7 Easy Steps to a Crappy Marriage!

Lots of books and blogs have been dedicated to helping people have happy and successful marriages but what about those masochists out there who enjoy struggling and beating their head against the wall?  Well, I have a handful of easy things you can do that will be guaranteed to make you and your spouse miserable and best of all they are things we all do naturally on our own.  The key is keeping your focus in the right place and you won't be burdened by peace or fulfillment ever again.

1.  Focus on your own needs and desires - Make sure you take every opportunity you can to let your spouse know how they are failing you on a regular basis in case they forgot how inept at marriage they are.  Describe in detail what it would look like if they were to fulfill all of your wildest dreams and desires, feel free to reference your friend's spouses, exes, or even your parent who did things the right way.  The good part is if you each are focusing completely on your own needs and desires then you'll be too busy to actually meet the other person's needs.  It's like each of you writing out a super long wishlist for Christmas gifts and then giving them to each other instead of any actual gifts - imagine the disappointment potential!

2.  Focus on their flaws - Sure you have much more of an ability to change things in yourself than someone else, but honestly, who wants to take time looking at their own junk when there is so much to point out in your spouse?  The great part is this is super easy as, unless you are a priest and are married to Jesus, you have a sinful flawed human being in your house who screws up on a regular basis.  Pointing out when they mess up is as easy as pointing out when they breathe.  If you ever get around to fully chronicling and categorizing all of their shortcomings you can start looking at yourself, but honestly you could spend a lifetime just studying every nuance of their failure.

3.  You can't have too much criticism - Don't just hold all of that frustration about their flaws inside, make sure you say it loud and proud and remember tone of voice and timing are important here.  Make sure they are already in a foul mood or even better wait until the middle of an argument to start airing your grievances.  Also whenever possible make sure you criticize them in front of others, like at a dinner party you could publicly humiliate your spouse for extra points or do that fun thing where you act like you are talking to your kids but your are really making a jab at your spouses character like "Now Johnny, I sure hope when you grow up you get a great job so you don't have to live in squalor like we do, thanks to your lazy dad" or "Suzy, you need to ask with manners, you don't want to grow up and be an ill-tempered dictator like your mom do you?"  Make sure you disregard anything that might lead you to develop appreciation as that can throw the whole thing off, best to filter every bit of data recording all they do poorly and deleting all they do well.

4.  Never, ever let it go - When people tell you not to keep score in marriage they are trying to throw you off so you won't be able to win, because winning means remembering every single offense in vivid detail.  Keep a secret journal of when the last time you had sex was or take pictures of messy spots around the house to shame them on Facebook.  Rookies start with the very first thing their spouse ever did to hurt them and catalog everything moving forward, but if you want to do it right you can use stuff from before you ever met them like how they grew up, mistakes they made in other relationships, you can even count offenses from other people if you lump them into categories like "Men are always..." or "Women aren't happy unless..."  Don't forget anything and definitely don't forgive anything because you are likely morally superior to them in every way and don't need grace yourself.  You'll become bitter and apathetic, dying from the inside out and they will start seeing the entire relationship through your resentful glasses as well so it is a gift that keeps on giving.

5.  Make sure you keep a fixed mindset - Everyone knows you are either just naturally good or marriage or you aren't, you can't learn how to be a better spouse or how to better love them and they definitely can't change either.  You are who you are, women have been that way going back ten generations and it's your god-given right as a man to talk like that from time to time.  Throw out things like "You just need to love me the way I am" so you don't have to see change as a possibility.  Give them a mixed message of complaining about stuff wanting it to change, but attacking their character at the same time so they know they are really just too stupid, lazy, or morally bankrupt to ever pull it off anyway.  It's not like people can learn and become better at things so what applies to school, sports, hobbies, and the rest of life has to apply here as well - you are either born with it or you aren't.

6. Don't ever let the blame fall on you - It's like a fun game of hot potato where you can point fingers back and forth until the other person is stumped or runs out of ways to redirect fault.  Since most marital problems are circular instead of linear in that they just keep looping in cycles the fun really never has to end.  Don't ever apologize or even hint at the possibility that you might share some responsibility, its like being a good negotiator you have to start at the far extreme and when you get worked down to the middle it makes them feel like they got something when they really didn't.

7. Give your spouse exactly what they deserve - This one is key, and can't be repeated enough.  Marriage isn't a place for mercy, grace, or understanding, the most important thing you can fight for is fairness.  Before you decide to do something nice for them make sure they have done enough nice things for you, but if they aren't meeting all of your needs then make sure you withhold some things from them or else it will never be fair.  If she is being critical and nagging then just stay late and work and ignore her, if he is raising his voice in conflict just get louder, don't just get mad, get even!  Getting your spouse whipped into shape is like training a dog, don't bother with the positive reinforcement and don't reward anything other than perfection on the first try - heavy handed punishment is the key.  If they hurt you, make sure you hurt them back a little more, it's in the Bible that we are supposed to gouge out someone's eye if they poke ours right?  This creates a place where perfect people deserve a perfect spouse but the rest of us shouldn't get any breaks, and so the marriage will be fine until the first person has a bad day or makes a mistake and then, like dominoes, everything else will come crashing down.  Nobody deserves love, so why give it freely away when it is a valuable commodity to be hoarded?

The sarcasm is pretty thick through here, but for those who may not catch it I feel I should spell it out that these are the approaches I see all the time that give the same miserable results in marriage every time.  The key to improving your marriage is keeping the focus on what you can do to make things better, since that is all you have any control over.

Apologies

Well, since it has been five months since I last blogged and it's New Years I guess I should try and throw up something and I'll even try to do what I've been trying for a while, write something shorter so people don't fall asleep halfway through!  So today I will talk about how to apologize well, since most of us are pretty bad at it.  We tend to do a quick 1% apology up front followed by 99% of justifying, explaining, excusing ourselves, and even blaming.  We learn to apologize while fighting with our siblings or on the playground and the forced apology we learn at that point often sticks as our only way we know how to apologize.

So most people apologize something like this:

"I'm sorry, but really I would have never yelled like that if you weren't being so darned stubborn.  I wish we didn't have to fight like that but if you would just listen to me and hear what I am trying to say I wouldn't have to yell.  Pretty much anyone in my situation would have responded the way I did and really it becomes completely involuntary at that point.  I come from a long line of yellers and between my red hair and being an only child I don't think you could expect much different.  In fact, lets just stop dwelling on stuff from the past, can't we just move on or do you just enjoy holding grudges?  So what, I yelled, big whoop, you are a big boy you will get over it, or you can just keep trying to make me out to be the bad guy who always does everything wrong.  So I guess I am just the worst wife on the planet because I yelled once, huh?  I mean compared to the way you yelled at me last week, or do I need to remind you of my mother's birthday?  You've done far worse than just yell and it is just all forgotten when you catch me yelling.  So, you knew what you were marrying and you were OK with me then, guess you'll have to be OK with me now.  I'm tired, I don't feel like talking any more about this."

A good apology is basically the opposite of that and has three main parts to keep in mind - Accept responsibility, Acknowledge the impact, and Speak to the future.  First make sure you take full responsibility for your choice, you could have chosen to act or respond in hundreds of different ways but your choice hurt the other person.  It didn't have to be purposeful harm or even conscious, but you did something that caused pain and you can apologize for it.  No blaming, no justifying, just accepting that you did something that caused pain or disappointment.  Second you make sure and acknowledge that there was hurt or pain rather than minimizing it or comparing it to pain you have felt.  They aren't just making a big deal of nothing and if you don't understand what damage was done then ask with a open heart and humility to hear.  And then finally speak to the future of how you would like to avoid hurting them in the same way in the future.  This isn't a grandiose promise to never hurt them again, which you both know to be a lie, it is taking their pain seriously by trying to find a way to prevent it in the future.  "Maybe we can figure out a way to call a time out when we start getting agitated so I don't ever get to the point where I am yelling that way, because I want to make sure when we disagree that I am able to do it in a way that always honors you."

Keep all three parts in mind and you will actually leave the other person feeling cared for rather than even more angry than when you started apologizing.

