Triggering has to do with those emotions hidden away, along with memories, all stuffed by trauma in various secret compartments of the brain. Unforgiveness on the other hand is not so much emotion as it is the seeking of vengeance upon someone, rather than leaving it to God. The two are really quite different. You can have forgiven someone, but still get triggered.
God Doesn’t Care About Shells
Spiritual Maturity and Emotional Health Go Hand in Hand
“True spiritual maturity is not possible without concurrent growth in emotional health. In one of my comments to last weeks’ post, I said that what’s going inside of us often repeats itself in our outside world. For example, when we’re unhealthy on the inside, we attract others who are unhealthy. When we beat ourselves up on the inside for our faults, flaws, mistakes, and failures, we are more likely to tolerate that behavior from others on the outside. When we don’t think for ourselves we are more likely to blindly follow or believe things people tell us without checking it out for ourselves. When we feel unhealthy, we also often feel incapable of taking care of ourselves or standing up for ourselves in appropriate ways. When we don’t care about ourselves or care for our soul, spirit, mind, or body then we are more likely to accept relationships with others who do not care for our body, mind, spirit and soul either.”
Read the rest of Shortening the Abuse Learning Curve by Leslie Vernick HERE.
Let’s jump out of our “Christian” boxes and jump into the ocean of God’s creative plans for each one of us. He’s got a few more ideas than you might think, and they’re waiting in your mail box…
“Those who fully experience depression, doubt, confusion, and despair, may be infinitely more healthy than those who are generally certain, complacent, and self- satisfied. The denial of suffering is, in fact, a better definition of illness than it’s acceptance.” M. Scott Peck
A reader asks:
“If abuse…is so prevalent in Christian marriages, do you think there are “warnings” or “red flags” we can look out for as young women, to avoid marrying into an abusive relationship?”
Yes there are. Here’s a good list to get you started:
Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. Love is in the air. Love notes are passed around. A lot of chocolate, too. Roses. Hearts. For women in destructive marriages, days like this are a reminder that they are not loved the way they dreamed when they were little girls.
Fifty Shades of Genesis 3:16
The Twilight Series was a lighter version of Fifty Shades of Grey. Call it what you want – erotic fiction, BDSM, or in the Twilight Series, paranormal young adult fiction. But the bottom line of both series is the same — Good Girls fall in love with Bad Boys. These particular series made the news because the individual books and movies reached a mass market audience, but “romance” novels involving the “hero” treating the girl badly and the girl wanting him anyway (with the hope of reforming him) have been hugely successful among women for hundreds of years.
The popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey doesn’t surprise me, because God predicted it in Genesis 3. The woman’s desire or strong craving (addiction if you will) will be for the man, and he will rule over her. THAT is why Fifty Shades of Grey, the Twilight Series, and countless other lesser known masochistic “romance” novels have flourished over the years. When Christ is removed from our relationships, that is what is left – men oppressing women and women lapping it up, even if it’s just in fiction. I imagine men will not appreciate that characterization any more than women will. Yet, apart from Christ and God’s common grace among unbelievers, this is where both sexes default in my humble opinion, and I think history affirms my view.
Read the rest of this article by Wendy Alsup HERE.
God is the Author of reality. The opposite of reality is insanity. Anything done to right wrongs without including Reality is just exchanging one type of insanity for another.
Five Indicators of an Evil Heart
As Christian counselors, pastors and people helpers we often have a hard time discerning between an evil heart and an ordinary sinner who messes up, who isn’t perfect, and full of weakness and sin.
I think one of the reasons we don’t “see” evil is because we find it so difficult to believe that evil individuals actually exist. We can’t imagine someone deceiving us with no conscience, hurting others with no remorse, spinning outrageous fabrications to ruin someone’s reputation, or pretending he or she is spiritually committed yet has no fear of God before his or her eyes
Find out how you can tell the difference between an ordinary sinner and an evil person by reading the rest of Leslie’s article HERE.
“God can and does heal and redeem broken marriages. But some individuals can and do marry evil people who resist God’s Holy Spirit but try to use God’s word as cover to keep perpetrating their evil. Marriage, like a church, to a certain extent is still a shell. If a marriage “shell” is used to allow real people to be abused and hurt, God may well take it down. Keep in mind, in the first century, Jewish women weren’t allowed to divorce their husbands. Jesus fought divorce to protect women who could be easily discarded with little prospects. His comments on divorce were to protect women, not to keep them in a harmful situation. He was caring for real people more than he was idolizing a “shell.”
Haven’t we turned this around a little? When a man preys on his wife and children, refusing to repent, almost laughing that they can’t escape his abuse because he has not been sexually unfaithful and won’t abandon them so any divorce would be “unbiblical,” and then he’s supported by well-meaning Christians who essentially say “the shell of marriage matters more than the woman and children inside the shell,” I think we’ve lost the heart of God.”
Read the rest of this article HERE.