Wrong Thinking?

[from the archives]

In my last post, Peeling Bananas in Secret, I was talking about the way we could be letting others control us. I used to let my husband control me.

I remember when the Lord first spoke through my conscience to me about the way I habitually related with my husband. I was standing by my bed in my room folding some laundry I think. I heard the crunch of the gravel in the driveway, drawing to my attention the fact that my husband was arriving home. As usual, I was unaware of the time of day. I began to make a mental note of the state of the house combined with a sinking feeling that it wasn’t good.

Did I leave any laundry baskets in front of the laundry room door? Did the kids pick up their blankets off the TV room floor? What can I make for dinner? Is the kitchen cleaned up? These thoughts came in rapid succession, combined with a mental bracing for the silent angry glare that would be coming my way as soon as my husband got into the house combined with the clomping of things being roughly slammed here and there in order to make it known that they were not where they ought to be. I tried to think of anything I could do to change the state of the house before he arrived. Maybe I could clean up some of the kitchen. I heard his footsteps on the stairs. A feeling of failure washed over me. There was no way I could clean the kitchen in the next seven seconds. I began to kick myself internally for not paying attention to the time and not having all those things taken care of earlier. My mind raced back over my day trying to understand where the time had gone. Did I really accomplish ANYTHING today?

That takes much longer to write and read than it took in real life!  Somehow I was able to think all of those thoughts at once!

Suddenly my habitual thought process was interrupted by my conscience. I’d been listening to and obeying my conscience in connection with the way I related with my mom for about 2 weeks, and I’d grown accustomed to distinguishing it. To me it seemed like my conscience was particularly loud because my mind and my adrenalin were extremely active at that moment. It was like the sound of a record-player needle being ripped off a record, errrRRRRCHCH!!!, and I heard, “This is wrong thinking.” I stopped thinking about how to keep my husband from being angry in order to ponder that very sudden and new idea.

I knew that was the Holy Spirit speaking through my conscience, I had no doubt about that. But I had never considered that my activity of trying to keep my husband from being angry came from wrong thinking. Actually it was quite the opposite. I had always thought it was my duty as a submitted wife, as his helper. I hadn’t really thought it out in those terms before, but I believed I was being godly by working at trying to keep my husband from being angry. I asked The Lord, “It is wrong thinking?”  My conscience immediately resounded back to me, “YES!”

Shortly my husband burst into our room, silent and deliberate without any sort of greeting, went through his routine of putting his things away, and then roughly informed me that I didn’t park the van straight in the garage again, complaining with derision that he could barely squeeze his car in. I was barely hearing him because I was trying to imagine a life without thinking about how to keep him from being angry. I couldn’t wrap my mind around the possibility. I spent a great deal of thought life on the subject of preventing or quelling his anger. I almost began to wonder what I could possibly think about instead…..What a silly thought!! (as I sit here at my computer laughing out loud at my old self!)

How do you think about your own activities surrounding someone in your life you are controlled by? How do you make plans to avoid the expected response? Do you kick yourself for not doing better? Do you spend thought life considering how to fix (manipulate) the circumstances or even convince or direct other people in your life so that a certain controlling person won’t behave the way you know they will? Do you cringe inside before it happens, bracing yourself for the look or the outburst or the argument or the blame or the cold shoulder or that certain set of words that you can’t bear to hear?

If you allow your children to control you, how do you think and plan to avoid, stall or prevent their undesirable activity?

Considering how to control and manipulate another for your own gain is wrong thinking. Some might say, “Wait a minute, I thought you were talking about BEING controlled?”  I AM talking about being controlled. Our fleshly self-centered response to being controlled, is to control and manipulate in return, only with a different set of tactics. My thought processes were wrapped up in what I could do to change (manipulate) my husband’s responses because I didn’t like it. I desired to control the circumstances and often my children in order to manipulate him out of his anger, because I didn’t like the way he treated me when he was angry. I wanted his approval so I spent thought life and much effort trying to figure out how to get it.

I was engaged in wrong thinking.  Thank You Lord for rescuing me from my own wrong ways of thinking!

P.S.  For those of you who don’t yet know our story, it has a happy ending. Tim is no longer an angry man. He is thoughtful, understanding, caring and kind and he loves me with his whole heart. All the things I share about him are shared with his full permission and blessing.

My story continues in the following blog posts starting here.

More of our testimony is included in Marilyn Howshall’s book, Empowered—Healing the Heartbeat of Your Family, and two accompanying audio testimonies, which were recorded at a conference in May 2010.

[originally posted November 2010]