When we stop codependent caretaking, we can expect to get lots of flack, especially if we’ve been doing this for someone for a long time. They, too, are not likely to give up their overdependence without a struggle. Some will pout, some may “scream and holler” and some may get downright nasty. They are very adept at playing the “blame-game” and will do all in their power to make us feel guilty and/or ashamed.

Getting blame/shame/guilt thrown at us is bound to happen. But if we catch (accept) it, that’s our problem and we’ll need to work on that.

To stop catching these “fiery darts” we need, first of all, to see them for what they are and say kindly but firmly to the thrower, “You’re not trying to make me feel guilty are you?” or “You’re not trying to make me feel bad are you?”

They will deny it of course, but if we stop catching what they’re throwing, eventually they will at least stop throwing it to us.

However, if we are blame/shame/guilt throwers ourselves, we need to admit what we are doing (as it is a way of “dumping our stuff” onto others) and take full responsibility for resolving “our stuff” (our own unresolved problems/issues). And, if we are blame/shame/guilt catchers, we need to see this for what it is and stop allowing others to “dump their stuff” on us.

At times we may need to confront irresponsible people with the truth of their actions, but it isn’t our responsibility to make them feel guilty. Guilt is best left to the Holy Spirit.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, help me neither to be a blame/shame/guilt thrower or catcher, but to own and take responsibility for my ‘stuff’ (unresolved issues/problems) and become the whole and mature person you have envisioned for me to be. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Psalm 7:8 (NKJV).

In one breath Paul says that we should bear each other’s burdens, and in the next breath he says that every man should bear his own burden. Is he talking out of both sides of his mouth?

Actually Paul is referring to two types of burdens. The first means a large boulder, the weight of which is too heavy for any one person to carry alone.

The second refers to a knapsack size burden that one can readily carry himself. In other words, we need to help people when their load is too heavy to bear alone but not when they can handle it quite well by themselves.

However, those who are “takers” can be adept at getting those of us who are “care-takers” hooked into feeling sorry for them and we end up taking responsibility for their knapsack. What we need to do is to walk away and leave their knapsack for them to carry. They may get nasty and mean when we do this, but if we don’t walk away from them, we become a part of their sickness.

To do this can be very unnerving at first. Long-standing patterns never surrender without a struggle, but helping people help themselves when they are fully capable of doing so is the kindest and most loving thing we can do for them—regardless of what our feelings “tell” us. By developing healthy boundaries to protect ourselves from being used, in time we will feel good about what we have done—or what we have stopped doing—because we will know that we have done the right and healthy thing. Plus, when we allow ourselves to be used, we make ourselves angry and upset and feel badly about ourselves—and understandably so.

So here’s a paraphrased edition of what Paul said: “Help carry one another’s boulders but don’t carry their knapsacks for them.”

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, give me a discerning heart so I know when to help a brother or sister with their boulder, and when I need to quit carrying knapsacks for people who are quite able of carrying their own knapsack. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully in Jesus’ name.”

1. Galatians 6:2, 5 (NIV).

Caretaking, when it is a symptom of codependency, is being so concerned about taking care of others that we neglect to take responsible care of ourselves. It’s also feeling responsible for somebody else’s happiness and for their negative feelings as well.

It is good to be kind to others, but when we do things for them that they should, could and need to be doing for themselves, we are not being helpful or loving. We are encouraging overdependence.

The bottom line is motive. The codependent caretaker may look like he is doing something for someone else but he’s really doing it for himself—to be liked, to have others think he is wonderful, to feel needed and wanted, or trying to earn love. But love cannot be earned. It’s a gift. If it has to be earned, it’s conditional and isn’t love—it’s need.

One of the kindest things we can do for ourselves is to take responsible care of ourselves and be responsible for our own happiness. And one of the kindest things we can do for others is to allow them to do the same. This is a part of what I believe Paul meant when he said, “Every man shall bear his own burden or carry his own load.”

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me to help another where he or she can’t help him/herself, but help me not to take over another’s responsibilities when he/she needs to be taking care of him/herself. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Galatians 6:5 (NIV).

In his article, “Today I Will Make a Difference,” Max Lucado wrote, “Today I will make a difference. I will begin by controlling my thoughts. A person is the product of his thoughts. I want to be happy and hopeful. Therefore, I will have thoughts that are happy and hopeful. I refuse to be victimized by my circumstances. I will not let petty inconveniences such as stoplights, long lines, and traffic jams be my masters. I will avoid negativism and gossip. Optimism will be my companion, and victory will be my hallmark. Today I will make a difference.”²

The reality is that we eventually become what we constantly think about for “what the mind dwells on the body acts on.”

