Latest / In His Circle / Facing the Truth: Healing and Hope Amidst Relationship Turmoil | Ep 24

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Facing the Truth: Healing and Hope Amidst Relationship Turmoil | Ep 24 · In His Circle

• 0:00
  Announcer: Welcome to In His Hands podcast from women for women.
• 0:03
  Announcer: We're here to help you find peace in knowing you are in God's hands.
• 0:08
  Announcer: Our goal is sharing the Word of God in simple conversations.
• 0:12
  Announcer: We're here to help you thrive every day.
• 0:15
  Announcer: And now, here are your hosts.
• 0:18
  Tiffany Windsor: Good morning.
• 0:18
  Tiffany Windsor: I'm Tiffany Windsor and I'm Mary Koenig, and today we want to talk about facing the truth and, Mary, will you pray us in?
• 0:27
  Mary Koning: I will.
• 0:27
  Mary Koning: I'm reading from John, chapter 8, verses 31 and 32.
• 0:32
  Mary Koning: If you abide in my word and you are truly my disciples and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.
• 0:40
  Mary Koning: And there's a version that says in the truth will make you free.
• 0:43
  Mary Koning: So, lord, both set and make us free, buy your word and with your truth and help us be brave warrior.
• 0:52
  Mary Koning: Women In Jesus' name, amen.
• 0:55
  Tiffany Windsor: Amen.
• 0:55
  Tiffany Windsor: I do want to let everyone know that it is raining here this morning, so you may hear rain in the background and we've decided to go ahead and just record because we really want to talk about this topic today.
• 1:07
  Tiffany Windsor: This came to mind for me, mary, because I was thinking about the three women that I'm really close to right now, and all of you have had challenges from being in narcissistic relationships.
• 1:22
  Tiffany Windsor: I was asking you what are the different challenges that Christian women are having in relationships?
• 1:31
  Tiffany Windsor: Is it always narcissistic men?
• 1:33
  Tiffany Windsor: So I'd love for you to talk about that today, because in chatting about this before we started recording, you pointed out to me some of the different characteristics that can really challenge a relationship and force you into facing the truth.
• 1:52
  Mary Koning: And that is dredging up a lot of past issues and emotions, and so I'm going to try and gather my thoughts here.
• 2:03
  Mary Koning: Not having any wise women or community, as a young married and a young mom, I was left to try to figure things out and using the Bible and the community I had which wasn't close, it was a homeschooling community and a church community, along with a community Bible study to try and figure out how to operate in a marriage and to be a wife and a mom, and my special set of circumstances where I was a child raised to try and figure things out by myself because I didn't feel like it was safe to ask questions or make mistakes or not know what to do, and so I carried that through to adulthood, where I was just looking around and trying to figure out what to do on my own without asking any questions or feeling safe enough to ask questions.
• 2:49
  Mary Koning: So all of that added up to finding a narcissist to marry and in a way I was relieved because then I could abdicate responsibility to this person who wanted to control everything, and that was okay for a while until it wasn't okay anymore.
• 3:05
  Tiffany Windsor: I asked for you to break down for me what are some of the other challenges that women may find in marriage.
• 3:13
  Tiffany Windsor: One of the words that I wrote down is you said well, this past could be very selfish.
• 3:18
  Tiffany Windsor: That doesn't necessarily equate to narcissism.
• 3:22
  Mary Koning: No, and in my recovery group there were many instances of where a betrayal had happened, whatever that betrayal might be.
• 3:30
  Mary Koning: Some of the betrayals might be pornography, actual affair or an online affair, financial abuse, some things where truth is hidden purposefully in order to satisfy the man.
• 3:45
  Mary Koning: In this case, it was all men because we were women in the recovery group, but women can do this kind of thing too.
• 3:51
  Mary Koning: There were many instances of women in marriages that weren't healthy becoming healthy, and that was so beautiful to see.
• 4:00
  Mary Koning: It was really beautiful to see that if the spouse was willing to own their behavior and learn how to become healthy and make different choices, then that marriage had a chance to succeed and become more healthy.
• 4:16
  Mary Koning: In my case, that wasn't the case, from my unhealthy issues that I was bringing in that I wasn't healed from, and then the exes unhealthy things.