Women Are a Mystery?

How were the pyramid's built?  How many decimals does Pi go out to?  How do teenage boys eat so much?  These are all mysteries of the universe, but maybe understanding what is going on inside the brain of a woman is the greatest mystery of all for most men.  I get the benefit of working with hundreds of married couples acting as a translator between the sexes and over time see the same basic desires expressed over and over by most women and figured I'd share what I've gleaned.

The first thing I've discovered is that the deepest desires of a woman are a mystery to men partially because they are a mystery to the women themselves.  I really have to push women to admit this, but after lots of "He should just know" and "Women are just complex" bluffing I usually get shrugged shoulders.  There often seems to be an inner desire to be cared for like a baby, you should just be able to whine and cry and an all powerful being will come in and determine what you need and make it all better.  This works as an infant as there are like four possible things wrong and so if they smell you and look at the clock they can pretty much figure out what you want, but as a full grown woman with approximately 9 trillion possible dilemmas most of which without a fix expecting mindreading doesn't work as well.  The problem is that women are far more likely to be in touch with their emotions than men as well as more open to communicate them so you get a steady slew of expressed frustrations and concerns with tons of vagueness - kind of like getting a daily job performance review from your boss with absolutely no tangible suggestions for improvement.  This results in confounded men who would love to help meet your needs but hear cultural lies like it is just an unknowable mystery so just give up.

The second thing I have discovered about the innermost needs of most women I talk to is that they don't occur to most men simply because we really don't need them that much.  It is kind of like when I was caring for an infant for several hours while my wife was at work, I had to make sure I remember to feed the baby on a regular basis because they get hungry a lot more often than I do.  I can't just think about what I need waiting on my own stomach to rumble, I have to think through what someone else needs even if it is different from anything I need (another way being a parent helps you become better in other relationships).  If we, as men, need a, b, and c to feel fulfilled in a relationship we'll readily give them out, but often if we don't have the need, we don't think to provide it for someone else.

So what is it that most women want that I speak with and help them put into words?  Three basic things, to be pursued, to be validated, and to be reassured.  Most men don't really care whether it was you or me who set up the time to eat lunch, just that it happened.  Most women, however, take it as a sign of being valuable and important that you were the one to call them, set something up, and made the arrangements.  This is even true in their friendships; when was the last time you heard a guy complain that he is the one who is always having to call his friend, Bob, and how he wonders why Bob just cares so little for him because of this.  It is the basic premise of most every fairy tale, book, or movie that has ever been that a man will put forth an immense amount of effort and endure danger to relentlessly chase after the woman he loves either to rescue her or win her back.  The harsh reality is that within most marriages the woman waited a really long time up in the tower and by the time she gave up and hunted the prince down he was unconscious in the recliner in front of a football game with Cheetos all over his chest and by the time she makes her appearance SHE is the dragon to be slain.  Maybe it's planning a date night and actually arranging childcare and having an opinion as where to go.  Maybe it is taking the lead in making sure there is ten minutes a day to communicate on a deeper level, instead of the usual 80% of marital communication being initiated by women.

Most men are able to have a conversation with another man without even a shred of validation and it is OK, we each say our opinions and how dumb the other person's opinion is and then we are good.  For women it is pretty important that they feel like we get what they are saying and see validity in it.  There are plenty of stupid jokes out there that say men should just smile and nod and say "yes, dear" to whatever she says, but that is condescending to both men and women and really doesn't make a women feel truly validated, just more of a bully.  You don't have to agree with everything they say, they don't have to be right about everything, but everything can be heard, accepted as a valid perspective, and empathized with.  Even if afterwards you have to tell them you disagree or that you feel they are sinning in the situation and need to repent, as any good leader would need to do at times, you can still validate that they aren't an insane crazy-woman with ridiculous thoughts, beliefs, interpretations, and perspectives.

Men tend to see relationships as static, they just are - Bob, Frank, and Jimmy are my friends and Betty is my wife of twenty years.  Women tend to see relationships far more accurately, as eternally dynamic, constantly shifting and growing closer or further away.  Jenny is my newer friend who is really getting closer to me while Rita and I have been growing apart for years, while my husband and I are drifting further and further apart for the last few months.  There is a need for men to grow in relational awareness in order to not feel like their wife is just complaining when she is simply sounding the alarm that your Titanic is heading for an iceberg and only a fool would ignore that.  What it also means is that men need to make sure and reassure their wives on a regular ongoing basis that they still find them attractive, still love them, and really value their marriage as well.  We tend to think that if we said at some point in the past that we love our wives and "I do" then that should be the point of reference moving forward in case there is any doubt.  Unless there are major issues we don't usually question how our wife feels about us, like we don't question that the next time we look at our grass it will probably still be green.  We figure if anything changes we can send our wife a memo, but otherwise we shouldn't need to keep repeating ourselves.  The problem is that in the midst of that silence tons of doubt creeps in and it means a lot for our wives to be daily reminded that we are still committed to them and love them more than we ever have, and that we still get giddy as a middle schooler when we see their beauty, and that we are proud to have them as our wives.  Silence isn't seen neutrally but rather as a lack of value and importance for them and the marriage.

So unless your wife says my list is crap and wants to fill you in on their core needs just assume that if you are being graded on your husbanding skills it is likely how well you are pursuing, validating, and reassuring.  If you are a wife and your husband is randomly pushing buttons like a monkey trying to please you, but frustrating you both in the process please share this or your own desires with him, you'll be glad you did.

Honor Above and Below

I've been thinking more and more lately about the concept of honor and how is is similar yet very different from respect.  Honor is important not only to our relationships but to our faith, and seen and practiced well gives us an opportunity to make our relationships healthier, our faith stronger, and even allows God opportunities to shower us with blessings.  We live in a culture where we are encouraged to treat others with the level of respect we feel they have earned, nothing more, nothing less.  What this means is that people we don't know shouldn't get any respect, people who have hurt or disappointed us surely don't get it, and people who don't respect us shouldn't be given respect in response.  If there is someone above us in authority it is no longer necessarily essential to treat them with respect, if anything it makes you a bigger target for disrespect today.  If someone is below us in authority we can use our power to force obedience, but there is no need to do it in a respectful way.  If someone is beside us in authority then it is fine to see them as competition in need of being squashed so that we can get ahead while they lag behind.  All of this runs contrary to what following Christ actually looks like, it's rather just following our culture.

Phillipians 2 is a great chapter describing how Jesus lowered himself to take on the form of man rather than lording his power and authority over others.  Jesus encouraged paying taxes to Caesar and supporting the authorities we have been placed under with honor and respect.  I would say that how you handle power and whom you are willing to honor may be the most insightful peek into your heart possible.  How do you choose to act towards those you feel like you don't need, how do you care for those underneath of your authority, how willing are you to submit to the authorities you are under?  These are the questions that reveal your real character, not just the polished exterior you present to the world.  If you are only kind, giving, and respectful to people you feel you need or can benefit you in some way then you aren't loving, you are exchanging or manipulating.  You either wait for them to do something beneficial for you then honor them and therefore pay them for their services or you do for them with strings tied, expecting a payout down the road, and therefore are manipulating them to get what you want.  How well do you treat those under your authority or whom you have more power?  Do you lord your power over them expecting perfection or do you use your position to display grace when they mess up, compassion when they struggle to meet demands, and forgiveness when they wrong you?  What about the authorities over you, do you submit to them as unto the Lord, do you openly defy them with flagrance, or do you sneak around trying to get away with as much as you can without being caught? Do you feel like you can pick and choose who is in authority over you or do you believe what the Bible says about government leaders being established by God, children needing to honor their parents, husbands and wives needing to submit to each other but the husband being appointed as the head, employees (slaves) needing to obey their bosses (masters)?  Often we decide that since I didn't vote for the current president I have the right to criticize, demean, and defame him privately and publicly - yes we have the American right of free speech, but if we claim to be a Christ-follower we are called to a higher standard of honor.  Often we decide that when our spouses don't meet our expectations then we have the right to criticize them openly to anyone who will listen rather than honoring them with our hearts, minds, words, and actions.  Children who pick and choose what they will or will not obey of their parents will develop the hearts that rebel against God's authority.  Children who see their parents berate their teachers for daring to expect compliance from their child are being taught that authority figures are to be challenged and that honor and submission are signs of weakness rather than Christ-likeness.  Children who see their moms criticize their dads learn that either mom is the true highest authority in the house or that there really is no authority and everyone gets to just decide on their own.  We need to model humility, honor, and submission to authority to our children if we ever expect them to respect our authority or to ever be able to bow their own selfish will to God's authority over them.  Because that is what it comes down to when it comes to honoring and submitting to those in authority over us - if we feed the rebellious, stiff-necked, selfish, unable to be corrected spirit within ourselves by dishonoring those in authority over us it just reveals our true heart towards God, that we'll listen as long as we agree but then do whatever we really want behind closed doors.  I heard a woman married over 55 years telling her best advice for how to have a loving, long-lasting marriage and she said: be able to forgive well and be able to receive correction well.  Both of those are power and authority issues - who has the right to tell me what to do and what will I do to someone I feel wronged by and therefore have power over.

