“I was your cure, and you were my disease. I was saving you, but you were killing me!” (Author unknown)
Introduction: Nothing is more painful than watching someone you love suffer deeply and, in some cases, do harm to themselves through wrong or addictive behavior. It wounds our own souls to watch the people we love wound theirs. It is always good to try to help the people we care about who are hurting, but when helping them begins to destroy us, then we have to stop.
Joyce shared that helping her brother was killing her. She said at the bottom of page 176 that “I finally had to realize that trying to cure him was stealing my life!”
That is the testimony of so many people. You spend all your life and energy trying to help someone else while in the process you are killing yourself and/or robbing yourself of a happy life.
Later, her brother was in treatment program and he left the treatment center before completing the program. Several months later, her family received word that her brother was found dead in an abandoned building.
The feeling of Guilt
When this happened, she had the temptation of feeling guilty and wondered if she had done enough to help her brother. (This will happen when tragedy happens…we tend to blame ourselves.)
Just as Joyce had to realize, we all must accept the same fact. That only her brother could make the decision he needed to make and that no one could help him unless he did his part
IMPORTANT
NUGGET
If someone you love is making bad choices and all of your efforts to help them
have not done any good, be careful that you don’t take on an exaggerated sense
of responsibility, thinking it is your job
to rescue them.
Co-Dependency
Wanting to help someone we love does not mean that we are codependent, but our efforts to help can morph into codependency if we aren’t careful. When a person is codependent, it means that their life is controlled by someone else’s problems or bad choices. They may never know how any day will go for them because it is dependent on what the troubled person in their life does.
Codependency Changes Your life
· Your life depends on someone’s decisions
· Joyce had to shift her schedule when her brother was going through an episode or dilemma.
· We should all be willing to change our plans if someone truly needs our help, but if the same person creates the same situation over and over, it is not good.
Many people say they want to change, but they are not willing to do what is required of them.
You must be prepared to do your part!.
· If you are in a codependent relationship, the hardest thing you may ever do might be to walk away or stop helping.
o The Story on page 178
§ A lady had been in a relationship with an alcoholic for 6 years.
§ He refuse to make a commitment to marriage
§ She said she was co-dependent on him.
§ Many people have advised her to leave this relationship.
§ But she feels that she can’t live with him nor without him.
§ She said it’s hard
How many years will she allow him to steal her life?
· Her life is being taken.
· She was not happy
· What would it take for her to walk away?
· Joyce’s mother could not walk away
although she was abused an was afraid.
Her mom loved her dad and was accustomed to a dysfunctional life. She loved him but she hated him too.
A Life-Changing Thought –
When it’s Time
Deciding when the
time is right to distance yourself from someone is a choice that you must make
for yourself, and it should be done after much prayer and contemplation.
God has called us to help people and to do so even at the cost of self-sacrifice, but He has not called us to live lives in which we are being controlled and manipulated by the poor choices that other people make.
If trying to help someone continually and it isn’t working, sometimes you must stop trying. Sometimes w think we are helping, but in reality, we are enabling the person to continue hurting us.
It is not uncommon for troubled people to never be willing to make a change as long as they have someone who continues rescuing them.
Mothers and Their Children
If you have a child that is addicted to destructive behaviors, ONLY GOD gets them through it.
1. God can get you as a parent through the pain and disappointment.
2. Parents who deal with children that constantly destroy themselves, remember that God can reach places in the depth of our souls that no one else could ever reach.
3. You are urged to totally rely on God to guide, heal, and restore you.
4. His grace is sufficient even in situations that are more painful than we could have ever imagined.
With God, we are never without hope, and hope is a great motivator that movs us along in life with an expectation that something good can happen..
If you have a child in pain or who needs healing and deliverance in their life, and your soul is weary and wounded from what you have dealt with, be assured that God can reach into your soul and refresh and heal you.
Spend
regular time with the Lord and ask Him to strengthen and heal you.
It’s hard for a Mother…
It’s very hard for a mother to watch her children make bad choices and not be able to reach them, knowing that those choices will ultimately bring pain. God gives each of us free choice, even if the choices we make are not the right ones, and sometimes the only way we learn to do better is by experiencing the painful results of our wrong choices. Sometimes not helping is the most merciful thing we can do.
Don’t’ ever give up on the people you love.
Even if all of your efforts to get through to them have failed, remember that God can do in a moment of time what we cannot do in a lifetime.
A mother’s prayers for her children are very powerful, and even when it looks like nothing is changing, it doesn’t mean that God isn’t working. It might take a while – perhaps even a long while –to see results, but all things are possible with God!!
Being Out of Control and Loving it
A great deal of our pain and misery is caused by trying to control people and situations that we cannot control. We as parents and friends find it easy to control the decisions of those we love. We want to be “in control”, but sometimes it’s totally OK to be OUT OF CONTROL! (LOL)
Being out of control brings us FREEDOM. Then we can totally turn a situation over to God. He does much ore than when we are trying to “help” Him do His Work. Sometimes we think we are helping, but we are actually hindering.
But when we cast our care, worry, and anxiety on God, He cares for us (see I Peter 5:7)
Question: What is the difference between being responsible and being controlling?
Mothers tend to take on the role of micro-managing their children’s lives. As parents, we need to learn to pray more and watch God work instead of being too free with our advice.
Giving up control is actually very freeing. The only person God wants us to control is ourselves, and that should be our goal.
Let Go and Let God
We hear this saying many times. This is definitely a true statement. When we let go, God begins to work. Never stop praying and if God opens a door for you to give a word of advice at the right time, give it---but don’t keep trying to make people listen who don’t want to hear you. If you do, it will only steal your peace and joy.
Signs that you are helping too much…. PAGE 182
What are the signs that you might be helping or giving too much? There are things that we can and should watch for in our lives and here are a few:
Sign 1 When you resent what you are doing.
Sign 2 If what you are doing is fostering
irresponsibility or incompetence, or
if
it is making the one you are helping too dependent upon you.
Sign 3 If you have a feeling that you are being manipulated
Sign 4 If what you intended as a one-time blessing has become a
long-term
obligation that is now a burden to you.
Sign 5 If you continue to say yes to the person you are helping when you know in your heart you should say no
Sign 6 If the person you are helping expects you to do more and more for them instead of being grateful for what you have done.
Sign 7 If you continually cancel your plans because the one you are helping needs you to help them.
Check Your Motives
· Jesus gave His life sacrificially in order to help us and being a blessings to other people is one of the things He has called us to do.
· Nothing makes us happier than helping and giving to others when we do it in a healthy way and for the right reasons.
· Some people help others because it makes them feel good about themselves. They find their value in doing things for others even when what they are doing is harmful.
· Actually, if we truly love people, we will say no if that is what will help them more than us saying yes. (Saying YES all the time can do a lot of damaged.)
· Joyce’s mother had a poor self-image. She felt unloved and she carried a lot of guilt.
· An honest evaluation of our motives can be painful, but it can be one of the most freeing things that we ever do.
Try asking God to show you why you do many of the things you do, especially the ones that seem to add stress to your life, and you may be surprised by what He reveals to you.
It does very little good to ask God to heal our wounded souls if we continue doing things that wound them over and over. God is in the healing business, and He delights in making us whole, but we need to cooperate with Him by doing everything He shows us that we need to do.