CASTIMONIA

Sexual Purity Support & Recovery Group

Recovery Articles

By

Why I am able to heal from infidelity!

Originally posted: http://huperecho.wordpress.com/2013/04/06/why-i-am-able-to-heal-from-infidelity

Jesus Culture Your Love Never Fails lyrics

Nothing can separate
Even if I ran away
Your love never failsI know I still make mistakes
But You have new mercies for me everyday
Your love never fails

Chorus:
You stay the same through the ages
Your love never changes
There may be pain in the night but joy comes in the morning

And when the oceans rage
I don’t have to be afraid
Because I know that You love me
Your love never fails

Verse 2:
The wind is strong and the water’s deep
But I’m not alone here in these open seas
Cause Your love never fails

The chasm is far too wide
I never thought I’d reach the other side
But Your love never fails

Bridge:
You make all things work together for my good

One of my favorite scriptures is from Romans 8:28 28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. I can heal because I have hope and faith that God keeps his word. He didn’t say some things he said ALL things.

I could rephrase this and say And we know that in infidelity God works for the good of those who love him…………………………I started this new bible study in our new church and it’s on hope. Coincidence? I don’t think so. If I didn’t have hope that this will work out for good I wouldn’t have been able to heal the way I am. You see my hope isn’t in my husband, it’s in my God. Even though I do hope my husband will change and continue changing as we are living together so there has to be work in making this marriage work, my final answer is always going to God.

I can forgive because God tells me to. Even if we didn’t stay together I still would have forgiven him. I preached this scripture over and over and over and what do you know now I get the chance to live out what I believe. I know that with or without him I would make it. In fact it would have been a whole lot easier for me to walk away but I would miss what God was going to do with this. I am always living in expectation that God is going to meet my needs even if my husband doesn’t. I think that’s why I stayed in such a bad marriage. I always HOPED  it would change but even in my darkest nights I was still pursuing God. The best years of my walk with God were while my husband was cheating …go figure.

I believe that although there was pain in the night that joy comes in the morning. I always live with such great expectation of what God can do. Even when I am triggered I still can make a choice to sit in the pain or deal with it and let the joy come. I want the joy more then I want the pain. I don ‘t plan the triggers or plan for them. I just take one day at a time now. I will still grieve my losses but I also believe God will restore what the “locusts have eaten”.

This is one of my favorite passages especially the highlighted portion.

Psalm 84

1 How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of Heaven’s Armies. 2 I long, yes, I faint with longing to enter the courts of the Lord. With my whole being, body and soul, I will shout joyfully to the living God. 3 Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow builds her nest and raises her young at a place near your altar, O Lord of Heaven’s Armies, my King and my God! 4 What joy for those who can live in your house, always singing your praises. Interlude

5 What joy for those whose strength comes from the Lord,     who have set their minds on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. (I’ve read that in today’s terms Jerusalem can be any place we meet with God) 6 When they walk through the Valley of Weeping,     it will become a place of refreshing springs.     The autumn rains will clothe it with blessings. (God is pouring his blessings into my life right now.) 7 They will continue to grow stronger, (Every day I find myself growing stronger, and my love for my husband is stronger too. )

    and each of them will appear before God in Jerusalem. (I sense his presence with me. When I am livestreaming IHOPKC.ORG through my phone on my TV I feel such a lift in my spirit. When I am praying or sitting in the prayer room or reading my bible, he speaks to me through his word. When I am hurting I feel him holding me and telling me to keep trusting him. When I’m out working in my garden or yard and see the beauty around me I see his handwriting all over it. )

This may sound crazy but all I can say is that it’s working and I am healing from infidelity.

By

How Journaling Heals Wounds, Part 2

stop-child-abuseWriting that both describes traumatic events in detail and also examines how we felt about these events at the time and feel about them now (describing both negative and positive emotions), is the only kind of writing about trauma that clinically has been associated with improved health . And this is accomplished in Pennebaker’s (Dr. James Pennebaker of the University of Texas) experiments by only one hour of writing – fifteen minutes a day – over a four-day period. Later studies showed that the more days people wrote the more beneficial were the effects of writing. Dr. Pennebaker’s work is compelling. I knew nothing about it during the years when I was working on When the Piano Stops, my own memoir of recovering from incest (and Never Tell: The True Story of Overcoming a Terrifying Childhood, which was the title given its best-selling, UK print). From time to time during those years, my beloved uncle, who had a very limited understanding about what’s involved in healing from childhood sexual abuse, expressed concern about my continually revisiting the most horrifying experiences of my life. The information in this blog would have been great to share with him at that time, but of course I couldn’t. Today, however, I have the opportunity to share it with you, and I do so with the hope that if you’re a survivor of child abuse you’ll take it to heart, gather your internal resources, your memory, your pain, and your creativity, and write on! By Catherine McCall, MS, LMFT
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/overcoming-child-abuse/201209/how-and-why-writing-heals-wounds-child-abuse

