I was doing good. I had a job I enjoy, I had good friends, I was content with my alone time. My husband has been working hard to grow his business. I was great with all of that. Or so I thought. Overnight, I was bombarded by a series of negative thoughts. All of a sudden, I felt unloved, neglected, my husband had to be cheating. I felt worthless, unimportant, and small. There was no significant moment that destroyed every ounce of trust and self-esteem I had, it just happened overnight. Minute after minute, the negativity flowed. I prayed, I read self-help books, I tried to talk to my husband and nearly ended up divorced. How did this happen? How did I go from feeling good about myself to planning my life alone because I just knew my husband wanted someone else?
The answer is: I have no idea. Mental warfare can come out of nowhere. It is as fast as the enemy country in the middle of the night. One minute, you’re safe in bed; the next minute you’re in tears clutching your head as though it may explode. And it feels like it will. When the mental warfare hits you that strong and that fast, it very much feels as though you physically can’t take the pain. So, how did I fix it? Well I haven’t yet. I am still a work in progress.
I am a religious person. I have turned to God for help, comfort, and guidance on how I can overcome these issues. Recently, I started reading It’s All In Your Head by Jennie Allen. I was actually at chapter 13 when all of this happened but I realized that I wasn’t really reading it. I wasn’t getting a takeaway. I wasn’t learning or applying practices to my life. Chapter 2 talks about the three main lies that people tell themselves. According to Allen, the three lies are I am helpless, I am unloved, I am unworthy. Before I started with chapter one, I wrote down all of the negative thoughts that were blasting through my mind.
Here is a small portion of what was running through my mind in the span of about ten minutes.
First things first, you are not good enough to be causing these kinds of problems. People leave you all the time because you are not fun, you have no personality, you don’t know how to be fun. If he does cheat, then you deserve it. You could probably make the pope cheat on you. The good stuff is not for you. He keeps you around to take care of things. He will get his fun somewhere else. He is more likable than you. People will always choose him over you. He will move on, he has moved on already.
Clearly, the lie that I tell myself is that I am unlovable. In the very first part of the book, Allen says “In less than an hour, I had diminished myself, criticized all my work, decided to quit ministry, ignored God, and pushed away my greatest advocate and friend.” That resonated with me. It was an accurate description of how I felt. There was no slow build, there were no warning signs. A couple of days before, I had actually spoken to my coworker about how I felt that things were going so well. I was rehashing instances from 15 years ago and 13 years ago. I was, as Allen said, finding peace, ruining my peace, finding peace, and then ruining it. I have been stuck in a cycle of distrust and trust. I was burying demons and then digging them up to stare at them. In the span of three weeks, I was actively looking to prove my husband was cheating. I had no basis for this thought. There were not subtle signs. He keeps his phone unlocked, he usually comes home right at 6. If I ask who text him, he will tell me. But I found myself Facebook stalking. I wanted to go through his phone. I wanted to prove that he was cheating on me so I wouldn’t hurt anymore. But then I was hurting because I thought he was cheating on me. Round and round I went in the negative thought mind battle.
Why am I constantly struggling with the same fears? The same concerns? Why is that infidelity is always my go-to conclusion? The devil begins planting seeds in your mind from the time you are a child. Every hurt, fear, and pain that was caused feeds those seeds until they grow. If we don’t find a way to take the weedwhacker to the devil’s seeds, then he will find one small instance and dump miracle grow on it. My miracle grow moment was when my husband worked late nearly every night to finish a job. This was an attractive, divorced woman, with a crap ton of money. Yeah, I felt way inadequate. Why wouldn’t he leave me for her. She has more money, she is probably prettier, and she is obviously driven since he was working on finishing the building for her new business. I got to the point where I finally made a small catty comment, hoping that he would ease my fears. But he didn’t, he sang her praises. Cue the whole box of Miracle Grow. From that moment on, I knew he wanted her. If they weren’t flirting yet, it was only because she was holding out. John Owen once said “Be killing sin or it be killing you.” And it was killing me. My heart physically hurt. I cried more in three weeks than I have in three years. I knew my marriage was over. I knew my life was about to change for the worst.
So what did I do? I tried the honest approach. I told him every fear I had. I told him that I was unhappy. I told him I was afraid he was interested in another woman. He listened to me. He heard me. He answered my questions. Questions I had from 2008. I didn’t believe him. I figured that there was some form of truth but why would he tell me all of it. Would he really tell me if he played tickle fight with the girl he worked with? Would he really tell me that the friendship he had with his ex-girlfriend was more than platonic. Would he tell me if he was attracted to someone else. Probably not. I don’t know a whole lot of people who would willing pour out those kind of answers knowing that they would hurt. Knowing that it could or would end the marriage. So it escalated. There was one night, where it was a breaking point. I either needed to figure out how to win this battle or we were done. It became very real. Our children asked if we were getting a divorce. I cried, he cried. He never cries.
I delved into the book. I wrote down every nasty thought as referenced above. I highlighted my passages. I watched a Ted Talk. In that Ted Talk, they said a person can control the negative thoughts by asking two questions. Are my thoughts useful? How do they behave? I ended up using, Do my thoughts glorify God? How do they serve me? The day after our marriage imploded, I used those two questions frequently. When I thought about him still working for that lady. Does it serve the Lord? How is this serving me? Then it became, Does this glorify the Lord? My mind would respond with no and the thought would be gone.
The following day was a little harder. I found an email that made me question something. I tend to overthink, if you haven’t noticed. I have had to utilize my two questions for a majority of the day. The devil is still playing mental warfare. I read the second chapter and listened to another video about positive thinking. I will share all that in my next post.
I guess, the point of my ramblings is to let other people know that they are not alone. Mental warfare is one of the biggest killers in today’s society. Those bombardments of negative thoughts make people think it would be easier if they were dead. Marriages are dissolving because a spouse has convinced themselves that they aren’t loved. I like to read and I like to research. Hopefully, my experiences, combined with that research will help someone out.
insidewritermind 