Angie Lewis's Blog

• Do You Love an Alcoholic? – Stop Rescuing and Enabling (Part 1)

  2007 Jul 06

  Do You Love an Alcoholic? – Stop Rescuing and Enabling (Part 1)
  
  Do you love an alcoholic? How can you live with an alcoholic and love them at the same time? Very carefully. It’s true, it is very difficult to live with an alcoholic, but people do it all the time. Alcohol controls the mind and spirit of a person, so in affect as long as the alcoholic is drinking you will not get much love in return. Being married to an alcoholic is not a reason for divorce. It is reason for helping your loved one with the disease. Alcohol addiction is called the insidious disease for a reason. It breaks up homes, kills lives, and keeps them from discovering the Creator. Can it get anymore insidious than that?
  
  A person who drinks excessively is called an alcoholic but that is not who they are. A person who drives a truck is called a trucker, but that is not who they are. I believe alcohol addiction to be a phase or transition of a person’s life, meaning it can be temporary. But many alcoholics become sober only to start drinking again, soon after, why? It is because they think they are in control of their addiction, but they aren’t. If a person truly wants to get sober and stay sober, they will.
  
  The person behind the destruction and deception of alcohol is a totally different person when they have been sober for six months. A sober alcoholic can be a very loving and spiritual human being who is able to discern right from wrong and able to live a happy and abundant life. As long as the alcoholic remains drinking, his true character remains hidden from others, and will be under the control of the drink in every aspect of his life.
  
  What can you do for the alcoholic in your life? The first step in helping them is to first help yourself. Become knowledgeable about the disease. Once you realize the impact of how your actions may be affecting the alcoholic in your life, you can detach properly from their destructive behavior. Detaching can be difficult to do but if you love the alcoholic and want to be supportive, detaching with love is the way to go.
  
  Are you enabling your loved one to drink? Are you rescuing them from their problems and responsibilities? Ask yourself these questions to find out?
  
  Am I doing anything that would enable the alcoholic to drink?
  Am I doing anything that would facilitate the alcoholic’s behavior?
  Am I doing anything that would rescue the alcoholic from his problems?
  Am I getting driven into the disease with the alcoholic?
  
  The only way to truly be supportive is don’t rescue, don’t enable, and don’t allow yourself to get driven into the disease with them. Here are some of the ways you enable the alcoholic.
  
  You enable when you take up the slack for the alcoholic by doing their chores, duties and responsibilities. You enable when you give the alcoholic money or buy them booze.
  You enable when you drink with them, or when you do anything to help the alcoholic to continue to live his alcoholic lifestyle and not realize that he has a drinking problem. If you do everything for him, how will he know?
  
  Here are some of the ways you would rescue the alcoholic? You rescue when you sweep the alcoholic’s messes under the rug. The alcoholic NEEDS to be responsible for his own mess. You rescue when you lie for them. You rescue when you bail them out of jail or pay court fees for them.
  
  Understand that the enabler/rescuer, which is you, help the alcoholic to continue drinking when you unintentionally become entangled within the deception of the disease with them. Remember, alcoholism is an insidious disease, and it will trap you in its grip if you allow it to. Don’t allow this to happen, or there will be no hope in the alcoholic to ever stop drinking.
  
  How would you become driven into the disease with the alcoholic? By trying to control the alcoholic and how and when he drinks. By threatening the alcoholic with angry words and name calling, you are driving yourself into alcoholism. Don’t fuss, fight, argue, plead or try to control the alcoholic – it won’t work!
  
  When the alcoholic spouse tells you they are sorry for anything bad they did against the marriage or you, they probably are really sorry, but that does not mean that it won’t happen again. An alcoholic can’t control their actions once they start drinking. The drinking is what makes them out of control and under the enslavement of the disease.
  
  There is great hope for the alcoholic in your life, if you take care of yourself first, by not enabling, rescuing or getting driven into the disease. Once you are aware of what you should and should not do, you will be free to set boundaries for yourself in the home. An alcoholic will not abide by any boundaries, so it would be fruitless to try. You are setting boundaries for your own spiritual, mental, and emotional well-being, not the alcoholic’s. See part 2 on setting boundaries for you.
  

• 5 Reasons Why Affairs Don’t Work

  2007 Jul 06

  5 Reasons Why Affairs Don’t Work
  
  What is the purpose for having an affair? Most people would say it is because they like or love the other person they are having the affair with. Think about this. At one time in your life, you also loved the person you married, right? What happened? Some people have affairs and trysts because they allow their negative emotions to control them. Simply put, they listen to their feelings. Sex outside of marriage is a lack of self-control. Self-control only comes from God. No one has the power to defeat the flesh on his or her own.
  
