It’s impossible to attain Brilliant Health without doing the things you love. How can you be fully, completely healthy if you’re not infused with the positive emotions that come from doing things that exhilarate you?
— Rick Foster & Greg Hicks, Choosing Brilliant Health, p. 92
It’s amazing how many people believe that suffering is a proof of love. If I don’t suffer when you suffer, they think, it means that I don’t love you. How can that possibly be true? Love is serene; it’s fearless. If you’re busy projecting what someone’s pain must feel like, how can you be fully present with her? How can you hold her hand and love her with all your heart aas she moves through her experience of pain? Why would she want you to be in pain, too? Wouldn’t she rather have you present and available?…
You don’t have to feel bad to act kindly. On the contrary: the less you suffer, the kinder you naturally become. And if compassion means wanting others to be free of suffering, how can you want for others what you won’t give to yourself?
— Byron Katie, A Thousand Names for Joy, p. 73, 74
Truth is what dispels the prejudice, shatters the illusions, and breaks the bonds of verbal abuse.
— Patricia Evans, Verbal Abuse Survivors Speak Out, p. 237
You don’t have to forgive because they deserve it. Frankly, they don’t. But just as Jesus chose to forgive us even before we’d repented, the choice to forgive opens the way for the most meaningful growth we can experience in life. If you think you can’t possibly forgive, do it instead to set yourself free from that pain. Do it in hopes that trust will one day return. But do it soon, and accept that it’s simply a part of living life.
— Cheryl & Jeff Scruggs, I Do Again, p. 177
Accountability may not sound like a lot of fun, but trust us, its opposite is a lot less fun.
— Rick Foster & Greg Hicks, Choosing Brilliant Health, p. 51
I think the main thing is, if there is any confusion or doubt as to what you should do, to err on the side of trusting that God can do the impossible….
God can do immeasurably more than you could ever ask or imagine. He can heal your heart, and he can resurrect your marriage, no matter what state it’s in.
As mere humans, we tend to limit God, especially in this extreme type of situation. But where there is room for repentance, there is also room for forgiveness and grace. If you can’t imagine such a miracle in your situation, choose to believe that God can and does. And in practicing that power you possess to believe God and take him at his word, you will find the strength to commit to acting on that belief. As we know from experience, reconciliation is a matter of trust, and it begins between you and God.
We didn’t have to remarry; biblically, the grounds for divorce were sound. But that doesn’t negate the truth that God created marriage to be the foundation of the family, and he created the family to be the foundation of society. The best thing we can do for ourselves, our children, and our society as a whole is to preserve marriages. If you choose to give up your right to your ego and your pain and walk the road of forgiveness and grace, you are glorifying God and living according to his purpose. You are giving an immense gift to yourself, your spouse, and your children. If you allow God to heal your heart and bolster you with his grace and love, choosing to walk the difficult path, you will never regret it.
— Cheryl & Jeff Scruggs, I Do Again, p. 174-176
Caring about people we love, feeling victimized when we’re betrayed, giving our all to people we love, or wanting to control people because we’re watching them destroy themselves and hurt us doesn’t mean we’re sick. These are natural reactions. Codependency is about normal behaviors taken too far. It’s about crossing lines.
— Melody Beattie, The New Codependency, p. 5
The need to blame (ourselves or others) runs so deeply at times that it can feel like a basic necessity. Part of the need arises as a defense against shame. As shame encroaches, fending it off requires that someone else be proved the villain. And it is not enough that we protest what they’re doing, that we have our say. We have to nail them to their crimes, make them confess, make them feel bad and promise to be better. Only then can we finally have the satisfaction of being free of the denunciation we direct at ourselves….
Knowing oneself is integral to growing up. But, to the extent that we live in a blaming system, we do not want to know the truth about who we are and, therefore, resist growing up. We don’t want to know our own murderousness, selfishness, greed, envy, because all of these very human feeling states have been made a source of so much guilt and shame that they lead at once to total condemnation and self-rejection. We can’t know them, and we can’t know how we came to them. As a result, we miss out on the experience of self-empathy and self-care, which might be the basis for doing something new, for beginning to emerge from these things we don’t like in ourselves but which hold us prisoner.
Some of what we do is bad and should be changed — the way we bully, deny, manipulate, shirk, indict…. But if we make every misdeed or character orientation into a capital crime, into evidence that our very being is worthless, we will not be able to let ourselves know the full complexity of who we are. If there can be no mercy, no leniency, no understanding, no forgiveness, no simple tolerance for the magnificent complexity of being human — if we face every flaw or disliked quality as evidence that our blackened souls require rejection and banishment — we will not be captured by our own awareness and motivated to change. The blaming system, therefore, puts a brake on a fundamental area of growth….
Blame is very absorbent. It soaks up sadness. It dries the tears. It provides an opportunity and a target for fury which is felt as preferable to experiencing pain or loss — whether the loss is a cat, a spouse, an aspect of physical health, a loved object, a piece of work, a good night’s sleep, an election, a colony, or a war. Blaming and vindictiveness are ways of not feeling one’s sorrow or shame and, by corollary, of not caring for oneself. Blame is the anti-mourn and, hence, the anti-self.
— Robert Karen, PhD, The Forgiving Self, p. 110-112
There are not two sides. Abuse is not a conflict. It is not a fight. . . .
When a child is molested or abused, there are not two sides. Similarly, when an adult is verbally abused and threatened, there are not two sides. One person is not attacking and the other counterattacking. On the contrary, one is trying to understand and not upset the other, whose behavior is directed toward maintaining control and dominance with overt or covert attacks.
— Patricia Evans, Verbal Abuse Survivors Speak Out, p. 98
Most couples believe there is a point when the situation becomes hopeless. But I am here to tell you it’s not true. Jesus promised that seeking reconciliation will bear fruit, so there is great hope that a marriage can be restored to a place beyond what a couple could even imagine.
— Cheryl & Jeff Scruggs, I Do Again, p. 164