2 Ways to Stop Making the Same Relationship Mistakes (Pt. 2)

Have you ever been given words of wisdom or advice that you wished later you had heeded? 
Words that echoed in your head after your own experience proved them right?
Truths that you should have taken to heart, but in the moment you thought you knew better?

I believe we often do this because what it would take for us to follow such wisdom feels too hard. Our way seems easier, softer, better, more gradual, less painful. I know this well. There was a time when I was given words of advice, wisdom, or even warning by the few good people in my life, and I would find ways to justify why it was true for them but could never apply to me.

I wanted help to not make the same relationship mistakes again. I didn't think I could be more broken, and so I couldn't handle one more messy relationship. I would struggle and cry in the midst of such hunger and heart sickness.

But I didn't want a cure, I wanted comfort. 

Comfort for me was to not have to change anything but to still be better and have better relationships, or maybe just change a small things that would put me in a much better place. Whatever it was, it needed to make sense, and I needed to feel good about it.

My journey with Jesus gave me two answers to a single burning question. Here's the second: 

Q: How do I quit making the same relationship mistakes that lead to the same place of brokenness?
A: Cut it off.

These were Jesus’ words as He God-defined what humans had made a mess of. We needed truth, but it wasn't going to comfort us, instead it would cut to the core and provide a cure for our sin sickness. We had gotten things wrong in our understanding of His ways. 

Jesus told us that what happens in our hearts, where no one else could see, deeply mattered. We could look lily white on the outside, and be like a rotting graves on the inside. And that mattered. Our hearts, our souls, our minds mattered to God as much as our bodies and actions. Sin could spread like a sickness inside before it ever revealed its shocking symptoms on the outside. 

"You have heard that it was said, 'Do not commit adultery.' But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.” (Matt. 5:27-30)

Wow, Jesus. Not much comfort there. Pretty drastic. And that’s not advice, it’s a command.

What He’s telling us is this: His way is to be whole from the inside out, not hide and ignore the inside and just put on a show on the outside. So, address your heart. Where do you struggle in relationships? Why do you struggle? What leads you to a place in relationships where you believe that “if only I had _____, then I’d be _____”?

What are you really looking for? Why have you turned, in your heart, to follow a path where you seek to meet your own desires and needs—that path of heart led astray? When will you turn around and seek where or how God can meet your deeper desires and needs? 

Then, He’s telling us that whatever causes us to sin, cut it off. Not in a physical sense, but as a radical choice. You've heard those crazy stories about people in desperate situations like rock climbers alone in the mountains, pinned in a crevice, or farmers in a far field trapped under machinery without help. They have a choice: die, or cut off their own limb and live. It’s the same picture. 

Stuck making the same mistakes? Pinned down, broken, and wondering how to get out? You have a choice.

Dissect the shocking image and what we find is, we aren't commanded to have a tough conversation with that eye or hand. We aren't told to put a sock on it or cover it with a patch, putting boundaries around it so it behaves better. We aren't called to make a tough choice and then carry pieces of it around with us; it’ll rot and cause indescribable sickness that will spread. We are called to make a radical choice to make a painful separation and get the thing that causes us to sin as far away from us as we can. Cut it off and throw it away.

These are the words of wisdom, the clarion call that would have changed my course, and because they weren't comforting words, I discarded them. 

What does cut it off and throw it away mean for you? Not “to” you. Jesus has told us what it means. “For” you—what are you going to have to do? 

The most common radical choice I see young women have to make: break up. Stop dating and start healing. It sounds shocking, and hard, and it has so many implications. You have to cut it off. You have to throw it away. It will be painful. You’ll have to take time to heal. And it’ll leave a mark…for a while. 

When we take our messy hearts and with a radical choice--bleeding, broken, and in need of healing—we go to Jesus, the beauty of what he does as Healer is to heal both our hearts and our lives, inside and out. He doesn’t leave people with stumps and patches. He heals so we are whole, new, restored, changed, so we can live a life in Him of more than all our eyes could see or our minds could ever grab a hold of. (1 Cor. 2:9-10)

Just another seed of my faith,
Ginny

2 Ways to Stop Making the Same Relationship Mistakes (Pt.1)

Seventeen years ago today, Chip and I got married. Our anniversary is one of the most important days of the year to me. It’s this glorious marker that by grace we’ve defied the odds that were stacked against us! It’s a celebration of a lot of things that are just “us.” Our anniversary also reminds me that at one point God rescued me and I began walking with God on a new path, in a new direction, one that included a right and good relationship. I want to use the words “actually” or “finally” in there somewhere because I was the queen of long-term, broken, unhealthy, sin-filled relationships with men. With God, I was able to live beyond that! 

