39 Years of Living in Fear......

"Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” ~Joshua 1:9

Today as I started to open my bible to study the word a strong force came over me and told me to start looking up passages in the bible about fear.  Then I began to find scriptures on the internet (Catholic pages) about fear and it became clear to me the strong force was God telling me to learn and read why I am not to live in fear anymore.

39 years of my life I have lived in some sort of fear in one way or the other.  When I was a child my mother had struggles of her own that left us kids to basically raise ourselves and fight for our survival.  There were times as a child we would have no electricity or hot water and even times of no food in the house.  Dinner for me, I recall, on several occasions was a slice of white bread with sugar on it and maybe a glass of milk.  

My eldest sibling had emotional issues that would cause him to rage at the drop of a hat.  His rages were not only mental but physical and he could strike at you in a second. My mother use to say she was afraid he was going to kill us all one night in our sleep.  This, of course, developed a fear of being physically hurt.

My mother would go on drinking binges and could be gone for a few days at a time when I was smaller.  There were nights I would pray to God that she would not die or that she would come back for us and not just pick up and leave all together. Naturally, this developed into a fear of being abandoned.

My mother never really worked during my childhood.  She would have a few part time jobs here and there but generally she lived off Social Security checks from the death of my brothers' father.  She also depended on the men in her life to help pay for things when she fell short.  This caused us to have to move many times during my childhood because we could not pay our rent. I established a fear of being homeless early on in life.  Then true to the fear it happened the summer before my freshman year. My mother didn't have a job and didn't have a man at the time she could lean on and she and I ended up homeless sleeping in the cab of her truck at a rest stop in West Linn.

Fast forward to my first marriage.  My spouse and I were very young. We had no business being married at such a young age, especially me I was only 17.  My spouse at the time was not a forthcoming man and usually would lie about where he had been or who he had been with.  This developed a fear of being taken advantage of.

As you can see the patter developed throughout my entire life, fear has grown in me from as far back as I can recall.   

There is a saying that I have on my computer that sums my fears up pretty good:  

"I over analyze situations because I'm scared of what will happen if I’m not prepared for it." 

The fears that I live with continue to be detrimental to my life I am trying to live.  I have talked about letting go of my fears in the past, giving them to God.  But when you live with fear for so long and you live in fear each day of your life it is hard to just put them on a shelf and walk away.

I live a much different life now than I did as a child, I am blessed.  But my old fears that were developed as a child are still alive and with me as I get ready to turn 40.  Situations in my marriage to my hubby now have thrown me into stronger fears than I have ever had and sometimes I feel like I can be falling down a dark hole.

This is not how I want to live the next 40 years of my life.  Timothy 2 1:7 says: 

"For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control." 

The life of power and love and self-control is the way I want to spend the next 40 years of my life.  I trained my mind to be a better person a few years ago, happier.  I trained my body to be in the best shape of its life.  I taught myself how to forgive and be able to put the transgression aside.  I WILL teach myself not to live in fear anymore.  This is not the life I want for myself, this is not the life God wants for me and I know this is not the person my hubby wants to spend the next 40 years with, someone who lives in a darkness of fear.

I hope that I can achieve this and I pray that my hubby will help me along the way.  John 4:18 says 

"There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment and whoever fears has not been perfected in love" 

I know this verse is speaking of our Lord but I think it goes for our spouses too.  We need to have no fear in love, we need a love that casts out those fears and it is up to us as married people to ensure that we are casting out the fear for our spouses.  I don't think my hubby has any fears when it comes to me in our marriage but I know that while working on putting my own fears aside and learning not to live in them I am going to go out of my way to ensure my hubby has no fears of his own.

I will learn fear is not where God wants me to live. I will learn that I can only control myself and the rest I have to give to God.  

40 more years of life and I am praying for strength, for the will to live outside of fear and for the perfect love that casts out fear.

~Mellie

 http://youtu.be/Kc7orBfhEmk

The Love Dare-Day Sixteen

Begin praying for your spouse's heart.  Pray for three specific areas where you desire for God to work in your spouse's life and in your marriage.