Admittedly, controlling our thoughts can be much easier said than done. To succeed, it not only needs consistent practice and mental discipline, but also the resolution of things that “bug” us. For instance, if we have any major unresolved personal conflicts with accompanying super-charged negative emotions, these can have a major effect on our thinking. They can be compared to having a throbbing toothache that literally controls our thinking. Because of the pain, it’s just about impossible to think about anything else until we get to the dentist and have the aching tooth taken care of.

To live a peaceful life, it is imperative that we learn to control and consistently think positive thoughts. And to control our thoughts, it is imperative that we resolve any and all personal conflicts. In other words, if we want to live peacefully we need to get all our “emotional-tooth-aches” resolved.

Suggested prayer, “Dear God, thank you that your Word teaches the importance of positive thinking ‘about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.’ Please help me to live in harmony with your will, be rid of all guilt by confessing my sins, and resolving all personal conflicts so that I will be able to fix my ‘thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable.’ Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer, gratefully in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Philippians 4:8 (NLT).

2. Max Lucado, www.MaxLucado.com.

Ken Crockett, in his book, I Once Was Blind, But Now I Squint, shares the experience of Pastor Ed Manning who told “about a situation when a woman approached him to ask a question. As she drew closer to him, he tipped his head back to look through the bottom lenses of his bifocals to focus on her more clearly. ‘There you go again!’ the woman exploded. ‘You stick your nose up in the air every time I talk to you! Who do you think you are? I’m sick of your arrogant attitude!’

“Manning was taken aback by her outburst of anger. ‘You don’t understand,’ he explained. ‘I’m not sticking my nose up in the air at you. I just can’t see you when you get near me. I’m tilting my head back so I can see you through the bottom half of my bifocals.’”²

Sound familiar?

Blaise Pascal said, “We view things not only from different sides but with different eyes.” Or to put it another way, “We see things not the way they are, but the way we are.”

For instance, if I have unresolved anger, I will see things through angry, critical eyes. If have unresolved fears, I will view things through fearful eyes. If I have a negative attitude, I will look at things through negative eyes. If I am insecure, I will see things through insecure eyes. If I am a jealous person, I will view things through jealous eyes. If I am a cheat, I will see things through cheating eyes, and so on.

Whatever I see—the way I see it will always be twisted to match my distorted perception of reality and in so doing I will rationalize my every thought and justify my every action. A very unhealthy and self-defeating way to live.

Any wonder that Jesus said that if we are going to see things the way they are, we need to see the plank in our own eye and get rid of that. It is true, what I see is who I am. It is equally true, if I am a loving person, I will see things through loving eyes.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please open my eyes so that I will see clearly who I am—warts and all—and help me to get rid of any specks and all planks in my eye so I will see the truth as it is and not as I distort or want it to be. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Matthew 7:3 (NIV).

2. From I Once Was Blind, But Now I Squint, by Kent Crockett, AMG Publishers/Living Ink. See http://tinyurl.com/8kesa

“I don’t need to get into a recovery group and deal with my past,” my good friend Graham said, “I had special prayer and God has healed me from all that.”

However, his constant gut-level coughing bothered me, but what could I say? God had healed him—those who prayed for him told him so! However, not too long afterward Graham came down with cancer. Again he was prayed for and a year later told me how grateful to God he was because he had been totally healed—those who prayed for him told him so!

Exactly one week later he was back in the hospital. His body was riddled with cancer. The hospital did what they could but after a few weeks sent him home to die.

The reality was that Graham had a very dysfunctional upbringing. His so-called-sister was actually his mother. As a teen she had a child out of wedlock and her mother adopted this child, and brought the two of them up as brother and sister. As an adult Graham covered the pain caused by his dysfunctional family background by becoming a super workaholic. As long as he kept super busy, he didn’t feel or face the pain. However, in “deadening” the pain he very likely contributed to his own demise.

Very often it’s the buried pain from the past—supercharged repressed negative emotions such as envy, resentment, guilt (real or false), anger, hurt, grief, fear, anxiety and/or hatred and so on that make us ill. These “sins of the spirit,” if not resolved, can be lethal.

