Happy New Year Everyone! A New Year brings new hope. Let us have a blessed year filled with loving, supporting, encouraging, nurturing people. No more toxic people in our lives! (I know I already said this in the last post, but it is worth repeating). This current scripture, Psalm 97, helped me have a new healthy standard for choosing future friends and dealing with the family and friends I already have. It has helped me make painful, but necessary adjustments in my life, some of which I have previously shared in other posts. In the past I endured & triumphed over all kinds of abuse that I was exposed to both as a child and adult. This resulted in a very low standard for relationships coupled with the fact that as a baby Christian I received horrible spiritual abuse that said, if only I love a toxic person strong enough & long enough s/he will change, and forgiveness without the requirement of remorse and repentance is what God and Jesus wants which is a lie from hell. This lie that God wants us to be a doormat and suffer abuse after abuse without requiring repentance from our abusers not only makes a person feel like a bad individual for requiring true repentance and change in order to continue the relationship, but also a bad Christian as well. This lie made me feel like it was my fault that the toxic people in my life were abusive & continued to be abusive towards me. I must not be a good enough/strong enough Christian to lead the toxic people in my life to remorse and true repentance.
The very low standard for relationships that I once had went basically like this, if you didn't abuse me you must be a friend. Only recently have I truly learned my self-worth and to require much more from my relationships than the mere absence of abuse by establishing clear boundaries & consequences. I have learned that it is healthy to let people go because some people whether family or friend are not meant to stay in your life for the full duration, and that is not only okay to do, but recommended by God. I have realized that I am worthy of toxic free pure love. Therefore, even the shallow, selfish, one-sided relationships, though some would say are better and less harmful than the sever abusive relationships I once had, are also a part of my past. My husband recently joked with me saying he was going to get me a shirt that says, Toxic Free Zone and also get a sign for our house as well -- hey on second thought -- that's not such a bad idea! I pray these scriptures bless you as they did me and that toxic relationships will be a part of your past.
Psalm 97
A Song of Praise to the Sovereign Lord:
10. You who love the Lord, hate evil! He preserves the souls of His saints; He delivers them out of the hand of the wicked.
NIV "Let those who love the LORD hate evil, for he guards the lives of his faithful ones and delivers them from the hand of the wicked."
The Lord hates evil and so should we. Did you notice His promise to deliver/rescue us from the hand of the wicked?
Sounds like the Lord is speaking about having No Contact (NC) with evil toxic people. I just recently went NC with the wicked person in my life and believe me it is definitely a blessed relief from her attacks of invalidation/persecution/triangulation one family member against another/gaslighting/lies/ & other types of abuse. At this time I have no idea when exactly I sent the Official No Contact Letter (it was some time in late summer of 2009). In a way it seems so very long ago. The actual date of freedom was not important -- just the fact that I remain free regardless of the egg donor's attempt to break No Contact (NC) by sending my child a package of nice items. Yes we let my daughter open the package (not my idea), but later we regretted letting her open the package because that would break the NC Guidlines which I got from the Luke 17:3 Ministries, found on our Links Page on this blog, and most importantly send mixed messages to the egg donor and our daughter. The package arrived before the Holidays a "just because I love you" gift. We packed up the contents, placed them in our home office and our daughter has forgotten about them. We will donate them to a shelter and future packages will be returned to the post office marked return to sender. I did not tell anyone from my Family of Origin about the package or any body else for that matter. The only two people who know about the package are my husband and myself. We did not contact the egg donor to let her know we received it. Some purest of NC would say that we broke it by letting our daughter open the package (she went to the mail with Daddy and saw the package and was so excited to open it that Daddy had a weak moment). Our daughter did not know who it came from because we did not tell her and we did not read the fake over-the-top lies that were in the adorable puppy card she sent). The purest of NC might be right that by merely opening a package even though our daughter never knew who sent her the items, nobody else knows about us receiving the package, we didn't allow our daughter to keep the contents, and we did not acknowledge that we received it by contacting the toxic, evil person so she does not no if we ever received it, thus it is like it never happened is breaking NC -- I believe that in this situation Grace can be found even in NC Rules & Guidelines. Even though the toxic person broke our request for No Contact, we did not respond to her directly or indirectly through others, thus we did not break our No Contact status.
Other Christians that do not support our decision of NC and claim that we are not true loving Christians if we don’t emulate their own eternal enabling patience with evil are actually only perpetuating evil rather than stopping it. Having eternal patience with evil is no difference than being an enemy of the good and the innocent. What comes to mind right now is the saying, you are either for me or against me. If people tell you to stay involved with a toxic abusive person, they do NOT have your best interest at heart. No matter how they deny it they are against you. What?-Good loving Christians are actually against us? Yes. If you truly love someone, you would want to protect them from evil doers who bring harm either on a physical, verbal, or emotional level. Don’t give into the pressure by those that are self-righteous and imply that they are better than you because they won’t give up hope that God will save the toxic person. Recognize the false premise in their reasoning. They reason that: if you walk away/give up on/abandon the toxic person then you have, at the same time, shown that you don’t believe God can save the toxic person. This is a huge lie! Walking away says no such thing! God is NOT rendered powerless to save anyone just because we’ve chosen to go NC to end our exposure to their evil.
“Where in the Bible has God said that every person we will ever come in contact with will be saved by God through us? It is no where even hinted at such a notion. The arrogance inherent in believing that God can only use YOU to save a particular person is quite odious when you recognize it for what it is.” Just tell them that no human is that important or powerful. We are not the toxic person’s personal Savior-that position was filled a very long time ago before we even came along.
(this post was inspired by and exact quotes from Luke 17:3 Ministries, on links page)
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