What To Do When the Marriage Has to Change for You To Stay in it.
When things have gotten dire enough to seek help, it’s often hard to know what to count on from your spouse regarding the future of your relationship. You desperately want to plant your feet into something solid and reliable. Therefore, it makes complete sense that you’d want to know if the changes being made are “real.” So, how can you tell?
Chemistry is Not Connection
We enter relationships attracted by something—a look, a personality, a desire, an intrigue—without the skills to maturely relate. And without those skills and perspective, the chemistry easily explodes into chaos, confusion, and loneliness.
Staring Abuse in the Face
One of the devastating effects of prolonged narcissistic abuse is gaslighting, leading victims to doubt their own sanity. She may ask herself if she is the narcissist because she has begun to internalize the abuser’s accusations.
“Where’d You Park?” — A Self-Evaluation for Breaking Free of Stubborn Pride, Fear, and Complacency
Where’d you park? Not literally — I mean in your life. Your marriage. Your walk with God. The people you keep close.
Most of us never stop to ask. And if you’re anything like the people I sit across from every week, some part of you already knows why: looking honestly at where you’ve parked means admitting you might need to move.
Driven by the Feelings You Choose
Most of the time, we let feelings drive our behavior like mindless fools, not realizing we’ve given away our own power to enjoy the moments for what they are. We make a meaning and attribute a motive to what we think we see, and that becomes the “perception” that fuels our feelings. Those feelings become the motivation and direction of our responses.
The Perturbed Heart Part 2
If God is after your integrity, and He uses the people around you to soften the edges and knock out the junk, how do you navigate the toxicity without getting burned? Here’s how to embrace growth within relationships.
The Perturbed Heart, Part 1
Consider the inner chaos you are experiencing connected to another person or people. Whatever feelings they provoke in you, that’s what God is after. The closer the relationship, the deeper the emotional impact. These feelings reflect the deeper issues of your heart—your insecurities, fears, desires, and your ability to connect and love. It’s within this space that God wants to transform your life.
Crazy…or Courageous?
The hard part is confronting our prideful need to feel in control of our circumstances. Trusting God enough to follow Him to some crazy places means that we allow ourselves to be vulnerable to the unknown and the unsafe.
What is Wisdom
In today’s postmodern culture, it would seem that “wisdom” is not absolute but is only determined in relevance to personal circumstances however one decides to define or identify it. The argument is that something that is “relative” is not lasting and not valuable. Why would we seek it, then?