Here is another great blog from Marsha of Porn to Purity. Her commitment to others is amazing and her heart for this cause is amazing. I hope that you are able to take much with you after this blog from her and her friend Linda.
For the wife of a sexual addict, it’s so easy to get caught up with the things of this world and of the “flesh” and completely forget that there is a “spiritual” side to everything.
Our husband’s sexual addiction hits us hard and is so painful. We can very easily see the “person” (our spouse) as “the enemy” and the cause of all of our pain, difficulty and heartache. A natural instinct is to against him and start blaming, accusing, criticizing, correcting, fixing, judging and rejecting… you know all those things we do to protect ourselves from more hurt, pain and betrayal. All those feelings are real and valid but we need to ask ourselves a very important question:
“What are we accomplishing by doing and saying all those things?”
Are we fighting the battle correctly? Are our tactics working or making it worse? As Dr. Phil likes to say, “How is that working for you?”
For me, it didn’t work at all! And after over 20 years of trying, I discovered that this defense mechanism actually made things worse It seemed to plunge me and my husband into an even deeper into pit than we were already in.
A SPIRITUAL PERSPECTIVE
God helped me one day with a new perspective (one of many in my journey of healing and recovery) and a vision that I had not seen before. He helped me to rise above the temporal to see the situation from my husband’s perspective and from the spiritual dimension, and it caused my attitude to do a complete 180. I began seeing that my husband was not the enemy… He was a victim just as much as I was!
It’s not that my husband wasn’t responsible for his own actions and behaviors, because he most certainly was, but he was deceived and got caught in a trap that was far more dangerous and costly than he imagined and he couldn’t get out of it on his own. The enemy, knowing his weaknesses, baited and trapped him using the sexuality that God created him with, and set out to systematically destroy him, his marriage and his family.
The Lord showed me the constant battle my husband faces each day in the world we live in. The constant sexual images in the streets, in magazines, movies, sports ads and programs, TV shows… and the office he worked in, the restaurants, grocery stores and places he goes are all filled with provocatively dressed women… everywhere he goes he is surrounded by the bombardment of sexual enticement! He is constantly at war with the very thing God gifted him with; his sexuality and visual stimulation, on a conscious and subconscious level.
Wow! That was an eye opener for me!
The world and media are dominated by Satan’s influence – he is “the ruler of the kingdom of the air” (Ephesians 2:2). Much media t is targeted at our husbands and children… we are at war for our very marriages and families and our spouse is not the enemy.
AM I MAKING MY HOME A “WARZONE”?
What I realized was that, in my “incorrect” way of dealing with this situation. I was making his battle more difficulty by beating him up verbally and emotionally over the things I thought he was doing wrong. I made it my job to correct him. I made home a “war zone” instead of a place of peace and refuge from the storm!
I had to ask myself, “would ‘I’ want to come home to ‘me’ each day?” Am I making his home a place where there is peace and safety, comfort, love, respect and security? My answer was a clear and resounding “NO”.
The Lord reminded me of the way we were supposed to be fighting – back to back, side by side. Fighting the real enemy together. We were most certainly defeated when we were separated, fighting against each other. But together, we have a chance to succeed with God’s help!
II Corinthians 10:3-5 it says “For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”
So now, whenever I get those negative thoughts about my husband, and/or have the urge to “help him out” with negative correction or accusing comments I keep my mouth shut (most of the time anyway) and I pray for him! I lift him up for protection, strength and courage to make the right decision everyday. I pray for wisdom and for protection for his mind from the constant visual images he deals with each day. I pray that he will make the right and Godly choices that he truly wants to make in all situations. And, I leave the “changing” of my husband to God! Then I pray for myself that I would be the wife he needs me to be, supporting him and praying for him, and that I would always remember who the real enemy is so that I can “fight the good fight” (1 Timothy 6:12), fighting for and with him in the spiritual realm and not fighting against him in the physical realm.
Lord, help us all have a revelation of who the real enemy is!
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Linda Daniels lives in Apex, NC (near Raleigh). She works regularly with wives whose husbands struggle with sexual addiction. She and her husband Tom have been working with individuals and couples for 10 years. Marsha of Porn to Purity.com is a part of her ladies group.