Love intercedes-- Beloved, I pray that in all aspects you may prosper and be in good health, just as your soul prospers.  You cannot change your spouse.  Insanity has been described as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.  Isn't that what happens when you try and change your mate?  It's frustration as the highest level.  At some point you need to realize that it's not something you can change.  But what you can do is become a wise farmer.  A farmer cannot make a seed grow into a fruitful crop.  He can not argue, manipulate, or demand it to bear fruit.  What he can do is plant the seed into fertile soil, give it water and nutrients, protect it from weeds, and then turn it over to God. This challenge is not about changing your spouse.  It's about you daring to love.  If yo take the Love Dare seriously, there is a high chance you will be personally changed from the inside out.  And if you carry out each dare your spouse will likely be changed and your marriage will begin to bloom.  It may take month, or even years. But regardless of the soil you're working with you are to plan for success.  You are to nurture the soil of your mate's heart and then depend on God for the results. God is sovereign.  He does things His way.  He's not a genie in a lamp that submits to your every wish. But He does love you and desires in intimate relationship with you.  This doesn't happen apart from prayer.  Prayer works best when coming from a humble heart that is in a right relationship with God and others.  The Bible says "Confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another."  Have you ever wondered why God gives you overwhelming insight into your spouse's hidden faults?  Do you really think it's for endless nagging?  No, it is for effective kneeling.  So turn your complaints into prayers and watch the Master work while you keep your hands clean. Pray for his heart. Pray for her attitude. Pray for your responsibilities before God. Pray for truth to replace lie. Pray that forgiveness would replace bitterness.  Pray for a genuine breakthrough in your marriage.  And then pray for your hearts desires- for love and honor to become the norm. Pray for romance and intimacy to go to a deeper level. "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you." (Matthew 7:7)

"Have you ever wondered why God gives you overwhelming insight into your spouse's hidden faults?  Do you really think it's for endless nagging?  No, it is for effective kneeling."  

This statement made me laugh yesterday when I read it but it also made me really think and reflect on what I was praying for and how I was going about it.  How many of us really want to change our spouses and think if we just do this or that we can get them to come around to our way of thinking?  I know I am guilty of this ten fold.  I am embarrassed to say it, but it's the truth.

I have always been able to tell when something is up with my hubby.  Maybe it is just a feeling at first, maybe it's a list of things that are adding up, maybe I don't find out the whole thing at first but eventually it all comes to me.  I have always thought this was Evil trying to fill my head and point things out to come against my marriage but when I read the statement above it hit home, perhaps it's really God showing me so I can get down on my knees and pray for him.

I am no saint.  I am not the wife of the year.  I have baggage from my life.  I have trust issues from here to Canada.  I listen but sometimes I do not hear.  I care but sometimes I do not love.  I give but sometimes I have resentment.  These are just some of the reasons I took this challenge and then invited my friends to do it with me.  I am not trying to proclaim that I am the wife of the year, I struggle with so many issues on my own then you add my hubby to the mix and sometimes we can be on a roller coaster of events that can change each day.

However, what I do know is this.... I WANT to be better.  I WANT to be a better wife.  I WANT to be off that roller coaster.  I WANT to listen and hear everything.  I WANT to care and give love in everything I do.  I WANT to give and not resent. I WANT my hubby to feel safe and have trust in me too.  I really feel as this challenge goes on I am growing on the inside and I am getting closer to God and in the end that will help my marriage.  

I did pray for my hubby and I had my three specific areas that I prayed for.  And for the first time I felt like I was REALLY praying.  I did not ask him to change my hubby, I did not ask him to get my hubby to do this or stop that.  I just prayed for him.  As I drifted off to sleep last night I prayed again this way for him and really felt a sense of peace.  I think I am finally learning how to pray.

~Mellie
***I have a couple friends who are struggling in their marriage.  I challenged them to take the Love Dare with me.  This is a 60 day love challenge based off the movie FireProof Your Marriage.  I have started this challenge in the past but not fully dove into it or completed it so I thought if I got these ladies to do it with me we could all work through it together.

http://www.lifeway.com/Product/the-love-dare-paperback-p005180605



I am always looking for ways to improve my marriage, my faith and my relationship with my hubby.  I am doing this for me more so than FOR him.  It is about changing who I am and who I want to be as a wife and mother and child of God.****

The Love Dare-Day Fifteen

 Choose a way to show honor and respect to your spouse that is above your normal routine.  It may be holding the door for her.  It might be putting his clothes away for him.  It may be the way you listen and speak in your communication.  Show your mate that he or she is esteemed in your eyes.

