Leslie Vernick

Topic: What am I saying when I share my husband with another woman?

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 15:27:00 +0000

Good morning friends,

We are having a great time in the webinar series, Does God Want me to be Happy. Last week we learned how to identify and get rid of our negative thoughts. This week we are going to learn how to manage our negative emotions so that they don’t get the best of us. It’s still possible to sign up and be a part of the series if you’d like. Click here for more information or to register.

Please pray for me if you think of me. My schedule feels a little too busy, and I need to make some changes. I ask that you please pray that I will have the wisdom to let go of the things God is not asking me to do and to use my time wisely. My two words for this year are balance and purposeful, and I’m not doing so well. I feel scattered and tired more than I want to.

Here is this week’s question. I invite all of you who have lived through parts of this story to share your words of wisdom with this woman.

Question: My husband confessed to adultery several years ago, and he still wants to cling on to his "2nd wife". I have chosen to stay on in this marriage and not fight in the worldly sense. However, I wonder if that is wrongly telling him that it is alright to carry on this choice of lifestyle?

Answer: There are many reasons why some women choose to stay in such an arrangement--financial issues, health concerns, and young children being some of them--but staying with your husband while he is having an adulterous relationship with another woman indeed gives your husband the message that there are no consequences to his sinful behavior. (And you might also be teaching your children that it’s okay to sin because nothing really bad happens.)

Dishonesty, betrayal, and infidelity breach our marital promises. They deeply wound and can fatally injure the very foundations of any marital relationship. You mention that you’ve chosen not to fight in the worldly sense. I’m wondering if you are fighting in the biblical sense.

Many believe that Christ’s teaching to turn the other cheek and go the extra mile excludes fighting back. However, the apostle Paul said that in some circumstances he found it best to fight back. Instead of fists or ugly words (worldly ways), however, he used different kinds of weapons. He used the weapons of righteousness (2 Corinthians 6:7).

You are in a war. It is a war of good versus evil, but we are not to fight this war as the world does (2 Corinthians 10:3-4). Romans 12, tells us how we are to win this war against evil. We are to overcome evil with good. Overcome is a fighting word. It is active, not passive. So, let me give you some specific ways you might start fighting in a godly way for your husband, for your marriage, and for your self.

First, we overcome evil with good when we choose to respond to wrongdoing in ways that are godly, righteous, and loving. In other words, we are to respond to our spouse’s wrongs in ways that are in his long-term best interest.

So the question I want you to ask yourself is this: What is in your husband’s best interest here? Certainly it is to pray vigorously for him. But is it best to allow him to continue to sin without protest or consequence? Is it good for him to believe that it’s acceptable to live with you while continuing to be sexually involved with another woman?

The Bible tells us that a man reaps what he sows (Galatians 6:7). It also warns an adulterer “Can you take fire upon your lap and not get burned?” (Proverbs 6:27). By staying with your husband, are you not short circuiting God’s process for bringing someone to his senses by giving him the perks of marriage while not being committed to you in that marriage?

Second, we overcome evil with good when we don’t let our enemy, Satan, fill us with doubts about God and his love for us. When we are hurting, angry and afraid, Satan often attacks our faith and tempts us to doubt God. We feel too afraid to implement the gift of consequences or too angry to speak the truth in love. The outcome is that Satan not only has our spouse, he’s now captured us as well. Don’t let him.

Third, you can fight for the sacredness of the marital covenant by not allowing this other woman to share your husband. You cannot change what your husband does, but you certainly can change what you do. You might want to say something like this:

"I’ve been more than patient with your struggle, hoping you could come to your senses. But, I will not continue to live as if this is okay and I am not deeply wounded by your unfaithfulness to me, your wife. You must choose. I will not live like this--with you thinking it’s acceptable to have us both.”

Your children are learning what is acceptable and what is not acceptable to live with. What you are teaching them by your example is something to soberly look at.

Last but certainly not least, what is in your own long-term best interest here? A biblical self-love honors one’s body and cares for your self. Is it in your best interest to be sexually involved with a man who is sexually involved with another woman? Are you not risking disease as well as continued emotional and mental harm?

I cannot decide what’s best for you, but with wise counsel, you must make some hard choices. To stay may look like the more biblical and “loving” choice, but if one stays because she is afraid to leave, then it is not a choice made by faith but rather based on fear.

That is not God’s way. Cling close to God and be willing to let your husband go

Topic: How Do I Live with a Tyrant?

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 16:01:00 +0000

Good morning friends,

I’m so excited about the new webinar series that I’ve started. It will begin this Wednesday night, February 15th at 9pm ET, 6pm PT and go for three weeks. This Wednesday I will be talking about Getting Rid of Stinkin’ Thinkin’. February 22nd will be on Managing Negative Emotions and February 29th will be on Building Healthy Relationships. Each 45 minute webinar will be followed by a 45 minute question and answer session related to the topic. It’s not too late to join us. Click here for more information or to register.

This week’s question: My husband is basically a good man. He is a school teacher and the music director/organist of our Church. He can be patient, kind, loving and always deeply spiritual. He can also be demanding, tyrannical and irrational.

He blames everyone and anyone for any problems that arise. It is a knee-jerk reaction to even the slightest, most inconsequential of events. If one of our children falls down, his first reaction is to scream an "I told you so" at them--never is his first reaction one of concern for their well-being or safety. He expects our older children--living away from our home with lives of their own--to always be at his beck and call. If he wants them to do something for him, it does not matter that they have jobs, plans, etc. He refuses to be told no, and, everyone cow-tows to him just to keep him on an even keel and avoid the rants and literal rages that he has demonstrated.

While he is a school teacher, his passion is the piano and he is an accomplished pianist and composer--just not as revered and accomplished as he would like to be. Whose fault is that? It’s his parents; his father for having a health crisis when he was younger or his mother for not knowing or doing enough to promote his career. The children and I are also to blame because he has to work a "meaningless" job to put food on the table.

He takes no responsibility for any failure, real or imagined, in his life. He doesn't seem to have any concept that not everyone's life revolves around him and that people are allowed their own lives and opinions. He is negative in all aspects of his life- except, of course, if it relates to music. While I could write pages about this aspect of his personality, suffice it to say that he will always see the dark cloud around the silver lining. He is also very vocal about his negative thoughts and when he's challenged, he plays the victim and accuses the challenger of attacking him. It's to the point where conversation with him is seldom initiated because we all know what his reaction will be. Want his opinion? Just think of the most irrational response, and go with that.

He is like a petulant two-year-old who demands his own way and nothing is ever right for him. Even if you do something considerate to try and make life easier for him or take care of something that he hadn't time to do, his reaction is never one of gratitude--there is always, always, always a negative reaction. Things are still done or taken care of for him, but it's never brought up to him and, if he does notice, it's never mentioned.

While we all love him, he is driving a wide and very deep wedge between himself and the rest of our family. It is very difficult to live with someone when you are walking on eggshells at all times. I am not looking to leave him or my marriage. I am looking for help in how to live with him and how to help my children live with him. I do not want my children to grow up like their father.

Answer: I feel a little confused. You say that your husband is basically a good man: patient, kind, loving and always deeply spiritual. Then you go on for several paragraphs listing all the ways he is not patient, loving, good or spiritual. Perhaps what you mean is that your husband can be charming and act loving when everything is going his way and everyone meets his needs and expectations in exactly the way he wants. When that doesn’t happen (which is real life), watch out!

Now your question: how do you live with someone like that and how do you help your children live with someone like that? The best answer I can offer you is you can only live with this (if you choose to) with a good support system and lots of grace and truth, with no expectations of a meaningful relationship or mutual give and take.

I am reluctant to put a label on anyone, but your description of your husband’s behavior is typical of someone with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. A craving for admiration, an attitude of entitlement and lack of empathy for anyone else’s needs are usually the big red flags. You can “google” it and read more information on it if you want to see if it fits.

Let’s start with grace. In order to live with someone like this, you will need to learn to lean hard into God’s loving grace knowing that when your husband doesn’t treat you well or love you like you wished he did, you are still deeply loved and valued by God. You will need God’s grace to continually forgive your husband and keep a clean slate of the wrongs he does against you so that you don’t become hardened by bitterness and resentment. Your husband will never apologize or take responsibility for the wrong’s he’s done which makes it that much harder to forgive and let things go, so your strength must come from outside yourself. It can only be from God.

You will need God’s grace to biblically love your husband when you feel like screaming at him and grace to not repay evil for evil. Jesus calls us to love our enemies, but we rarely have to live with our enemy day in and day out. To live in a relatively conflict-free relationship with your husband, you will need to accept that you will always be more the giver. God sees how much you give whether or not your husband notices or appreciates it. You will need His eternal perspective on your marital loneliness and suffering because you will feel unheard, unloved and unvalued much of the time, which may tempt you to seek other male companionship.

You will need grace to not judge your husband and have contempt for him as a man or as a person, even though truth tells you his attitudes and actions are sinful. Grace keeps us humble, reminding us that we too are sinful and have our own brokenness. Grace keeps us mindful of the logs in our own eyes before trying to remove the speck in our spouse’s.

You will also need to stay focused on God’s truth to stay healthy emotionally, spiritually and mentally. Your husband blames and shames and it’s tempting to believe his harsh words. Don’t do it. Listen to what God says about whom you are and not your husband’s words. You will need God’s truth to explain to yourself and even your children that sometimes their father acts selfishly, and it’s not wrong of them to say “no” or to ask him to consider their needs, and not just think of his own (Philippians 2:4).

Truth will help you know when boundaries are important and how to set them. For example, when he begins his angry tirade you might stop talking, turn around and walk away. If he continues, leave the house. When you return you can say something like, “I can’t listen to you when you scream at me.” Keep it short and simple. Or say “I don’t want to feel angry and hateful toward you so I’m leaving until you can cool down.” Then do it.

You will also need truth to guide you when to confront your husband’s sinful behavior and how. There may be a strategic or teachable moment where you could say something that may cause him to press pause and think about his actions. You want to look for those moments and ask God to give you an anointed tongue.

We are to speak the truth in love to one another, but it’s tempting to either placate this kind of person or eventually get sick of it and blow up, only to later feel guilty, regretting your reaction, which only adds more fuel to his fire. Wear truth as a necklace and she will teach you when the time is right to speak. Hard words need not be harsh words.

For example, when he’s inconsiderate of your needs or your schedule, you could say, “I know this is important to you, but this is important to me so I have to do this first.” Your goal in this kind of statement is to remind him that you are a separate PERSON with your own needs, feelings and thoughts. You are not just a slave or a robot or a “wife”, but a person and, even if he doesn’t value you, you are going to value yourself.

You said you don’t want your children growing up to be like their father. Children do learn a lot from their parents, but their father isn’t their only influencer. You have a huge impact on your children, and the way you interact with their father will say a lot to them about not only who he is, but who you are. If you act as if he’s right and he’s entitled to act this way, they get the picture that men get to have their way all the time and that’s “normal”. Therefore, it’s important to speak truthfully to your children about things such as, “I think sometimes your father can be self-absorbed and not realize that you have your own plans. It’s okay to remind him that you can’t always accommodate him and stick to what you need to do for yourself.”

You say your husband is deeply spiritual. Galatians 5:16-26 speaks about the person who lives in the spirit and one who lives in the flesh. Perhaps in a moment when your husband seems open or more in tune with God, you could ask him which one he inhabits most often. Or when he is most negative or critical say, “You don’t seem to experience God’s joy or peace very much. Why do you think that is?” Your words will have little impact on him, but God tells us that His words are powerful and don’t return void. They have the power to cut right to the heart (Hebrews 4:12). Ask God to use His Word, even those in the lyrics of the music he plays each week at church, to cause him to see the truth about why he is so critical, so miserable and so unhappy.

Lastly, don’t forget you do need good relationships even if it’s not in your marriage. Seek out healthy girlfriends that can encourage you, love on you, pray for you and hold you accountable to be the kind of person you want to be while living in this difficult marriage.

Friends who have walked in this woman’s shoes, please share your words of wisdom here with her.

How do I revive a wilting marriage?

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 18:15:00 +0000

Hi Friends,

This past week I did my very first webinar on Does God Want Us to Be Happy. It was exciting to venture into this new opportunity to teach more of you and reach a wider audience. We had over 400 people in attendance from across the world and got great feedback from those who participated. You still have time to join in on the next three sessions. Click here for more details.

I’m also planning to develop a new webinar series this year on The Emotionally Destructive Marriage so be sure to stay tuned to future newsletters for more details.

In addition, I’m opening up five (5) new coaching spots after February 15th. If you’re interested in an application, please contact me at leslie@leslievernick.com.

Question: My marriage isn’t terrible, but it isn’t great either. I often think I married the wrong person and that I would be happier with someone different. How do I learn to love the person I married instead of always dreaming of what might have been?

Answer: Believe it or not, your situation is not all that uncommon. I’ve talked with many women who do not have a bad marriage but are unhappy with the person they are married to. The love they once felt toward their husband, they no longer feel. Or, as they look back, they realize that they married their husband for the wrong reason like wanting to get out of their parent’s home or to have children.

That said, you are married, so what do you do? You have a couple of choices, none of which may feel very appealing to you right now. One is you can continue to regret your choice, live in “what if” and be unhappy. Sadly, if you continue to do that, your marriage will get worse. You cannot change the past. You cannot relive your decision. Living in regret is a waste of time and energy. You did it, it’s done. Move on.

That brings you to your next two choices. One is to give up. You can choose to end your marriage. I don’t say that lightly nor do I believe that is the best choice, but it is a choice. God allows us free will even if we choose poorly. But divorce is not an easy decision and is not without serious consequences relationally, spiritually, emotionally and financially.

I’m glad your question is really about the third choice. How might you learn to love the person you married? I have some friends who are in an arranged marriage. When they married, they were virtually strangers. But they have learned to love each other. It is probably not the Hollywood, romantic version of Valentine love, but a deep trust, a safe harbor type of love which endures over the ups and downs of family life.

Here are some things you can do which will help you come to better love the man you’re married to. I call them the five A’s of relationship revival: Acceptance, Attention, Affirmation, Admiration and Affection.

1. Acceptance: No one has a perfect marriage or perfect spouse. Learn to be content with the person you married instead of trying to remake him into the person you think he should be.

You said that it is not a bad marriage. What’s good about it? Is your husband faithful? Good with the children? Does he provide for your well-being financially? Is he handy with house repairs? No one gets all 52 cards in the deck when they marry. All of us have strengths and weaknesses, and the things that bug us the most after marriage are often the things that we loved the most while dating. For example, I love that my husband enjoys doing things with me and talking, however he’s not crazy about tackling work around the house. I can focus on what he doesn’t do, but when I do that I feel more and more upset, lose sight, and forget to give thanks for all the good things he does do.

2. Attention: In all of life, what you don’t maintain deteriorates. This is true with your nails, your body, your home, your car, and it’s true with your marriage. Make time for your husband and marriage. Take the time to talk, to play, and to have romance together. Even if you’re not always in the mood, being intentional about giving attention puts the structure in place to build on the other things in your marriage. When you were dating, you probably spent lots of quality time together. That’s what helped bond you together. When you don’t invest the time, don’t expect to get the results.

3. Affirmation: Think about the things that drew you to him in the first place. Was he a strong leader? Perhaps he was very kind and generous, funny, or a good money manager. Let your mind remember his good qualities. When he gets home, tell him how much you like or appreciate those qualities in him.

