STEP 1 To Finding Peace While Living With A Dramatic Spouse

Step 1 To Finding Peace While Living With A Dramatic Spouse

*Update: The righteous ways of God are most difficult because they challenge & grate against our fleshly desires of what we think we deserve. My flesh cries out to be loved and respected the way that speaks love and respect to me. My husband's does the same. The ways we view love aren't necessarily wrong; just different. The safe environment of grace and mercy, honor and truth, lived out humbly yet firmly, are the keys to the metamorphosis of perfect love. And patience. Lots and lots of patience intermingled with prayer.

I was raised in a Church of Christ atmosphere. My parents were good people who were not just church-goers but were faithfully involved. My dad was an elder and taught an adult Sunday School class and my mom had a group of teenagers over every thursday night for a Bible study.
You could say that I "grew up in church."
Along with that background, I found myself attending a full gospel church in my early 30's. I was newly divorced with two young children. There, I learned about the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues, raising my hands during worship, etc.
I'm not sure where my faith got side tracked. But, its foundation was definitely "tried".

Fast forward to today.
Through all of the hardships of my life to date, I've come to these conclusions:
1. It doesn't matter how "good" I am, I'm going to come into contact with bad things and bad people.
2. I cannot control those bad things or bad  people.
3. When I pray to God for help, He most often will not change my circumstance for me. He wants me to live; not withdraw every time I come into contact with something unpleasant. So if I pray for help, He'll whisper to me, scriptures that bring comfort, open my eyes to a new plan of action or offer me a new way of looking at my situation that makes it bearable, so that I can make it through--a far cry from the wildly innocent notion that He would magically make everything in my world "right" according to my emotions and feelings. I've learned to stop praying for happiness and now pray for others and an ability to love & forgive them.

When My mom passed away, my sisters and I were faced with  the task of sorting through her belongings to decide what to do with them. We divied up books and I haphazardly placed my pile in a box and put it in the garage for one of those, "One day, when I have more time, I'll read all of these," moments.
After one of countless times, of struggling to love (love-meaning stand by & not abandon) my insecure, fearful, angry, 2nd husband, my prayer found me out in the garage, sorting through the hoard-worthy mess. I came across that pile of books and I believe God used one of them to open my eyes to my own responsibilities regarding my unhappiness. I'll explain further, later in this post. That day, I found in my hands, a book, titled, "Codependent No More," by Melody Beattie. I thought, "I wonder if my husband is codependent?"
I've been slowly chewing the information in this book for months, reading and rereading paragraphs and pages to engrave them into my brain. It's a book written by someone who not only was controlled by the use of drugs and alcohol but after rehabilitation, continued to be controlled by the use of alcohol by those she loved. It's a revelation to hurting people like me who have poured years of our lives into trying to change other hurting people by controlling them or the atmosphere around them in order to keep life, in our minds, bearable. These people are called "codependents".  Turns out, my husband is codependent. But so am I. While he's a more aggressive codependent, I'm a passive one. We both try to control others; him, by his emotional outbursts and me, by trying to keep the peace. I became ridiculously fearful--carefully avoiding doing or saying things that might set my husband "off" (which was about everything). I went from being somewhat introverted to being downright meek and intimidated. I learned the hard way that just shutting down wasn't a good thing. Everything I did seemed to make his problem, our problem and didn't get the point across--until I heard a valuable message by Joyce Meyer, who said, "It's not your responsibility to make, or keep, other people happy. They are responsible to work out their own salvation." That was a life changer for me. And the Holy Spirit was then able to speak truth to me. Allowing my husband's emotional outbursts to control what I did or said and how I felt, was enabling him to continue to think that those outbursts could make things better for him. I was interfering with God's gift to him--the opportunity to work out his own salvation. "Wherefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not only while you were in my presence, but, now that I'm (Jesus) absent, continue to work out your own salvation (do your best to control your sinful nature) with awe and reverence." Phil. 2:12

