Becoming Objective and Accurate

[from the archives]

Over the past several blog posts I’ve been remembering and recounting how the Lord set me free from allowing my husband to control me. I began this part of my story with Peeling Bananas in Secret. The situations I’ve been recounting happened in February, March and April of 2006.

Over the next 5 months I continued to allow the Lord to change me. I was learning how to relate rightly with people around me. I learned through conversations with Marilyn and through conversations with the Lord that I was using many people to gain approval for myself by parading my abilities and making arrangements to spend time with people who seemed to like me or be impressed by me. I saw how unloving this was and I stopped doing those things.

I came to see how I expected people to reject me, so I projected rejection of me on them. In my mind I twisted their words and actions into rejection for me and then I rehearsed their “rejection” over and over, entering into internal self-pity. I came to see how unloving it was to assume people were rejecting me, assigning that behavior to them when it was really coming from within me. I repented and stopped using people this way.

As I allowed the Lord to show me the truth about myself and repented, I began to be able to accurately see how my husband’s controlling and unloving behaviors worked in him. I began to have an objective and accurate picture of his ways of relating, which no longer controlled me. I told the truth to myself about his unloving ways which prepared me to soon be able to tell him the truth void of self-centered motivation and emotion—to tell the truth IN LOVE. This is the kind of understanding that is required in order to have true grace.

I find that many parents are simply unwilling to tell THEMSELVES the truth about their spouse’s unloving behavior. In recounting to me relational interchanges, many wives unknowingly reveal how unloving their husbands are, but when I speak more bluntly about those behaviors, calling sin for what it is, they’re quick to say, “Oh no, he’s a godly man and he really loves the Lord.”

It matters little how much a person knows about Scripture or how much they study the Bible or how active and serious they are in church and outreach  activities. 1 John 4:8 and 16 says it very plainly, “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” And “God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.” Unloving behaviors within the family relationships reveal a lack of true relationship with the Lord, no matter how serious about God and His ways a person seems to be.

If we as parents are not willing to objectively tell the truth to ourselves about the unloving behaviors of our spouse and children, then we will not be able to help them become free of their sin and come to truly know God who is love. We cannot accurately see the truth about their unloving behaviors until we stop soft-selling our sin to ourselves, tell the truth, and repent of our unloving relational practices. Allowing God to teach you how to love by listening to your conscience will give you the ability to truly lead others to Him beginning with your own family.

I had already begun to tell my husband the truth about how his behaviors hurt the children and destroyed his relationship with them. However, I was the one who bore the brunt of his unloving behaviors. He would not be free from these strongholds in his life until he stopped being a slave to them in the way he related with me. The Lord led me through the process of overcoming my fear of conflict, my fear of rejection, and my intense selfish desire for my husband’s approval so that I could learn what love really is and become a true help to him.

My story continues here…

[originally posted November, 2010]