4. Admiration: Affirmation is more external, it is something we do. Admiration is more internal. It is something that we feel towards another person. But our feelings are linked to our thoughts, and so we must train our mind to give thanks and dwell on our husband’s good points, not his weaknesses. The apostle Paul tells us to think on the positive things in life, not the negative things (Philippians 4:8). In this passage, Paul’s not pretending that there aren’t negative things, but if we dwell on them we will make ourselves unhappy.

5. Affection: Every human being needs touch. Put your arm through your husband’s arm during a movie or church service. Hold hands. Rub his back. If you’re wary that you’ll be giving your husband the message you want sex, (and do not) then do it in a more public place or at a time when more romance is not possible. However, good sex is a way to improve marital intimacy. Remember, talk and touch are the primary ways we build intimacy.

I challenge you to faithfully work on doing these things. Let me know if your feelings toward your husband and your marriage improve.

Consequences or Punishment?

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 16:53:00 +0000

Good Monday Morning friends,

I’m so excited. We have over 500 people registered for the free webinar on Wednesday night, February 1 at 9PM ET answering the question, Does God Want me to Be Happy? It’s not too late to join us, and we’d love to have you attend. Click here for more information or to register.

This week’s question: I've read some of your books, and I wholeheartedly believe that I deserve to be treated better than I am. This crazy cycle isn't ok, and it must stop one way or another. I'm on-board with that much.

My trouble is that I need some help thinking creatively about what natural consequences might be. It's easy when it's a little kid. For example: "You know the rules; until you can respect the furniture and sit on it properly (rather than jumping), you may not use it. Here...sit on the floor to have your lunch and maybe tomorrow you can use the furniture again properly."

What do you do with a husband and that crazy cycle? I can go toe-to-toe when I have to, but really what I want to do is run far, far away. In these times, I want nothing but out of this relationship.

I desire to be treated properly, but don't know another reaction other than fight it out (which gets sooooo old) or flee. Those are my two stand-by's. However, I don't like it (actually it angers me) that I don't know any other reaction. What actions could I take instead? Can you give some practical examples of how to dance differently?

Answer: First of all let me commend you that you even want to dance differently and you’re not happy with your own “reactions”. Let’s take the metaphor of the dance. If you were dancing with someone and they repeatedly stepped on your toes, what would a “natural” consequence be, especially after you kindly asked them to be more careful or to stop dancing that way? If they would not change their behavior, then you would have to dance differently yourself if you wanted your toes to stop hurting.

That might mean you stop slow dancing with that person or you let go of his hands and step back and dance separately. If he pulls you back into the embrace of a slow dance, then you stop dancing once again and say, “I won’t close dance with you because you’re stepping on my toes. That hurts me, and I’ve asked you to stop and you haven’t. Until you learn to dance with me without stepping on my toes, I am not able to slow dance with you.

Now it’s his turn to make a choice. Either he will stop dancing altogether with you, dance separately, or learn how to dance without stepping on your toes. Meanwhile, he may scream and blame you that you’re being too sensitive, unreasonable, unsubmissive, mean spirited, and sinful because you won’t dance with him like he wants.

This is where we get fuzzy headed and manipulated. We do want to dance with our spouse, and we do want to dance closely. We also believe that it is God’s will and what we promised when we got married. Therefore, we feel guilty pulling away or putting boundaries down. We look inside and think maybe we were too sensitive or selfish.

It doesn’t help when he screams and accuses and blames until we can’t think straight. So we try harder and go back to dancing close, but when he steps on our toes again and we can’t take it anymore, we blow up or run away. This pattern repeats itself again and again as a person gets lured in or dragged back into the same old dance where your toes keep getting stepped on.

So, you asked for some practical ways to implement consequences when your husband is abusive toward you. You don’t mention specifically what is happening so I can’t coach you in specific strategies but here are some general principles about consequences.

It’s important that we understand that we are not punishing our spouse (as a parent might punish a child). That is not our role and it is inappropriate. Consequences are meant to wake us up and help us to see more clearly. The pain of our sin is meant to teach us not to repeat the same things over and over again. The scriptures are clear, what a man sows he reaps (Galatians 6:7). When a man sows discord, abuse, enmity, strife, and pain in a marital relationship, there is a natural consequence. He doesn’t reap the benefits of a good marriage relationship.

If he didn’t experience that painful consequence, it would enable him to stay deceived into thinking that he can act sinfully and not suffer any consequences. That is not the truth. So painful consequences have a way of helping a person change his sinful ways because he doesn’t like or want that PAIN of the consequences.

I think this is where many Christian women have been misadvised and foolish. They have put up with terrible treatment and still tried to provide the relational closeness of a healthy, loving marriage. That enables the husband to deceive himself into thinking that it is “her problem” and “she makes me act this way”. The lie is that it doesn’t matter how I behave or treat her, she’s my wife for life, God hates divorce, and therefore I’m entitled to the perks of a good marriage. That is not biblical wisdom, nor healthy reality testing.

So here are some natural consequences for an abusive relationship:

1. Call the police and press charges if he is physically abusive. The longer you make excuses or put up with it, the more aggressive he will become. A night or time in jail helps someone see that what they are doing is not only wrong, it is illegal and you will not allow yourself or your children to be physically abused.

2. When he becomes verbally aggressive, end the conversation. Simply walk away when he begins his screaming or verbal assault. Remind him that you will not allow yourself to be spoken to that way. Do not argue with those boundaries. If he follows you, go to a bedroom and lock the door. If he breaks it down, call the police. Always make sure you carry a cell phone with you and have it preprogrammed to 911.

3. If he verbally assaults you in a closed area such as a car, refuse to drive with him. Drive yourself separately because he can’t control himself. He loses the privilege of your company when he mistreats you.

4. Exit the situation if it is escalating. If you need to leave the house because you feel in danger, whether emotionally, physically or sexually, you need to have a safety plan in place. That might mean putting a spare car key in the garage or under a planter, packing a suitcase and hiding it in the trunk or garage, or making sure your children know that when you say a certain phrase, they all exit the house and get into the car. If you’ve been through the cycle, you can tell when he’s getting himself worked up. You don’t have to stay for the blow-up stage. Leave. The consequences for his inability to control his temper and his tongue (or his hands) is the loss of your company (for a hour, for an evening, for a season).

5. Separation. If someone repeatedly refuses to listen and you are in a position to do so, separation can be a very effective consequence for this kind of behavior. It has the potency to “wake him up” and let him know that he cannot continually act abusively towards someone and expect that they will still want to be in a loving relationship with him. Separating often begins to open the abusers eyes for the first time that you are a separate individual with your own thoughts, your own feelings and your own needs. Before you return back into the relationship, however, it’s important that he not only “see” what he’s done wrong, but that he’s gotten help in respecting your “no” and with the ability to tolerate and manage his own negative emotions.

6. End the relationship. Some Biblical scholars disagree on whether or not abuse is a biblical reason to dissolve a marriage. Certainly, it would be a last resort after all other steps have been taken. But it is a natural consequence of this kind of behavior. When someone repeatedly abuses someone else without repentance, without remorse, and without change, what are the alternatives? The choices are continued separation, continued abuse, or ending the relationship. Sometimes the abuse continues throughout the separation and end of a marriage through legal harassment, child custody disputes, and withholding of finances.

In addition, although these are not technically consequences, I want to give you some things you can say when your husband is starting his tirade. You say your pattern typically is to either “fight it out or flee”. Instead, try saying one of these phrases and then walk away: “Just because you think that way doesn’t make it true” or “I’m not going to argue about that” or “That wasn’t appropriate or a nice thing to say” or “I don’t deserve to be spoken to that way.” Again those statements will not transform your spouse, but it will open his eyes a bit to you as a separate person who is not going to allow herself to be bullied, badgered, manipulated and mistreated. As you gain respect for yourself and handle yourself in godly ways, you will exert a powerful influence on your husband and children. And, those are good things.

Hear me. You can make a bad relationship better all by yourself by not escalating the conflict, not retaliating, not repaying evil for evil and not engaging when someone is pushing your buttons, but as much as you desire a good marriage, you cannot make a bad marriage a good marriage all by yourself.

In closing, here just a few verses from Proverbs that tell us the results and consequences of living with a difficult person:

22:3 A prudent man forsees evil and hides himself, but the simple pass on and are punished.

22:8 He who sows iniquity will reap sorrow.

23:9 Do not speak in the hearing of a fool, for he will despise the good sense of your words.

23:10 Cast out the scoffer, and contention will leave; yes, strive and reproach will cease.

24:25 Make no friendship with a man given to anger, nor go with a wrathful man, lest you learn his ways and entangle yourself in a snare.

Am I enabling my new husband and understanding God's perfect will?

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 15:24:00 +0000

Good Monday morning friends,

I want to invite you to my very first webinar on Wednesday, February 1st at 9:00 PM ET. Far too many people think that they have to suffer in order to live a God-ly life. They find themselves wallowing in negative feelings, dealing with feelings of overwhelm and experiencing intense sadness. I'm sharing the keys to living a happy, joyous and fulfilled life according to God's plan in a special free webinar. For more information or to register, go to http://www.leslievernick.com/registration.html.

I hope you enjoyed your weekend. My girlfriends and I are choosing words to define or clarify our focus and goals for this New Year. One friend chose “Remember”, another chose “Everything”, another “Learn” and another “Strong”.

They also picked verses to go with them which are below.

“Be STRONG and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go.” Joshua 1:7

“God's divine power has given us EVERYTHING we need for life and godliness through the knowledge of Him, who called us by His own goodness and glory.” 2 Peter 1.3

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in EVERYTHING, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” Philippians 4.6

I thought it was a great exercise, so I wanted to challenge you to think of a word or phrase, with an accompanying verse, that will help keep you on track. Last year my word was “Presence”. This year I’ve chosen two words, Balance and Purposeful. I want my life to reflect the Apostle Paul’s prayer when he prays,

“And this is my prayer: that my love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that I may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ – to the glory and praise of God.” Philippines 1:9-11

How about you? Share with us your word or phrase for 2012.

This week’s question: I googled how to deal with controlling people/spouse and I found your articles. It is the first time in Christian circles I have ever heard anything about dealing with an abusive spouse. In the churches we were in, everyone just put on a front.

I’ve been divorced from my abusive spouse for about 4 years. He was mentally, emotionally, and verbally abusive, but upon reading your article I see how I perpetuated that by trying really hard to be the submissive wife. I had a slanted view. He was sooo angry and acted like he hated/despised me. He would not go to counseling. We were both teachers of the Word and leaders in the church.

I was afraid of him getting mad. I was afraid of him. When I would finally protest, he would just get more angry.

I am married again and my friend tells me I am enabling my new husband. My new husband has learning disabilities and is almost 70 years old so I have compassion for him just like I did my last husband, who had a bad childhood, so I do most of the work, etc. Is this wrong? Am I just making it too easy for him?

I am also carrying a lot of guilt because of the sin of divorce. I fell in love with my second husband while married to my first because my second husband showed me the love that I never had from my first. I have repented of course, but feel like I took a wrong turn now and am not where I am supposed to be and cannot be used by the Lord.

Would you have recommended divorce from the first spouse if he was unwilling to change?

Answer: Wow you asked quite a few questions, and I’ll try to cover most of them. The one I can’t answer is your last one, would I have recommended divorce in your situation. I never recommend divorce to anyone. I don’t think it is my place to recommend such a life-changing decision as to whether or not someone should continue to persevere in a destructive marriage or not. My role is to listen carefully, to help clarify what is really going on, and then help the person get healthy and strong enough to make wise and biblical decisions on how to handle it. In my opinion, divorce is always the last resort when all other efforts to reconcile and bring true peace in the marriage have repeatedly failed.

So let me move on to your question about all the guilt you feel about having an affair with your second husband while still married to your first husband. Guilt is an appropriate emotion anyone should feel when he or she breaks God’s commands. It is hardwired into our conscious. It helps us not to repeat sinful behavior because we feel bad.

You say that you repented of your sin, so I wonder if you’re still struggling with guilty feelings because you don’t believe you’re truly forgiven. Or, perhaps your guilt has morphed into regret. You regret that you rushed ahead of God’s best for you by getting involved with another man while still married to your husband, and now the waters are muddied and you are unclear of God’s will and his purposes for you.

If it’s more unbelief, then understand you are in a spiritual battle. If Satan can’t get us to fall by tempting us with sin, then he will accuse us with our sin and remind us how unworthy we are of God’s forgiveness, mercy and grace. We might think things like, “God hates divorce so he must hate me because I got divorced.” Or “God hates adultery so how could he love me when I was so foolish?”

Jesus cautions us that Satan is a liar and deceiver and accuser (John 8). God’s grace is so good that it even covers the sins God hates most. That’s why it’s called amazing grace. Don’t let Satan rob you of your peace or joy of forgiveness by accusing you of your sin. Notice David’s confession and relief after he received God’s forgiveness for his sexual sin against Bathsheba (Psalm 51). We must choose to believe what God says, that “He has removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west.” Psalm 103:12

Remember, God doesn’t forgive us because we’re worthy of it, he forgives us because he wants to. The psalmist said, “O Lord, You are so good, so ready to forgive, so full of unfailing love for all who ask for your help.” (Psalm 86:5 NLT). Can you believe God is that good? That willing to forgive and that loving?

On the other hand if you’re struggling with regret because you fear that you’ve missed God’s best for you, confess that too. I think most of us can relate. We look back on things in our past that we wished we had done differently and wonder if we have been forever doomed to God’s plan B because we got off track.

I’ve just finished reading through Genesis (I’m reading through the Bible this year), and most of the characters, Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca and Jacob and Esau, sinned big time and made huge mistakes. Yet God still used them and his plan was not thwarted. In a nutshell, God’s perfect will for us is not that complicated. Paul says that it is God’s will that we mature and live a holy life (1 Thessalonians 4:1-7).

Could you have learned to do that in your first marriage? Yes. Can you still learn to do that now? Yes. You have not missed God’s best for you if you believe what he tells you. The Apostle Paul says God’s best for you is to conform you to the image of Christ and he will use all things for your good (even your sins and mistakes) to accomplish that purpose (Romans 8:28,29). When we believe that, then we know that his work in our life is not finished. He is still shaping you even in this new marriage you’re in.

That brings me to your question of whether or not you are enabling your new husband. Again I can’t know for sure because I don’t know what specific disabilities he has that make him incapable of doing his fair share around the house or to contribute to the marriage. But sometimes our compassion for someone does motivate us to do things for people that they should be doing for themselves. For example, if an adult child doesn’t have enough money to pay his or her bills, any parent would feel badly and be tempted to help, especially if his car is repossessed or she has to move out of her apartment.

However, if the reason they don’t have enough money is that they won’t work, or won’t work at a menial job, or he or she spends money foolishly, then for you to step in and pay the bill because you feel bad would only enable their irresponsibility or laziness. On the other hand, if your child was struggling with serious health difficulties, or an unexpected job loss or an emergency that took more money then was available, of course you would help if you could.

If your husband is capable of helping you with the housework or contributing financially but he refuses because you “do it” just fine, then your compassion is misplaced. If he refuses to do things for himself and you pick up the slack, then you are enabling him to be childish, lazy, selfish, or stuck. You are keeping him from maturing into the man God calls him to be and, in the long run, that is not loving him well.