One area I see this coming out often in counseling is the clashing of my generation with the one that came before mine (I am 35 if that helps).  Both generations have erred when it comes to honor and the differences create major conflict as we interact as adults.  The generation of my parents were raised in a society that taught that children were to be seen and not heard and that elders were to be catered to and always given deference.  My generation was raised in a society that said that children were to be the most important people in the house and elders should cater to them.  Put them together and you have parents who spent a great portion of their lives placating and pandering to a bunch of adults that treated them like a nuisance at best or cattle at worst.  They grow to become older and expect that their investment will now be paid back with the generation below them placating and pandering to them now.  This is met by my generation's narcissistic response that old people are great if they are doing stuff for us, but otherwise are just a nuisance - the reverse of the seen but not heard principle.  Put it all together and both sides expect to be catered to and feel slighted that the other isn't doing what society promised them.  The solution is honor; when you honor those below you, above you, and beside you not just with lip service but in response to the love and honor God has poured out for us then we all have life breathed into us.  When we choose dishonor it not only hardens our hearts but limits God from being able to fully bless us the way he would like.  If you feel like you just aren't making strides in your walk with Christ it's worth asking yourself; do I have any unconfessed sin, do I have any bitterness from not forgiving others, or is there anywhere that I am not honoring those above or below me in authority?  God opposes the proud, he despises when bullies use their power to harm rather than enhance, but he also can only do so much with people that rebel against authority, that can't be corrected, and who are unteachable.

Insufficient Funds

Sex, Money, and In-laws - most surveys say these are the top three topics that couples argue about and I'd say that is true, even if the core issues behind all three usually are more related to pride, selfishness, and self-centeredness.  90% of the time when couples come in arguing about one of these things I can usually help them best not by whipping out slides and spreadsheets on how to do them well but rather to point them back to what is really at the root and needing to be discussed - we're really talking about MY money, MY freedom, MY pleasure, MY body, MY not being controlled, MY family, etc.  If both people's hearts are in the right spot and they just need guidance then I can help people with the nuts and bolts of how to relate within extended families but I'm about as qualified to instruct people in financial matters as I am in lovemaking.  I can tell you how me and my wife do things (just financially) but I'm no expert.

In fact I'm a financial idiot, not because basic math eludes me but because willpower does, and I can rationalize my way into anything.  This lead to a scenario that probably only happened 5-10 times over the course of the 9 years I was responsible for running the family's finances, but each time it was mortifying.  It seemed to happen more often to my wife than me, but it was standing in the check-out line of the supermarket with a buggy full of groceries and no way to pay for them.  A good hour of life has already been invested in selecting just the right items and then apparently rough approximations of remaining checking balances and maxed out credit cards don't equate to a return on that time investment.  So you have to walk out of the store either staring blankly at your wallet hoping it might console you or looking around hoping you don't know anyone in the store before jumping back in the car and driving home empty handed.  Then later on you reach in the pantry to get something you purchased before you are once again reminded of your blunder as just because you picked something out doesn't mean it made it home with you.  I share this not only so I can be openly mocked by the greater world but because I have a hunch I'm not the only one who has been there or somewhere close.  The good news is you don't have to stay there, as my family will never be there again thanks to getting together with a financial counselor.

Our guy sat down with us and walked through what it actually looks like to construct an exhaustive budget and live by it, how to set aside money each month in savings for expenses that aren't monthly, and how to use a cash envelope system so you are going to the store with cash instead of a debit card and hopeful thoughts.  What this means for us is no longer living paycheck to paycheck, building savings, eliminating debt, and most of all a freedom that comes from being in charge of our money rather than our money being in charge of us.  You may be awesome at all this stuff and if so good for you, read a different blog entry, but if you are like me then stop rationalizing or getting more information and get guidance and accountability.  If you are in the Charlotte area contact Kim and Loree Heimbach at http://www.newhopefinancialcs.com/ or 704-604-3485. If you aren't then check out http://www.daveramsey.com/coaching/find-coach/ to find somebody in your area.

Keeping Score

Lots of couples keep score in marriage, I'd wager to say that most everyone who has ever been married has kept score at some point and probably routinely.  By keeping score I mean holding on to some sort of measure of fairness in the marriage based either on number of times the other person has screwed up, number of times they have let you down, or how long it has been since a desired action or behavior has occurred.  Men are quick to accuse their wives of this as they are usually pretty good about ignoring the 49 things fully accomplished on the to-do list and focus in on why exactly the toilet didn't end up getting cleaned when they have never been the one to get urine anywhere other than in the bowl.  But then I have also found that most every husband on the planet can give you how many days/weeks/years/minutes it has been since the last time their wife had sex with them, data which they are pretty sure is scientifically reliable but almost always errs on the side of exaggeration.  Most of this comes from always having a front row seat to observe what we are doing but only occasionally seeing what they do, knowing full well how many times we held our tongue but only having access to the data of when they don't.  Whether it is how many times I have done the dishes because you forgot or how many times you have said you are sorry in the last year or the last time I felt like you called me at work and didn't have a complaint from me we all seem to have a running internal scoreboard that is constantly updated.  The problem with this scoreboard is that it is rarely even remotely accurate and even if it were it all is a push for fairness in a marriage - and fairness is something that should have been crushed in Kindergarten but seems to survive for most of us.

I touched on this idea here: http://pilferedwisdom.blogspot.com/2011/08/compromise-key-to-marriage.html in talking about the myth of compromise, but fairness doesn't just infect decision making, but our general stance towards the other person.  Either they are doing a sufficient job at pleasing me (Because my happiness IS the supreme ruling force of the universe to be striven after by all, not the worship and glorification of our creator and savior...) and I feel like the scales are balanced, or I am doing the lion's share of the work, responsibility, and sacrifice and therefore I am owed a debt.  But if doing things for the person we love and have pledged our life to produces resentment or an invoice then what are we saying about them but that they are really just an object and not a person to be appreciated and loved?  Love doesn't expect to be paid back, an exchange does, and if you are part of an unchristian, legal-document, formal contract arrangement then your work and effort needs to be compensated, but if you are loving someone then just shut up and do it.  If loving someone who can't love you as well in return makes you foolish then Christ is the biggest fool of all.  Maybe you are a part of a relationship with your creator and savior who knowing full well you couldn't begin to pay him back for the lavish love he decided to pour out on you still decided to enter a relationship with you and will never back out.  If so and you call yourself a follower of Christ then love deeply and foolishly and pray that your idiocy brings God more glory.  If you exist in a world where you are what is most important than by all means squeeze every bit you can out of your spouse, use them up and spit them out, guilt and manipulate them into giving you what you want and throw them to the curb when they stop producing.  If loving someone causes resentment because you don't feel paid back then you need to reassess whether you even know what the word "love" means, because apparently you are treating them like a retirement account - you put stuff in and invest so that eventually you can get even more back out.  


