God is NOT mad at you. His will is not for you to be hurt or abused by your husband.
History shows us that when imperfect people use their independence to get what they desire without any consideration of others and a foundation of love and honor, the result is hurt, abuse, and devastation.
Abuse/Domestic Violence, Faith Struggles and Strengthening, Fear, Oppressing Thoughts or Mind Matters, Struggles, Uncertainty in Transitions of Life
Surrender is Not Defeat
July 16, 2018The process of surrender is constant and requires you to be intentional. Ever present is our flesh self-will wanting to do things “our way” and in “our time.” However, our way is the opposite of trusting and surrendering to Jesus.
Abuse/Domestic Violence, Faith Struggles and Strengthening, Love, Oppressing Thoughts or Mind Matters, Relationships, Struggles
I Just Want to Feel Loved
July 3, 2018If you are looking for love in all the wrong places and still feeling love-starved, why not look to Jesus through a personal relationship. The only way to change the love in your life is to CHANGE what you have been doing. Transformational changes take place in the renewing your mind and heart through Christ Jesus. These changes empower you to intentionally choose your thoughts, words, attitudes, and actions to mirror his.
Unfortunately, many Christians have not been taught how to use Christ’s strength in them to help them face and overcome their problems. Jesus shows us the importance of acknowledging, examining, and the steps necessary to overcome our problems through his love, example, and scripture.
We all start out as infants using our emotions and cries to alert others to our basic needs. Some of you have never grown out of the emotional reactionary demand for what we desire, want, or need, especially if people have always given into you. You may think you have control over others but in the end, you are an emotional mess. The truth is, your emotions have made a slave of you. The good news is, you can learn a new empowering mindset and behavior to free yourself from using your out-of-control emotional reactions.
However, most of us try to figure out how to be happy on our own. We use what we know from our beliefs, mindsets, and experiences. If you grew up in a negative, hurtful, or abusive environment, you might have come to believe happiness is rare, circumstantial, and short-lived. Some of you may also believe you were not meant to or deserve to be happy from the messages and treatment you received from others.
All your messages, beliefs, and experiences have combined throughout your life to create your unique definition and understanding of happiness. Then it is filtered through your personality and tendency to be optimistic or pessimistic.
Without knowing God’s true meaning, I interpreted this chapter through the imperfect lens of my broken love experiences. My misguided understanding of love twisted my mindset. I saw love as me giving my all, while my spouse enjoyed it. I didn’t have equal expectations for the way he treated me. In this mindset, I saw the success or failure of my marriage as my sole responsibility. My one-sided and love-starved mindset and misunderstanding of God’s design for love and marriage made me vulnerable to become a victim of domestic abuse.
The primary trap for me was the illusion that my husband loved me, especially since I felt love-starved. The reason I stayed and kept trying to make my marriage work was my commitment to God in my marriage vows. I knew I had to give God and my husband my all. With my twisted understanding of love, I continued to be abused for thirteen years.
I never realized God created the perfect recipe, design, and aspects of love until I was in my thirties. No one ever told me, and I wouldn’t be surprised if no one told you. After several abusive marriages ending in divorce, I began to study the life of Jesus. He showed me his love is not a feeling. His pure love “is” the substance of all of God’s goodness and it “does” everything to honor Him, others, and yourself. Just as I needed the right ingredients to successfully bake mom’s cake recipe, I needed to know Christ’s recipe for love to live in each aspect.
Christ’s characteristics, words, and actions helped me understand what my thoughts, words, attitudes, and actions will look like when I love as he does. It also revealed what a marriage looks like in his design with gentleness, kindness, and selflessness. His love revealed the flaws I had unknowingly created in my definition of love.
My mindset led me to accept it was “normal” for a woman to expect to be punished if she provoked her husband’s anger. The enemy loves to twist a strand of truth with rationalizations, excuses, and entitlement in your mind to justify why someone who professes to love you, would hurt you. I didn’t realize that my marriage focused on making my husband happy to avoid making him mad, instead of love. At this point in my life, I didn’t know about God’s design of love and marriage.