Sometimes the boundaries between being compassionate and being co-dependent are not always as clear cut as my examples. That’s why we need help to gain clarity to see what’s really going on so we can gain the courage to make the necessary changes. Ask your friend what she sees that make her think you are repeating some of your past enabling behaviors in this marriage and then bring those things to God and talk with him about it. You said some of your misunderstanding of submission caused you to put up with abusive behavior far too long in your first marriage. Perhaps some of your misunderstanding of love and compassion are also causing you to enable behavior that needs to change in this marriage.

Husband says he's sorry and will change, but doesn't. Now what?

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 14:45:00 +0000

Good morning friends,

Do you have people in your life who will tell you the truth? I do and am thankful for that. Remember the childhood story, The Emperor’s New Clothes? No one had the courage to honestly tell the king that he was naked. What happens in our lives if we have no one who will honestly speak the truth?

To learn more about why that’s important, please sign up for my newsletter at www.leslievernick.com which will be coming out tomorrow (January 17th). I am also going to be doing a free webinar Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 9:00 PM ET answering the question whether or not God wants us to be happy and what that really looks like. The webinar will be about 45 minutes long followed by a live question and answer time. If you’ve always wanted to ask me some questions, here’s your chance!

In order to get the webinar sign-up information to you, please submit your e-mail address to my website at www.leslievernick.com.

This week’s question: My husband has had two affairs, he throws things when he’s angry, abandons me for days at a time after an argument, and now has just completely detached himself from our family. He also lies about his whereabouts. I want to be the wife God has called me to be, but I can’t continue this way. My husband always says he is sorry and will change, but these behaviors continue to resurface. Please help.

Answer: I think the first question you must settle is what kind of wife do you think God wants you to be for your husband? Is it a wife that allows herself to be abused, abandoned, lied to, and cheated on with no consequences?

You say I can’t continue this way. I don’t blame you. No one would want to be married this way. But I think your dilemma is that although you can, with God’s help, be the wife that God wants you to be, that doesn’t guarantee that your husband will become the husband God wants him to be or that you want him to be.

But the question remains, what kind of wife do you think God wants you to be here? Do you think he wants you to be passive and continue to live with a man who lies to you, cheats on you, leaves you, and scares you when he’s angry? Or, might God be calling you to love your husband in such a courageous way that you boldly confront his sinfulness, refuse to accept his excuses, and, if he wants to remain married to you, require him to show through his behaviors that he’s repentant and truly wants to change. His words are meaningless. He lies. If he wants to be married, it’s time that he takes specific and consistent action steps that demonstrate that he’s serious and willing to work hard to change.

What might that look like? For starters, he needs to get some accountability partners that will help him stay honest, engaged, and sexually faithful. He needs a plan to help him learn how to manage his emotions when he’s angry or hurt so that he doesn’t get destructive, deceitful, or disengage for long periods of time. Obviously he hasn’t been able to change these habit patterns by himself, so he will need to get professional or pastoral help to learn how to deal with his emotions and understand why he does the things he does. These changes do not happen quickly or painlessly but, with God’s help, are possible for the person who is committed and teachable.

I think you fear that if you hold your husband to these necessary changes and he refuses, then what? I’m going to tell you the unvarnished truth. Your relationship is broken. You may stay legally married, you may even still live together, but you cannot have a good marriage if your husband will not change.

Hear me. You can make a bad marriage better all by yourself (by not retaliating or repaying evil for evil), but you cannot make a bad marriage a good marriage all by yourself no matter how good a wife you are. We only have to read through the book of Jeremiah to see how God longed for Israel to repent, to come to her senses and change, but she would not. God loved Israel, but He could not and would not have a close and intimate relationship with her until she was willing to change her sinful, adulterous, deceitful ways.

God knows what you’re going through. Let him empower you to be the wife he wants you to be and the wife your husband most desperately needs. You don’t have to live this way.

Setting Boundaries With an Adult Daughter

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 15:18:00 +0000

Morning Friends,

I’m in Texas this week with some of my writing and speaking girlfriends. We do this once a year. It’s called Spa Week--although we’re not really at a spa. We’re at a Christian retreat center, in our sweats and sneakers, doing some exercising, walking and eating right, compliments of Carole Lewis and her group, First Place 4 Health. Each January she invites us to be pampered, fed and ministered to so that we are refreshed in mind, body and spirit to minister to others. Thank you Carole and First Place 4 Health!

Question: My adult daughter has moved back home after making a mess out of her life. I think I’ve enabled her to be too dependent on me and now she is acting like an angry teenager instead of a responsible adult. What can I do to help her?

Answer: I hear this so often. Well-meaning parents have crippled their children by not teaching them how to stand on their own two feet. My definition of a good parent is that you work yourself out of your job. In other words, your kids don’t need you in order to function anymore. With that said, you can’t change your daughter. But you can identify and own your problem.

What is that? You have given too much. You’ve been too nice and that may be one reason she is not taking responsibility for her own life. Unfortunately, this kind of unhealthy relationship fosters a love/hate relationship between you and your child. She loves you and is dependent on you and hates you for always being right and having to “need” you.

To change this dynamic, you will need to figure out why you have been overindulgent with your child for so long. Are you afraid to say no? Are you anxious that if she doesn’t need you, she won’t have a relationship with you? Do you pity her and believe she can’t do it without you? This is an important step so that you don’t revert back to rescuing her when things get hard for her.

Second, you need to evaluate what is in her best interest. I know you love your child, but godly love acts in the beloved’s best interests, not just what feels good. I’m sure you didn’t give your child candy for breakfast, lunch and dinner, even if she screamed for it because you know that wasn’t good for her. It is the same principle here. To change things, you will have to say no to her requests for help, not to be mean, but because it is good for her to learn to figure out some things for herself.

Third, you need to let her know how you are changing. I talk about this in section two of my book, The Emotionally Destructive Relationship in detail.

Let me give you a sample speak up dialogue that you may want to share or write to your daughter.

I love you. You are my child and nothing will ever change my love for you. But I realize now that I haven’t always given you what you needed most. I have given you lots of things, probably too much, but I have not given you the confidence that you can manage your life just fine without me. I fear you have grown too dependent on me to solve your problems, to rescue you from your financial woes, and to provide your living space, when at this age, you should be doing these things on your own.

I will take responsibility for my part. I now see that by giving in to you, I didn’t help you grow up. I know you are in a tight spot right now and have moved back home but I want you to know that this is only a temporary solution. I expect you to get a job, work hard and save money toward moving out on your own. You will need to pay room and board while you’re here so that you learn that you have to be responsible for your bills and your life.

I want to have a good relationship with you, and we will not have one if I treat you like a child and you behave as one. I want us to respect and care for each other as adults.

If you haven’t done step 1 and 2 first, it will be hard for you to stick with your resolve. Make a plan as to how you will respond when she cries, complains, criticizes you, or doesn’t pay her room and board. Remember, you can’t make her be responsible or mature at this point in her life. That is her job. However, you can create an atmosphere where it is more likely that she will make those choices.

Are You Living by Faith or by Fear?

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 19:59:00 +0000

Happy New Year Friends,

Are you the kind of person who makes New Years’ Resolutions? I am. I was just going back over last year’s goals and was happy I met some of them, but other’s I totally forgot about it. How about you? What resolutions did you manage to actually keep or change through 2011 and what got pushed back to the backburner of your life?

I’ve found that when we are serious about making change, it helps to have some structure and accountability. For example, if you want to lose weight, structure means that you have a meal plan or specific diet you are following that you know how to do and are taking time to work into your daily routine. Accountability means that you share your goals with someone who can encourage you to reach them. Accountability also may be that you weigh yourself every few days to see if what you are doing is working.

Let’s share with one another the change we want to make this next year and what structure and accountability we are putting in place to reach it.

I am going to read through the Bible this year, so I have downloaded a reading plan that I check off every day. (That’s my structure). My accountability is that I’m telling you all what I am going to do and will have to report to you in 2013 whether or not I reached that goal. Knowing I will have to tell you will help me to actually push to reach my goal.

FYI--I will be a guest on Moody Mid-Day Connection radio program on Tuesday, January 3rd at 12:00 CT talking about depression proofing your life. You can call in with your questions or comments at (877) 548-3675 or (877) LIVE-675 or go to http://www.facebook.com/middayconnection#!/middayconnection

Today’s Question: I read your blog on “Making Christmas Happen for Everyone” (December 5th blog). I have done your suggestions. However, what I experience from my husband when I act in the ways you describe is rage, anger, bitterness and resentment, and it’s not because I didn’t say it right. It’s because he’s not getting his own way, and it’s becoming too much for me to handle (it’s been 25 years).

I believe the next step is to seek a counselor who can help us both communicate better and respect each other, and then allow my husband the gift of consequences if he chooses not to work on these issues. I signed up for a mutual relationship, not a servant/master relationship, and I plan to hold him to his word--lovingly.

I believe, from my experience with my husband, that he will not cooperate with anything and will give me the ultimatum, “Take it or leave it. You have the problem.”

What do you think? Speaking up terrifies me because I don’t know what could happen, and rocking the boat causes a lot of anger, not just in our marriage but in the whole family.

Do you have anything to offer besides trust in the Lord, pray, and don’t be afraid or anxious for nothing. I know these wonderful truths, but even Jesus cried and exuded blood from his pores. Even Moses was scared. Even Abraham doubted when he walked the journey to place Isaac on the altar. All of these emotions are part of being human, but it doesn’t mean I don’t have faith. My family is very dear to me, and I’m afraid that if I put my foot down it will only get worse. Is it wrong to just want peace and rest? I know God won’t give us more than we can handle, but I am so very tired and afraid of the outcome.

Answer: You are right--we are human and we all have real and raw emotions when we live in stressful situations where there is continual conflict, bullying and disrespect.

Your letter indicates you are conflicted about this change you want to make. On the one hand, you say you are very tired of living this way and are ready to make a serious attempt at real change. On the other hand, you are very afraid that the change you desire won’t occur and, by standing up to him, things could get worse.

I was just reading today in the Psalms. It said, “My soul has dwelt too long with one who hates peace. I am for peace; But when I speak, they are for war (Psalm 120:6,7 NKJV). Your situation reminds me of many marriages where one person wants peace, but when she or he finally speaks up, it just causes more drama, more hatred, more conflict.

You’re right. Just because you finally take a stand and say “I didn’t sign up for a slave/master relationship” doesn’t mean that your husband will be willing to move toward a more mutual marriage. As long as he’s the master and you’re willing to be the slave, it works for him. However, perhaps he’s just as frightened of change as you are or just as unhappy.

So you ask if there is anything I can offer besides the standard trust God and don’t be anxious? It’s sad to me that we don’t find the comfort and healing in God’s word that he wants us to, but I understand what you are saying.

Here’s what I want you to know. God designed marriage to be a mutually loving and respectful relationship, not a slave/master one. Because that is God’s will for marriage, know that he is on the side of the oppressed when one person takes power over another and uses words, money, physical force or the scriptures to dominate and control the other.

When you respectfully speak up against injustice and oppression in a marriage (or anywhere else for that matter), know that God is on your side. If the other person refuses to listen, the gift of consequences can be a painful but helpful reminder that he or she will not reap the benefits of a good marriage when they sow discord and selfishness.

Sadly, when we are in close relationship with people (as in marriage and family) and one person receives painful consequences, often the entire family also suffers. That’s what you fear and rightly so.

So I think the next step you need to ask yourself in this whole process is do you want to live in fear--fear of staying or the fear of leaving--or do you want to live in faith (whether you think it wise to leave or stay)? Faith that God knows your story. Faith that God is bigger than your story. Faith that God has a plan for your life, and he is your helper in times of trouble.

It’s interesting to me that the psalmist says both, “I trust in God, so why should I be afraid? What can mere mortals do to me?” (Psalm 56:11), and “When I am afraid, I will trust God” (Psalm 56:3). There are times our faith is so big we don’t feel fear. Other times, we are so filled with fear that we will be overwhelmed by it if we don’t trust God.

I pray you choose faith, even when you feel fear.

Favorite Books for 2011

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 18:33:00 +0000

Good morning friends,

I hope you had a wonderful holiday yesterday. Today I thought I’d keep it light. I love to read. I read fiction, non-fiction, and cereal boxes. Here are my three favorite books I’ve read this year. Please return the favor and share what your favorites are and why.

One Thousand Gifts by Ann VosKamp

Hands down one of my favorite books of all times! The writing is exquisite and thoughts profound. Her subtitle is A Dare to LIVE FULLY Right Where You Are. I am rereading it now and still find myself catching my breath in wonder.

Bonehoeffer by Eric Metaxas

If you are a history buff and want to better understand the church prior to WW 2 and the life of one of Christianity’s hero’s, Deitrich Bonehoffer, you will love this book. It is rich with history, with passion, and with the thoughts of a man who lived his life fully for Christ.

This Gorgeous Game by Donna Freitas

Every mother with a teenage daughter needs to read this book together and talk about it. It’s written for the adolescent or even preadolescent girl, but I loved it. A young girl wins a writing award and her prize is a year-long mentorship with a famous author who also happens to be a Catholic priest. The relationship begins to feel oppressive and Olivia is not sure whether to be flattered by her mentor’s attention or scared of his intrusiveness. How can she not be grateful? How can she say “no” to his demands? It’s about stalking, boundaries, inappropriate relationships and paying attention to your gut.

Grieving in the Holiday Season

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 15:08:00 +0000

Merry Christmas Friends,

Are you all ready for Christmas? Is the tree up and decorated, stockings hung, cookies baked, gifts bought, cards signed and sent, and presents all wrapped? I didn’t think so. But if there is such a person out there who has all this done, please share your magic secrets with the rest of us who are scrambling. From the responses, I will draw one person’s name (there is probably only one) for a free copy of my book, Lord, I Just Want to be Happy.

For the great majority of us, it’s probably best to accept that we won’t get it all done unless we forgo sleeping. Please don’t do that. Instead of trying to get it all done, take some time for yourself and enjoy the music, the beauty of the season, and the Lord.

I was meditating on Sara Young’s devotional, Jesus Calling, which is a favorite for many of us. She writes for December 16th, “I speak in the language of Love; My words fill you with Life and Peace, Joy and Hope. I desire to talk with all of my children, but many are too busy to listen.”

Is this YOU? Are you too busy to listen? There is a huge difference between hearing something and truly listening. I’ve heard Christmas carols for weeks now, but I haven’t listened to them. I haven’t pondered their words, or felt their melody. They’ve been nothing more than background filler. They haven’t touched my heart.

I wonder if that’s what God’s Word becomes for many of us. We hear, but we don’t listen. We know the words, but they fail to move us. They don’t really change our heart.

God’s Word is meant to move us, to heal us, and to change us. The psalmist declares “He sent forth his Word and healed them.” (Psalm 107:20). And John writes, the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. And even then, we didn’t listen (John 1:10, 11).

Are you lacking hope, joy and peace even in this most joyous of seasons? Perhaps it’s because you’re not listening. You hear, but you don’t believe. The apostle Paul prays, “May the God of hope fill you will all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.” (Romans 15:13)

This Christmas, ask God for the gift of faith, so that you will be able to hear and listen to Jesus speaking his language of love to you personally.

