Obstacle or Opportunity?

Thomas Alva Edison didn't stop to think that he would discover thousands of ways to NOT invent the light bulb when he started. He just refused to see one little "un success" as being a failure or obstacle when the opportunity was clear and ahead of him.

I have not failed. 

I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.

Thomas Alva Edison 

I had the opportunity, many years ago, of visiting Thomas Alva Edison's Winter Estate (summer home) in Fort Myers, Florida. I was awestruck by the number of "failures" that he endured before each success. It seemed that success didn't come easy to him, failures were exorbitant and that he did not let his failures dissuade him from inventing the wonderful things that we take so much for granted today. He seemed to realize that every success is paid for by many failures and that one failure didn't mean the end of his vision; it meant only "one way that it didn't work".

I would like to me more like Thomas Alva Edison. I wish that our lives was not filled with the weight of failure but the hope that we are one step closer to succeeding and have found one way "that it doesn't work". Relationships are like this also. We can try many ways to "reach" a loved one and if they are suffering from a mental illness; especially Borderline Personality Disorder, we may discover that there are many more ways to fail that we ever have believed because it seems, that there is no way to succeed in carrying a relationship with someone who is not able or capable of providing their healthy half.

So is mental illness the obstacle or the opportunity? Yes. It is an obstacle. If you expected an healthy relationship whether romantic love or familial connection with a person who suffers from mental illness; you are bound to be disappointed and find that it has become an obstacle in your life and in the life of the one you love.

However, there is a little thing called "acceptance" that can turn that obstacle into an opportunity. IF your mentally ill loved one can see clear to believe that they are suffering from mental illness without the horrible stigma that society perpetuates upon it, and accept a healing journey of DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy is therapy designed to help people change patterns of behavior that are not effective, such as self-harm, suicidal thinking and substance abuse. This approach works towards helping people increase their emotional and cognitive regulation by learning about the triggers that lead to reactive states and helping to assess which coping skills to apply in the sequence of events, thoughts, feelings and behaviors that lead to the undesired behavior. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectical_behavior_therapy), then you have just seen an obstacle turn into an opportunity.

Whenever I hear or think of the words "opportunity" or "dream"...I am reminded of this quote of Thomas Edison's. I remind myself that failure will proceed success. Rarely do we succeed the very first time. That is not usually skill but possibly luck and nothing that we can count on or duplicate. Failure doesn't have to the obstacle in "finding ourselves, healing from abuse and learning to dream again". We have put way too much importance on "doing things right". I give you permission to make a mistake and learn from it and not judge yourself for "not getting it right" the first time. It is unrealistic to believe that anyways; why not allow ourselves to see obstacles as opportunities.

Get back to the basics

Singing a New Song

began as a vehicle used to speak out against spiritual abuse/domestic abuse in the christian marriage. 

Religion has been and remains the most commonly used vehicle for abuse. 

Abuse is insidious. As a christian, I strongly believed that "a christian man would NEVER abuse his wife". While I still believe this to be partly true, I also have experienced how the concepts we believe and the religious dogma we embrace can set us up as victims of religious abuse. 

I was a very active christian many years before I met my son's father. I had been very involved in serving in the church in worship leading, teaching, prayer, conference planning and program developing and coordinating. I love people and had found a wonderful niche for my creative and musical outlets. I had a wonderful life serving the Lord and enjoying my "family". 

When we are "in church" (christian church that is) we tend to assume that most everyone there is a christian. They have come to worship God with us and we have much more in common than we may have dividing or distinguishing us from each other. Looking back on it, I see this assumption as part of our need to BELONG. We all feel a deep need to "belong somewhere" or "to someone". Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs shows a pyramid of needs that places BELONGING just about physiological and safety needs: including within it: friendship, family and sexual intimacy. These are very BASIC needs.

I didn't understand my needs at the time and how religion has fulfilled the bottom three level on this Needs scale but I realized that it has played a significant supporting role in the next level of needs: ESTEEM.

As much as I had trusted God, I now realize that I had trusted man too much and my ability to discern intent of others and interpret behavior within marriage too little. I was in the worship team the day my ex husband and his daughter walked into the church that I had so joyfully served. Only a few brief months of courtship and 19 months later, confusion nd frustration began filling our home when my then christian husband seemed to be "unhappy" with me while I was pregnant with our now 13 year old son. He became critical, unloving, biting, harsh in his speech and manner and even so demanding that I "behave as a christian woman should" that I was reluctant to share my feelings and thoughts of my difficulty in the pregnancy. He said "you have changed, I am still the same". He later called me "contentious" and "disobedient" and even said in later years..."when you disobey ME, you disobey God". 

Now, as I look upon this, I can see that this is just abusive, manipulative behavior. NOT christian at all. But I had believed and continued to want to believe that he was truly a very good christian but yet experienced deeply disturbing cognitive dissonance over this. HOW can a christian man be so callous, unloving, demanding and even abusive??? I studied the Bible more, scouring it for wisdom and understanding on how I should view my new christian husband's behavior in light of feeling abused. I then found a few books on abuse by christian authors: (Jan Silvious's book: Fool Proofing your life and Leslie Vernick's book "The Emotionally Destructive Relationship") and I realized that "not all that glitters, is not gold" or "just because he says he is a christian, appears to act like a christian, seems to believe as a christian believes, doesn't mean that he is not or cannot be an abuser". 

This was a VERY harsh reality for me to accept. I didn't want to believe that what I had held as principles and concepts of virtue that I had held dearly would be so twisted in attempts to control, manipulate, discredit, demean, discount and disrespect me...after all, he was a christian. A christian man would not abuse. THIS WAS A FALSE PREMISE, a VERY untrue assumption that kept me in an abusive marriage for may years 8 years beyond my initial revelation that I was being abused by my christian husband.

Patricia Evan's books; mainly "Verbal Abuse Survivors Speak out" and "Contolling People" where too books; disdainfully shun and severely criticized by my then "christian husband" as being "not of God" and I was not only "admonished" to not read them but to "only read the Bible" and "listen and obey" him. He was "my head". I was just a woman. At one time, I "misplaced" the book, "Controlling People" twice...I had to buy new copies. I believe that he had thrown them away in attempts to dissuade me from reading them and awakening to HIS ABUSE OF ME in this "christian marriage". 

I found the book, "The Gaslight Effect" by Dr. Robin Stern. It was another "forbidden" book but by that time, I had separated from him, taking our then 8 year old son to live apart from him and his daughter. 

I share all of this to caution all those who hold onto a belief system and seek to find others who believe as you do to form the security of friendship, family and sexual intimacy that there are "wolves wearing sheep's clothing" among those who call themselves christians...and they CAN and DO use religion to ABUSE and control their victims.