Ep. 25- Karen's Story

Becky and Tiffany sit down with Karen to share her story. Karen is a co-founder of the Healing Through Christ 12-Step program.  She is a mom of five children, has sixteen grandchildren and another one on the way.

Karen shares that she had been married for two years when she began feeling disconnected from her husband. She knew something was off. She prayed a lot to know what the problem was and it became more and more evident there was something really wrong.

However, Karen says she didn’t find out the truth about her husband’s sexual acting out until they had been married for twenty-five years. After her husband’s disclosure, Karen talks about how she felt so betrayed.  She shares:

I had no idea what my life was.

Karen says she questioned why the Lord did not let her know what was going on sooner.  She felt a strong answer that there was no help available at that time and that He was aware of her and had a plan for them.  During those long years in the dark, Karen explains that she had developed unhealthy behaviors to cope with her husband’s out-of-control behaviors. She felt the need to control what was happening. 

Becky reminds us that there is a lot of pain around our loved ones’ acting out behaviors… “but when we can pull back and recognize that this (person) is a choice son of God who is struggling, we can give him compassion. Sometimes that compassion means stepping away from the relationship, and for some people, the relationship can continue.”

Karen shares that she felt overwhelmed as she learned more about her husband’s actions. “My mindset was it was my job to heal everything,” Karen says. However, the Lord whispered to her: This is not your job. I will take care of your husband. You don’t need to heal his addiction.

Feeling a sense of relief that she could try to surrender this, Karen shares that she began attending 12 Step meetings. After about a year, she got to Step 4, which asks us to take a searching moral inventory. She felt she was being self-righteous for feeling this way, but she couldn’t think of anything she’d done wrong.  Becky shares that she has learned that Step 4 is really about finding where we really need healing and taking it to the Lord.  Tiffany shares that she recognizes that doing her more recent Step 4, she knows that there is another piece she is going to need to surrender and that feels scary.

Karen says that it took going through a long, arduous illness before she began truly surrendering to God and to His will, which was a huge thing for someone who, as she describes, wanted to control everything. After meeting with many doctors and no answers, Karen shares she fully surrendered to the Lord.  The Lord stepped in and brought the right doctor and right information into her life.  When she began healing from her illness, she finally understood what to include in her fourth step moral inventory. She recognized where she was truly broken and where she needed healing. 

It was going through the fourth step when I felt an intense love from the Lord.

Karen shares that feeling this desire to no longer dictate to the Lord what His will should be that truly helped Karen heal from her betrayal trauma. She shares: “Since then I’ve come to see a challenge in front of me and instead of telling the Lord what I need to have happen, I can say, ‘Wow. I didn’t know this was going to happen. I don’t know what to do about it but I know you knew it was going to happen and I know you know what I need to learn from this or what I can learn from this and you know how to get me through it. So please help me to learn what I need and please guide me in this next step. Please show me the way.’”

Karen explains that she feels addiction is a rollercoaster and she didn’t always know if her marriage would survive. But finally, her husband made the efforts that he needed to put his addiction behind him. When asked what helps her when she feels stuck, Karen explains that she falls to her knees in prayer. 

I’m shedding this mortal ‘gunk’ through Christ. Christ is the basis of my recovery.

Karen’s Recovery Resources:

Healing Through Christ 12-Step program   http://www.healingthroughchrist.org

Prayer

Surrender

Trust in the Lord

Christ- the One Who is Healing my heart

Karen’s Song:

“Beautiful” by Mercy Me

Ep. 24- Anarie's Story

Becky and Tiffany sit down with Anarie to share her story. Anarie shares that she is currently in a Master’s program in school, majoring in Social Work. She has two children, raises goats, and is an accomplished pianist, who loves yoga.

Anarie shares that growing up, she cared a lot about her relationship with God. She placed a lot of pressure on herself to always be better, pushing herself to unreasonable levels. She knew God was important to her, but she wasn’t sure she was important to God. She shares she felt He didn’t need her, but only tolerated her.

To connect with God, I was taking my shiny, Sunday self to Him. Not my messy self.

Anarie says that she took this approach with her into her twelve-year marriage. Religion was a big part of their marriage, but spirituality was something she felt like she was doing on her own. When she discovered early on that her husband struggled with pornography, she took on damaging beliefs about herself, and felt a lot of shame.

I believed the cultural message of it being the wife’s responsibility to prevent him from consuming porn.

Anarie shares that these negative beliefs caused her to believe she couldn’t tell anyone about her husband’s problems. She says she felt lonely, unhappy, and isolated. Over the years, Anarie’s husband lied about his porn use, and their sex life suffered. She shares she wanted so much to believe what he was telling her was true that she denied what her body and mind were telling her. She says she had to override her gut feelings to stay with him.

When the truth of his sex addiction finally came to light, Anarie discusses how she and her husband entered intensive therapy that was crucial to their individual healing.  “But there were other things in our relationship that were going on besides pornography addiction that weren’t addressed that we weren’t able to work through,” Anarie says. “Ultimately our best choice was to divorce.”

Anarie shares that knowing she needed to end her marriage was difficult to accept. “I was really, really angry with God… I was upset that He hadn’t revealed more to me that might have spared me this pain.”

However, with the help of individual therapy, group therapy, and SALifeline, Anarie started to claim her own thoughts and feelings without shame.  She also talks about how she utilized boundaries. Through a lot of work, Anarie shares that she learned that God could handle her anger. “I could scream and rage, but God was still there. He understood why I was angry…He validated it and didn’t correct me. I was amazed that my relationship with God could hold all that space.”

I’m a person in process, and that’s exactly who I should be. I’m important to God and am known as an individual. He has turned my ashes to beauty.

Anarie’s Recovery Resources:

Brene Brown’s work, especially her book Rising Strong

Self-compassion by Kristin Neff

Jennifer Finlayson Fife’s work

Kristin Hodson’s work

Heart of a Woman retreat

Yoga with Adriene YouTube channel

Relationships with other women in recovery

Anarie’s Song:

“Stand by You” by Rachel Platten