  We all want to be accepted, appreciated and loved and when we don’t get that at home, some of us go out of our way to go get it. But it is morally wrong to go outside the bounds of marriage and enjoy someone other than who we married. So why do some people do it?
  
  1. Affairs simply don’t work because many times they are just a temporary fling. Marriage is (supposed to be) forever. And if the affair is not temporary, one day you might end up marrying the person you cheated with, and later find out the euphoria of the relationship is gone. And now your new spouse nags about your faults. Now what? Should you cheat on your second spouse now to make yourself “feel” better again?
  
  2. Affairs don’t work because you’re married. More than half of all affairs dissolve because the cheater wants to repent and work on their marriage. This says something to all of you who get involved with a married person. Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched. Better yet, don’t get involved with a married person.
  
  3. Affairs don’t usually work because the unmarried partner is desperate for you to divorce your spouse. Their desperate behavior lets you see what kind of a person you have been hanging around with. Sooner or later, if they keep pushing you to divorce your spouse, you’ll leave them and go back to your spouse.
  
  4. Affairs don’t work because after going through all the trouble of moving out of your house and being the bad guy with your children, you actually feel worse than before. This happens a lot. Adultery is not worth the effort. Have you ever thought about what kind of a person would have an affair with a married person anyway?
  
  The reality is most people who commit adultery wish they wouldn’t have done it. But the minority few cheaters will continue to cheat on all their partners until they are physically unable to. They will never find satisfaction within themselves, so they get it from using and abusing others. Fortunately, this is only the minority, but works for both men and women.
  
  5. Affairs don’t work because most of the time it is sexual lust that leads the heart to have the affair in the first place. Some people try real hard to find justification for committing adultery or they blame their spouse. This is how powerful feelings can be.
  
  Wrong thinking steers people further and further away from God and closer and closer into sin. A person’s lustful thoughts eventually make him to commit adultery. The need for acceptance and love is so strong in the mind that it leads to sex outside of marriage.
  
  The Lord is with you when you are with him. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will forsake you. 2 Chronicles 15:2 NIV)
  
  A person’s infidelity is only the symptom of a greater issue within them. Without seeking out the Spiritual Christ for our spiritual well being, we will remain separate from God and unable to remain self-controlled. We need God!
  
  Choosing to work on your marriage will make you a stronger and better marriage partner in the long run. You can skip all of this game playing with yourself and become the person God intended you to be. God has made us wise enough to make the right choices for ourselves. We can choose to love the person we married or we can follow the ways of the world. Use the gifts God has given you and work on your marriage.
  
  For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age. Titus 2:11-12
  
  

• 4 Ways Couples Verbally Abuse Each Other

  2007 Jul 06

  4 Ways Couples Verbally Abuse Each Other
  
  
  Some of us will never learn how to communicate our thoughts and feelings properly. Instead we go on a rampage and say things we mostly don’t mean to say, but say them anyway because we’re angry, tired, confused, frightened, stressed, resentful, or? We are literally allowing our feelings tell us what to say.
  
  1. Lack of Proper Communication
  
  The power of our words can make or break a marriage. The way we treat our spouse because of our own inability to communicate properly can literally build up barriers between couples. Words hurt, even though as children we learned to say, “words may never hurt us” the simple fact is, words can be darn right abusive. Most of us when abused with words, abuse back, because we don’t know how to fight back properly.
  
  Ethel calls Tom a lazy sex addict because he won’t help around the house, and when he is not working he watches TV or looks at porn. Tom calls Ethel a floozy because she dresses provocatively to work and has been known to flirt with Tom’s friends.
  
  What is the problem here? Lack of proper communication is the biggest problem I see. Instead of Ethel calling Tom a lazy sex addict she should do something about it. Probably if she stops dressing like a floozy to work, and starts appreciating her husband more, he will stop devaluing women and start valuing his wife for a change. Tom has been taught since he was little that women are sexual objects to exploit to his advantage, and Ethel reinforces that for Tom by the way she dresses and by the way she treats him.
  
  Instead of Tom calling Ethel a floozy, he should start appreciating her more for being the “person she is” rather than what he imagines her to be. You see, both Tom and Ethel need inner healing and guidance that the world is not going to give them. Heck, neither Tom nor Ethel thinks they have a problem! The world thrives on immorality and lust in marriage. As long as Ethel has a low self-esteem she will dress like a floozy, she knows no other way to be. And as long as Tom thinks women are nothing but a sex object, he will continue devaluing his wife and other women.
  
  2. Disrespect
  
  Verbal abuse of any kind is disrespectful. It hurts a person emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. Many couples disrespect each other and they don’t even know it. The pattern of disrespect is in unproductive communication. It is not that you cannot tell your spouse your feelings, but it is in how you tell them! If it is destructive or negative towards your spouse then it is unproductive, and disrespectful.
  
