The Message of Your Pain

Compassion, Core Value, Healing, Relationships 0

Resentful, angry, and abusive people drastically misinterpret the message of their own pain. . . . The bad feelings your husband blames on you are telling him to improve, appreciate, connect, or protect, for those are the only things that can make him feel better. And your pain is giving you the exact same message. Even if your husband changes dramatically and replaces his resentment, anger, or abusive behavior with compassion, you still have to heed the message of your core hurts to improve, appreciate, connect, or protect. This means that your focus has to be on your own resources, not on your husband and not on outside supports.

— Steven Stosny, You Don’t Have to Take It Anymore, p. 116

Your Beauty and Power

Core Value, Healing, Life 0

The message of our wounds nearly always is, “This is because of you. This is what you deserve.” It changes things to realize that, no, it is because you are glorious that these things have happened. It is because you are a major threat to the kingdom of darkness. Because you uniquely carry the glory of God to the world.

You are hated because of your beauty and power.

— John and Stasi Eldredge, Captivating, p. 85

Forgiveness Is About You.

Forgiveness, Healing 0

Forgiveness is not giving up your right to justice. In fact, you may need to seek restitution of some kind for the wrongs that have been done to you. You may even need to resort to legal recourse to get support or help in your healing.

Forgiveness does not remove or alter pain from the past. The hurt and sorrow of yesterday can’t be changed. Forgiveness can only make your present and future less painful.

And, perhaps most crucial of all, forgiveness in no way excuses the wrongdoer. When you’re ready to forgive, you do so for yourself. His inexcusable behavior stays inexcusable. Forgiveness isn’t about him. As I’ve mentioned, it’s only about, and for, you.

— Eve A. Wood, MD, The Gift of Betrayal, p. 61

Choosing Not to Blame

Forgiveness, Gratitude, Growth, Healing, Letting Go, Marriage, Relationships 0

Our intimate partners are by and large our most important persons. Because we share responsibility for our lives with them, because they are magnets for our disappointments, it is all but written into our marriage contracts that we will blame them when things go wrong.

But what happens when we make a point of doing the opposite? What happens when we let go of our proclivity to blame and resent our lovers for our own disappointments? Every time we forgive and thank each other we teach each other critical, and generalizable, life lessons: There is no master plan. There is no life that we were supposed to lead. There is no good future in wishing for a different past. The assumption that things should always go our way, and that someone or something is to blame if they don’t, only leads us away from the path to our better selves.

— Mark O’Connell, PhD, The Marriage Benefit, p. 164-165

Focus on Abundance

Gratitude, Healing, Joy 0

When we focus on abundance, our life feels abundant; when we focus on lack, our life feels lacking. It is purely a matter of focus.

It is true that we can’t be in denial about the pain in our life. That is damaging to our physical and emotional health. And just as importantly,

We can’t be in denial about the abundance in our life!

— Susan Jeffers, PhD, Gratitude: A Way of Life, by Louise L. Hay and Friends, p. 132-133