Common Obstacles When Surrendering To God's Plan

What are some of the most common obstacles that people face when it comes to surrendering to God's timing and his process in their healing?

Control. A lot of these things we've talked about. Control. Fear. The fear of. There's so many fears, but, like the fear of. For. For the betrayed spouse. Like the fear that it's not going to happen. The fear that I'm going to be lied to again. I'm going to be betray again. The fear that I can't trust myself to know that what's happening is, is true. Yeah. That there's a whole layer of, of healing from what's already been done. And then like, learning to undo those feelings and then being able to. To walk out this new journey of trusting this process with new eyes, with a new vision of, of how am I responding to this? So there's. There's that piece of it, but then fear on the struggling partner side of, you know, fear of the unknown. Fear of having to face the. The thing that has been the driving force of those coping behaviors. You know, I have to put this down. I think there's so much, so many parallels to just our Christian walk, like the fear of people when they become a believer thinking, oh, I'm not going to be able to have fun anymore. You know, this part of my life has to go away, so I'm not going to have fun anymore. So, like, putting aside a lot of those behaviors and thinking there's a piece of my life that is going to have to disappear. And, and with that comes, like, facing the fear of those, of those. Those behaviors or the, the reasons that we have those behaviors. I often think too, that there are also the. Just a warped perception or maybe an uninformed perception of God and like, having to. Maybe it's coming from a place of like, legalism or just church wounding, but just not really trusting God in the process.

As you're talking about that, I'm thinking about people who come to us and are specifically considering counseling a married couple. You know, it's a financial commitment. And from their perspective, there's no guarantee that they're coming out the other side in a healthy way. And you see, sometimes you'll see the betrayed spouse say, this isn't my problem. You need to take this journey alone. And I think that's an obstacle, personally, because this journey is done much better and in a more comprehensive way when both partners are involved in the process. And we've seen over and over that when both of them are engaged, the outcome is much better.

Yeah, I think one of the realities is that whatever woundedness or trauma that has caused our negative or compulsive behavior, we bring into the counseling or group process. And so for me, you know, a major part of my story is performance, to be loved, that if I perform well enough that I'm accepted and loved. And that fear, even like with Dr. Ted Roberts as my counselor, was that if I don't do recovery well enough or if I don't work hard enough, or if I share too much that reveals how twisted I was in my thinking or how sinful I had become, that I would be rejected. And that fear of maybe I better hold back or I better just do the work to make people like me and approve of it versus actually, actually doing the work. You know, the work we do in group or in counseling isn't for the group, it's not for the counselor. But I think early on that was my mindset of what do I need to do to make them happy? And coming to that place of slowing down and going, I need to trust the process. And I'm doing this work for me and asking what do I need to do not to perform well? What do I need to do to learn? What do I need to do to grow, to become self? Aware? Like, those are really important questions. I think one other obstacle that comes to mind for me, and I don't know if you've seen this, Kelly, but there's definitely, especially in this whole realm, whether it's because of church hurt or bad counseling advice or just stories that are out there, there are all these things that people have heard. Well, I've heard this. You know, it's like, well, I heard about that one airplane that it crashed and everybody died. And if that's what dictates your way of viewing air travel, is that one story you heard you'll never get on an airplane. And I think a lot of people maybe have some of those fears. I've heard, you know, they were forced to do these things or this bad outcome happened. And sometimes we have to kind of quiet that noise and go, you know what? I'm going to get the truth here. I'm going to research Pure Desire or any other ministry or counselor. I'm going to find out what people have said about their care. I'm not just going to listen to one random story and decide that I can't get helped or that I'll be rejected if I share something. But those just as recognizing stories like that can have a powerful impact on shaping our thinking. And sometimes we have to face that and go, you know what? That might not actually be the reality for everyone that pursues help in this area.

Yeah. I think with that, there's some comparison of our stories and the healing journey. So either, like, well, your story is. Is worse than mine, or your husband just struggles with this, or you're. You only struggle with this. You know, there's this comparison of what the. What the circumstances, but then the comparison about the rate in which we recover. And so if we maybe have had failed attempts in the past, like, oh, even my own history, I'm. I'm kind of holding that as my narrative of what to expect the next time around. So. Yeah, I. I see exactly what you're saying.

Sam.