My journey with Him gave me two answers to a single burning question. Here's the first:

Q: How do I quit making the same relationship mistakes that lead to the same place of brokenness?
A: Know your rooftops.

Journey through 2 Samuel 11:1-4 with me to discover rooftops. This part of David’s story holds one of the keys to not making the same relationship mistakes over and over again. 

In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king's men and the whole Israelite army. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem. One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, "Isn't this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite?" Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her…

David’s progression went something like this: 
  He should have been at war. He remained in Jerusalem. 
    He should have been peacefully at rest. He walked restlessly on his rooftop. 
      He should have turned his eyes away from the bathing woman.
        He asked someone to find out more about her. 
          He should have listened to the servant’s subtle caution about the married woman.
           He sent messengers to get Bathsheba.

Spoken like this, David’s downfall seems fast, doesn’t it? However, we’ve seen it didn’t begin with a rooftop. This was much farther down the path of “heart led astray.” Like a jenga tower, the rooftop was the last piece pulled before the blocks collapsed.

Rooftops can be spiritual places, emotional and mental places, and physical places. Think about those three aspects as we consider that a rooftop is…

• An innocent place. Rooftops were not known to be dens of iniquity. A rooftop was a personal place for a king, a place to get some fresh air, or to sit and meet with his family or advisers. Despite his choice to not be in the right place (at war like all the other kings), it was David’s own heart and lust that made the rooftop a dark place.
• A planned, deliberate choice—to be here instead of there. This can be a physical location but we can also choose emotional or spiritual places in relationships that can lead to a total mess including sexual sin such as longing for approval or running to numb feelings of conviction. 
• A place of restlessness. When we are restlessly seeking to meet our own needs we begin looking here, there and everywhere for that perfect situation and perfect person to meet our desires. 
• A place of entertaining possibilities. We become willing to deceive ourselves with the notion that something or someone out there will be able to meet all our needs, desires, and expectations. 
• A place separate from our “brothers” and without real accountability. We probably have plenty of company, but we grow increasingly disconnected from truth-speaking Christ followers, and friends who call to God out of a pure heart. (2 Tim. 2:22) When we are alone with our thoughts, our growing emptiness, and our struggle we’re left vulnerable. Without authentic relationships with people who respect us and love us enough to speak real truth and point us to Jesus, we are in danger of taking a hard fall. All the “brothers” who would have held David accountable to God’s way or told him a hard “no” were away at war.

This is when a rooftop becomes ripe for temptation. It’s a place where our desires can take an awful turn toward evil desires and we can be dragged away and enticed. (Jas. 1:14)

Consider your rooftops. Ask God to show you where you are physically, emotionally and mentally, and spiritually when you are most tempted to repeat the same mistakes or to sin. Ask Him to open your eyes to you how you got there. 

Understand when you ask Him this, He stays with you to sort through it. He doesn’t turn on the light in a messy room and walk away, telling you to clean it up. With God, no condemnation, no shame, exists. (Rom. 8:1). He desires to lead you in the way everlasting. (Ps. 139:24) That includes freedom from condemnation and shame, and freedom from lingering rooftops. 

It may be helpful to read through the rooftop list considering your body and physical locations first, then soul (heart and mind) places, then spiritual places. 
   It may be when you are feeling insecure, rejected, lonely, or fresh from a break up that you become desperate for someone who could really be the perfect guy to meet all your needs—and rush into sex in the next relationship you find. 
   It may be that you seem to be attracted to the same kind of man, every time, but nowhere to be seen is his true relationship with Jesus, and you set your relationship with Jesus aside every time, because you believe this guy is different—and you can “handle it; this one will be better.” 
   It could be the same guy you struggle with, break up, have long conversations, get back together, and enter in to the exact same mess all over again. Where’s your rooftop there? 

The primary lesson I learned in living beyond our pasts is that we must take time to know our rooftops. If we ignore our rooftops or don’t truly identify them, then the very places we have tripped before we may trip again. We stop repeating the same mistakes when learn to avoid our rooftops or get off of and get away from those places. 

It is there that we can stop short on the path of heart led astray and entrust ourselves, and our needs and desires to God. As we look to Christ to answer spirit-soul-body longings in His way and in His time we will find Him wholly satisfying, and find ourselves becoming whole.

Just another seed of my faith,

Ginny