I've had a relatively easy and trauma free life but I've often thought that Viktor Frankl must have had a hard time biting his lip as a therapist when people came in to complain to him.  Probably could have gone like this:
Client: "Yeah, my wife is getting fatter and I'm just really not attracted to her any more.  It's just not fair, I make lots of money and she just lays around eating bon-bons all day..."
Frankl:  "Hmmm, yeah I had a wife once.  Her, my mom, and my dad were all murdered by the Nazis in a concentration camp I only survived because I was a doctor so I was useful.  They needed my psychiatric skills to calm down the cattle that were being lead to the slaughter.  I'm sorry, what were you saying?"
While I am pretty sure this never happened, he did have the ultimate trump card for peoples complaints and in a way the Bible gives similar advice - gratitude and appreciation are pretty important and you only get them with perspective.  Are you worried?  The Bible says when you stop to appreciate what you have and how God has always provided for you it gives you the perspective to trust him.  Are you in an unfair relationship?  The Bible says if you are in relationship with Christ it is far more lopsided and unfair than any other relationship you have but you like it that way.


You see, when people tell me they just want fairness they don't really mean it, they want more and better, even more than they deserve.  You want fair?  The average family income in America is $31,000 a year, so it would only be fair to be given that to work with as a couple.  But then internationally you are considered statistically in the "rich" category if you make $8,000 a year so really it's "unfair" you have so much money.  One in four women and one in four men will be sexually abused at some point in their life, so fair means you should have to throw that into your marriage and see how that affects things.  22% of wives are abused by their husbands, as high as 42% in other parts of the world so fair would say that you should spend at least a fourth of your marriage cowering in fear of retribution.  30-60% of marriages involve an extramarital affair, etc, etc.  The truth is you don't want fair because your wife gaining weight is a burden the vast majority of the world would have a hard time sympathizing with you for as 925 million people do not have enough to eat.  Bickering about who has to clean the house you actually own when warlords and corrupt governments make that difficult in some places, who should get to drive the "newer" car when people walk miles to the nearest semi clean water, and how often your husband wants to have sex with you when millions of women and girls around the world are sold into sex slavery and forced to have sex with 40-110 "men:" a day seems like we could all use a bit of perspective.  Because it is only with a healthy perspective that we can see the immense blessing that our spouse is and how blessed our lives are, and it is only by deciding to stop manipulating our partners to get what we want that we open ourselves up to truly loving them.


Best line from a sermon I've ever heard was "Fair died on the cross."  We don't want fair, we don't want what we deserve, we want some counterfeit myth of the perfect husband or wife we were promised by a deluded society. 



Fair died on the Cross

Thorn In Your Flesh

I have found that most people tend to struggle with the same frustrating weaknesses over and over in their lives and no matter how hard they try they can't seem to make them better.  I know this sounds like blasphemy coming from a Christian counselor whose career is based on helping people get out of stuck patterns and getting to a state of increased healthiness, but it is often the case.  There is definitely a sanctification process where we as believers are transformed by God over the course of our lifetimes being shaped more into His image, and there are insights and tools that counseling can provide that facilitate this process, but often there is a point where no matter how hard I work as a counselor or how hard my client works the weakness doesn't seem to go away.  The young man who is afraid he might actually lose his job soon if his business finds out he regularly surfs for porn during work hours, who works extremely hard to institute changes, does everything I tell him to do, and fervently begs God to take the temptation away from him.  The woman who has been in counseling for decades and studies scripture daily looking for God to lift her depression that even medication doesn't seem to touch.  The spouse that tries and works their tail off trying to transform their marriage and years later continue to get nothing in return.  There seems to be cases where people work hard and get better and cases where people work hard and don't get better, but rarely if ever are there times where people are irresponsible and put forth no effort but they are magically transformed by God.  So maybe the two necessary components for significant life change are a determination to put forth effort and take responsibility paired with the transforming power of God, where one without the other is ineffective.  Don't get me wrong, I believe Non-Christians can improve their marriages and become less anxious, they just have to do all the work on their own and have to fight an uphill battle against their own sin nature to which they are a slave.  I also believe that God is sovereign and could choose to transform a person without them doing a thing, I just more often observe in counseling as well as scripture that God seems to like for us to invest in the process rather than sitting back and waiting on the magic.

So this post isn't expressly for those who just don't have a relationship with Christ, or for those who just aren't interested in doing the work of getting better, but rather those who are crying out desperately to God to rescue them from their sinful flesh and are doing everything in their power to take responsibility but consistently see no change.  Paul says this, and we can all relate:

2 Corinthians 12:7b-10

New International Version (NIV)

⁷ Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.⁸ Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. ⁹ But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. ¹⁰ That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

The relationship between man and sin, before and after salvation is a deep and theologically rich topic which can't be fully fleshed out here but the basics I am working from are these: God could have chose to create a world without choice and therefore no sin but it would have also been mindless automatons devoid of the ability to really love.  He also could have set it up to where when we accept Christ we are not only forgiven of our past but allowed to move forward without ever sinning again, but that seems to not be the case.  And while many believers experience the supernatural deliverance from their sin, weakness, or affliction there are many more that, like Paul, never seem to catch a break.

What this indicates to me about the heart and character of God is that he seems to be more interested in us relying on him in humility and dependence, regardless of what kind of benefit we get from it, far more than he is interested in us becoming more and more perfect and sinless according to the law.  It seems that the work of sanctification, where we are rescued from the bondage of sin and able to live more in the image of God, is a work that we are powerless to do in and of ourselves.  But it is also a process in which God likes for us to do our part, to struggle and fight, to make responsible choices, and to step out in audacious faith - kind of like my kids cleaning up the playroom on a much grander scale.  I know I will be doing the vast majority of the picking up of toys and that by the end I am lucky to get a toy or two a piece cleaned up from my boys but I want them to take ownership and engage in the process even though I could lock them in there for days and they could never get it exactly perfect, but would more likely just create a bigger mess.

I think this is important for people to remember for several reasons, one of which is that it reminds us that if we aren't seeing significant reduction in our sinfulness and we can't easily just acknowledge our own lack of responsibility that maybe God teaches us just as much from allowing us to stay in our sinfulness as he does from rescuing us out of it.  It's really just our stubborn humanness that convinces us that the chief goal of life is to stringently stick to a set of laws and work towards becoming more and more perfect.  The Bible, however, is chock full of stories and injunctions that suggest us focusing on being more and more sinless is not the correct focus as it ultimately is on us and our elevation instead of God and his glory.  God flat out tells Abraham to commit the worst kind of sin, killing his own son, just to make the point that we are to be about listening to his voice and obeying rather than blindly following dogma.  In Micah 6:8, God indicates that our acts of sacrifice, trying to become more and more perfect, are worthless compared to a heart of humility and mercy, broken and contrite.  It seems keeping us weak and helpless gives God the richest, fertile ground for these things.  If you can just get it in your mind to kick a sin and you do it then it becomes hard to stay humble.  If you never have to struggle with something far beyond your own power and steely resolve then it is much easier to interact with others based on judgement rather than mercy.  And Paul speaks clearly when he says God's power is made perfect in our weakness.  I believe God prefers a dependent person over a sinless person any day, someone who knows his frailness and desperate ongoing need for not just a far off savior but a daily strength to get through the day.  Someone who knows that they don't have the power to stand toe-to-toe with temptation, that they'd lose 10 times out of 10, and that their only hope is to run full speed away from sin's tempting influence and into the arms of God.

Maybe your weakness is a mouth that can't help but gossip, slander, and judge whenever you are around your friends.  Maybe for you it is a nagging sense of never feeling good enough that keeps you working late and disappointing your wife once again.  Maybe there are weeks on end where it takes the effort of climbing Mt. Everest to get you out of bed in the morning and reading your Bible just feels like ash in your mouth.  Maybe you weep while praying that today when your wife leaves to go to work you won't be haunted by urges to surf for porn or get out your stash of whiskey she doesn't know about.  All I know is that over the years I have met many men and women of every age that deeply love Christ and desperately cry out to him to be delivered from their weaknesses only to hear that God's grace is sufficient.  These are also the humblest, least judgmental, pious, and Christ-like people I've had the pleasure of knowing.  God likes to use weak people, prone to sinfulness, and flawed in every way because when he does great things in and through us the watching world has no other logical recourse than to see the handiwork of an powerful and praiseworthy God.  God chose a murdering adulterer to bear the title of a man after his own heart, used a fanatical murderer of Christians to spread the gospel further than any other man, and he uses weak, recurrently sinful, and hopelessly dependent me to counsel broken people because I am and always will be one too.

