I
really hope my automatic pilot keeps guiding us safely through this. Keep your wits about
you, and we should be ok. God's been defusing some unexploded bombs in me lately, and I
want to tell you about them. The lessons embedded in these stories are very
instructive.
I am a very open
person. I'll talk freely about anything you like to bring up generally. This subject is
extremely sensitive, though, and I have to come at it very carefully. It's not that I mind
discussing it - but the usual problem applies. Someone else is involved, so I am
constrained by love not to say anything that might be hurtful.
"Speaking
the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into Him who is the Head, that is
Christ." Ephesians 4:15
The first few
times that mental illness caused my husband to abuse me emotionally, I was deeply
traumatised. It was the frog into the hot water type stuff, and a normal,
intelligent frog would jump straight out of that water and find refuge - then she would
think through the spiritual and philosophical implications of the whole business from a
vantage point of safety.
Not so this little
frog. She had some newly acquired beliefs that hadn't been tried in the fire yet. Love
seemed to demand that she help her husband find a solution to his problem, no matter what
the cost to herself. So she stayed in that hot water, though it felt like she would
be boiled alive. Then someone turned down the heat a bit and she thought it would be
ok. It was still frightfully hot, but she could survive.
The old lie was
still there, too, quietly residing beside the new truth that had been planted in her
heart. Remember it? There was no-one to help, so she had to be strong and rely on
her own resources to survive. Well, now she had Jesus to help - she must be able to
survive anything!
Year after year,
the heat was slowly rising again. Eventually it would reach that fatal temperature
where bodily functions could no longer be maintained - organ meltdown I think it's
called. Long before this she had lost the ability to climb out, even if she had
realised it was necessary.
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