At some time every one of us will experience painful circumstances of one kind or another. The important issue is not what happens to us, but how we respond to what happens. Painful experiences can make us bitter or better. The choice is up to each one of us. Like the Apostle Paul we need to learn how to let go of what lies behind so we, too, can “press on” to achieve God’s goal for our life.

To do this requires the following steps on our part:

Quit playing the blame-game. One lady I was working with in a group setting complained bitterly saying, “I can’t understand why God gave me such a terrible husband.” “Who chose him?” I asked. “God did,” she replied. She had deceived herself into believing that fantasy. God will guide us if we genuinely seek his direction, but he won’t make our decisions for us. As adults we are totally responsible for every decision and choice we make. As long as we play the blame-game, we can never get on with our life. We stay stuck where we are and can do so for years.

Overcome denial. Fred (not his real name), has been divorced for close to twenty years. His former wife re-married soon after their divorce. But Fred is still living in the delusion that his former wife will return to him. He is refusing to let go of the past, and is stuck there. Denial is deadly if we ever hope to fully live and fully love.

Forgive to be free. No matter how badly we feel we have been hurt, failing to forgive keeps us bound by the past as we are unconsciously allowing bitter memories of past hurts to control our present life. As another has said, “Failing to forgive is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”

Resolve supercharged negative emotions. Regardless of the reason, whenever we feel let down, rejected, or even abused, we have hurt and angry feelings. This is normal. To nurse these negative emotions is damaging to all present and future close relationships and meaningful living. Until we resolve these negative emotions, it is impossible to forgive.

Denying, suppressing, and/or repressing supercharged negative emotions is also destructive of physical, emotional, and spiritual health. No wonder God’s Word advises: “So get rid of your feelings of hatred [unresolved anger]. Don’t just pretend to be good! Be done with dishonesty … deception, envy and fraud.”² Stuffing negative emotions is not getting rid of them.³

As we follow these steps for letting go, we are freed to forget what lies behind and move onward and upward to achieve our God-given goals and life-purpose.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, thank you for your Word with practical advice for healthy relationships and meaningful living. Help me to take responsibility for my responses to all situations, never play the blame-game, be free from denial and forgive everyone who has every hurt me so that I can let go of and put behind me all hurts and failures from the past, and ‘press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.’ Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Philippians 3:13-14 (NASB).

2. 1 Peter 2:1, 3 (TLB)(NLT).

3. For further help in dealing with negative emotions read “Dare to Be Honest” at: http://tinyurl.com/dare-to-be-honest

As I have said before, in working with divorced people over the years I have found that far too many divorcees are adept at primarily blaming their partner for the failure of their marriage. Most fail to see what they contributed to the breakup. I once did too.

Before marriage, many of us prayed that we would find the right partner when what we needed to pray was that we would be the right person. As much as many hate the following statement: we are as sick as the people we are attracted to—especially romantically. For those who want a more positive statement we could put it this way: we are as healthy as the people we are attracted to. In other words, if we want to have a healthy and mature marriage, we need to be a healthy and mature person.

I learned this the hard way because my first marriage was a disaster. I grew up in a very dysfunctional family and, as a teen, being the only son with three sisters, I was set up to play the role of the emotionally missing father/husband in the home. My mother leaned on me emotionally; and as a teen I took a lot of care of my two younger sisters as well as much of the family home. In so doing I learned to mistake need for love.

When thinking of marriage, what kind of person was I attracted to? Yes, you guessed it—someone who unconsciously needed to be taken care of. At the time I didn’t realize that I was a super-codependent caretaker person and that the person I was attracted to was a needy over-dependent person. So which of the two of us was the sicker? We were as sick as each other and equally immature. I just happened to be the functional one. Tragically, we lived together alone apart and died a little every day. After 18 years of therapy, and every counselor having given up on us, I finally gave up. (As a side line, after our marriage ended, my cholesterol level dropped 80 points almost overnight. Stress is a killer! And what is more stressful than impaired and failed relationships?)

Romantically we are pretty much attracted to a person with whom our neuroses mesh. Or as a counselor of mine used to day, “The bumps on my head matched the holes in her head.” How true this is. In fact, we can tell a whole lot about ourselves by the kind of person/s we are romantically attracted to.

So when did I get to see my major part in my failed marriage? After years of therapy and our situation continuing to deteriorate, I was at wits end and literally begged God to face me with the truth of what I was still contributing to the mess my marriage was in. Almost overnight, even though I had never heard of the word back then, I saw my super codependency and realized that as long as I was taking care of my then wife, not only was she not getting better, but she was becoming increasingly non-functional. Because I was taking care of her, she didn’t have to get better. My codependency was in the way.

Indeed, it was this truth that set me free from my blindness.