Today’s Question: I am a widow of over four years. My husband was the love of my life. We met when I was 16 and married at 18. We had our struggles, but we loved each other deeply. We have two daughters. One was having our grandchildren, so we moved out to be near her. We built our dream home. I got transferred. My husband sold his business and started a new one at our new location, but then he developed panic attacks and couldn’t sleep. He went to the doctor, was prescribed antidepressant medication, but five days later he shot himself. My life forever changed. I have never known such pain, and for years I wanted to die too. I am doing better, but the sadness is always with me. Will this ever go away? I go on, despite my feelings, and do the best I can do to make my life.

I loved being married. I miss all the things that went with being married. I’ve been in counseling. I meditate and try to live for today and don’t look back, but it’s not easy. I still miss what I had. I remember all the cards that said your memories bring you comfort, but that’s not true. They only bring pain of what I had and don’t have now. Any suggestions?

Answer: I chose your question for this week because for so many people the holidays are not a happy time. They are filled with suffering and loss and other challenges that feel like they will go on forever. I’m so sorry for your pain. Losing a loved one is very difficult, but when it is also suicide, it is especially devastating.

There is no time table for grief. I imagine that you hear you should be “over it” by now. But for many, they don’t really get over it. They just move through it, and sometimes it takes a long time to get to the other side where they find themselves able to enjoy life again. Sadly, your husband wasn’t able to hope for a future that was different than his present. That’s why he felt desperate enough to end his life. It’s important that you remember that no matter how difficult your present is, God has a plan for your life, a plan with a future and a hope (Jeremiah 29:11).

I recently read a powerful book called The Color of Rain by Michael and Gina Spehn. It chronicles the story of two families, Michael Spehn and Gina Spell, who each lost a spouse too young. Gina’s husband died Christmas day leaving her alone with two young boys. Michael’s wife died unexpectedly from a brain tumor. Nether Michael nor Gina minimize the loss and grief they suffered, but they also share the story of a future and a sense of purpose in what God is doing in the midst of their suffering. You may find it encouraging for you this season. Finding purpose in your suffering is one way we move through and deal with tragedy in a healthier way.

Another book that I found very helpful is Ann VosKamp’s book, One Thousand Gifts. She doesn’t pretend life is easy, but she powerfully reminds us that whatever happens, God is good and that one way we can chase out our negative feelings is to learn to give thanks in all things.

My good friend Georgia Shaffer, who is a Life Coach, wrote a newsletter this month on dealing with the holidays when you’re not so happy. I found her suggestions helpful; perhaps you will too. Georgia’s resources can be found at www.georgiashaffer.com.

Georgia writes:

It's that time of year when television commercials and magazine advertisements overflow with what seem like only bright, happy faces. But what if you are filled with a sense of loss, uncertainty, or dread? What if you are feeling discouraged or hopeless?

Unfortunately, the holidays accentuate those feelings. Whether you are facing the loss of income, lifestyle, health, relationships or a long-held dream, the holidays can be a painful reminder of what once was and no longer is. Although there are no quick fixes, here are a few suggestions:

Give yourself permission to grieve.
Recognize that the time of sorrow may coincide with the holiday season. Be willing to accept your sadness, disappointment, or anger rather than struggle and fight with it. Along with your holiday activities, give yourself time to process your pain. Allow yourself the space to reminisce, cry or journal your thoughts and feelings.

Let go of some old traditions.
Reduced energy accompanies loss and sadness. Be gentle with yourself and realize that your Thanksgiving and Christmas this year may not meet the American holiday dream. What is most important to you? You may choose to focus on meeting the needs of your family rather than baking dozens of cookies for friends and relatives. Next year you may have the strength to resume that tradition.

Develop new traditions.
If the sadness results from death or divorce, your significant other will no longer be part of the holidays. What new traditions can you establish? Reaching out to others helps to take the focus off your circumstances. Delivering flowers to a nursing home or calling someone who is alone often causes your problems to shrink.

Accept help and support.
Although most of us prefer to give help rather than receive it, sometimes it becomes necessary to accept emotional or physical support. Rest in the knowledge that God will provide for your needs and remember that in time, like winter, the season of sorrow will end.

Lastly, I’d encourage you to find a grief support group such as Grief Share that will give you the added support you still need. Sometimes we fear tiring out our friends with our sadness and therefore end up faking it a lot. Who knows better what you’re going through than other people who have also suffered a deep loss?

Even though it’s been four years, when you allow God to use you in the most tender areas of your own pain, you will begin to feel that sense of purpose and aliveness that you have lost with the death of your husband and loss of your marriage and future together. You still have a future and so ask God to show it to you.

Friends, especially those of you who may also have lost a loved one, what other resources, advice, or help can you offer this dear woman?

How Do I Handle My Husband's Defensiveness?

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 15:41:00 +0000

Good morning friends,

This is my 150th weekly blog. I can’t believe I’ve been writing these for three years. To celebrate you, I am going to give the first five (5) people who respond to this blog, a free copy of your choice of any book, CD or DVD in my current inventory. I want you to respond with some suggestions to help the person who is asking the question in this blog, “How can I respond to my husband’s defensiveness?”

So give her some suggestions, and then e-mail me at leslie@leslievernick.com with your snail mail address and what book or CD or DVD you’d like. We will sign it and send it off to you as my thank you gift for being such a great community.

I am back home now after a week in Florida, refreshed and rested, ready to begin writing my new book, The Emotionally Destructive Marriage. This next year I will be focused on this topic, especially in this blog, and I’m looking forward to your feedback as I write.

If you have questions that you wish were answered in this new book, please send them to me at leslie@leslievernick.com. As I am able, I will answer some of them in this blog throughout the year so you will actually have a sneak preview of the book to come. Also, please forward this blog to anyone else who you think might benefit from having some practical and biblical answers to marriage’s most difficult dilemmas. We will be having some contests and free give-a-ways throughout the year to keep it interesting.

And just a few more newsy items:

My December newsletter will be out Tuesday and it’s on a lesson God showed me this past week, called The Gift of the Sand Dollar. You won’t want to miss it. If you haven’t signed up yet, go to my website home page and sign up. It’s not too late.

For those of you who are e-reader fans or will be receiving an E-Reader such as Kindle or Nook for Christmas, my current book, The Emotionally Destructive Relationship will be offered at a special discounted price of $2.99 from 12/22 to 1/3 only. It will be available for Kindle, Nook, Kobo and Sony Readers.

In the new year, I will be doing some free webinars on various topics. The first one will be in January and will answer the question, Does God want me to be Happy? One of the things I’ve really recognized this year is that people struggle with issues about being happy. This is a huge challenge and I’ve decided to do something about it.

So e-mail me and let me know what struggles you are having that prevent you from being happy or experiencing the joy, peace and love God desires for you.

Today’s Question: Whenever I say or do anything, my husband’s immediate reaction is defensiveness. For example, on Sunday I did two loads of laundry, we went to church, when we got back we ate lunch and I did the noon dishes (washed them)…I went for a walk, came back, took the recycle bins out of the van, put them in the garage, moved a wheel barrow that was still in the yard from Friday, took the laundry off the line and came in the house…dishes still in the same spot and our utility room floor needed sweeping. So I went to my husband who was watching football – and I just mentioned this to him. “Do you know what would really turn me on and make me happy? If when I’m out for a walk or when I’m running errands for you to take care of some things for me…like doing the dishes or sweeping the floor…”

Instead of a kind response like, “Oh I’m sorry. Did you want me to do that for you?” His response was the following. “You KNEW I liked football when you married me…huff…why are you making such a big deal…nothing is ever good enough for you…”

This is how he responds to everything I say or do. I feel I can’t do or say anything right in our relationship without a negative, belittling, blaming response…

He knows that when he responds to me this way it just makes things worse, but he keeps doing it. I try to express how I feel, use “I statements”, and express to him what I need and would like, and he gets defensive every time.

What do you suggest short of hitting him over the head with a bat or getting a divorce--neither one are good options.

Answer: Before I even attempt to answer this, I want to invite you, my readers--both men and women--to chime in here and help this woman understand why her husband may be defensive and to give her other suggestions that will help their communication style. I’m sure she’s not alone in this merry-go-round, and so let’s put our collective wisdom together to help them break this cycle. Remember, the first five people who respond, receive their choice of a free book, CD or DVD.

First, let me say that most people (men and women) get defensive when they fear they are being criticized. Whether you are saying it nicely or not, you’re husband’s statements to you indicate that he feels you think he’s regularly letting you down and not measuring up to your expectations of a good husband.

As I’ve said many times in my writing, the only person you can change is you, so let’s begin by looking at what kinds of things you can do differently.

You wrote, “He knows that when he responds to me this way, it just makes things worse, but he keeps doing it. I try to express how I feel, use “I statements”, and express to him what I need and would like, and he gets defensive every time.”

You can start breaking the cycle by asking yourself what’s your part of making things worse? You said, “He keeps doing it,” but you didn’t mention what your part is of making things worse. So begin by examining whether or not your negative statements, your “I statements” about what you’re unhappy about with him outweigh your positive statements to him. In any relationship when our negative statements are more frequent than our positive statements, it deteriorates.

Sometimes we believe that if we use “I statements”, they should always be taken positively. Let me give you a few examples of “I statements” and “you statements” that both sound critical, or like “you’re not good enough.”

For example, “I’m so tired of doing everything myself” verses “You never help me around the house.” Both statements are critical, one is a more direct attack; the other more implied.

A more positive “I statement” is, “I’d really like you to help me today get the house straightened up. When would be a good time, because I know you like football.”

Here’s another example: “I feel hurt that you never finished cleaning the bathroom like you said you would” verses “You’re so irresponsible, you never finish anything you start.” Again, both are critical.

A more positive “I statement” would be, “I’d really like you to finish cleaning up the bathroom today. Is that going to be a problem?”

Second, when your husband reacts defensively to one of your comments, how do you make it worse? Are you overly emotional? Do you give him the silent treatment? Is there an endless argument? Is the rest of the day/evening ruined?

In your e-mail to me, you implied a few times that your husband feels you’re overreacting to things. I don’t know whether or not that’s true, but ask yourself are your expectations realistic? In other words, it may not be unreasonable for you to wish or hope that your husband would jump up while you were out on a walk and notice what needs to be done around the house and do it for you while you were away, or even to apologize to you when you call him on it, but is it realistic to expect that knowing who your husband is? Perhaps you’re setting yourself up for disappointment and for him to fail you when you expect him to do things that he’s probably not going to do at least without you directly asking and perhaps even reminding him to do it.

Third, it seems like you’ve lost sight (as he has) of the bigger picture at stake. The problem is no longer whether or not he helps you or finishes the chores he says he’ll do and then doesn’t. The problem is that you can’t talk together in a way that feels good for him and good for you. Does that mean that you just keep quiet and accept that you will do 90% of the work while he watches football? Or that you divorce?

I hope not, but I think you might try to talk with him in an adult to adult way about how you can’t talk together about things without him getting defensive and you getting sad, critical, or angry. Describe what happens between the two of you when he finally says to you, “I should just leave.”

I wonder what would happen if you changed two things in your approach to your husband. First, instead of talking about his defensiveness or lack of follow-through or lack of help, ask him what he means when he says, “nothing is ever good enough for you.” You say this is his standard response, but instead of getting defensive yourself, what would happen if you stopped and said, “What do you mean? How do I tell you nothing is good enough?” And then just listen to what he says.

Second, I wonder what would happen if you didn’t do it all yourself, but instead made every effort to look for the positive things your husband does do and share that for a while, leaving off the negative comments. See if his mood toward you changes and his defensiveness lessens. If it does, then understand you may be part of the problem. If it doesn’t, then you may need to take other measures to talk about the health of your relationship and what it means that you can’t have a normal conversation without some sort of put down, or belittling remark.

Most of the men that I’ve talked with throughout the years in counseling are not monsters who don’t care about their wives and only want to live selfishly and self-centeredly. I’ve found most of them deeply want to make their wives happy and proud of them, but never quite know how to do it. As soon as they think they’ve succeeded in one area, the rules change and now there’s another area that they need to change or do better. Over time when this cycle continues, they begin to feel hopeless, like I will never make her happy or proud of me and they begin to get cynical, resentful and bitter.

Please hear me, I’m not saying you are to blame you for your husband’s defensiveness. As human beings we ARE defensive. But when we feel unsafe and attacked, it usually gets worse. So if you don’t want to hit your husband over the head with a baseball bat and you don’t want to divorce him, you must try a new approach. Don’t do everything yourself, but instead try encouraging him in the things he does right. That may motivate him to do those kinds of things more often. Give it some time and see what happens.

How To Stop Making Christmas Happen For Everyone

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 15:45:00 +0000

Good morning friends,

This week I am in Florida at a beautiful condo on the Gulf of Mexico that some friends of mine graciously let me use to rest, read, think, pray and write. I probably will have a little fun too. But beauty is so restorative to my soul. As I’ve said before, it’s essential to our spiritual and emotional well-being.

So instead of writing an answer to a new question today, I’m going to repeat an answer I gave to a woman last year who was feeling resentful that no one helped her with holiday preparations. I thought some of you might be feeling the same way and could use some of these tips NOW so that you don’t end up angry and exhausted after the holidays.

Today’s Question: I’m angry, hurt and tired. It seems like I’m the only one doing all the preparations for making our holiday a nice one. If it weren’t for me, we’d have no tree, no presents, no cookies, and no Christmas dinner. But it’s not only the holidays that I feel this way. I feel like I carry the entire responsibility for everyone’s life to go well. Am I being selfish that I want someone to care about me and my needs once in a while? Signed a burned out wife and mom

Answer: No you are not selfish for wanting someone to notice that you are a person and not just a machine that makes sure everything goes well for the people in your life. That said, I find many women in your exact predicament. You over-function which enables the other people in your life to under-function. That’s fine once in a while or when there is a specific crisis, but when that becomes “normal routine” for a family, marriage or even workplace, it can lead to disaster.

Let me explain. When you do all the preparations and carry all the responsibility, people begin to see you in that role and expect you will continue. The perks of over-functioning is that you get total control (which some people want and that’s why they do it all). However, most people get worn out over time and begin to feel resentful and unloved (which by your letter is happening now). If you start to balk or complain or get crabby, your family members look annoyed and wonder what is wrong with you? If you ask for help they either ignore you because they are used to you doing it all, or they give you such an attitude it’s just easier and more peaceful to do it all yourself.

When this happens in a marriage or family, it’s important for you to realize that it not only hurts you to carry the entire load, it hurts them not to help you. You are not doing anyone any favors by allowing them to think you can do it all while they relax on the couch watching television, sit in front of the computer playing games, or do their own fun things. It only enables selfishness to flourish and for your resentment and bitterness to grow-- a lose/lose pattern.

So how do we change this pattern? It starts with you. You have to be willing to relinquish control of everything and how things are going to be. Next, speak up to whoever your change will affect. Begin this dialogue by taking the entire responsibility for over-functioning (don’t blame your family) but state that you are no longer going to continue. Tell them that you are tired and starting to feel angry and resentful toward them and don’t want to have those negative feelings so YOU are going to change. You must be willing to let go of control of how it’s going to be and then spell out what you are no longer going to do specifically. For example you might say something like this:

Hey guys, I need to apologize for being so crabby lately. I think the reason I get that way is that I feel like I have to do everything in order to make it a nice Christmas for you all. But then it’s not a very nice Christmas when I get upset and resentful is it? So I’d like to simplify the decorating--I’m going to get an artificial tree so it’s not a hassle going out and cutting one down and I’m not going to bake anymore. It’s just too much work and I don’t want to feel resentful that you guys don’t want to chip in to help. I’m realizing that perhaps my expectations were too high and those things just aren’t important to you so I’m going to let them go.