Listen Up

Most of our parents did a pretty good job of teaching us how to talk but few did as well at helping us learn how to listen, a skill that most of us struggle with.  Some of this comes from when our parents tell us to listen to them they really mean obey, they aren't just as happy if we were to say, "Father, I know you worked hard to provide the money for my hard working mother to purchase and prepare these brussel sprouts, and that your desire is that I eat them all.  I regret to inform you, however, that I have chosen not to eat them, but to wait for the ice cream later."  We sort of grow up believing that listening automatically implies obedience, and often this is poison in our other relationships, because when people feel they are not being heard they tend to either get louder or repeat themselves - or both.  It happens all the time in marriage counseling that a spouse says to me something like, "My husband just never listens to me.  I've tried talking nicely, yelling, repeating myself, and nothing gets through!"  I then ask the other spouse what it is that their partner is trying to get them to hear and they almost always can parrot back exactly what it is - they have heard what was being said. Then a foreign concept is introduced where you have to help a person understand that just because someone hears what you are saying, it doesn't mean they will agree with it or be willing to submit to your demands.

So then, how do we become better listeners, and help others understand that we are listening without just placating and agreeing to get them off of our back?  It first starts with reminding ourselves that core truth about marriage that 70% of what we are going to argue about over the course of our marriage are perpetual issues that will never be resolved, but still need to be discussed.  He will always be late, she will always have a lower sex drive, they will never be best friends with your dad, and they will never be able to hold onto cash in their pocket for more than a day, and no amount of deeply hearing your brilliant wisdom on life will change these things.  So most of our conversations about frustrations, disappointments, and hurts will best be handled by really hearing the other person's perspective, validating and empathizing with them, and reassuring them of your love and commitment, not fixing them so they never do it again.

The second thing we have to do is learn to temporarily shut off our self-centered brain long enough to truly put ourselves in our partner's world and experience long enough to get where they are coming from.  This requires two difficult tasks, shutting our mouths, and shutting down our internal conversation where we are fact-checking their statements, determining if we agree with them or not, and figuring out how to counter their obviously flawed viewpoint.  This takes metaphorical muscles inside our brains and wills that for most of us are extremely weak and atrophied.  We have to get to a point where we care at least as much about hearing the other person as we are about being heard.

Once we get those two things down it gets a lot easier and you can then just make sure you are internally hearing the content, perspective, and emotions behind what is being shared as well as externally reassuring our partner that we get those three things.  Mirroring or reflecting content is the first of the three and it is crucial to get before you can really do the other two, or else you will each be having two different independent conversations with each other.  Often we assume we know what our partner is saying or what they are REALLY trying to say rather than just working to hear exactly what they are actually saying.  Once you have the actual content you are less likely to remember each other having said different things down the road, "Remember last week when you said X?  No way, I said Y..."  The second part is to make sure you get their perspective by validating them, letting them know that even if you disagree or did not mean for your actions to be interpreted the way they have, that you can see how they view it that way from their point of view.  They aren't crazy or irrational, just rationally convinced of a different perspective.  Then you finally can make sure you reflect their emotions through empathizing with them, picking up on how the situation makes them feel and letting them know you understand.  If you assume it is possible to have a disagreement and don't feel you need to bully the other person into agreeing with your perspective, can shut up and focus wholly on the other person, and let them know you get the content, perspective, and emotion behind what they are saying then you are listening.  They will feel heard, be more likely to be OK with you having a different perspective, and actually curious to hear what it is, rather than just having the usual control battle about who will be heard.

Anxiety and Control

Wow, after a hefty month off from the blog I will finally deliver on the promise from the previous post of a helpful strategy for getting yourself out of an overwhelmed state of worry.  Anxiety is a huge topic which I am sure I will hit on more at some point but for this post I will focus more on worry and some practical steps that can help manage and process worry state.  The first thing to remember about worry and anxiety are that they are not only unavoidable but necessary and even helpful in the right contexts.  When you have a big test next week it is worry that gets you off of the Xbox and your nose in the books.  When your child is walking a little too far ahead of you at the county fair it is anxiety that keeps your vision locked onto them.  When you get your credit card statement and it makes you want to vomit it is worry that makes you tough it out at an unpleasant job rather than telling your boss to shove it.  Worry is helpful when you are faced with a situation where you need to do something that is within your control in order to prepare for or respond to something in the present. Laying in bed late at night worrying about whether the upcoming budget cuts will cost you your job is not useful or beneficial.  Lamenting the poor quality of the local high school that your 3 year old is districted to attend some day isn't helpful.  Assuming that because you are 23 and have not yet received a marriage proposal that you are destined to a sad and decrepit life ending as an isolated elderly shut in who is eaten by her 95 cats and the world doesn't even notice for weeks is perhaps premature.

A horse who is working and supposed to only focus on what is in front of them to avoid distraction and wandering off is outfitted with blinders, because it really doesn't matter what is to the left or right, only what is straight ahead.  In a similar way I have found a big part of determining whether worry is helpful or destructive is to put on two blinders by asking two questions about the situation.  Blinder #1 - What can I do right now in the present about the situation.  This means if you are focusing on fixing some mistake or beating yourself up for something from the past and you are NOT in possession of a functioning time machine then you need to forcibly focus yourself on the present and what you can do now.  If you are living in the future, mapping out 90 different scenarios of what might possibly happen and preparing contingency plans for each of them, and you are not one of those creepy precogs from the movie, Minority Report, then you are doing what Beth Moore refers to as paying payments on debts that most likely will never come due.  What can you do right here and now about your big job interview in the morning when it is midnight?  Go through your mental Rolodex of every possible question that has ever been asked from one human to another, or just roll over and get some good sleep for the big day.  Rather than once again convincing yourself that you will never dig your way out of the debt you have piled up and that it is just a matter of time before your house is foreclosed on and your kids repossessed, you could step out of the line at Starbucks and decide that starting right here and now I'm going to stop spending money frivolously starting with the couple of bucks you have in your hand.  We like to think that if I can be prepared for something bad to happen then it can hurt us less, which is true if you have set up an emergency savings fund in case your job gets outsourced, but getting shot in the leg pretty much hurts the same whether you anticipated it or not.

The second major blinder to keep secured into place is to ask the question "What do I have control over in this situation?"  If you are honest with yourself then usually the answer is very little as the vast majority of the control we convince ourselves we possess is just an illusion.  We can't really force our kids to make good decisions so worrying that if we were good parents that they would never make mistakes is giving yourself a little too much false control.  Being riddled with anxiety about losing your job is helpful if it pushes you out of your comfort zone to start sending your resumes out to better opportunities or to buckle down and start actually doing the job you've been getting paid to perform for years, but just rehashing over and over that somebody in a boardroom somewhere might make a decision that will cost you your current job doesn't actually lead to preparing yourself or responding to the situation.  What do you have control of?  Your thoughts, feelings, decisions, beliefs, values, and commitments?  What do you not have any control over?  Basically everything outside of that.  I'd say everything outside of your own skin but marathon runners with high cholesterol and health food nuts with cancer would say that's even a myth.  I'd say everything outside of your own mind but those suffering with debilitating depression or in the midst of intense grief would say that you often don't even have control over that.