“We must be content to grow slowly. Most of us will still barely be at the beginning of our recovery by the time we die. But that is better than killing ourselves pretending to be healthy.” – Simon Tugwell

By

How Journaling Heals Wounds, Part 1

I often wondered why I was supposed to journal my thoughts and feelings when I entered recovery.  Honestly, nobody answered the why, it was just something that was supposed to be done.  Initially, I felt like some teenage girl in her bedroom writing in her “diary” because I did not understand the basis behind putting those thoughts and feeling to paper.  Below is a good summary of how journaling can help God heal our wounds!

journal-bestThere is a profound connection between writing and healing. Dr. James Pennebaker of the University of Texas, after considerable research, explained in his book, Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions, that excessive holding back of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors can place people at risk for both major and minor diseases. More than simply a catharsis or venting, translating events into language can affect brain and immune functions. The subjects he tested had an increase in germ-fighting lymphocytes in their blood and lower stress levels. Writing was found to reduce anxiety and depression, improve grades in college, and aid people in finding jobs. He also reported that months after people had written about traumas over 70% reported that writing helped them to understand both the event and themselves better. Writing provides a means to externalize traumatic experience and therefore render it less overwhelming. At the same time, as the upsetting experience is repeatedly confronted, the emotional reactivity one feels as s/he assesses its meaning and impact is weakened. Once organized, traumatic events become smaller and smaller and therefore easier to deal with. Having distilled complex experiences into more understandable packages, survivors can begin to move beyond trauma because the process of writing about it provides a means for the experience to become psychologically complete, therefore there’s no more reason to ruminate about it. But not just any kind of writing will do. Dr.Pennebaker explains that the more writing succeeds as narrative – by being detailed, organized, compelling, vivid, and lucid – the more health and emotional benefits are derived. Likewise, over time, the work of inhibiting traumatic narratives and feelings acts as an ongoing stressor and gradually undermines the body’s defenses. By Catherine McCall, MS, LMFT
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/overcoming-child-abuse/201209/how-and-why-writing-heals-wounds-child-abuse

“A journal is a tool for self-discovery, an aid to concentration, a mirror for the soul, a place to generate and capture ideas, a safety valve for the emotions, a training ground for the writer, and a good friend and confident.” – Ron Klug

By

5 Ways Porn Undermines the Gospel

By Pastor Bernie
Originally posted on March 8, 2013
http://pastorbernie.wordpress.com/2013/03/08/5-ways-porn-undermines-the-gospel/

imgres-2#1 Porn Makes Sex Our Savior
John 3:16-17  tells us that God sent his only Son Jesus into the world to save the world. He is the savior of all mankind. Pornographers inform the culture, and would have us all believe that sex is the new savior of mankind. That while the gospel is good sex is better. Indeed sex is good, and a gift from God, but it was never intended to save us. Sex through pornography “saves” you from feeling powerless, vulnerable, or even impotent. It saves us temporarily from loneliness, rejection, and hopelessness. It can even make us feel worthwhile, valued, and excited. But it can never save us ultimately. Though pornography masquerades as if it can save it is eventually unmasked as woefully insufficient to either satisfy us or save us.

#2 Porn Demands A Performance
 Pornography is meant to arouse. It has an end in mind and that is the high of orgasm. But pornography only pays off if you can perform. Either through the fantasy of participating in your mind or through actually living out those fantasies with a willing or unwilling partner. In other words “works” or getting “worked up” is involved in order to experience salvation through porn. Thankfully that isn’t the gospel. The gospel demands our surrender not our performance. We are the beneficiaries of Christ’s work on the cross. After receiving Christ, our performance, or obedience isn’t motivated by what we get at the end. We are empowered by the beauty of God’s grace, forgiveness and sacrifice. We live with anticipation of a relationship throughout eternity with the one who saves us.