• 4:26
  Mary Koning: We had gone too far and had too much unhealthiness to recover from and we ended up divorced.
• 4:35
  Tiffany Windsor: We've talked about narcissism.
• 4:37
  Tiffany Windsor: There could be selfishness in the spouse where they're just not willing to participate at a certain level to try and heal the marriage.
• 4:46
  Tiffany Windsor: You could have a partner that simply shuts down.
• 4:49
  Tiffany Windsor: I'm guessing that's probably lack of emotional intelligence.
• 4:55
  Tiffany Windsor: They just don't step into anything emotionally.
• 4:58
  Tiffany Windsor: They could be unaware, uneducated.
• 5:01
  Tiffany Windsor: I kind of think of that as shutting down.
• 5:02
  Tiffany Windsor: What I'm trying to get to because our friend Lisa Wilcox is really talking to us a lot about this the steps that you may go through to start identifying this and getting from the pit into your power.
• 5:19
  Tiffany Windsor: How do you face the truth?
• 5:21
  Tiffany Windsor: How do you step into this?
• 5:23
  Tiffany Windsor: Because you've talked about years and years of dealing with a relationship that wasn't working.
• 5:31
  Tiffany Windsor: What finally brings someone to the brink to say I need to face the truth about this.
• 5:39
  Mary Koning: So my particular issue was the message I was receiving from church about God hating divorce and God hating divorce and needing to stay married because that's a covenant before God.
• 5:54
  Mary Koning: That kept me in an unhealthy marriage for years and years until I understood that God loves people more than he loves the institution of marriage.
• 6:05
  Mary Koning: God loves people first and most and whether we're married or not, he loves us best.
• 6:11
  Mary Koning: This message I'm not sure if it was overt or covert that it wasn't okay to leave a marriage and be a believer kept me in denial and in an unhealthy marriage for years.
• 6:26
  Mary Koning: And add to that my living in the state of denial and we had mentioned selfishness and my selfish want to stay married, regardless of how damaging it was to me and the kids.
• 6:40
  Mary Koning: My selfishness of not wanting to face the discomfort of divorce and having to just the utter destruction like the tornado of a destruction and having to rebuild comfort seeking versus truth facing and having to operate in a church where marriage was so valued over me and many women and just my personhood.
• 7:07
  Mary Koning: I just didn't want to face that alone, and so I read Gretchen Baskerville's life saving divorce and that just was a switch, because I was either going to stay in the marriage and die or leave and live.
• 7:20
  Mary Koning: Because I was so sick, I was so so thyroid issues and I couldn't see straight, and so many health issues because I was denying my personhood for the sake of the marriage.
• 7:33
  Mary Koning: So I'm not sure where that message came from, other than I absorbed it from church.
• 7:38
  Mary Koning: And there's so many unhealthy stay married books that you can find in stay married life groups, and the last book study I was in with the small group at the last church I was in was Emerson Egretsch's Love and Respect.
• 7:51
  Mary Koning: And boy, he's getting a lot of backlash right now because he isn't truthfully calling abuse abuse.
• 7:57
  Mary Koning: He's again putting unwarranted, unhealthy responsibility on the wife for the husband's behavior and that is not God's intention.
• 8:07
  Mary Koning: He does not want the person to sacrifice themself for the sake of the marriage.
• 8:14
  Tiffany Windsor: I do want to reiterate that we first pray for all of our girlfriends to be able to work through their marriage, have both husband and wife step up and face the truth and start talking and sharing.
• 8:34
  Tiffany Windsor: But when you don't have two people that are willing to step up like that, at some point we're speaking to women here, so at some point the wife has to make some sort of decision after asking, probably numerous times, for help and in wanting to talk through this with her spouse.
• 8:55
  Tiffany Windsor: You can't define the moment, the moment of facing the truth, but I have to assume that women all go through that same moment and let me just add this because when they're going through that moment, they need someone to reach out to right.
• 9:12
  Mary Koning: Yes, for me it was knowing the truth, having friends tell me the truth and still yet not wanting to face the truth because the truth meant the destruction of my family.
• 9:27
  Tiffany Windsor: What I'm seeing a lot of times.