  Why do we disrespect the person we are supposed to be loving? One reason is because we don’t know how to be loving people. Superficial love is what most couples live off of. Is there any wonder marriage cannot survive on superficialities. Another reason is because when one spouse verbally abuses the other it causes a chain reaction.
  
  3. Negative Feelings
  
  How we communicate our feelings to others shows in how well we are doing as a person. I have learned that we do not have to be aggressive with our feelings to get our point across, we can be assertive instead. In this way we do not hurt others with our awful words.
  
  Don’t say: “You can’t do anything right, I’ll just do it myself?” (This is invalidating and rejecting)
  
  Do say: “Yes, that is one way of doing it, but I like doing it this way because…” (This is not invalidating or rejecting)
  
  Don’t say: “You make me so angry” (This is blaming and accusing – no one can make you angry, but yourself)
  
  Do say: I feel angry when…” (This is directing your anger toward yourself instead of on your spouse)
  
  Don’t say: “You made me commit adultery because…” (This is making your spouse feel responsible for your weakness)
  
  Do say: I made a mistake, I’m sorry for being unfaithful in our marriage. (This is taking responsibility)
  
  Don’t say: “All you care about is what you want, what about me?” (This is selfish)
  
  Do say: “I feel that we do a lot of things that you want, and I would like to do something that we both like.” (This is compromise)
  
  Do you see where I am going with this? You would not believe how many times a day that we direct our negative and destructive feelings at our spouse, and accuse each other for stuff that has nothing to do with them. We have control over our feelings and how we use those feelings in interaction with those we love. Think before you speak.
  
  4. Lack of Faith
  
  A Good relationship with Christ means a good relationship with our spouse. I encourage couples to start applying God’s wisdom filled ways into their marriage and using that as a guide toward inner healing and restoration of marriage. As long as we are devoid of the Holy Spirit within us, we will direct our emotions and feelings in negative and destructive ways towards one another.
  
  Finally brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things. (Philippians 4:6-8)
  

• 7 Ways To A Successful Marriage

  2007 Apr 06

  7 Ways To A Successful Marriage

  
  What do you think would deem a marriage successful? Is your marriage successful or are you still working on bringing it into success? I have compiled a few thoughts I think couples should incorporate into their own relationship for a successful marriage.
  
  1. Proper Communication
  
  In a successful marriage both husband and wife understand where the other stands on certain issues within the marriage, and are considerate of each other’s feelings. They don’t let matters pile up on the back burner to cause unneeded resentment and animosity later; instead they discuss issues in an appropriate manner when they come up.
  
  2. Acceptance (tolerance, validation, forgiving, support)
  
  Accepting one another is very important if you want a happy and satisfying marriage. By accepting the person you married, you are less likely to bring up faults and habits and later use those faults against them. True acceptance is being loving in every respect.
  
  3. Trust (confidence, faith, belief)
  
  Couples who trust each other have more personal freedom within the marriage. There are no jealousy issues, and deceitful practices causing marital conflict. If you don’t trust your spouse maybe it is because you don’t trust yourself?
  
  4. Giving (selfless, considerate, giving)
  
  All good marriages understand the aspects of the give and take relationship. The selfless attitude of wanting the best for your spouse is what real love is all about. When you learn to give of yourself without wanting anything in return, you are actually giving something to yourself because goodness and giving will come back to you.
  
  5. Respect (esteem, honor, admire)
  
  If you want your marriage to grow and be successful you have to respect the person you married. The more you value your spouse and make them feel good about who they are, the more they will respect you for who you are. God gave you to each other, so cherish each and everyday with what God has blessed you with.
  
  6. Healthy Attitude Towards Self
  
  Having a healthy attitude about self is what allows you to be free to give of yourself and to be more accepting of others. If you have a low self-image, or if you have not given up a negative past, or you are ensnared within an addiction, etc, these things will keep you from loving wholly. First, take care of you! Then you can be a better marriage partner because of it, and then you can work on your marriage.
  
  7. Spiritual Foundation
  
  If your marriage makes use of the characteristics above then it is supported by God’s spiritual foundation. God is the one who gives us the gifts of real love. Only through Him are we made complete and whole to love others freely.
  
  Jesus said, “Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and not do what I say? I will show you what he is like who comes to me and hears my words and puts them into practice. He is like a man building a house who dug down deep and laid the foundation on rock. When a flood came the torrent struck that house but could not shake it, because it was well built. But the one who hears my words and does not put them into practice is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. The moment the torrent struck that house, it collapsed and its destruction was complete.” (Luke 6:46-49)