#3 Porn Does Not Bring Peace
 Rather than peace, pornography leaves us paranoid. Whether its because we’re constantly looking over our shoulder wondering if we’ve been caught looking, anxiously scouring the web for another porn high, or we’re just more self consciousness about how we look or perform, porn steals our peace. Self consciousness becomes all the more acute with pornography. We can’t help but wonder what others are thinking of us. We’ve bought into the lie of the standard of beauty that pornography sets up. A standard of beauty and performance that neither men or women can ever live up to. So we’re left to feel inadequate and unfulfilled. We’re left to constantly compare ourselves to others. But contrast that with the Gospel. With the gospel there is lasting peace because I am identified as God’s beloved child (I John 3:1-2). I can rest securely in his acceptance of me. This removes the pressure to compare, or even covet what others have or to fixate on my own blemishes.

#4 Porn Does Not Satisfy
 It is not enough to simply say that “Jesus saves”. I believe it is true, and scripture affirms it. But I also believe for this day and age that the gospel must teach us that Jesus not only saves but he satisfies. Jesus encountered a woman at the well who He knew not only needed a savior, but she longed to fill a deep hunger within. From what we can tell, she had tried unsuccessfully through relationships that seemed to end badly. Christ understood this and let her know that if she drinks the, “living water” that he alone can offer, then she would never thirst again, “but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst.” (Jn. 4:13-14) We live in a culture drawing from the shallow pool of pornography believing that somehow it will bring peace and fulfillment. In the end though it only leaves us more parched than ever. Christ alone is ultimate, He alone is our answer to the deep longings of our soul. If we are alone, powerless, or insignificant he promises to draw near, empower, and give us a place of honor. The nature of porn is such that it can give us a false sense of fulfillment. Eventually we’ll find our selves spiritually depleted and longing for so much more.

#5 Porn Keeps Sin Alive
 Porn is “everywhere” we say, Pamela Paul in her book “Pornified” says it is “omnipresent”. The truth is I know stories of young men raised in decent homes with solid parents. Still, the young men have been overwhelmed by the sheer intrusiveness of porn in our culture. They’ve found themselves caught in the tidal wave of pornographic material available to anyone, and gotten hooked. Porn has become an incessant, unrelenting promotor of sexual sin. Where as scripture calls us to “put to death” sexual sin (Col. 3:5, Rom. 8:12-13) porn keeps sexual sin alive and thriving. The gospel is a message about freedom from sin and sinning. It is about death to sin and a “new life” where sexual sin has been put to death and we pursue, “righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness.”

By

Types Of Dysfunctional Families

Many people hope that once they leave home, they will leave their family and childhood problems behind. However, many find that they experience similar problems, as well as similar feelings and relationship patterns, long after they have left the family environment. Ideally, children grow up in family environments which help them feel worthwhile and valuable. They learn that their feelings and needs are important and can be expressed. Children growing up in such supportive environments are likely to form healthy, open relationships in adulthood. However, families may fail to provide for many of their children’s emotional and physical needs. In addition, the families’ communication patterns may severely limit the child’s expressions of feelings and needs. Children growing up in such families are likely to develop low self-esteem and feel that their needs are not important or perhaps should not be taken seriously by others. As a result, they may form unsatisfying relationships as adults.

Types Of Dysfunctional Families

    • One or both parents have addictions or compulsions (e.g., drugs, alcohol, promiscuity, gambling, overworking, and/or overeating) that have strong influences on family members.
    • One or both parents use the threat or application of physical violence as the primary means of control. Children may have to witness violence, may be forced to participate in punishing siblings, or may live in fear of explosive outbursts.
    • One or both parents exploit the children and treat them as possessions whose primary purpose is to respond to the physical and/or emotional needs of adults (e.g., protecting a parent or cheering up one who is depressed).
    • One or both parents are unable to provide, or threaten to withdraw, financial or basic physical care for their children. Similarly, one or both parents fail to provide their children with adequate emotional support.
    • One or both parents exert a strong authoritarian control over the children. Often these families rigidly adhere to a particular belief (religious, political, financial, personal). Compliance with role expectations and with rules is expected without any flexibility.

http://www.counselingcenter.illinois.edu/?page_id=171

“If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.” – George Bernard Shaw