When we bury these emotions we never bury them dead but very much alive and, as John Powell says, “When we bury our emotions our stomach keeps score.” To put this another way, and pardon the language, the stuff we stuff damages up our lives—physically, emotionally, spiritually, and/or relationally. These negative emotions are like an emotional cancer and we either get the “cancer” or the “cancer” gets us.

This is why gut-level confession is absolutely essential for healing. Without which, prayer is like putting a Band-Aid over a deep wound without cleaning out the pus. It just drives the wound deeper and increases the infection.

Certainly, not all sickness is caused by unresolved personal issues, but if it is, God isn’t going to heal me any more than he will heal me if my sickness is caused by my living in sin or in an unhealthy manner and refusing to change my ways. God’s way is to deal with issues that make us sick so healing can follow. If I smoke, eat unhealthy foods, or fail to exercise, I will suffer the natural consequences. Healthy living requires a healthy lifestyle—physically, emotionally, relationally, as well as spiritually.

So beware of faith healers who ignore the principle of genuine confession which is essential for healing. As God’s word says, “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.”²

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, about these constant ‘headaches’ (or whatever … name the specific sickness) I’m experiencing—please help me to face, deal with, and resolve any unresolved personal issue that may be causing or affecting my sickness in any way. Please lead me to the help I need to see and resolve these issues. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. 1 John 4:1 (NLT).

2. James 5:16 (NIV).

A Daily Encounter reader writes, “I am having a very difficult time and need help. I am angry a lot and do not know how to go about changing to be how I should be. My husband is an abusive alcoholic and keeps verbally jabbing me until I get angry and then he uses my anger against me. What should I do? Please help me.”

Dear Jennifer (name changed). Unfortunately you can’t change your husband. If you try to, it will make him angry and more abusive. The reality is that the only person we can ever change is ourselves and when we change, those around us are forced to change in their relationship to us. This is not always for the best, however, as people don’t want us to change and can get very mean and nasty if we do. However nothing changes if nothing changes. Husbands like yours refuse to take responsibility for their actions and need someone to blame their anger on, so for your own sake you are the one who needs to change. If you don’t change what you are contributing, you become a part of the family sickness.

It won’t be easy but what you need to do is to exercise tough love. Make it very clear to your husband that you will no longer tolerate the way he treats you and if he continues to do so, you will have to distance or separate yourself from him until he gets into a recovery program and overcomes his addiction to alcohol and treats you with loving respect all the time. So while you can’t change him, with help, you can change you. For your survival it is imperative that you do so.

You also need to realize the reason you were attracted to this type of man in the first place. Chances are that you are a codependent and, as such, mistake need for love. In other words you need to be needed in order to feel loved. I urge you to ask God to confront you with the truth about you no matter how much it hurts and to lead you to the help you need to overcome your problem. This is difficult. I know. But as long as you blame your husband for your problems and not look at what you are contributing, you will never find peace, love or contentment. And as it is nigh on impossible to make these changes by yourself, I urge you to get some qualified counseling help and at the very least join a twelve-step Al-Anon group—a group for the spouses of alcoholics. You will be able to find information about these groups by contacting the Al-Anon and Alateen web site at http://www.al-anon.org/index.php.

And above all, every day ask God to help you to be “as Jesus” not only to your husband but also to yourself. And remember, Jesus used tough love to drive the money changers out of the temple when they were abusing it. To be like Jesus we all need to exercise tough love when required. Tough love is the most loving thing you can do for your husband—and for yourself.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, in all of my problems and conflicts, give me the courage to see exactly what I am contributing and then lead me to the help I need to change. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Proverbs 15:22 (NIV).

It’s amazing how many people actually blame God, the devil or anyone else for their own irresponsible behavior. I have a talk I used to give that I titled, “The Devil Didn’t Make Me Do It—I Can Mess Things Up All by Myself.” And I can. Sure we are all tempted from time to time but each of us is responsible for the choice we make either to resist temptation or to give in to it.

A former supporter of our work, a man in his mid-thirties complained to me about the opposite sex because of his repeated experiences in failed relationships and tried, without success, to get me to agree with him in his self-justification. No chance. A distressed young woman bemoans the fact that she and her boyfriend fell pregnant and wondered why God allowed it to happen. Amazing? Another man I know is convinced that there’s something wrong with most of the men he has had dealings with because none of them like him.

And here’s a classic from a woman in a support group I was leading some time ago. “I can’t understand why God gave me such a terrible husband,” she bitterly moaned in a whiney poor-me tone of voice.