Now, you HAVE to mean it if you say it. Here’s what will happen next. If those things are important to them and they do want a real tree or home baked cookies, then they can offer to take responsibility or help to make sure they happen. If they don’t, then you must LET THEM GO in order to demonstrate that you will not carry the entire load anymore. Until your husband or children experience the consequences when you stop over-functioning, they won’t begin to pick up the slack.

Here’s another example of a possible speak-up dialogue:

Honey, I’ve gotten burned out in the past with all the gift buying for everyone, so this year I’d like it if you took the responsibility for getting the gifts for your family. I don’t care what you get them but I don’t want to carry the entire load anymore. If you don’t want to do that, just let your family know that we won’t be exchanging gifts with them this year because I can’t do it all.

Many of you reading this are seeing lots of other areas where you over-function and allow your family to neglect carrying their own load of caring for themselves and caring about you. Please understand that God doesn’t want you to sacrifice yourself in order to allow someone else to be lazy or selfish.

The Bible says two things that at first glance appear to contradict one another but both are true. First, we are called to bear one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2), and second, each person is to carry their own load (Galatians 6:5). Both teachings are true. We carry another’s burden when he or she is unable to carry his/her burdens alone. However, when we carry a load for someone who is perfectly capable of carrying it themselves, we enable that person to under-function and that hurts them. It allows them to stay lazy, dependent, selfish and self-absorbed. As C.S. Lewis so wisely wrote, “Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness.”

It’s not too late. It’s only December 5th. Delegate and let go and you enjoy the season for a change.

Topic: The Gift of Prayer

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 17:27:00 +0000

Happy Cyber Monday Friends,

I hope you’re not getting too stressed out already. The saddest thing about this wonderful season is that most of us don’t really enjoy it. We’re so busy trying to make it perfect for everyone else, that we are stressed out and crabby. Please don’t do that to yourself. You know you do have a choice.

I’ve been blogging about the gifts of love that we can give someone, especially when we don’t feel all warm and fuzzy toward him or her. In fact, we often feel the opposite. Jesus tells us to love our enemies, but actually doing it is a challenge.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve blogged about the different gifts of love that we can choose to give even when we don’t have any loving feelings. I’ve covered the gift of acceptance, the gift of truth, the gift of consequences, the gift of kindness and the gift of forgiveness.

Today I want to talk about the most powerful gift we can give someone who feels like an enemy. It’s the gift of prayer.

The bible tells us that Jesus continually intercedes for us. To be more like him, we must also learn to intercede for others. To intercede means to speak on another’s behalf or to plead his case.

Moses did this in Exodus 33 when God was about to destroy the Israelites for worshipping the golden calf. Interceding for someone who has hurt us is not easy. Much like an injured animal often attacks others, hurt people often hurt other people.

If your spouse or someone else is hurting you, I’m not suggesting that you continue to offer yourself to be bitten, but I am suggesting that you ask God to help you have his perspective and his compassion toward this individual, thereby empowering you to intercede on his or her behalf.

Prayer is one of the toughest disciplines, especially intercessory prayer, because it is so other-focused. Richard Foster, in his book Prayer, Finding the Heart’s True Home, writes, “By means of intercessory prayer God extends to each of us a personalized, hand-engraved invitation to become intimately involved in laboring for the well-being of others.” What better gift of love. We often pray about our enemy, but do we pray for our enemy?

I’m reminded of Samuel the prophet. After Saul had just made some pretty big mistakes, Samuel replies, “As for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by failing to pray for you” (1 Samuel 12:23).

In my life, at times I have been so focused on praying for my own needs—whether material, physical or spiritual—that intercessory prayer gets tacked on at the end—if I have time. Yet, Jesus continually prays for us, and we are to be like him. We can give someone the gift of love by praying for him or her in the following ways:

•We can pray for his or her salvation.
•We can pray for his or her growth and spiritual maturity.
•We can pray that he or she gains wisdom and forsakes foolishness.
•We can pray for the conviction of God and the moral pressure of the Holy Spirit.
•We can pray for his or her eyes to be opened and to see the truth.
•We can pray that those who interact with our spouse (or other person) would speak truth to him or her.
•We can pray that our spouse (or other person) would desire to know God or know him better.
•We can pray that he or she would desire to be a better husband (wife) or father(mother).

Leanne Payne, in her book Restoring the Christian Soul, describes a process of praying for our enemies. In it, she concludes with instructions she received from the Lord regarding this matter. He told her to:

“Pray for the health, the wholeness, of your enemies. Pray for the salvaging of all that is good, beautiful, and true within them. I do a great work, one that will amaze you. Be at rest now from all that besets, offends, attacks—love, write, pray, live in peace in My Presence. Enter the timelessness of My joy and peace.”

James encourages us to stick with praying for our spouse or other person by reminding us that “the prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective” (James 4:16).

So friends, when you are at your wits end and you have no idea how to love this person, pray. That is the greatest gift you could give.

*Portions of this blog were from Chapter 9 of How to Act Right When Your Spouse Acts Wrong.

Topic: The Gift of Forgiveness

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 15:28:00 +0000

I am so thankful for you. I want to ask you to do something for me. Pray. I am beginning to write my new book, The Emotionally Destructive Marriage and I am tempted to be overwhelmed and scared (as I always am when God takes me way out of my comfort zone).

It will take me most of 2012 to write, although I’m hoping to get it done before September. Pray that I make the time to write, that God gives me fresh insights and that I accurately discern his Word as I tackle some touchy and controversial topics (in the Christian world).

I want to “test drive” many of my ideas in this blog, and would love to hear from you. Please let me know if they are they helpful, does it meet a felt need, is it biblical and what are your most important questions that you want answered in this book?

Over the past few blogs, I’ve been writing about the gifts of love. So far we’ve talked about the gift of acceptance, the gift of truth, the gift of consequences, the gift of kindness and this week we’re going to talk about the gift of forgiveness.

Forgiveness is the oil that smoothes over the rough spots as two people struggle to love when it’s hard and become what God calls them to be. When we keep score on marital wrongs, love is impossible. Although some excellent books have been written on the subject of forgiveness, I still find in my counseling practice a common misunderstanding of what it is. When I asked one client how she will know she has forgiven her husband for his adultery she replied, “When I don’t hurt anymore.”

Getting past the emotional pain caused by someone who has hurt you is a reasonable goal, but not a prerequisite for forgiveness. In fact, it was while Jesus was in pain he forgave those who abused him saying, “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). Forgiveness doesn’t remove the hurt or the consequences that sin has inflicted upon the victim. Sometimes the life-long consequences are worse than the original sin.

For example. Susan wasn’t honest with her husband about how much debt they were in. She had started her own business just a few years earlier and the expenses were much greater than she had ever anticipated. Instead of sharing that burden with her husband, Susan kept it to herself and tried to resolve the household cash flow problems by taking cash advances on all the new credit card offers she received.

When the creditors finally started calling the house because of unpaid bills, Danny hit the roof. Although it wasn’t easy, eventually Danny decided to forgive Susan for her deceit and pride even though he still felt hurt and angry. They had to file for bankruptcy. They lost their home and Susan’s business. If Danny waited until he felt no more anger or pain before he forgave Susan, their marriage may not have survived. The consequences of Susan’s deceit was devastating and would impact their lives for years.

Extending the gift of forgiveness doesn’t guarantee an absence of pain. Neither does it imply an automatic restoration of the relationship. Sometimes we confuse forgiveness and reconciliation. Forgiveness is something we can choose to offer because of who we are. God tells us we are required and empowered to forgive because we have been forgiven, not because the other person deserves our forgiveness or has even asked for it. In fact, it is often the person who has hurt us the most that never asks us for forgiveness. They are not sorry, or they simply don’t care.

Forgiveness is choosing not to hold onto our right for justice or vengeance. We cancel the debt they owe us. In order to be able to do this we must free our heart from the bitterness and resentment we often feel when someone has wounded us. Although love covers a multitude of sins (1 Peter 3:8), there are times that reconciliation of the relationship depends upon the genuine repentance of the one who has sinned.

When we sin, God eagerly desires to forgive us, but our relationship with him is broken until we repent. In order to move back into right relationship with God, we must acknowledge our sin, turn away from it and seek his forgiveness. Like God, we too must extend the gift of forgiveness to those who have hurt us, but for true reconciliation to take place, repentance and forgiveness must work together.

Part of Susan’s repentance involved cutting up all credit cards, allowing Danny to handle the checkbook and being accountable for all expenditures. The restoration of their marriage relationship involved both Danny’s decision to forgive and Susan’s repentant heart and behaviors, leading to their eventual reconciliation.

As fallen human beings, forgiving someone is not something akin to our nature. Justice and revenge come more naturally. We can only truly forgive someone if we learn how to do it from the great forgiver himself—Jesus. Part of seeing what God is up to when our spouse acts wrong is understanding that God teaches us how to become more like Jesus through this process. For how do we ever learn how to forgive if no one ever hurts us?

There is wonderful freedom in knowing we do not have to react to a painful wrong either by shutting down or retaliating. As we grow in our relationship with Christ, we become a reflection of who he is in us rather than a reflection of what others have done to us. Gary Thomas author of Sacred Marriage writes, “We will be sinned against and we will be hurt. When that happens, we will have a choice to make: We can give in to our hurt, resentment, and bitterness, or we can grow as a Christian and learn yet another important lesson on how to forgive.”

**The gift of forgiveness as well as the other gifts are from chapter 9 of How to Act Right When Your Spouse Acts Wrong (WaterBrook, 2001).

Topic: The Gift of Kindness

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 16:29:00 +0000

Good morning friends,

What a beautiful weekend we had here. As I left church yesterday, my heart sang praise as I watched all the trees stretching out their arms with their fire engine red leaves to the glory of their creator.

I love beauty. Don’t you? My soul thrives on it. Ugly and shabby things drag me down. This weekend I finally got my front door painted. It’s been faded and chipped for over a year. It feels so good to have transformed this tiny bit of ugly into something beautiful.

Did you know we all NEED beauty in our lives? It revives our spirit. It refreshes our soul. It points us to God. In his excellent book, The Evidential Power of Beauty, Thomas Dubay writes,

You and I, each and every one of us without exception, can be defined as an aching need for the infinite. Some people realize this; some do not. But even the latter illustrate this inner ache when, not having God deeply, they incessantly spill themselves out into excitements and experiences, licit or illicit. They are trying to fill their inner emptiness, but they never succeed, which is why the search is incessant. Through worldly pleasure seeking never fulfills and satisfies in a continuing way, it may tend momentarily to distract and to dull the profound pain of the inner void. If these people allow themselves a moment of reflective silence (which they seldom do), they notice a still, small voice whispering, “is this all there is? They begin to sense a thirst to love with abandon, without limit, without end, without lingering aftertastes of bitterness. In other words, their inner spirit is clamoring, even if confusedly, for unending beauty. How they and we respond to this inner outreach rooted in our deep spiritual soul is the most basic set of decisions we can make: they have eternal consequences.

There is a lot of ugliness in our world, in our nation, in our communities, in our churches and in our families and relationships. Have you ever asked yourself what you can do to create more beauty? What can we do to stir someone toward goodness, toward thankfulness, toward love, toward God?

I’ve been blogging over the last few weeks about the gifts of love that we can give people. We’ve talked about the gift of acceptance, the gift of truth and the gift of consequences. Today I want to talk about the gift of kindness. Kindness, especially when unexpected and undeserved, is a potent demonstration of love and beauty. It can wake someone up as powerfully as the gift of truth.

There are lots of movies and books that illustrate this concept. Les Miserable’s is probably the best known, Play it Forward is one of the most recent. When we give the gift of kindness to someone who least expects it, it often motivates them to kindness as well. On the other hand, when we get caught in repaying evil for evil, the only result we get is more evil and more ugliness.

It is clear from the scriptures that one of the fruits of the spirit is kindness (Gal. 5:20), and that being kind is one of the very definitions of love (1 Cor. 13:4). Yet, as with the other gifts, we struggle with giving the gift of kindness when we don’t feel kind or our mate has hurt us.

Most often our first reaction when our spouse is acting in a way we don’t like is to treat him or her with contempt. However, contempt is the acid that will erode feelings of goodwill in a marriage quicker than bad behavior. Is that what you want to happen? Remember, God tells us to “not to be overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21). Through acts of kindness we are empowered, not overcome.

The last thing that we feel like doing is to be gracious to someone who has hurt us. For example, Joan’s husband, Adam, was an alcoholic and drug abuser. He spent more money on his habit then he did for food and clothes for their kids. His drug use was so out of control that Joan finally asked him to move out until he could get help for his problem (Gift of consequences).

He continued careening out of control and sent less and less money for the family. One day Joan heard through mutual friends that Adam was sick with a bad flu bug. Joan went home and cooked up a big pot of soup and delivered it to his apartment. Joan gave the gift of kindness to her selfish and irresponsible husband. She was not overcome by Adam’s evil; she was learning to overcome it with good. The kinder Joan was to Adam, the more obvious was Adam’s selfishness.

God speaks of kindness as a means of shaming our enemy (Romans 12:20) which may lead to their repentance. In the Scriptures, Joseph was kind and gracious to his brothers in spite of their cruelty toward him (see Genesis 37-50). Being kind and gracious doesn’t mean you ignore the wrongdoing or pretend it didn’t happen. That’s like putting your head back into the lion’s mouth after he has already bitten you. Being kind toward your enemy means that whatever happens to you doesn’t define you. It doesn’t shape you or turn you into something evil. Satan’s intention is to not only injure you but infect you with evil’s poison. It was by Joseph’s response to his brother’s injustice, deceit and treachery that good won out. He reminded his brothers, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good...” (Genesis 50:20).

Jesus tells us “Love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:35).

Friends, we should be kind toward others because we want to be like Jesus, not because someone necessarily deserves our kindness. We are a representative of the King of Kings and Lord of lords. Therefore, our desire is to treat others with kindness and mercy because we are God’s ambassadors and his image bearers. Our kindness and mercy doesn’t depend upon whether the other person has been good or bad, wrong or right. They are gifts of love, not rewards for good behavior.

Now it’s your turn. Please share with the rest of our blog community ways you have given the gift of kindness or ways that you’ve received the gift of kindness and how it impacted you.

Some of this blog is taken from Chapter 9 from my book, How to Act Right When Your Spouse Acts Wrong.

Topic: The Gift of Truth

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 19:18:00 +0000

Good Monday Friends,

Today is your last opportunity to sign up for a free 1 year subscription to WHOA, a new Christian women’s magazine that is filled with great stories of real women who listened to God, featured articles on living a godly life in a secular world, and lots of great tips from cooking delicious meals to what not to wear. To receive your free subscription, please contact our office at leslie@leslievernick.com and leave your full name and snail mail address. We promise, we won’t use it for any other purposes. If you've already signed up for WHOA, there is no need to send your information again.

Since we are entering into the holiday season, I want to talk about love as a gift instead of something we always feel. We love a person because we choose to. Genuine love can’t be earned, deserved, bought, or demanded. True love is always a gift.

God demonstrates this by loving us just as we are. More accurately, he loves us in spite of who we are. And he calls us to love one another just like that. He knows it’s easy to feel love for the "perfectly put together" people, but he also calls us to love the unlovely and the broken and even our enemy.

