
Plus there a lot of other news, but one of the most exciting pieces of news is that we have 5 new videos on my facebook fan page on women dealing with stress, emotional overload and conflict. My colleagues, Georgia Shaffer and Catherine Hart Weber joined me for a panel discussion, sort of like TV’s The View about these topics.
But being a novice on Facebook, we loaded them wrong, so just look for number #1 first because they are out of order. We discovered once you load them on to your facebook page,it’s impossible to change the order without unloading them.
Over the past few months I have received a slew of questions from women in abusive marriages. Do I need to take him back? How long do I wait for change to show itself? Does God expect me to stay for better or for worse?
So this week instead of answering another reader's question, I'm going to share with you a letter I received from a gentleman who responded to a blog I previously wrote called, A Biblical Response to Domestic Violence. If you'd like to read that blog first, go to:
Society for Christian Psychology Blog
http://christianpsych.org/wp_scp/2009/10/04/a-biblical-response-to-domestic-violence/
Below is his response. It is an open letter to women who are married to abusive husbands. This is what he wrote:
1. Leave - until you leave, the abuse will continue. No matter how much the person protests or promises change, LEAVE! If not for you, then for your children. I learned watching my father beat my mother. It was my choice though to abuse my wife.
2. Get authority involved IMMEDIATELY--police, minister, social worker. As an abuser, the hardest step is taking responsibility, admitting and accepting it was all my fault. Turning myself in set me on the path to salvation.
3. Until you hear the words "It is my fault not yours. You are a God-given gift that I have sinned against and I will never sin against you again" do not believe he has changed. After this is said, you may hope but it took over three years for healing to occur in my case.
4. Never be alone with the person until you feel safe, see an actual change in the person (no enabling, true change not rose-eyed hope!)
5. DO NOT ACCEPT VIOLENCE IN A RELATIONSHIP EVER!
His response says it all. It reminds me of Edmund Burke’s statement, "all that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good men (or women) do nothing".
It is time to say NO to the sin of domestic abuse!
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