So you find yourself absolutely crippled with anxiety, worried about the million troubles in your life and how you are going to fix them, what do you do?  You get out a piece of paper and write out each major issue and list them out, which immediately shrinks your list from a million to like 6.  Counting anxieties in your mind is like counting toddlers in a room, you end up getting a much higher number because they keep moving around.  Once you have each of the main categories you hit each one individually with the two big questions of what do I have control of in this and what can I do right now about it and it will look something like this:

It's 10 at night and you are getting ready for bed and just feel overwhelmed:
1. Aunt Suzy is having a hip replacement - I can pray for her and ask God to give her a speedy recovery.  I can write on my task list to pick up a card tomorrow while I am grocery shopping.
2. We are in a bad economy - Pray.
3. I think my daughter is sexually active - Pray.  Stop by her room and just tell her I love her, hope she sleeps well, and that if there is anything at all that she feels like she needs to talk with me about that I am here for her.  Put on my to do list for Wednesday while I am having tea with Mary Beth to get the contact info for that hit-man she hired for her rotten husband to see if he does grungy teen boys as well (Just Kidding).
4. My marriage is falling apart and I'm afraid my husband doesn't love me any more - Pray that God will help you forgive his shortcomings and that he would reveal your own and give you the strength to become better.  Before going to bed tell him I am committed to him, that I love him, and that he is good enough in my eyes.  Write down in task list for Friday night to make him a big steak out of the blue and rub his back before bedtime.  Spend my last few minutes before I fall asleep tonight reading a book on being a better wife rather than using the time to watch CSI: Hoboken reruns.

One last great resource on this topic is a recent sermon at my church called "Work, don't worry.  Because worry don't work." - If you have an ipod/pad/phone just get the elevation church app as it has all the old sermons and find it under the "Treatment" series - or hopefully this link works - http://www.podcast.tv/video-episodes/treatment-anxiety-worry-don-t-work-part-1-15353536.html

Worry vs Denial

There are plenty of things I may struggle with over the course of my life but due to my personality and natural temperament I am definitely not an anxious person.  I'll struggle with being lazy far before becoming a workaholic, I'm not even sure if wokahol even exists much less where to get a hold of it.  I'm not a worrier so there have probably been times in the past where I may have even judged others for worrying, but that is my right as a Christian in America.  We like to pick something we are never going to struggle with and then choose that to judge the faith of others like homosexuality, gossip, or depression - it's easy for us to avoid temptation so must be for others.  That is why I am thankful to God that he gave me almost a solid year of worrying on a daily basis so that I could never judge again, so I could better empathize with those who do, and so that I could learn the real antidote to worrying - trusting in God's provision.

A little while back I found myself in a position where I was working at a counseling center that just didn't have that many clients, and so my schedule was pretty wide open.  Up until that point in my career I always had plenty without really having to work that hard and if I did do a little networking or advertising myself it resulted in immediate results.  But then I hit a point where even with advertising and practically calling people begging them to let me counsel them I was still unable to see enough clients to even pay my basic bills, month after month after month.  My wife, friends, and family would all reassure me that it had nothing to do with how good of a counselor I was and it was just the bad economy, but I didn't believe it.  I'm pretty thick skinned and don't take much personally, especially counseling and the approval of others, but even if I didn't care whether people liked me I cared whether I could provide for my family.  It was at this point that I learned point number one about worry, as long as you live in denial you never have to worry.  It finally clicked with me that the reason other people worried and I didn't was because I lived life with my eyes closed, fingers in my ears, and humming a tune to myself while they were actually looking at reality.  As month after month stretched by my denial was crushed and I was forced to what I really believed about worry, that maybe I was in this spot because I was irresponsible and reaping what I had sown.  Maybe I had taken the gift God had given me for granted and not applied myself fully to being a success and the result was my son crying for more milk and I didn't get paid for another week so he had to go without.  Like a punch to the stomach I was awakened from my blissful ignorance and forced to stop denying, so naturally I turned to worry as the next valid option.

So I buckled down and did more to drum up new clients, applied for jobs outside of private practice counseling, networked, begged, pleaded, and did everything I could to to become successful.  The whole time I had a running number in my head of how many clients I needed each week to pay my bills and each time a client cancelled my heart sank as I tried to make it up.  Right on the verge of when I was beginning to see the prospect of new clients in terms of dollar signs rather than human beings in need of God's liberating truth in their lives I even began applying for jobs outside of counseling.  That is when I read the book, Sun Stand Still, by Stephen Furtick and I learned the next big lesson about worry that really made a difference, it isn't about me.  I began in a spot where I felt like I was invulnerable and worries were unimportant and small because I chose not to look at them.  I graduated into a spot where I saw the worries and concerns as huge but that maybe I could be big enough to tackle them.  Where God brought me was to a place where I saw how big the worries and concerns were and how small I was to conquer them but how large He is and how capable God is to make the sun to stand still in my life for my provision.

It was at this point that I stopped worrying and began trusting in God for my provision, not in the pseudospiritual way I started out in where I did nothing and expected God to do the work, but in a way where I had active faith.  I began doing what the book refers to as digging ditches, I prepared for where God was taking me rather than worrying about where I was.  I did advanced training, I read more book, I became a better counselor, I took the time to remind myself why God called me to become a counselor in the first place and it wasn't to collect a paycheck.  I nagged, harassed, and begged the partners at my current practice to please feel sorry for me and offer me a storage closet to work out of and when after five years of trying they finally gave me a shot I jumped on it.  My prayer was answered and I was blessed with a position at a practice where I am seeing twice as many clients as i was last year, I am completely booked weeks in advance, and I can focus on what I love doing - counseling not accounting.  I was given this blessing at the exact moment that I was able to see that denial was making the problem worse, and worry was denying God's power and sovereignty, and so I had to be blessed when I was humble and completely dependent on God because doing it myself just was never going to work.And so the key to worry was revealed to me in that moment and it wasn't the trite, "Just trust God and everything will work out fine" nonsense I was spewing out of my ignorance.  It was getting to the point where I realized me trying to take care of my own provision was like the birds worrying about what they would eat and the flowers about what they would wear.  It finally clicked that as hard a bird tries it is too stupid and incapable of planting and growing a tree to live in but I thought that since I was an advanced human I was capable of so much more when the truth is we are just as reliant on God despite our many talents, capabilities, and responsibilities.  The only way to see things clearly is to see our struggles and issues clearly for what they are - not minimizing and denying them and not making them an idol - and then realizing how truly small and ineffective we are for all of our worrying, but seeing God as big and powerful enough to take our little acts of obedience and turning them into a blessing we don't deserve and could never have earned.  Ignoring our responsibilities does not honor God, worrying without taking steps of active faith will always be fruitless, but trusting in God's provision while you do your small part results in miraculous provision of all you could ever need or want.

Next post I'll give some more practical help on what to do when your mind is assaulted by overwhelming worry and anxiety...

Voice, Relationship, and Power

Last post, I mentioned the need to redefine what sexual abuse is and how we should view it's effects.  Most of my examples focused around childhood sexual abuse and incest, but sexual abuse also covers rape, whether by a stranger, a date, or a husband.  Sexual abuse is very different for everyone and there are many various degrees of hurt that are inflicted upon individuals.  Many factors come into play that make abuse worse - do you know the offender, are they a close friend or family member, are they in a position of power, were they supposed to be caring for you and protecting you instead of abusing, how far physically did the abuse go, how long did it last, how many times, where at, how did other family members or authorities react, what propaganda was given, were you punished for refusing, were you powerless to stop it, were there injuries, was there sexual stimulation or pleasure, all of these questions and more determine severity.

Today what I will focus on is speaking to the predictable ways in which sexual abuse damages people for years and years afterwards, especially if it was childhood incest or molestation.  My goal with my blog is never to give trite truisms, to never replace the value of one on one counseling, and to not lump large groups of people into one category and label them.  That's why I make a much better counselor than a preacher, I prefer speaking to specifics.  But in the same way that all auto accidents are different but have similar injuries, so all sexual abuse is different but has similar injuries.  Whether the abuse stunted growth in these three areas from the point of injury or whether it shattered them inside a person, or stolen from them altogether, most everyone who has experienced sexual abuse deals with three main deficits that need addressed and healed - Their Voice, their Relationships, and their Power.