How do we do that especially when that unlovely and broken person happens to be our spouse? We know we promised to love him or her in our vows, but it feels impossible and we don’t always do it very well.

Last week I blogged about giving the gift of acceptance when our spouse is doing something we don’t like, don’t understand, or don’t approve of. Acceptance of one another and our differences, and yes sometimes even our sins, is an important part of learning to love a real person who is yet to become all God intended him or her to become. The gift of acceptance can be a wonderful blessing for a spouse who is struggling with something that he/she isn’t quite able or ready to tackle yet in his or her personal life. We can allow them to be who they are and where they are right now and love them without bitterness or resentment or making it our mission to change him/her.

However, the gift of acceptance isn’t the wisest way to love a spouse that is acting abusively toward you.

Today I want to talk about giving other gifts of love such as the gift of truth and perhaps the gift of consequences.

Today’s Question: How do you acknowledge the truth of what someone is doing to you and emotionally accept it when you are in a destructive relationship? Getting banged on the leg over and over is exhausting and painful. I acknowledge that I am being banged on the leg and that the banging is causing me to go limp and that pain is excruciating to my heart and soul. Now what do I do?

I have acknowledged the truth, emotionally accepted that I can have no expectations at all from the other person. This process has yielded a destruction of my personhood. How do you apply these concepts in a destructive relationship? My main goal is to gain wisdom and understand, so that one day when I sit before God he will say well done good and faithful servant. I don’t want to disappoint God because my heart and mind did what they wanted instead of what God wanted. Help?

Answer: I’m not sure if you’re using a metaphor when you describe being banged on the leg or you are actually being banged on the leg, but acknowledging the truth of someone’s abusive behavior toward you and also accepting that they aren’t willing to change (yet) is an important part of your own emotional and mental health. Healthy people live in reality, not in fantasy. They acknowledge what is, not what they wish it would be.

That being the case, what do you do when your spouse is hurting you and won’t stop? That is the reality you live with day after day and you’re right, it is intolerable, excruciating painful and destructive to both you, him and your marriage.

I think as Christians we have often misunderstood Biblical love to mean that when someone treats us abusively, we quietly suffer without protest or consequence, and simply turn the other cheek over and over again. But when Jesus taught us to turn the other cheek (Matthew 5:39), he never said we shouldn’t avoid mistreatment, but simply that we were not to retaliate against it. He didn’t want us to become abusive in return. But Jesus did leave situations when he knew people were trying to harm him.

Allowing someone who we are in an intimate relationship with to continue to hurt and mistreat us isn’t biblical love, but fear and foolishness. We’re afraid to stand up to it because we don’t want to make things worse. We’re afraid that God will be displeased with us or we don’t have a good plan on what to do next if the abuse escalates. So we suffer silently and think that is God’s will. However, I think God and biblical love call us to do something far more courageous. But just as Jesus warned, that kind of love often involves suffering and sacrifice.

To love our spouse in these kinds of situations, we must be willing to boldly (not disrespectfully) speak the truth to him about the sinfulness of his behavior and the effects on you, your marriage and even on him.

You indicated that the abuse is destroying your personhood and you’re right, but it’s also destroying his. This is not who God made him to be and no human being can feel good about themselves when they abuse, degrade and mistreat other people.

If you choose to give this gift of truth to your husband, he may retaliate with more abuse. When you love him enough to seek his true good it may cost you. Much like jumping into an icy pond to save a drowning child, God calls us to lay down ourselves for another person’s welfare (John 15:13). But the bible doesn’t ask us to lay ourselves down to enable someone to continue in sin. That wouldn’t be good for them or for us.

If your husband is unresponsive and unrepentant to your gift of loving truth, I would also be prepared to give the gift of consequences. Consequences (not punishment) can be a powerful teacher of life’s truths. If you plant weeds, don’t expect roses (Galatians 6:7). In other words, when you are abusive toward people, don’t expect a happy and loving marriage to result.

So let me map out how this might look like for you. You need to ask God to give you the courage to love your husband enough to speak the truth to him about what his attitudes and behaviors are doing to you, to him and to your marriage. You also need to have a plan in place of how you will be safe if he retaliates against your gift of truth with more abuse. (For free help implementing a safety plan, you can call the Domestic Abuse hotline at 1-800-799-7233.)

But know this: God hates abuse and will empower you with the right words and right spirit to deliver them. We all know that the Bible says God hates divorce but we forget God also hates a man covering himself with violence (Malachi 2:13-16). God has a tender heart for those who are oppressed by bullies.

When you take this step, if your husband refuses to hear you and repent and get help to change his behavior, then I would encourage you to take the next step and give him the gift of consequences. In other words, your message is this,

“Our marriage is so destructive to you, to me and to our children, I cannot continue to live this way or provide the benefits of married life without significant change."

Separation will be necessary so he experiences the pain of his sin by losing his family life. Sometimes painful consequences are the only thing that wakes us up enough to put in the hard work necessary to change our destructive ways.

You asked God for wisdom. You want what God wants. God says he generously gives his wisdom to anyone who asks for it (James 1:5). Hear me. God wants you to honor your commitment to him and your husband by loving well. God wants your husband to repent, to change, and to learn to love also. God isn’t asking you to be a peace at any price woman. As a wife, you have a unique opportunity to partner with God to be an extraordinary helpmate to your husband so that he will see his sin, repent, change and grow into the man God made him to be. If he does, you have rescued your husband from the brink of death (James 5:20).

If he hardens his heart and refuses to listen, please know that God understands your disappointment and pain. Much of the Old Testament is that very story of God implementing tough love with Israel and Israel refusing to repent.

God calls us to unconditional love, unconditional forgiveness and unconditional kindness, but he never asks us to have unconditional relationship or unconditional reconciliation with someone, especially when they are abusive and unrepentant toward us.

Topic: My Husband is Smoking - The Gift of Acceptance

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 14:26:00 +0000

Good morning friends,

We have just survived our first October snowstorm. Much of the area has been without power, many beautiful trees are ruined. Their branches couldn’t carry the load of snow and ice because their leaves hadn’t dropped. It is so sad to see the wreckage. I’ve included two pictures, one from the snow storm on Saturday, one from my front yard today– the snow has mostly melted, but the damage is still here.

This week’s blog is going to answer the question, how do we handle things about our spouse that we don’t like? They may be small things or fairly large things (at least in our own mind) but not necessarily deal breakers (if we don’t let them).

Today’s Question: I just found out my husband is smoking again. I can’t believe it. I hate smoking, and I made that very clear when we met. I knew he was a smoker but he told me he would try and quit. Obviously he hasn’t. He doesn’t smoke in the house or around me but I don’t want him to smoke at all. What can I do to get him to stop?

Answer: Every married person discovers qualities and habits in his/her spouse that he/she would love to change. It might be smoking, chronic messiness, forgetting to put the ATM receipts in the checkbook, or leaving the toilet seat up when you’ve asked him a million times to put it down.

Since you’ve felt frustrated trying to improve your spouse only to fail again and again, let me suggest another approach. Instead of trying to change him, change you. Let me explain. It’s easy to love someone when he does everything we want him to do. That’s idealized love, not mature love. Having a successful long-term relationship requires that we learn how to love our spouse when he doesn’t do everything we want him to do. This kind of love is much harder. It’s not the "feel in love" kind of love. It’s the "hard work" kind of love. One of the most powerful gifts of this kind of love is the gift of acceptance.

Learning to accept our spouse’s imperfections, weakness, and yes, sometimes even sins, doesn’t mean we like a fault we see nor does it mean that we simply resign ourselves to a hopeless situation. However, true acceptance understands reality–that we are all creatures in process and that God isn’t finished with any of us yet. Acceptance doesn’t simply mean that we acknowledge our spouse’s faults, but that we stop resenting them. We stop trying to change them. We learn to be emotionally content the way he is right now, all the while asking God to mature him (and us).

Here are three (3) things that you can work to change that will empower you to give the gift of acceptance to your spouse:

1. Stop playing Holy Spirit. We can learn how to be a better wife or husband but understand this: We will always make a lousy god. God himself teaches us acceptance and why it’s so important. He says, “Accept one another, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God” (Romans 15:7). The Lord is patient with our faults, and he wants us to learn to be like him. Instead of playing god, pray that your spouse would listen to and obey God in the areas God (not you) wants changed.

2. Remember you have faults too. It’s often our pride and perfectionist tendencies that make us so impatient with the flaws of other human beings. We say things like, “I can’t believe you did that.” Or “How could you be so stupid”. We seem surprised when our spouse acts imperfectly, stupidly, or differently, as if somehow he isn’t ever suppose to do such a thing. Humility helps us accept our spouses’ shortcomings because we’re well aware of our own. We know that sometimes we too can be difficult to love and live with graciously. The apostle Paul encourages us to “be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love” (Ephesians 4:2).

3. Focus on your mates good qualities. I often tell my clients who feel disgruntled in their marriage; no one gets all 52 cards in the deck. Every spouse has shortcomings, faults, and weaknesses. When we dwell on them continuously, we will feel angry, disappointed and gypped. If you don’t want to feel those negative emotions, then you will need to intentionally change your focus. Look for your spouse’s good qualities instead of always dwelling on his/her bad ones. Obviously he or she has them or you wouldn’t have fallen in love and married him/her in the first place. Let your mind dwell on these things, as the apostle Paul encourages in Philippians 4:8.

We’ve heard the saying God loves us just as we are, but it’s probably more accurate to say that God loves us in spite of who we are. God’s love is not a reward for good behavior, and it is not deserved or earned. Rather, his love is an extravagant gift. We too can learn to love this way even when it’s hard, because God has so loved us. It is God’s love that empowers us to love our spouse even in his or her imperfections, weaknesses and sins.

In the next few blogs, I’m going to cover other gifts of love that we can give our spouse even when we don’t feel very loving. As we’ve seen in this blog, there are times when our spouse’s behavior is so destructive to the stability of our marriage or our own safety that the gift of acceptance is not appropriate and a different gift of love is called for. In these serious situations, we may need to love our spouse enough to give him/her the gift of truth and/or the gift of consequences. I’ll cover these more in the following weeks.

Note: The gifts of love are explained in greater detail in Chapter 9 of my book, How to Act Right When Your Spouse Acts Wrong. WaterBrook (2001)

Men Are Victims of Domestic Violence, Too!

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 13:25:00 +0000

Good Morning,

I’m in North Carolina today doing a video shoot for the new Divorce Care series. Pray for those who will benefit from the tremendous teaching that Divorce Care Ministries has to hurting men and women trying to recover from divorce. Prayers are also appreciated for me today as I try to communicate God’s hope.

For those of you who would still like to sign up for my free subscription offer for WHOA women’s magazine, there is still time. WHOA stands for Women WHO Hear-Obey-and Act on God's Word. (You can Google it to take a look). It’s a first class, glossy, mailed women’s magazine featuring real life stories of women who trust God in the midst of life’s difficulties. It is similar to Oprah or More, yet with a distinctly Christian message. You will soon see them all over newsstands.

In this week’s blog, I’m doing something different. It’s not exactly a question, but rather some comments from a man who responded to my last newsletter titled, Is Your Marriage Healthy? and wants people to know that men are victims of domestic violence too.

I applaud his bravery in speaking out and giving us this reminder that the Church as well as society needs to be much more aware and sensitive to the problem of domestic violence in general, but not to forget about men who suffer abuse at the hands of their wives.

I’ve condensed his rather lengthy comments and have a few of my own thoughts at the end. My second newsletter this month is on the topic of Five Things You Can do to Help Someone that Has been Abused. Sign up on my home page at http://www.leslievernick.com/ if you’d like to receive it. It will be out on Tuesday.

A Reader’s Response: In your last newsletter on healthy marriages, one sentence grabbed my attention. You wrote,

“When a woman bullies her husband, the sinfulness and inappropriateness of the interactions are much more obvious to church leaders”

What??

My experience is anything but that. My experience is that women bullying and abusing men is considered funny. Men have no place to turn. They can be hit, abused, bullied and terrorized by their wives, and the only way they can hope to have contact with their children is if they continue to allow themselves to be victimized.

My experience has been that doors of help close for men. Social services make excuse after excuse for a woman's abusive behavior and scorn the man for taking photos or videos during her perpetration. The man must be ultra perfect, and if he ever does wrong, he goes to jail. If she does wrong, she needs more compassion, more money, more help.

My experience has been that very few church leaders have the courage to look a woman in the eye and confront her about her abusive behavior. Church leaders, therapists, and other professionals often migrate to the "most reasonable" partner and the partner willing to make changes. So that one is the one who changes and changes and changes, only to be hit, raged at, and made out to be a monster, because well "all men are monsters."

My wife posted as her Facebook profile photo, a picture my mom took of my wife, our daughter and me in front of the Christmas tree (2010) in which, under my shirt, I was physically injured by my wife. The picture literally makes me want to vomit, and I cannot look at it for more than a few seconds. It is still in my wife's photo album on FB. I avoid looking there.

And as long as therapists, authors and professionals look at this issue with even a hint of "gender" in view, then, frankly, right now, I feel we've lost. Abuse is to be confronted and our children are to be protected. Families are to be protected. And women's help lines and shelters simply MUST be opened up to men. Either that or parallel organizations can fill the need.

Out of about 20 calls to women's help lines (yes, I've been that desperate), there was ONE time where someone actually fielded my call. Someone actually gave me the counsel, information, and advice that they would have given a woman. That was a VERY helpful and healing call in my life, and I am grateful that the woman on the other end of the line neither yelled at me nor hung up on me as others had.

In the meantime, I am raising our daughter. I separated from my wife in mid August and even though we have a 1week on 1 week off caretaking arrangement -- oops, she's sick, oh, she brings our daughter to kindergarten late or not at all, oops, she dresses our daughter in clothes that don't fit right -- oh combing her hair is just too much of a hassle, so forget about it, she can just look like a nappy mop in KG, that's cool.

And no one would suspect it, considering her doe-faced kind-smile and soft-eyed presentation. Which is of course, the woman I married, but not the woman my wife is and was towards me behind closed doors.

And as the man, I am urged to "be more understanding." Of what? Of outright abuse? I have never hit my wife. She has hit, bitten, restrained, yelled, raged, etc.

The counselors want to discuss how both of us are perpetrators. Maybe make the discussion "fair" by seeing it as 50/50.

Well some things are not 50/50.

A sniper can kill you from 2 miles away with a single bullet. Was the exchange 50/50? A robber can steal your car. Was that 50/50? Are you just as much to blame as the person who stole your car? Do you need to do "personal work," because someone stole your car?

I have spent about a decade now absorbing abuse, compensating for constant chaos, and I am now repairing my life.

Thank God, now that I have separated from my wife, the kindergarten teachers and administration see more of what is going on. My daughter is well dressed, well taken care of, and OK when she is with me. When she is with my wife, she is either very very late, ragged, or distressed. My wife hasn't kept her appointments with the kindergarten staff and, oh, now my wife wants to pull her out of her kindergarten, where she is loved, has friends, and plays on a mountainside.

In one sense, I am fortunate, because my wife's neglect of her own child is pretty obvious to those who are in contact with her regularly. I have deep sympathy for men who are abused by women who do a "good job" with their children. That's got to be an even more impossible situation.

And how does it feel as a man to have "escaped" from an abusive relationship with a child? I feel like a complete idiot. Sure, people smile at me and my daughter a lot in public. She sings and is well dressed and both my wife and I are good looking people, so our daughter is simply a beautiful child. But the "background" behind this father with the adorable daughter is simply: horrific.