Which, brings me to today. Step one. Step one of the 12 steps of, not my husband's healing,  but my own--(re-worded a bit, to fit my circumstances):
"I admit I am powerless over my husband's emotional outbursts, his way of viewing life through fear and frustration, his lack of faith in God's power and love for him, and the false thinking that he can control what happens around him with those outbursts."
I've struggled with this in the past because, to me, it meant that in order to have peace and enjoy the rest of my life, it meant one of these things had to happen: 1. I'd get brave--tough as nails to be able to pack up my things and leave. I knew I'd have to give up my home and all of the hard work & equity I'd put into it; my small business, which didn't make enough money to support me--that is, if I wanted to eat, have a roof over my head, have heat and lights, and, I'd have to be ready to put up emotional barriers to resist my husband's pleas for forgiveness. In his defense, he really does love me in his own way. He just has so many fears and anger issues--and he always reverts back to his old habits after a short time.  2. I'd outlive my husband. An absolutely awful thing to think but even good people who are miserable & unhappy can let their minds go in crazy, bad places. It's frightening how those feelings, left unchecked, can open the door to the devil & I cringe to even admit that I was that desperate to consider it something to ask God for. 3. God would zap my husband and he would miraculously change from an insecure, fearful & angry man into a faith-filled, loving, self-less & confident man.  A miracle for sure, but God is the master of miracles and they still do happen. Unfortunately, we all have the gift of free will so even though God continues to pursue us until we take our last breath,  it could take that long.
Because the first two ideas seem outside of the will of God--both giving up on faith in God and in my husband's ability to change--I ruled them out. I have decided to hold out for the miracle but in the mean time, it will require much change in me because I need to learn to live in peace and a sense of well-being while I wait. I will have to pray a lot of prayers to hold my tongue, to give up control, to stop defending my honor (letting righteous virtue do that for me), reading encouraging articles & books and journaling to maintain my self worth & peace. If I'm going to truly believe my own words--that God can and will make this marriage into something beautiful for both my husband and I, I'll have to continually die to myself--the pride in me that makes me want to fight back. To defend myself. To give up. We're not talking about a once in a while difference of opinions. We're talking about an every day, something annoys, frustrates, gets under the skin, aggravates, or overwhelms him, occurrence. You get the picture.
When we discipline a child, we teach them that actions have consequences. "When you do that...this happens."  Even God says as much in the Bible. So, on occasion, I may need to walk away for a time. No threat of divorce. Not out of selfishness or pride but just a time to refresh. I think it will be important to not only state that I'm leaving temporarily, but why. And then follow through. I consider this consequence to be Biblical. I believe it's supported by Jesus, himself. When he chose the 12 disciples, he chose very different men with very different personalities from very different backgrounds. Do you think that he only chose men based on who he thought would get along together? If that were the case, why all of the differences? Differences cause, well, differences.  No, He chose men who had differing strengths and opinions to challenge each other to live and work in harmony for a great cause and an even greater end. Peter, a hard, strong willed, opinionated leader who was used to barking out orders (he had his own boat/fishing business) teamed up with John, an odd bird who often referred to himself in the third person and either had major insecurities or suck-up issues -- evident because he referred to himself as the "disciple whom Jesus loved". Wouldn't that be annoying? Didn't Jesus love them all? Was it really necessary to call himself that? Maybe to John, but not to the rest of them. And who likes a guy who is always bossing people around and can't see anyone else's point of view? It had to be challenging after a long day of being together, not to want to throat punch each other. So, what's my point? Even Jesus had to get off alone to pray and refresh himself. You may have thought it was because He needed to ask God for strength to change the world.  But I think it was to ask God to give Him the strength to love (love--meaning stand by & not abandon) these men enough, to stay in it for the long haul. To change the world for twelve men so that they would change the world for those around them, who would change the world for those around them, and so on and so forth.
I leave you with this question: Do you think divorcing every person who gets on our nerves so that we can try to maintain happiness is God's perfect will for mankind? Is it His perfect plan for us to just keep us happy? Is God codependent? Yeah, I don't think so either. Maybe His plan is far greater than just ourselves and our own happiness. Maybe while allowing others to work out their own salvation; more simply put, letting them deal with the consequences of their daily choices, we can focus on better working out our own salvation.
Maybe that means a few hours watching birds in the park. Maybe it means spending time with a friend--not rehashing your frustration or all the things wrong with your spouse. The idea is to get refreshed; not collect sympathizers. What ever can restore your peace without bringing more harm (a quart of Haagen daz or a whole package of Oreos will do long term damage for the reward of 20-30 minutes of enjoyment). Whatever you decide, use wisdom and self discipline. Act. Don't RE-act.

"Better to live on a corner of a roof than share a house with a contentious woman (man/person)." Prov. 25:24.