Love is honorable-Live with your wives in an understanding way.... and show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life.  There are certain words in our language that have powerful meanings. Whenever these words are used, an air of respect is associated with them.  One of these words is honor.  To honor someone means to give them respect and high esteem, to treat them as being special and of great worth.  You keep your language clean and understandable.  You are courteous and polite.  You take them seriously and give their words weight and significance.  Honoring your mate means giving him or her your full attention, not talking to them from behind a newspaper or with one eye on the television.  You give your mate's voice and opinion equal influence in your mind.  You honor what they have to say.  They matter, and you show them that in every way.  He or she is sacred to you, a person to be honored, praised and defended.  This means no other person in the whole world is supposed to enjoy this level of commitment and endearment from you.  Is that the way it is in your marriage?  Would your mate say you honor and respect them? Do you consider them set apart and highly valued?  Holy?  Love honors when it's rejected.  Love treats its beloved as special and sacred even when an ungrateful attitude is all you get in return.  You are to be devoted to one another in love.  But when your attempts at honor go unreciprocated, you are to honor just the same. That's what love dares do-to say "Of all the relationships I have, I will value ours the most.  Of all the things I am willing to sacrifice, I will sacrifice the most for you.  With all your failures, sins, mistakes, and faults-past and present- I still choose to love and honor you."  That's how you create an atmosphere for love to be rekindled.  That's how you lead your heart to truly love your mate again. And that's the beauty of honor. 


I always write about my dare the day after.  Today I am struggling within myself and struggling to let go of some past issues.  I actually re-read my own blogs to remind myself of the lessons I have learned so far in this exercise so that I could deal with my emotions and fears that I am having.  Learning to give it to God, learning to stay within myself, learning to honor, rules of healthy engagements... all of these reminders I am calling on today to help me change my behavior and patterns. The mind is a powerful tool and it can run away with the smallest detail and create the biggest scenario.  I am not going to allow this to happen today and by getting my challenge from yesterday down and moving forward into the season of Lent I know God will see me through.

Yesterday I had to honor and respect my hubby a new way and go above and beyond my normal to show him that he is highly esteemed in my eyes.  Yesterday I failed.  I thought all day about this challenge.  I read the chapter several times.  I underlined points of the chapter to focus on.  Yet, I could not come up with an "action" that I could do to go above and beyond my normal towards my hubby that would show him

Or did I fail?

We had a great evening yesterday.  We didn't go to the gym and rather than getting lost in chores around the house, the kids or other things that needed to be done we just spent time together alone when he got home from work.  We connected with each other and enjoyed our evening together.  We had a little stress over dinner but rather than letting that take over us and determine the rest of our night we both handled it pretty well and got over it together.  There was a point at one part of the night where I came to my hubby with a question over something he had done.  I tried to not sound condescending or accusatory and I think he responded well to my attempt.  So perhaps the challenge was not a failure.  Perhaps me changing the way I dealt with the stress of dinner and the question over an action was me going above and beyond to show him honor and respect. 

I think this is so hard for me not because I do honor and respect him, I really do.  But because of past situations between he and I one of the things he has said to me over and over again is that he does not feel respected.  This has always weighed so heavy on me because I do honor and respect him and it has frustrated me when he has said these things to me.  How could he not feel respected?  I feel I go above and beyond what I am supposed to do.  Then I recall something a manager once told me when I had a team of employees to supervise.  She said "Perception is 100% the truth.  If their perception is saying this, than that is THEIR truth and you have to decide if you are going to change their truth."  That always stuck with me over the years and when my hubby says things like he does not feel respected, then I tell myself that is HIS perception and it is up to ME to change it or not.

This is a challenge I will continue to work on and hopefully continue to improve in my marriage.  Because it is true.  Of all the relationships I have, I value this one the most.  Of all the things I am willing to sacrifice, I would sacrifice the most for him.  With all his failures, sins, mistakes and faults-I still choose to love and honor him.  I don't have to lead my heart to truly love my hubby... it already does.