Please don’t forget, men are victims of domestic violence too.

My Response:

Thank you for your poignant and passionate response. For those of you who did not get my last newsletter, the larger context of my comment he’s referring to is:

When a husband bullies his wife, his behavior does not describe biblical headship, nor is her forced "submission" characteristic of biblical submission. The correct terms are coercion, manipulation, intimidation, or rape and she is the victim. Let's make sure we use the right words.

When a woman bullies her husband, the sinfulness and inappropriateness of the interactions are much more obvious to church leaders, but the very sinfulness of bullying behavior is exactly the same whether the abusive behaviors is initiated by the wife or the husband.

Your points are well taken. Men are victims of abuse and here is more sad news:

http://dahmw.org/

To the man who wrote his comments and other men who are victims of domestic violence, we hear you. Domestic violence isn’t a woman’s problem or a man’s problem, it is a human problem and a tragedy.

Please know, God gives wisdom for both the victim and abuser to heal and to change so that generational patterns are broken, but it’s only as we speak up and speak out about this can we receive the help we and our loved ones need.

Topic: My husband won't change, my pastor can't help, and I am a mess!

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 13:21:00 +0000

Morning friends,

Today I’m flying home from sunny (and I mean SUNNY) California where I just spent nine wonderful but exhausting days cooking and taking care of my grandbabies. The weather has been unusually hot and I can’t believe I’m saying this, as a girl who LOVES the sunshine, but I think I’m looking forward to getting back to my Pennsylvania fall weather.

I have a wonderful gift for you. A brand new woman’s magazine is out call WHOA - Women WHO Hear-Obey-and Act on God's Word. (You can google it to take a look). It is a high glossy Christian magazine dealing with real women who encounter real life problems and find God’s answers in the midst. As my blog friends, they are offering you a free 1 year subscription. Just e-mail me privately at leslie@leslievernick.com with your name and address and I will forward this to my WHOA contact who has made this generous offer. Perhaps you’d like to gift someone for Christmas. That’s fine too. WHOA wants to get the word out and the best way to do that is to get their magazine into women’s hands. I promise you I will not give out your address to any other person and will shred it once I have forwarded it on.

Back to my time in California. I have been watching in horror the unfolding tragedy at Seal Bay where an enraged spouse, angry at a custody decision, decided to execute his ex-wife and eight other people. Let’s not forget, October is Domestic Violence awareness month and therefore, I’ve dedicated my blog topics and newsletter this month to be focused on this topic.

If you haven’t signed up for my newsletter yet, please do. The next issue is going to be about abusive women and victimized men. You won’t want to miss it. Women can be abusive too and some of my male readers have recently reminded me of that important reality.

This week’s Question: I need help. I read all your books and took the steps to separate from my husband (emotional & physical abuse) but my emotions are a mess. He is not doing anything to try to save the marriage or show that he has changed. He hasn't even set up marriage counseling. I don't have any money to go to a Christian counselor. My pastor has told me he can't help me any further, I am stuck.

Answer: You are in a very difficult spot, and I’m not surprised your emotions are a mess. Without knowing any more details than you’ve given, I imagine you separated not only for safety reasons, but also in the hopes that your husband would “wake up” to his abusive behavior and get the help he needs in order to reconcile and restore your marriage.

The hard truth however is that he has not taken any steps to address his problem. You feel hurt, angry, discouraged, and frightened. Now what?

Helpless, hopeless and scared are probably the predominant emotions that mess with your mind. It’s important that you realize that your emotions may be powerful but they don’t always reflect reality. Things are not hopeless and you are not helpless, it just feels that way right now.

You can’t fix his problem (his abusive behavior) but you must begin to address and work on your own problems if you are going to get a grip on your emotions as well as learn to live in a healthy way. Your problems may be your fear of living alone, the lack of financial resources, the loneliness you feel, or even the anger and hurt you’ve experienced by his abuse and indifference to your pain. You say you don’t have the money to go to a Christian counselor, but there is help out there for you if you want it and look for it. If you don’t work on your problems, you will be tempted to return to your abusive spouse without him making any of the changes needed to stop this abusive pattern. Is that what you want? Would that be in the best interest for you, your children, or even your spouse?

I’m not sure what your pastor meant when he said he can’t help you further. I don’t think your pastor can or should be the primary person to counsel you or your spouse with this problem, but that does not mean that he cannot be instrumental in getting the church to be a supportive resource for you. Sadly, often times when an abused spouse separates, the church withdraws support for both individuals in a troubled marriage.

But since your pastor has offered support to you in the past, ask him if he can recommend a wise woman in the congregation to be a supportive mentor to you during this time. In addition, you can get involved in a woman’s bible study in order to get around wise and hopefully healthier women as well as grow in your faith. If your church does not offer one, look for other locations that do. You must now take some proactive steps to help yourself if you are going to learn that you are not helpless.

Second, most communities have resources for abused women. I do not know your location but you can usually find these resources in the blue pages of your local telephone directory or google them on the Internet. They provide free counseling and support, sometimes even pro bono legal aid to help you through this process of getting financial support, a PFA (Protection from Abuse) if needed, and other things that will help you get on your feet right now. They won’t be able to fill in all of the gaps, and with recent funding cuts, many organizations can only provide the bare minimum of services, but you must seek out and get the help you so desperately need.

There are also other churches that offer free or low cost Christian counseling and, if that isn’t an option, there is online counseling (go to http://www.aacc.net to find a Christian counselor who is experienced in these issues willing to work with you on-line). There are also low cost mental health services in most communities as well as universities and colleges that may have interns. They may not be experts in abusive relationship issues, but they may be able to help you deal with some of your fears and runaway emotions.

There are books you can read (I recommend my book, The Emotionally Destructive Relationship as well as many others in the back of my book as additional resources). Many of these books are available at a community library or you can simply hang out in Barnes and Noble and read them there if you cannot afford to purchase them.

Here are some additional resources that you can explore so that you can begin to dig yourself out of the situation you are in and experience healing.

For additional education and resources on domestic violence, as well as e-learning, go to:

http://www.theraveproject.org/
or http://www.peaceandsafety.com/
or http://www.faithtrustinstitute.org/

For help developing a safety plan go to http://www.theraveproject.org/.

The hotline for domestic violence is 800-799-7233.

To find professional Christian counselors experienced in domestic violence, call Focus on the Family Counselors at 800 232 6459 or go to http://www.theraveproject.org/.

Yesterday I read about a gentile woman in scripture who asked Jesus to heal her daughter from demon possession. Jesus didn’t answer her at first, and the disciples eventually asked him to shoo her away because she was bothering them with all her begging. When Jesus finally did answer her he told her he was only there to help the lost sheep of Israel. But that response did not deter this woman. She was desperate AND persistent. She knew she needed help for her daughter and she was not giving up until she got it (Matthew 15:23-28). Jesus commended her faith and tenacity.

In another story, Jesus tells of the persistent widow who keeps pestering the judge until he gives her the justice she needs (Luke 18:1-8). For me, these passages encourage people not to be deterred with a “no” at first. We as women tend to be more passive, less assertive and are willing to receive a no and feel that is the final answer. But often a no turns into a yes when we continue to plead our case.

Please seek the help you need. The answer isn’t to just learn to live with an abusive spouse. The answer is to get God-centered, strong, and healthy enough to stand firm so that you can invite your husband to do the work he needs to do in order to truly reconcile your marriage.

How to Respond When Someone Hurts You

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 16:14:00 +0000

Good Monday friends,

I am in sunny California this week being Nana to Amaya and Leilani and cooking up a storm for my daughter and her husband to have meals to eat for the next few weeks. I've decided for this week to share a video on a question and answer session I did at a women's retreat last year. The question that's asked is: How do you respond when someone hurts you? What is a Christian to do?

Thanks for all your prayers over the last month. I did make it through and I give Him all the glory for the strength He gave me.

Click here to watch video

Mother longs for better relationship with adult daughter

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 19:55:00 +0000

Good Monday Friends,

I have a new grandbaby. Horray! Her name is Leilani Capri and she was born October 1. I’m heading out to see her on Saturday. I am so blessed. I can’t wait to meet her.

For those of you who are not on my mailing list, I also want to invite you to a special event this Saturday morning October 8th, at Faith Church in Trexlertown, PA from 9-12 where I will be talking on Emotionally Destructive Relationships. To register or for more information, visit www.faithefc.com. If you are a church leader, pastor, or counselor, I am also doing a special event on Friday evening on A Biblical Response to Domestic Violence. You are welcome to attend both. Register for each event separately, and they are both free.

Thanks for all your prayers for my speaking at the AACC Conference in Nashville. It was a sold out crowd with amazing speakers, and God truly was present. God gave me some very special moments with people, but today I feel a little exhausted from it all.

Today’s Question: I am married to a pastor/mediator/marriage and family therapist, yet continue to struggle with discontent with my relationship with my adult daughter who is a physician married to another physician. She has two children, 3 and almost 1. I never married her father who left her at six and never returned to her life until she was 19. He remained in contact with her over the years but loosely, inconsistently, but did pay for college.

She began her rebellious behavior when I married and she was 13. She has disapproved since the wedding and battled with him for most of the time she was at home. She left for college at 18 and returned on holidays but stayed with her grandparents. She and I have always stayed in touch, but of course it was different when she no longer would return home. She is now 36 and lives in another state. I divorced her stepfather and remarried four years later to someone she approved of.

Not living in the same state, she usually calls a few times a day for many reasons, often when she is troubled with dealing with the kids while her husband works long hours. I always take her calls, regardless of the hour or inconvenience. For whatever reason, when we are both visiting what was our hometown, when she is around family, we have disagreements and then we don’t talk for a few months over something ridiculous.

Sometimes she visits our hometown without me, and this past summer did so and rented a camper and did not invite me or tell me about it until I found out about it from someone else. Knowing I would be hurt, she invited her brother and his wife and my other son for a week of vacation without me.

I’ve spent lots of time babysitting for her oldest child while she was an infant. I do not understand why my daughter and I cannot be closer. We are different. I am more about talking about emotions and feelings and she works hard to avoid the same. She is not affectionate with her husband or me and it’s so hard to see what is and accept it.

She flies me in to babysit when she needs me, but when she didn’t include me on this vacation I told her so and now we’re not talking again. I have not figured out how to deal with conflict without creating distance between us. I have apologized for overreacting to her choice not to include me and assured her that I love and miss her. She has finally let me speak again to my granddaughter but I feel my heart hardening.

I can’t be sad all the time because I miss her and the kids. We can never talk about what’s the problem. We just eventually go on like nothing happened. There is more but it’s so complicated, it seems like we are close yet incredibly far away from each other.

It seems like she is angry, sad and doesn’t want to deal with it, and I don’t know what to do with it. She is such an accomplished woman who is so successful in her career and is well liked and respected, but with those closest to her, it is a battle. If you could give me some insight it would be so appreciated.

Answer: Having an adult daughter who lives out of state with a new grandbaby myself, my heart grieves for you and your situation with your daughter. I wish I could give you three steps to take that would magically turn this relationship around. You already know if you’re married to a therapist, that the only person you can work on changing is you. That said, what things might you need to do differently in order to accept where things are right now and not feel so hurt and sad all the time?

First, it seems like you have no boundaries (you take her calls night and day, fly in to babysit whenever she needs you) but you do have some expectations that she does not (or cannot) meet. I think this is a set up for conflict and hurt – for both of you.

Are your expectations reasonable? I think so. You expect she would treat you as a person and not just as a babysitter or a stress reliever. You expect she would care about your feelings and not be exclusive or competitive. You expect that because you are giving so much to her, she would give back to you. And you expect that because she is an accomplished professional, she would be more competent in handling interpersonal conflict and stress. But that’s not the case.

The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. So although your expectations are reasonable, they are unrealistic considering her past behaviors. If you want to get healthier yourself, you will need to let go of these expectations, otherwise you set yourself up to continually feel hurt. Again it’s not unreasonable that you wish her to be different. And you can hope that someday she grows and changes. But if you want to stop hurting so much, you must let go and emotionally accept who she is and where she is right now.

That takes us back to the issue of your own boundaries. You obviously love your daughter and grandchildren. You want to be a part of their lives. You will need to decide what you want to give and how often, regardless of whether or not you get much in return. This does not create a healthy relationship, but it does help you clarify your role right now. You can choose to give to your daughter and grandchildren out of your love for them, but without strings attached. The best word is “ministry”. You are doing this because you want to, because you love them, and because God calls you to. If you are doing it for any other reasons, you set yourself up to be continuously hurt, angry, and disappointed.

Lastly, I do think we as mothers can learn to be more strategic about how we say things to our daughters. I think every single child longs for approval from their parents even if they don’t want close connection. Your daughter is no exception even though she is accomplished and successful. I wonder if she has hurts from childhood when you choose to marry someone that she so strongly disliked, or that she feels she will never be able to be the kind of daughter you really want and has given up trying.

I remember once a client of mine feeling distant from her mother because her mother couldn’t accept her for who she was. Her mother wanted this strong mother/daughter bond with lots of emotional talk and the daughter was just not wired that way. Although the mother meant well, the daughter constantly felt the mother’s disappointment and disapproval. The only way the daughter could handle the tension was to further distance herself from her mother, accompanied by some passive/aggressive jabs to her mother.

I don’t know if this would help but I might encourage you to look for all the things you can encourage your daughter about who she is. Even when she calls you in her stressful moments, say something like, “Honey, I’m sure you can handle it, you’re a great mother.” Or “I know you have what it takes to figure this one out.” Giving our daughter’s the “blessing” as the Old Testament calls it, can be a priceless gift we give our children.

Friends, you who are daughters and you who are mothers, what else would you advise this dear hurting mom?

Topic: Do I have to have sex with my husband?

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 20:05:00 +0000

Hi Friends,

I’m heading off to Nashville, TN, tomorrow to attend the American Association of Christian Counselor conference. I am speaking on The Emotionally Destructive Relationship as well as Domestic Violence: An Abuse of Power. I’d really appreciate your prayers if you think of me.

I’ll post some pictures on my Facebook page and put a few on next week’s blog.

Q. I’ve been married for 25 years to an emotionally and verbally abusive man. I feel angry and bitter toward him for the way he treats me, yet he still expects me to be loving and affectionate with him, especially in bed. I can’t do it. What does God expect me to do? Can I withhold sex as a consequence for his abusive behavior?

A. This is an extremely important question that many women face. In last weeks’ answer I spoke about being treated as an object instead of a human being. An emotionally destructive marriage is where the personhood, dignity and personal choice of the spouse is regularly diminished, degraded, disregarded or crushed.

No one likes feeling like an object, especially if you are in a committed relationship with the person who treats you as such. Husbands sometimes complain to me that they feel that their wives treat them like a paycheck. Wives complain that they don’t feel like a loved person but merely a sexual object or a slave. Marriage is the most sacred and intimate relationship we have apart from our relationship with God. When one person (or both people) continually disrespects, mistreats, or lies to the other, intimacy is broken. It can be rebuilt but not without genuine repentance and a lot of hard work.

From what you say, it sounds as if your husband believes he’s entitled to the benefits of married life, (sexual intimacy, your affection and love, not to mention normal care), without having to do his part. He doesn’t seem to understand that having a good and loving relationship requires two people who interact with one another with kindness and respect. His emotionally abusive behavior is driving you further away from him. Does he just want sex from you? Or true intimacy?