• 9:28
  Tiffany Windsor: When women are working in unhealthy family relationships and then they go out into the workforce, they're challenged with the same issues and the same abuse.
• 9:41
  Mary Koning: So interesting that my current job is a mini version of my marriage.
• 9:47
  Mary Koning: And I know God's just kind of laughing with me and at me because he knows I know the things to do, the right things to do, because I've taken the time and the effort to heal and give myself a well-filled toolbox of what I'm supposed to do.
• 10:06
  Mary Koning: But he really wants me to use those tools instead of operating my old way of being.
• 10:11
  Mary Koning: And it's testing.
• 10:13
  Mary Koning: It's a testing ground for sure.
• 10:16
  Tiffany Windsor: I definitely feel like the Lord keeps bringing opportunities in front of us to learn, and if you don't learn, then he brings you another opportunity to learn and grow and another one.
• 10:28
  Tiffany Windsor: And we're constantly growing.
• 10:31
  Tiffany Windsor: We're constantly learning.
• 10:33
  Tiffany Windsor: That never stops, even when you think you've mastered something, there's always opportunity to learn.
• 10:40
  Tiffany Windsor: I have learned so much through talking through all of these last weeks with you, mary, and these last years.
• 10:47
  Tiffany Windsor: I've learned so much more about women's needs, women's wants, what the church does to so many women, and I love my church.
• 10:58
  Tiffany Windsor: I have not dug into what challenges may be going on there, but I do know in other religious organizations there are certain churches that don't seem to support healthy marriages.
• 11:14
  Tiffany Windsor: We keep talking about healthy marriages, but how do you get there?
• 11:18
  Tiffany Windsor: How do you get there?
• 11:19
  Tiffany Windsor: So I'm really stumbling today because I'm trying to find the right words to let women know that this community is here for you.
• 11:28
  Tiffany Windsor: We're setting up mentorships, we're setting up workshops where you can learn more.
• 11:33
  Tiffany Windsor: You can see all of the signs of dysfunction in a relationship, because I'm learning through the friendships that the Lord has brought to me over the past few years that this is so needed in our communities and I am heartbroken that I have not seen this and been there for other women.
• 11:55
  Tiffany Windsor: That is what the Lord has put on my heart, that this is what we are to do, and it's right here.
• 12:01
  Tiffany Windsor: This, my dear friend Mary, it's.
• 12:03
  Tiffany Windsor: It's right here for her every single day as she is navigating through this, and I just honor the strength in you, mary, because I know this has not been an easy journey for you and you're still every day trying to learn something new, to gather new strength and knowledge.
• 12:23
  Mary Koning: Thank you and just a message of hope that the Lord can heal a willing heart.
• 12:30
  Mary Koning: So many marriages were saved in this recovery group I was in and that was encouraging and I needed to see that that there were men and women who were willing to face their shame and trade their shame for truth and healing and wholeness that God was offering.
• 12:49
  Mary Koning: And so that's the core base of a healthy marriage.
• 12:52
  Mary Koning: And we can't do it, you know, in isolation, because I didn't want anyone to see what was going on in my family, so we kept it isolated and I wouldn't speak my truth.
• 13:02
  Mary Koning: And they still struggle to speak my truth.
• 13:06
  Mary Koning: But there is a path through, to the other side, and Jesus came to seek and save, and he came to do that through truth.
• 13:14
  Mary Koning: So I'm just going to say the verse again, because it's just so powerful is that you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.
• 13:24
  Mary Koning: So we pray that over you.
• 13:26
  Mary Koning: If the truth is hard today, that's okay.
• 13:30
  Mary Koning: God knows that too.
• 13:32
  Mary Koning: But Jesus never leaves you nor forsakes you and he loves you with an everlasting love.
• 13:38
  Mary Koning: So I pray that you feel that circle, sister, that you know it, and if you still don't believe it, that you just trust that God is the one that tells you the truth every day, in Jesus' name, amen.
• 13:52
  Mary Koning: Amen.
• 13:54
  Announcer: Thank you for joining us for today's podcast.
• 13:56
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• 14:00
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• 14:03
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• 14:04
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• 14:11
  Announcer: Thank you and, dear friends, have a blessed day.