~Mellie


***I have a couple friends who are struggling in their marriage.  I challenged them to take the Love Dare with me.  This is a 60 day love challenge based off the movie FireProof Your Marriage.  I have started this challenge in the past but not fully dove into it or completed it so I thought if I got these ladies to do it with me we could all work through it together.

http://www.lifeway.com/Product/the-love-dare-paperback-p005180605



I am always looking for ways to improve my marriage, my faith and my relationship with my hubby.  I am doing this for me more so than FOR him.  It is about changing who I am and who I want to be as a wife and mother and child of God.****

The Love Dare-Day Fourteen

 Purposefully neglect an activity you would normally do so you can spend quality time with your spouse.  Do something he or she would love to do or a project they'd really like to work on.  Just be together.

Love takes delight- Enjoy like with the wife you love all the days of your fleeting life.  One of the important things you should learn on your journey is not to follow your heart, but rather lead it. You don't let your feelings and emotions do the driving. In your marriage you will not always feel like loving your spouse. It's unrealistic for your heart to constantly thrill at the thought of spending every moment with your spouse.  Nobody can maintain that burning feeling. A newly married couple takes delight in the one they call their spouse.  Their love is young and fresh and have romantic hopes for their future.  However there is something just as powerful as that fresh feeling.  It comes from the decision to delight in your spouse and to love them no matter how long you have been married.  In other words, love that chooses to love is just as powerful as love the feels like loving.  It's time to lead your heart to once again delight in your mate.  Enjoy your spouse.  Seek their companionship. Desire their conversation.  Welcome this person back into your heart fully.  Again, you get to choose to what you treasure.. treasure your marriage. For some this challenge of delight may only be a small step away.  For others, it may require a giant leap from ongoing disgust.  The responsibility is yours to relearn what you love about this one to whom you've promised yourself forever.

What really struck me when I was reading my chapter was I know this feeling of not feeling the thrill of your spouse.  I know there have been times in my marriage where my hubby misses and seeks that thrill, the excrement of the new and the new possibility that may be out there.  I am sure we all have at one time or another in our marriages.  But I am always quick to recall that once that newness wears off you are right back to where you were with your last spouse or partner never really growing in yourself or your marriage but simply looking for that selfish all over good feeling.  As my hubby and I get older and grow deeper in ourselves and our marriage I think it's becoming clear that what he and I have is really good and a lot of people look all their lives for a love like ours.  Sometimes I think we forget to appreciate what we have because we are tempted by the outside world.

Typically every night my hubby and I have the same routine.  We spend time doing something we love (working out together) then we have dinner and family time and then we spend the rest of the evening alone together in our room.  So I was a little concerned on what I was going to do extra to spend quality time with him.  But sure enough God worked HIS work and rather than talking to my hubby about doing something different for our routine of the night my hubby just turned off the TV and we spent the evening in bed talking, laughing and bonding.  It was as if my hubby knew we needed to have that extra quiet time together and have a more focused time with each other.  I really felt like God worked through my hubby last night and we had a FANTASTIC evening.

My hubby posted a quote on my Facebook wall the other day I want to share:

“Love is the free exercise of choice. Two people love each other only when they are quite capable of living without each other but choose to live with each other.”
― M. Scott Peck  

This is so true for him and I.  We have lived apart, we were separated trying to find our own lives and moving on looking or having that newness in other relationships, but we still choose to come back together as one.  This quote I feel goes right along with this chapter.  I choose to be with my hubby.  I choose to delight in who he is and how we are when we are together.  I choose to fight for him.  I choose to forgive and forget because I know this is the man for me.  I choose on days that I may not feel like hanging out with him to turn my thoughts around and be thankful that he is here with me again.  I choose to recall how I felt living apart from my hubby and I don't ever want to feel that again.

Life is about the choices we make in every areas of our life.  I choose God who loves me and is unmoving in his patience for me to commit fully to him, just as I choose to be this way in my marriage towards my hubby.  I choose us.