The Bible calls us to love, not hate. That command includes our enemies. But what does Biblical love look like towards your husband in this instance? Biblical love isn’t necessarily feelings of affection or warmth, but actions that are directed toward another person’s long term best interests.

So ask yourself the question, Is it in my husband’s long term best interests to be sexually available to him so that his sexual needs are met? If you answer “yes”, understand that meeting his sexual needs is not a solution to your relationship problem it is just a solution to his sexual frustration.

Another way to look at this situation is that it is in your husband’s best interests to let him experience the felt consequences of broken intimacy and tell him that when he treats you disrespectfully, you’re too angry to feel warmth and affection towards him. When he’s not sorry he treats you that way, it makes it impossible for you to feel affectionate toward him. You need to have a calm conversation with him regarding your feelings. Here’s a sample of something you might say.

I know you get very frustrated when I’m not responsive to your sexual needs. You want me to be sexual with you and enjoy our physical relationship, but the way you treat me much of the time makes me feel angry and hurt. When you call me names or degrade me in front of the children, the last thing I feel like doing is being warm and affectionate towards you. If you want genuine intimacy and affection, you will need to work on changing the way you treat me. Wouldn’t you rather have someone who wants to get close and affectionate with you rather than someone who is just doing her duty?

Most men I talk with want closeness with their wives. Try expressing your feeling about being just an object versus a person. This may help him see the impact of his behavior, not only on you, but on him. But if your husband won’t hear you and doesn’t care about what your feelings are, then what?

Hear me. I don’t believe in using sex as a weapon anymore than someone should use the silent treatment as a weapon. It isn’t good for the marriage. It is controlling and manipulative.

However, I do think sometimes we have to say, “I can’t talk right now because I’m too angry to do it constructively” or “I can’t talk with you because you won’t hear me or listen to me”. That’s not using talking as a weapon, but stating a problem either with you or in the relationship.

In the same way, if someone says, “I can’t have sexual closeness with you right now because I’m too angry to do it lovingly.” I think that is stating a truth. Or “having sex with you feels like I’m just being used as an object but you don’t really care for me when you treat me so disrespectfully other times” helps the one who is doing the hurting to know what needs to change in order to repair the relationship.

Friends, you who are in this type of marriage, share your thoughts and what you have done here.

My mom's in an emotionally destructive relationship with my dad. What should I do?

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 14:49:00 +0000

Good Monday Morning Friends:

I hope you had a beautiful weekend. I just finished reading a beautifully written new book by Michael and Gina Spehn, The Color of Rain. It is a true story of incredible loss, hope, and trust in God’s goodness. Both Michael and Gina lost their spouses to cancer at young ages. The shared grief turned to friendship and eventually to love. Their story is a testimony to the grace of God.

I have had the privilege of being on Michael and Gina’s weekly radio show, “Your Family Matters” (streamed live at www.FaithTalk1500.com.) as one of their Round Table Experts over the past year but didn’t know their full story. If you know someone who needs renewed hope, I highly recommend their book.

Also, if you want to read my next blog for the Association of Biblical Counselors, here’s the link. http://christiancounseling.com/content/a-new-way-of-seeing

Question: My parents are in their fourth year on the mission field, their "second" career after retiring from business and moving overseas to serve for an undetermined number of years. They've been married 40 years.

For decades, my mom has spent hours in the Word and in prayer daily, and has a track record of humble service to my father (and to her three kids as we were growing up). In fact, her reading habits have drawn repeated attacks and ridicule from my dad. He has a history of humiliating her (and us kids) publicly, explosive anger, and is restrictive of her freedom. But to anyone outside our family, this would come as a shock. He's a successful businessman, gregarious, and active in every little church they've ever been part of.

Mom convinced him to seek pastoral counseling with her about 20 years ago and no real change resulted. He rejects psychology wholesale, yet admits to not finding anything profound or new whenever he reads the Bible. I found out when visiting them this summer that mom's frequent trips to the bathroom were the result of frequent and prolonged sex (compounded by a long history of health issues which have rendered her "fragile", to put it gently), which I'm guessing is precipitated by dad's age and evening alcohol consumption.

I was incensed at the state of things mom was enduring, and told her she did not have to submit to dad's physical advances any longer. She acted on that after I left and has not been intimate with him since. She and I both struggle with whether that is right, however I maintain that after years of humble service met with nothing but fits of rage, humiliation, zero emotional/relational intimacy, and rejection/denial anytime she attempted to talk about these issues, she no longer needed to put herself through it.

This all has caused mom to start examining her own life, tracing the roots of these problems back to her own father's rejection of her (her mom told her that he just didn't like her). She met my dad in college, who even then was controlling and manipulative. After a brief tryst (none of the "falling in love" typical foundation for a marriage relationship), she got pregnant and they were married a month later. She's been working at it for forty years, and without having to explain much to my siblings, they immediately understood mom's position when she told them she was ready to stand up to him.

Knowing what action to take has been the daily question. Your description of "crazy making" has been so helpful in understanding what she deals with. Dad does not initiate conversation with mom, denies any wrongdoing when specific instances are presented to him (by mom), and just this week has informed mom that she has been abusing him.

Mom has a plane ticket home in October to visit her 90 year old mother. My dad has removed any legitimate and substantive responsibility from my mom in their mission work. She is fully devoid of any in-country support (she refuses to take this to her co-workers for fear they wouldn't believe her. While mom still cooks and cleans for my dad and tries to "help him", he does nothing to reciprocate her attention or acknowledge it with any gratitude (that's how it's always been). My mom says she sees "improvement" in him, defined thus: he is trying really hard to control his temper, he doesn't ask for sex anymore, he's "earnestly seeking after spiritual things" and he has shifted from a "know-it-all" to "docile resignation."

To me, that improvement is not reversing the pattern, it's just neutral. He has no accountability where they are. So I've implored my mom to stay here in the US when she comes home. They are already making preparations to extract themselves from their position with their missions agency anyway, and since she doesn't do anything work-related, it seems more important that she get help here.

Mom says she doesn't know how she would be able to live apart from him, that she would always be worrying about him. This is understandable, but not healthy. How do I help my mom get healthy? Should she return even though he'd likely be home within the year? Is this "improvement" reason enough for her to resume physical intimacy?

Answer: Watching someone we love struggle in a destructive/abusive relationship is incredibly difficult. When it is our own parents, it is heartbreaking. I know you want to help your mom get healthy, but there are some things that she must do for herself and it sounds as if she is starting to do them.

You can help her, support her, and encourage her, but you must not push her to do something she is not ready or willing to do. If you do that, it will put you in the controlling role and she will once again stay in the passive role. Even though you mean well and only want her best, for someone to become emotionally healthy she must learn to figure out what she wants and to speak up for herself when necessary and not to be so passive, even when someone is upset with her for doing so.

What you can do is help her think through her choices and the consequences of those choices and then applaud and support her right to choose. For her entire marriage, she hasn’t believed she has the right to say “no”, or when she’s tried, she’s been manipulated, controlled, or pressured into giving in. You must not play that same role even if you fear she is making a poor choice.

You’ve asked a number of important questions but one in particular I want to spend a little time on. You asked how could your dad possibly accuse your mother of abusing him after all her years of patiently and passively enduring his humiliation, manipulations, verbal attacks, sexual abuse and controlling behaviors?

First, let me say that although your mother sounds like a saint, she is also still a sinner and there may be times when she does or is tempted to retaliate against your father, even if she does it more passively. The Bible tells us that people’s bad behavior rubs off on us and sometime, even if we’re not aware of it, we start to act like they do.

However, what I think is happening here is a common phenomenon I see once an abused woman stops going along with the abuser and begins to speak up for herself.

Let me give some background. When someone marries it’s understood that this person you married will have their own ideas, feelings, desires, goals, dreams and thoughts about things. If you’re healthy, you will not require the person you married to always think like you, feel like you, want what you want, or always do what you say. Instead you allow them to be different than you. The challenge of a healthy marriage is to lovingly blend two different people into a strong oneness that still contains each person’s uniqueness.

But this is not what happens in an abusive marriage. It sounds like right from the start, your father has not seen your mother as her own “person” to be cherished or loved but rather as an object to be possessed, owned, controlled and used. If this is the case, she isn’t allowed a separate voice, a personal feeling, a want apart from what he wants, or to disagree, or say “no”. As long as she stays true to the object role and shapes herself to meet every whim of your father, things stay relatively calm. Unfortunately this kind of wifely behavior has too often been applauded as biblical submission and a meek and gentle spirit which it is not.

It is not healthy to lose yourself in another person nor is it wise. Now as your mother is becoming healthier and realizing some important things she’s begun to assert herself. She is not just playing the “good Christian wife role” but is saying “I don’t like to be treated this way” and “That’s not acceptable”. However, as she begins to assert her needs, hurts, and feelings, he feels abandoned, rejected, unloved, and even abused.

The reason? In his mind, her sole purpose in being his wife is to please him, meet his every emotional need and always be available when he wants her. She has no needs of her own because she is not allowed to be a separate person. The more she speaks out about how she thinks, what she wants, how she feels and what she will or won’t do the more disappointed your father becomes.

This is not the helpmate he signed up for. And his “improvements” as your mother mentions are either an attempt to charm her to return to the object role, or as you suspect, “docile resignation” that things will never be the same again. This is still a far cry from a healthy marriage.

So do you encourage your mother to say in the States to receive support and help instead of returning to the mission field after her mother’s birthday? That is your mother’s decision to make, but you can help her think it through all of her choices and to know that if her marriage is to turn around, it is important not only that she continue to grow be the person God made her to be (not an object) but that her husband begin to value and cherish her as a person and not merely as someone who sole purpose is to take care of him, whether physically, emotionally or sexually.

Topic: When I am afraid, what should I do?

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 18:39:00 +0000

Happy Monday Friends,
This weekend I’ve been on a much needed respite. My dear friend Dee Brestin opened her home to me and I have been blessed. She lives in a lovely house situated on a great lake in Wisconsin and we’ve biked, kayaked, prayed, read, and rested. Sometimes we need breaks in our hectic lives in order to regain our strength and sense of God’s purpose. Dee provided that much needed break for me.

Last night we watched some of the 911 memorial services. They were very moving and brought back many traumatic memories and feelings from that horrible day ten years ago. I started to feel afraid of my flight home today. “What if the terrorists try something today – the day after 9/11?”

We all struggle with fear. Whether it is in these moments of national crisis, or just personal moments of crisis when we can’t reach a loved one for several days or we get a scary diagnosis or our marriage is falling apart. So instead of answering a question from a reader today, I’m going to share with you God’s answer to my fearful heart. He spoke these scriptures to me several weeks ago when I was fearful about a personal crisis, but I reread them this morning and reminded myself of his faithfulness.

Presence: He said, I will be with you always, even to the ends of the earth (Matthew 28:20). I will never leave you or forsake you. (Hebrews 13:5).

Protection: He said, “If God be for you who could be against you? (Romans 8:31). He will shelter you with his wings, his faithful promises are your armor and protection (Psalm 91:4).

Provision: He said, The Lord is my shepherd, I have all that I need (Psalm 23:1) My grace is sufficient for you (2 Corinthians 12:8) Seek the Kingdom of God above all else and live righteously and he will give you everything you need (Matthew 6:33). And if God cares so wonderfully for wildflowers that are here today and thrown into the fire tomorrow, he will certainly care for you (Matthew 6:30).

Purpose: He said, And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them (Romans 8:28). We can rejoice too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love (Romans 5:3-5).

Peace: He said, I will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stead on him (Isaiah 26:3). My peace I give you, not as the world gives, let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid (John 14:27). Don’t be anxious for anything, but by prayer with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace that passes all understanding will guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:6-7). May the Lord of peace himself, give you his peace at all times and in every situation (2 Thessalonians 3:16)

Friends, I’ve discovered that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but fear So I must ask myself once again, am I going to believe what God says or am I going to believe my own fearful emotions and scary thoughts?

The psalmist says, “When I am afraid I will trust in you “(Psalm 56:3,4). I choose to trust God. How about you?

Topic: What is the difference between coaching and counseling?

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 17:32:00 +0000

Happy Labor Day,

Since today is a holiday and the last weekend of the official summer season, I thought I’d keep the topic light this week. Since I began offering coaching services, I’ve had quite a number of people write and ask me the difference between coaching and counseling. Instead of responding individually, I thought I’d answer this question in this week’s blog.

And, this week my newsletter will be sent out. If you have not signed up to receive it, go to my home page at www.leslievernick.com and sign up. The topic is on holy listening. Do you know how to listen for God?

Question: What is the difference between coaching and counseling? I have been in counseling before but I see you are now doing coaching too? Is it the same thing? Does my medical insurance cover it?

Answer: Coaching is a relatively new profession, it began in the 80’s but is really growing as more and more people recognize its value. It is not covered by one’s medical insurance but sometimes covered by employers, especially with career coaching, performance coaching and/or executive coaching.

Perhaps most of us are familiar with a sports coach. The coach helps a player gain the skills to enhance his or her performance. The coach also provides encouragement, accountability and structure so that the athlete develops to his or her fullest potential.

In the same way, personal coaches or relationship coaches work with people who want to enhance their current life but lack specific skills necessary to make the progress they desire. They may also feel stuck doing it all alone and want accountability and structure to reach the results they want. A person hires a coach when they need more clarity, greater confidence, better direction, and accountability to reach their desired goals.

Coaches are action oriented. They come along side someone who has specific goals and help them get there. They aren’t necessarily dealing with someone’s past issues or something that is “wrong” but rather they focus on what impedes someone’s progress forward. Most coaches are not counselors but have been trained in the process of coming along side someone and being able to help move them toward a desired result.

There are many different kinds of coaches, life coaches, relationship coaches, business coaches, weight management coaches, clutter coaches, parenting coaches, marketing coaches, etc. Depending on your goals, you would choose a coach that would best help you get where you want to go.

Many counselors see the value of incorporating coaching into their practice, (as they may already do some of this with their counseling clients) however coaching is distinct from counseling. Counseling is usually sought when someone is experiencing emotional pain and struggling with problems in living that they have not been able to solve, get over or get through. Counseling’s focus is primarily healing of past hurts, understanding of present and past problems and resolving any trauma or relationship wounds. There is often an identified mental health diagnosis such as depression or anxiety disorder, especially when insurance coverage is used.

Counseling focus on feelings, coaching focuses on action. Counseling often focuses on the question of why this happened, or why am I feeling this way? Coaches don’t usually look for why, but instead look for how to move forward and what to do next.

Hiring a coach has nothing to do with having deep psychological problems or dysfunctions, but everything to do with wanting to become all that God has called you to be.

Sometimes when there is an overlap, a coach that is also a counselor can help someone through a short bump in the road, but if the client becomes emotionally unstable, overwhelmed, depressed, or unable to function, he/she is referred to a counselor. That doesn’t mean the coaching can’t continue, but the coach doesn’t do the counseling.

On a personal note, the reason I began coaching is that I receive many inquiries from people all over the world who are looking for specific help to become the best possible person they can. Or, they're ready to making some significant changes and need structure and accountability, or they want help moving their relationships forward or rebuilding their life after relationship loss.

If you’d like more information on my three (3) and six (6) month coaching programs please e-mail me at www.leslievernick.com and I’ll send you the information.