When I was writing When Your Husband is Addicted to Pornography: Healing Your Wounded Heart, I asked twenty-five women what scared them most about their husband’s struggle with pornography. Here’s what some of them said …
“If I let my guard down, he will hurt me again.”
“I’ll never again feel like I’m special to my husband.”
“Abandonment.”
“Judgment by others.”
“My husband will choose to continue in his sin and not seek healing.”
“Recurrence and deception will leave me looking like a gullible idiot.”
“Our hearts will get hardened to sin’s deceitfulness again.”
Do any of these resonate with you? I suspect most of them do and you could probably add to the list. Fear can choke the hope right out of us, leaving us feeling anxious and desperate.
In my experience, fear always sprints beyond our present circumstances to imagine the next disaster that lies ahead. We fuel it with an endless game of “What if …” scenarios that, if left unchecked, will consume us. Believe me about this, friend, I know what I’m talking about. When I didn’t get a grip on my fear, it launched me into a season of paralyzing panic attacks. When my hands and feet tingled, my heart raced, and I couldn’t fill my lungs with air, I became wild with fear. That fear was no longer about an imaginary future event, but my imminent death. Trust me, fear isn’t an emotion to try to stuff. Deal with it.
Because fear can be described as False Evidence Appearing Real, it’s vital that we focus on what is true and real. God’s Word has much to say about fear. If I were to boil His words down to one instruction it would be this …
“Trust Me. Period.”
Here’s the deal, God is Love (1 John 4:8) and He tells us not to “be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble” (Matthew 6:34). You see, Love is so busy taking care of today’s business that it doesn’t have time to be concerned about tomorrow. Fear, however, is so consumed by potential trials of tomorrow that it fails to deal with the responsibilities of today. In other words, fear and Love are mutually exclusive.
“By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world.
There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.”
1 John 4:17-18
Let me tell you, if your husband is struggling with pornography … or not struggling, but just doing it, then being scared is a normal response. If you’ll humor me here, I’d like to challenge you with a passage that challenged me.
“And without faith it is impossible to please him (God), for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.”
Hebrews 11: 6
This passage was like a bitter pill that didn’t want to be swallowed easily, because the truth of the matter is, as much as I want to please God, the things that require the most faith for me are the things that demand that I look my fears square in the face and deny that they have power over me.
When you are dealing with the fallout that has resulted from your husband’s addiction to porn, every coping mechanism you have to deal with fear will be put to the test. Believe me when I tell you that radical faith that begins with fear will land you in the arms of the Almighty.
What fears do you have concerning your husband’s addiction?
Do you believe that God is able to accomplish his will even through these circumstances?
*Portions of this blog post are from my book, When Your Husband is Addicted to Pornography: Healing Your Wounded Heart. www.VickiTiede.com