~Mellie 

**On a side note my hubby has started to do the challenge himself.  We have not really talked about it but he will make cute little jokes like, "It's day Two today, boy these challenges get harder and harder."  I can see his effort that he is putting into each day and I can see that he is taking this seriously and even in just a few short days I can see changes in my hubby.  He now prays over us before he leaves for work each day.  Never in my life would I have ever thought this to be a possible scenario for us. I actually always admired couples who pray together at the start and end of each of their days.  God is amazing and this just proves to me that we can never give up. We must continue to fight the good fight and for the good of our marriages.  No matter what comes against you, dig in deep and find that strength.  Ask God to lead you and help you and surrender yourself to him.  Miracles will happen.**

***I have a couple friends who are struggling in their marriage.  I challenged them to take the Love Dare with me.  This is a 60 day love challenge based off the movie FireProof Your Marriage.  I have started this challenge in the past but not fully dove into it or completed it so I thought if I got these ladies to do it with me we could all work through it together.

http://www.lifeway.com/Product/the-love-dare-paperback-p005180605



I am always looking for ways to improve my marriage, my faith and my relationship with my hubby.  I am doing this for me more so than FOR him.  It is about changing who I am and who I want to be as a wife and mother and child of God.****

The Love Dare- Day Thirteen

Talk with your spouse about establishing healthy rules of engagement.  If your mate is mot ready for this, then write out your own personal rules to "fight" by.  Resolve to abide by them when the next disagreement occurs.

Love fights fair-- If a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.  Like it or not conflict in marriage is inevitable.  The forced closeness of a marriage begins to strip away your public facades, exposing your private problems and secret habits.  Welcome to fallen humanity.  At the same time the storms of life are testing and revealing what you are both really made of. Word demands, health, families, financial situations all add pressure and heat to a relationship.  Every couple goes through it but not every couple survives it. Living this Dare is not going to drive out conflict it is meant to help you deal with conflict in such a way you both come out healthier... together. The deepest, most heartbreaking damage you may ever do will be during conflict.  That is when our pride is the thickest. Our anger is the hottest.  We are more selfish and judgmental.  Our words contain venom.  You can make the worst decisions during this time. Married couples who learn to work through conflict tend to be closer, more trusting, more intimate and enjoy each other on a deeper level.  This happens by establishing boundaries. You need to have "We" boundaries.  Rules you both agree on beforehand that apply during a fight such as never mention divorce, not bringing up old unrelated issues, or fighting in front of the kids.  You also need "Me" boundaries such as I will listen before I speak, I will deal with my own issues up front or I will speak gently and keep my voice down. Fighting fair means changing your weapons.  Disagree with dignity and your results will be to build a bridge instead of burning one down.  Love is not a fight, but it is worth fighting for.

So this was my dare on Thursday of last week.  As I have stated in past blogs I do not do my Dares Friday through Sunday because my hubby is home with me.  This Dare was started to help my friends and help me become a better person and wife so I really enjoy doing them while he is away from the home because it allows me to reflect on the lesson and really dig deep inside myself on how I can change and learn from it.

I did not speak to my hubby in regards to this.  He is not in the same place as I am so I do not want to overwhelm him or add any pressure.  My hubby is very sensitive to feeling as if I am trying to preach to him.  I know this is a trigger point for him so I really work on not making him feel this way.  He is the leader of my family and it is up to him to lead me, not the other way around.  So I pray to God for hubby and Him to work on the leading of this family and try and leave it in the hands of God.

Fighting is something that my hubby and I do and do not do a lot of.  We do not have the typical fights most married couples have.  We do not yell and scream at each other, we do not fight in front of the kids.  We can both be totally at our limit with each other and you will still see us hugging and kissing or posting on each other’s walls on Facebook. 

However, when we do fight it is very emotional... because of me.  My hubby being the strong and determined kind of man that he is, well he is not a real fighter.  He just wants the issue to go away.  He will say what he has to, sometimes true or not, just to make it go away.  I on the other hand want him to understand how I "feel" and how the issue is "affecting" me.  Can you see where I am going with this.... ?  It is about feelings for me, which I know is wrong.  I get so emotionally charged, embarrassed, my pride is hurt, my feelings are hurt, I have found out a lie, or whatever the case may be this sends ME into an emotional rabbit hole that I try and drag him down as well.  Well he will have no part of it and will shut me down instantly.  He does not want to hear how I feel or be dragged down the pit of darkness I am trying to pull him into.  This of course frustrates me even more because I feel like I am not being heard.