Sexual abuse damages a persons view of their own voice, their right to speak up for themselves in the face of mistreatment, the ability to call attention to wrong and for it to be dealt with.  As a child you were given the clear indication either by your abuser, enabling family members, or just your own deduction that speaking up and saying the truth is a really bad idea.  This carries over into adult life by allowing people to hurt you, take advantage of you, and abuse you without feeling like you have a right to speak up.  Maybe if you told on your uncle for abusing you it would destroy the family, maybe if anyone knew what your dad did you would be sent to one of those homes you saw on the news.  Maybe if you told your boyfriend to stop pressuring you for sex he would leave and no one would ever find you good enough to be with.  So now you feel like your voice is unimportant, to be ignored, and that your protests as well as you are really unimportant.  Maybe your abuser even used shame to convince you this was something you were a part of, that you were enjoying it, and that it was "our little secret" that couldn't get out or you would be in trouble too.  So then you get treated poorly as an adult and come to believe you must somehow be at fault because when bad stuff happens to you then you are partially responsible at least.  Whatever it looks like it is a loss of belief in your own ability to stand up and proclaim truth, to call evil out for what it is, and let the world see it for what it is so that it can be made better.

The second wound comes in how you view relationships - who and what are you, what do others exist for, and what is your role supposed to be in relationships.  You are given tons of data to suggest that you are beneath other people, an object to be used and discarded when the other person in the relationship is through with you.  You are an obstinate little girl who deserves what is coming your way because you have been bad, or if you don't do this then your abuser will be cranky and hurt someone else, or you are just a walking vagina with no other worth, value, or purpose.  The basic message sent over and over is that you exist solely for the pleasure of those around you, you are responsible for their happiness and if you fail in that purpose you aren't good for much else and so lose what little value you had.  Relationships become seen as transactional, and you never want to have to owe somebody or feel behind in the transactions.  If you only exist to pleasure someone else then it is important for them to convince you not to look for anything in return.  This creates this weird paradigm where you are supposed to make everyone else happy, even at your own expense, because everyone in the world deserves to be taken care of and treated well, everyone except you, you're different.  Realizing you are a real person with the same rights as everyone else who deserves equality in relationships and can even have people take care of you is part of the healing process.

The third major injury most people who have been sexually abused suffer is a damaging blow to their sense of their own power.  You were put in a position either once or repetitively where bad stuff was happening that your mind may not have even been able to adequately process but you were powerless to do anything to stop it.  You couldn't prevent it no matter how diligent you may be, you couldn't stop it because of the size or power differential, and no matter how much you wished or prayed for it to stop it never did and so you were powerless and God probably was too.  Either he was powerless or just deemed you as deserving it, but either way it skews how you view God - especially when it is your earthly father doing the abusing.  So most people who were abused go one of two routes in response to this powerlessness, you either become a helpless victim or a merciless control freak.  Maybe you accept your powerlessness and decide you are just weak and ineffective, so even if you wanted to go back to school you can't, even if you wanted to lose weight you can't, even if you wanted to get out of that bad relationship you can't, you don't have any power.  Maybe you go the other route and decide no one will ever take advantage of you again, because you will be hyper-vigilant and totally in control of everything, because being out of control was just too painful for you.  You'll mockingly talk of your abuse as if it were petty and if anyone else shows weakness or powerlessness around you it will provoke an irrational anger at them for for not rising above it the way you have.  Problem is that either way the abuse has come to define you and when you don't allow anyone close to you because you can't trust them you can pat yourself on the back for being strong and in control or just see that your abuser has once again robbed you of something life-giving and you let them.  Either way you go power becomes something different than it is to others, either an elusive thing you wish you were worthy of having or the most valuable commodity on the planet that must be acquired and maintained at all costs.

So whether you want to think of yourself as the survivor of sexual abuse or not, if your injuries look like the above three it doesn't really matter, just get the help you need to become all of who God created you to be initially before the sins of others changed the arc of your life.  I've walked with men and women through the process of redefining themselves through God's eyes, healing from past injuries, and counseling has helped them bloom into far more than they ever thought possible, and it can be the same for you.  The common excuses of it is too expensive, or I don't have the time for it, or shouldn't I just suck it up and get over it don't apply here.  You wouldn't give those excuses if you had a physical injury, no one has time to get their broken leg reset but you make time for it.  I see it like a total knee replacement, you could go the rest of your life limping and unable to do all that is within your potential or you can take the time and money required to have the surgery, with all the pain and all the months of rehab, but in the end you can run and jump and get up and down stairs like you've never remembered.

My Amazon widget appears to be malfunctioning but here is my book suggestion on this topic - http://www.amazon.com/Counseling-Survivors-Sexual-Abuse-Library/dp/1591605199/ref=sr_1_1?s=hpc&ie=UTF8&qid=1316457871&sr=1-1

A Shot In The Chest

When I first started counseling everyone suggests you pick a couple of key areas to focus in on and make them your specialties, and so I immediately picked Marriage and Parenting as my top favorites I wanted to get good at doing.  The problem was I seemed to have more and more people coming to me dealing with having been sexually abused, and we immediately loved each other.  My counseling style has always been very "tell it like it is" with far more truth spoken than tact, so while I am compassionate and encouraging I'll also kick you in the butt when needed.  My picture of the perfect counselor for someone healing from sexual abuse was a kindly older woman who would hold their hand and cry with them while sharing encouraging Bible verses, and that wasn't exactly me.  So it kind of shocked me that all these women felt so comfortable talking to me about something that for many of them I was the very first person to ever know about their abuse other than them and their abuser.  I mean women who have teenagers and husbands of 20 years who have never ever shared that when they were younger someone hurt them in one of the worst ways a human being can be hurt.

Given, to date, I have never had a single client come in who said they were there because they were abused as a kid.  They come in for depression, anxiety, trust issues, marital problems, being either obsessed with or repulsed by sex, boundaries problems, same sex attraction, addictions, etc but these were just symptoms of the core injury that needed to be addressed and healed.  Their stories broke my heart and made me angry and I found that without exception that anger was exactly what the women needed.  Not more sadness, not more shame, and certainly not pity, but something came alive in them when I said I wish I could have ten minutes alone in a room with their worthless piece of crap father.  So having a brash counselor tell them it was not only OK but necessary to get good and mad at their abuser turned out to make me a good fit.  You can't forgive someone if you haven't gotten angry, otherwise you are just sweeping it under the rug with denial.  The many men I have talked to that were sexually abused NEVER would have talked about that with a female counselor and usually expected me to respond like any other neanderthal in the locker room by high-fiving them for getting sex so early.  The women that shared it with me not only felt validated and understood, but in a wonderful way I could never had predicted but God ordained I was able to be a healing, healthy, safe relationship with a man.  A man that knew all of their secrets and didn't shame them, a man who wanted only health and healing for them rather than their preconceived notion of what all men want from them.  For some I was the first man in their lives that gave to them rather than taking, that loved them for who they were rather than what they could do for me, and who saw them how God views them so they could do the same.  I'm pretty good with marriages and parenting, but looking back I really believe my greatest impact has been on the men and women I have walked alongside as they heal from sexual abuse.

Still, years later I couldn't figure out why I had such a heart for sexual abuse survivors, why I was so beneficial for them, and why God kept bringing them to me until just within the last two years.  I was reading a book on sexual abuse and it was pretty good, but back in the appendix there was a frequently asked questions section that had a little note on men who were sexually abused.  It basically says when asking a man if he has sexually abused don't ask "Were you sexually abused," because they'll usually say no.  Ask "What were your first experiences with sex" and you'll get a totally different answer.  So it pops in my head in that moment that I had access to media with full nudity and sex scenes as a kid, and by adolescence there were a couple of incidents where guys my same age messed around with me and I assumed because I considered most of those things enjoyable at the time that it couldn't be "abuse."  That was when I was forced to reconsider what sexual abuse was, as I knew from my many clients that God designed sex to be pleasurable and so therefore just because something feels physically good doesn't make it any less abusive.  I also knew that just because you weren't held at gunpoint doesn't mean there aren't power differentials and consent is impossible for a child that doesn't know what sex is anyway.  Any time emotional pain is difficult for people to grasp I just transfer it into what it would look like as a physical wound and it seems to make more sense.  If a man kicks your front door in and points a gun at your child's chest and pulls the trigger while smiling it is clearly damaging and evil and wrong.  If the neighbor kid who is the same age as your kid brings over his dad's handgun and the two kids are playing around with it and it goes off shooting your child in the chest it is still damaging and evil and wrong.  The scars are actually the same.  Anytime someone is introduced to sex in an inappropriate way, earlier than they are ready and able to process, it damages a person's soul and it will show effects across their lifetime.

