Am I really in control here?

         “It’s ok. I’m in control of this relationship.”  I remember telling my friend when he got justly upset at some comments a young man had made towards me.  Yet this is the same thing I said a year earlier when I was in a very similar relationship.  Perhaps a little more guarded this time, I still felt it my missionary duty to continue to be friends with this person.  I thought I was in control and nothing could get out of hand.

            Fast forward, I just got accelerated into a mountaintop season of perspective.  Now I am seeing my life through a different lens.  Even though I grew up in the church and had every reason to seek out good and healthy relationships (and did), I had already settled for two emotionally (actually three) abusive ones.

             I was shocked when I googled emotional abuse to write this blog because I never recognized my feeling of being taken advantage of as such.  My two biggest excuses were “It’s no big deal” and “I’m in control.”  Here’s the worst one: “But he needs me.”  Woah!  I just sang a song from Oliver about that.  Yes, yes I do know something about abuse.

Signs that you’re not in control:

You feel manipulated

You feel like you have been de-valued

You are being ordered around

You feel belittled

            Thank God for community, right?  These are the ones who rallied around me and said, “This is not what’s best for you.”  When one of my guy friends said, “Get out of the relationship.  He is way out of line,” I noted their words and really prayed about them.  However, I analyzed their motives and thought they were being a bit too overprotective.  As stated above, unfortunately these two times I didn’t listen as well as I should have.

            I’m not going to say that I was not wise.  Especially the second time, I think I was very wise in a lot of the ways I handled the friendship.  It was of course under different circumstances.  This time I actually fought back.  I stood up for myself in more ways than I did before.

            However, the wisest thing to do in these situations is to physically GET OUT.  I was so blinded by my missionary love that I took a lot of the abuse.  In this situation God gave me an immense amount of pure, Christ-like love for him.  I therefore concluded that it was my duty to love him into church.  I was blinded by this unconditional love and was unable to see the truth that I needed to leave.

            In this I am learning an important lesson: I am not in control.  Wounding from my past is allowing me to be controlled by other people.  It goes much deeper than people pleasing. (If you want to know the details of these stories, please just ask me in person.)

            Fortunately, there is a God who is really in control and he loves me so much!  Each time I got abused he got fed up and physically removed the threat.  I am always removed from the situation.

            I was really incensed against men who mistreat women before I sat down to write this.  It is not ok for anyone (male or female) to continue to be mistreated in relationships.  There’s a righteous anger coming out of me today as I came face to face with unrighteousness and perversion once again but with new eyes.

            I’m going to make a bold declaration today.  The cycle stops here.  I like to present my readers and myself with an alternate list of signs that you are in control of a healthy relationship.  I found these on a university’s counseling center’s website and I thought they were very insightful:

Basic Rights in a Relationship

•       The right to good will from the other.

•       The right to emotional support.

•       The right to be heard by the other and to be responded to with courtesy.

•       The right to have your own view, even if your partner has a different view.

•       The right to have your feelings and experience acknowledged as real.

•       The right to receive a sincere apology for any jokes you may find offensive.

•       The right to clear and informative answers to questions that concern what is legitimately your business.

•       The right to live free from accusation and blame.

•       The right to live free from criticism and judgment.

•       The right to have your work and your interests spoken of with respect.

•       The right to encouragement.

•       The right to live free from emotional and physical threat.

•       The right to live free from angry outbursts and rage.

•       The right to be called by no name that devalues you.

•       The right to be respectfully asked rather than ordered.

Friends, lets prayerfully grab a hold of these.  They’re like God’s promises over you.  “I want you be in a relationship that looks like me and my church.  I want my perfect love reflected in you.  You shall behold me as I am holy in pure and holy love.”

Relationship rights taken from this website

http://www.counselingcenter.illinois.edu/self-help-brochures/relationship-problems/emotional-abuse/