My mother was a screamer.  She would yell at the top of her lungs at us kids and throw things and just carry on.  I would then rush around trying to fix everything and make peace in the house for everyone regardless if I was in the center of the distress or not.  I learned my behavior from her, and as much as I tried all my life not to be her I did and am her.

I do not scream.  I have learned over the years if I lower my voice when I am talking to my hubby I get further than normal.  He still will tell me "Don't yell at me or don't talk to me like that" but that is his reaction to being pushed up against a wall and I know he is trying to deflect.  It took me a few years to learn to control the volume of my voice when trying to discuss a problem with him.

But I am nowhere near where I want to be when learning how to fight correctly.  I do more harm most of the time than good and it takes us a few days to come together and see our own roles in the disagreement, but the good news is we always find our way back to each other.

Again, I did not talk to my hubby about this Dare but I am going to make US and Me rules that I am going to work on and hopefully by me changing how I react when problems arise it will change how he reacts as well.

"We" boundaries:

• We will never mention divorce.  
• We are in this together.  We have been separated, we were all but divorced in the State's mind and we choose to come back together because this is where we both want to be.  We will not use this fear tactic to gain our way or make our point even louder.  This is not an option.

• We will not speak ill willed about each other to others outside of our marriage.
• It is hard enough to be in a fight but when you drag in a 3rd party to hear your side of the problem all you do is create more drama and more ill willed feelings toward your spouse.  Our issues will remain in our household with each other under God.

• We will not bring up the past hurts and the past challenges that do not pertain to the situation at hand.
• Too many times you want to have a score card or you want to bring up the past hurts.  If it has nothing to do with what the issue at hand is then there is no need to bring it up.

• We will only be honest with each other no matter what.
• There is no reason to try and get ourselves out of a situation that we are facing by telling a lie or making the other person believe something that is not.  This is just building a house of cards that will fall on us one day.

"Me" boundaries:

• I will not challenge or confront my hubby while he is at work.
• This has been a terrible habit I have seen develop over the years.  I find something out that I am not happy with and I either pick up the phone and call him or I send him a text.  At the time I am trying to deal with the issue but in reality I am hiding behind technology and being a coward.

• I will learn to continue to control my words and my tone when speaking to my hubby in a disagreement.
• The level of my voice and the tone of it can make or break any argument; I must learn to control this if I am to have any kind of opportunity to get to the heat of the disagreement.

• I will learn to "stay within myself" when I first get upset.  Rather than lashing out I will try and get myself calm and even pray asking for God to help me.  My hopes will be to maintain control, no matter how hurt I am feeling, and not drag myself or my hubby down that hole.
• I will remind myself that my hubby is not against me.  He is not out to make me look like a fool, he is not out to hurt me, he is not out to embarrass me and he is not out to deceive me.  His actions are his actions but I KNOW he is not trying to hurt me.  I need to remember this because if I do not feel like I am on the attack I think I can handle my emotions better.
• I will remind myself that it is him and I in this world.... together.... we have to remain partners in every area of our lives.  
• I will remind myself that I cannot fix everything and some things I need to leave with God.

Okay, so like before I am trying to take the challenges and learn for ME to help us.  I think this is a great start and I am going to add these rules to my I phone so when the next argument comes up... I can recall what my rules are and go by them.  God give me your grace and your peace and help me be the wife I so want to be for my hubby.  One that shows him he too can be the man he wants to be and build our bridge together and stronger.

~Mellie
***I have a couple friends who are struggling in their marriage.  I challenged them to take the Love Dare with me.  This is a 60 day love challenge based off the movie FireProof Your Marriage.  I have started this challenge in the past but not fully dove into it or completed it so I thought if I got these ladies to do it with me we could all work through it together.

http://www.lifeway.com/Product/the-love-dare-paperback-p005180605



I am always looking for ways to improve my marriage, my faith and my relationship with my hubby.  I am doing this for me more so than FOR him.  It is about changing who I am and who I want to be as a wife and mother and child of God.****