I don't intend to compare my extremely minor abuse to anyone else because I know better than any of you reading the depths of depravity human being are capable of and the damage potential therein.  What I do want to say is that maybe we have the wrong view of sexual abuse and that it is a huge disservice to victims everywhere.  I say sexual abuse and the average person thinks of a disgusting pedophile that drives up in a black van and offers a kid candy to get in the back so he can viciously rape them, which I am sure happens but it is definitely the exception to the rule.  Most people in my generation got that stupid idea from the stranger danger campaign that taught us to watch out for creepy guys on the playground looking for a lost puppy.  The truth is it is fathers whose number one job is to love, nurture, and care for a beautiful defenseless child but instead use their position of power and authority to terrorize their little girl every time mom goes to the store.  It's the cousin, the family friend, the uncle, the grandfather who tries a little more and a little more usually because they were abused and think it is normal.  It's the who slaps his 12 year old son on the back with a smile and hands him a stack of Playboys, or the parents who watch graphic nudity and sex scenes or even porn with their kids in the room assuming they are too young to know what is really going on or that it will be over in just a minute.  It's the boyfriend in the back seat of the car that pushes past the "no" because she's had a few beers and doesn't really know what she wants.  It's the little boy who goes off to Christian summer camp and has another camper or even a counselor do things to him that feel good in the moment but feel dirty and disgusting and confused afterwards.

This post was basically to expand what sexual abuse is so that people can begin to see wounds that may need healing, as well as maybe to better protect your kids from the real dangers out there.  Stats are fuzzy as it is something no one talks about and few people admit to, but most estimates say one in four women will be sexually abused at some point in their life and one in five men will be, so next time you are in the mall or at church and you realize there are easily a hundred people you'll pass that have been sexually abused you won't feel so alone.  Next post I'll lay out how sexual abuse affects people on into adulthood so that you can know what needs to be done to heal and reclaim what was stolen and damaged.

Rules For Conflict Part III

Third and final post to wrap up rules for effective conflict resolution:

Everyone Takes Personal Responsibility - easily my single greatest pet peeve in counseling, when people refuse to look at their own responsibility but rather blame their spouse, and justify themselves.  God gives us our job descriptions as husbands and wives not our spouses, so when we fail to be what God has called us to be we have no one to blame but ourselves.  Too often couples want to go back and forth justifying their poor choices by comparing the other's transgressions, or excusing their own refusal to meet their spouses needs by listing what needs they haven't received.  That's like saying, "Yeah I failed Math but another kid in my class didn't do his homework so I decided not to.  And you think my grade is bad, my 60 is way better than their 45" - you both failed.  Everyone is responsible for their own decisions, good or bad, and justification and blame just assure that one will ever become who they are called to be.  We often compare our own excellent job of biting our tongue fifty times to our spouse's five mean statements and don't realize they bit their tongue eighty times.  When we compare our internal achievements to our spouse's external failures we always win and we feel justified in treating them like crap, when we compare our hearts to the hearts God has designed us for we allow ourselves to be molded into His image.  With this perspective there is no room for defensiveness, as anything our spouse brings to us can be seen as an opportunity to grow rather than an attack that needs to be countered with something they do even worse.

Become aware of the core wounds and accompanying fears of your spouse and avoid them.  If they came from a family that always made them feel they were wrong then they may fight a little harder than necessary to make sure they don't always lose in the marriage.  If they had an overprotective mother that smothered them they might fight a little harder to have their autonomy and not feel controlled by you.  If they had a critical father that always compared them to someone else who they could never live up to you may want to avoid telling them they aren't as good of a wife as friend's wife.  If your spouse has an ex-husband who verbally and emotionally abused her it may be that you can never raise your voice at all without signaling to her that you are attacking her.  Whatever the wound and wherever it came from you have the opportunity to help heal it or to keep ripping it open and pouring salt in it, and that is a tremendous power.  Usually during conflict there is the topic that the fight is about and then there are the real underlying issues that aren't being spoken.  You can grumble about how you have to clean up someone else's mess or you can recognize you have your own core fears that get triggered as well and need extra grace in certain areas.



Create a culture of appreciation and acceptance rather than contempt - One of the keys inside and outside of conflict to make sure you are able to resolve conflict well is create a culture of acceptance, appreciation, and love rather than judgement, criticism, and blame.  Research shows you need at least five times as many positive interactions for every negative one just to balance things out.  Deep at the base of your brain is a part called the amygdala that is the emotional center that basically sees people in black and white, good and bad ways, people are either your allies, on your team and there to make your life better or people are enemies, attacking you and need to be protected from.  Its like a giant scale that tips one way or the other and it takes five experiences of acceptance, respect, and positivity to balance out each one incident of anger, frustration, judgement, or negativity.  Whichever side the scale is on, that is how everything will be interpreted, neutral comments like "Oh those look like new jeans", get automatically interpreted either as a compliment - "Oh thanks, I'm excited about them" - or a criticism - "They aren't new, I've had them for two weeks, and before you complain about money they were on sale and I had nothing else that fits."  If you want your spouse to hear what you say as you intend it rather than with automatic defensiveness you can help by working hard to show tons more appreciation, respect, acknowledgement, and praise, rather than always being critical.


Stay Engaged - the last rule for effective conflict is no matter what, try your best to always stay engaged, or to reconnect as quick as possible afterwards.  Often in the middle of conflict one partner will go into an icy cool stance where they respond like a robot without emotions.  It's called stonewalling and it is usually a defense mechanism to keep themselves from becoming overwhelmed and flooded with emotions, and often as a way of protecting the relationship.  The idea is that if I were to open up and express how I feel I will say something I regret and then lose this important relationship, but what the other person sees is somebody who doesn't care about the relationship or them.  Both partners have racing heart rates and blood pressures, but only one looks like they give a crap.  This is where it becomes important to learn how to reschedule or just sooth the other person or yourself in the moment, to talk yourself back into being present and engaged.  Sometimes this carries over into an overall approach to the relationship where the partner is no longer angry, just numb.  The way our emotions work is that we either feel them all or none of them and if someone feels to painful for too long they often have a firewall that comes crashing down that cuts off all emotions.  To feel love means to also feel all the pain so they both get thrown out.  This is where you need to stop playing around and get in to see a counselor, because your marriage is flat lining.  Most couples wait 6-7 years after they notice major problems before they go for help which is like waiting a few weeks to see if you are having a heart attack - tons of damage has already been done.

Starting my very own blog...

Over the years I have had several people ask me if I have a blog or suggest I start one, but I have always scoffed at the idea for two main reasons.  One is that I have always feared that if I started one I could never keep up with it - I really admire the people who can daily or weekly update their blog and always have something useful, insightful, or challenging to say and in my black and white view I either wanted to do it right or not bother - hence years of not bothering.  The second main reason is I feel like I would run out of interesting stuff to say and the only blogs more annoying to me that the ones where people post once a year on average are the ones that post daily but without anything of substance.

So here is my solution - to the best of my ability I will try to keep up with this and be both consistent and follow through across time, but I will also only post if I think I have something relevant, helpful, and purposeful to post.  I won't presuppose that my musings on life or what I had for breakfast would constitute something anyone would bother to read so I will use what I have to try to help others - Good or bad I am a walking encyclopedia of information - most useless but some actually helpful, and most all of it pilfered from others more brilliant than I am.  Even when I think I have come up with something brilliant and original it usually is just me forgetting where I read it or who I heard it from.  Hence the title of my blog - pilfered wisdom - if it seems to have value and the information has the potential to help people that can't actually pay to come see me for counseling then hopefully this can be a platform for lives to be enhanced.

It may be current or former clients reading, friends, family, or just random people who have my blog suggested to them through something like facebook, but whoever checks it out I hope it is helpful.  So there you go, I just completed my first blog entry and had nothing of substance within it, but at least I am ready to start posting!