In many ways the codependent is addicted to the over-dependent person. It’s the same with a co-alcoholic. As long as a wife (or vice-versa) is taking care of her alcoholic husband and rescuing him from the results of his avoided responsibilities, she is an equal part of his sickness and needs to get out of the way and let him crash. This will not guarantee his getting into recovery, but without her doing this, there is little chance of his ever facing reality and accepting responsibility for his own recovery. Codependents need to do likewise in that they need to stop doing anything that the over-dependent person is capable of doing for him or herself.

On a more positive note, if there is any depth and quality in my ministry today it came out of many years of struggle in a very dysfunctional marriage which challenged me to face reality and get into recovery for myself. I am thankful for my education, but I didn’t learn about life in Sunday school, church, Bible College, undergraduate college or in graduate school. As the old saying goes, I learned about life in the “College of Hard Knocks.” My failures and recovery process also taught me to encourage others when they experience failure, not to waste their pain, but to invest it wisely in their own growth and recovery, and then in ministering to others. Failure can be an invaluable teacher when invested wisely.

I was severely criticized and lost all of my church support after I was divorced more than twenty years ago. Yes, it is true, God hates divorce—but who in his or her right mind doesn’t do the same? Divorce is incredibly painful. I certainly don’t believe in easy divorce and firmly believe that divorce should only ever be the last resort when all else fails. But like David of old, God didn’t reject him after his failures, and I am extremely grateful that God didn’t reject me either after my failures.

I share my story not to gain sympathy (because my life today has never been more fulfilling or more productive) but to emphasize the fact that, especially in our churches and Christian circles, let’s not preach about the sin of divorce and treat divorcees as second-class citizens unless we teach and emphasize the tremendous need for helping our young adults understand the dynamics of relationships. We also need to point out the pitfalls of attraction that is neurotic, and help them become mature and healthy emotionally before ever looking for a marriage partner. Until we deal with the major causes behind failed relationships and marriages, we will continue to see a never-ending flow of “over the cliff” divorces. In other words we need “to build a fence at the top of the cliff before building a hospital at the bottom.”

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, thank you for your Word that teaches us that it is the truth that sets us free. Please help me to understand not only the truth about you and your Word, but also the truth about myself, others, and the dynamics of relationships. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus” name, amen.”

1. John 8:32 (NIV).

Note: If interested, I have written in much more detail about the dynamics of relationships and recovery in both of the following books: How to Mend a Broken Heart and You Can’t Fly With a Broken Wing. These are both on sale at: http://actscom.com/store

For a number of years I have worked and taught in the area of “Divorce and Grief Recovery.” With divorcees we emphasize the importance of not getting into another committed relationship too soon; that is, not before resolving the grief and loss of their divorce—and even more important, not before facing and resolving the character issues that led them to be attracted to the person they married and separated from.

Time and again I have seen divorcees ignore this advice, and before long they are going through a second and sometimes a third divorce. The same can happen to widows and widowers who re-marry too soon.

True, there is nothing like romance to anesthetize the pain caused by the loss of a love and, like a drug, blind one to reality. People who use romance and/or sex to avoid facing their reality and deaden their pain, fail to see that while romance can lead to love, romance in and of itself is not love. Neither is sex. Romance can be triggered by physical and sexual attraction, by being over-needy, or by the magnetic pull of one’s neuroses (unresolved character issues).

The fact is that we are as sick (or as healthy) as the people (especially in romantic relationships) we are attracted to. We need to realize that what we fail to resolve we are destined to repeat. For instance, an over-dependent person will most likely be attracted to a codependent partner and vice versa. A weak, passive person will be attracted to a domineering and controlling partner and vice versa. A woman who had a bad relationship with her father is just as likely to be attracted to a man just like her father—and relate to him in exactly the same way as she did to her father. Or a man who had a bad relationship with his mother will likely be attracted to a woman just like his mother and repeat that bad relationship.

And the divorcee who fails to resolve his or her character issues will, in all probability, be attracted to the same kind of person they just divorced. The reality is that, before we can have healthy relationships, we need to be healthy, for only healthy and mature people find and make healthy and mature relationships.

And maturity is what God’s Word (as seen in today’s Scripture) encourages every one of us to become.

Furthermore, we strongly encourage all couples, whether or not they have been married before, to have in-depth pre-marriage counseling before they get married to ensure that they are suitable for each others, as feelings can come and go and be up and down like a yo-yo.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, help me to see the causes in me that contributed to my failed relationship/s, and to find the help I need to resolve these issues so that I will become, not only mature in my relationship to Jesus Christ, but also in my relationships to others. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

Note: In our next three Daily Encounters we will discuss some of the key characteristics of maturity.

1. Colossians 1:28-29 (NLT)