“Who chose your husband?” I asked.

“God did!” she said and was dead serious. Her avoidance of personal responsibility and denial of reality was painfully pathetic. There was no way I could even begin to get her to face reality, let alone get her to take a good hard look to see the truth about herself. Without access to the truth there is no resolution, no recovery, and no freedom.

“When dealing with people [like this],” Jim Rohn says, “I generally take the obvious approach. When someone says, ‘This always happens to me and that always happens to me. Why do these things always happen to me?’ I simply say, ‘Beats me. I don’t know. All I know is that those kinds of things seem to happen to people like you.’”

That might sound tough but it’s true. The fact is that what we project is what we get back and what we allow we reinforce. We either face reality and admit exactly what our part is in all of these situations and get into a recovery program, or we continue to repeat our past negative patterns. As the saying goes, “If we keep doing what we’ve always done, we’ll keep getting what we’ve always got, and we’ll keep feeling what we’ve always felt.” It’s either resolution or repetition.

The only people God or anyone can help are those who say, “I have a problem. I need help.” And as long as you and I allow people in our life to get away with boundary-busting, irresponsible behavior, we become a part of their sickness.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, whenever I’m in a jam or caught in a conflict or a problem, please give me the courage to face reality and see the truth of what I am contributing to the situation. And then give me the good sense to do something about it and resolve my part in it. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. John 8:31-32 (NIV).

As noted yesterday, God’s goal isn’t to make us good for goodness sake. It is to fix us from the inside and to make us whole. We know that Jesus came to seek and to save those who were lost, but he never asked anyone directly, “Do you want to be saved?” His invitation was, “Do you want to be made whole or well?”

In several places in the Bible the word for saved can be equally translated healed. God’s goal for us is to heal the whole person in body and mind as well as in spirit. Accepting Jesus as Savior is just the beginning point. We are then to go on to maturity, to grow and become whole. This takes time. It is a process. There is no such thing as instant wholeness or instant maturity.

To be made whole we need to want it badly enough that we are willing to face and resolve the root causes of our negative behaviors, poor relationships, sins and sicknesses that are caused by unresolved personal issues—whatever they might be. We need to come out of denial (be real) and be connected to our dark side (those areas of our life that we don’t particularly want to see and definitely don’t want others to see), and confess these not only to God, but also to at least one safe, loving, and non-judgmental person—and be loved and accepted by that person in spite of our failures. As James said, “Confess your sins and faults to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed.”² This is the path to healing and wholeness and also the way to grow in love, with love being the highest fruit of wholeness.

So the opposite of bad is not being good, but being made whole. Goodness that comes from the heart will be the result.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me, not only to be connected to you through Jesus, but also connected to my ‘dark side’ and to safe, loving, and accepting people to be loved, healed and made whole so that my life, actions, behaviors and relationships will be wholesome—and all goodness in my life will be the fruit or result of being made whole. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. John 5:6.

2. James 5:16.

We don’t have to be good for goodness sake!

In fact, as strange as it may seem, being good may be our worst enemy. It was for the Pharisees. Their external goodness was a cover-up to avoid seeing who and what they were on the inside. Jesus didn’t approve of their external religiosity! In fact, he opposed it vehemently because it was an outward act and not an inward response.

It can bring a great sense of freedom to realize that God isn’t into rules, but rather relationships. His goal isn’t to make us good, but to make us whole and to see us healed from the inside out. The end result will be goodness but goodness that comes from a healed heart—not from adhering to rules dictated by legalism.

This is not an excuse to act out in sinful or destructive behaviors. Not at all. As the Apostle Paul said, “Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means.”²

What it does mean is that I need to grow towards wholeness and maturity by recognizing my inner brokenness, my weaknesses, and my unresolved character issues and bring them not only to God for healing, but also to a trusted friend and/or counselor. As James said, “Therefore confess your sins [and faults] to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.”³

Again, God’s goal is not to make us good, but to make us whole. It’s the heart that counts with him, not the externals. If all I have is external goodness, I am no better than the Pharisees. Realize too, that only to the degree that we are made whole will our lifestyle, our attitudes, our actions, our behaviors, and our relationships be wholesome.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me to see my broken parts so I can bring them to you for healing. Face me with my reality, make me whole, and lead me to the help that I need to do this. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Colossians 1:28-29 (NASB).

2. Romans 6:1 (NIV).

3. James 5:16 (NIV).