NATALIE: Welcome to Episode 296 of the Flying Free Podcast. We’re going to start off today with some reviews that came in from people who are newer inside the Flying Free Kaleidoscope program, and here’s what some of them have to say about their experience so far:
“Two months in this program has changed my life. I listen to countless coaching sessions. My relationship with myself and the way I parent my children has changed dramatically. I’m addicted to the coaching sessions.”
Here’s another one: “I hear your voice in my head throughout the day. I only wish I could keep in my brain everything that you have taught me. Your programs are incredible. I have written your contact group info to many women on the back of a grocery receipt and talk about your program every chance I get. I have so many things I could say to you. Know I am grateful to the Lord that he has brought you and these programs into my life. They have literally changed my life. Hugs.”
And here’s a short and sweet one: “There are so many resources in this program. It is mind-blowing.”
And then the last one: “I am blown away. I joined only a few months ago. Every course I take, every single lesson I listen to three to five times. This and doing the journal exercises and listening to the resources in each lesson takes time, but it’s so helpful. ‘Each lesson and course,’ I think, ‘can’t possibly be topped. This was the best,’ but then it gets better and better.”
So, I just want to thank the people who wrote those kind things in. I am so grateful to all of the women who are inside of our Flying Free Kaleidoscope community. And I think I shared this in an earlier podcast that the word for a flock of butterflies is kaleidoscope. So we are bringing that more and more into our community, that idea that we are a kaleidoscope of beautiful Christian women who, we’re transforming our minds so that we can transform our world.
Now, someone sent this question that I’m going to be addressing this week in by email, but I thought that I would point out that I read and answer questions like this every day in our private community, the Flying Free Kaleidoscope. Plus, if this woman had posted this question over there, she would have not only received an answer from me, depending on what space in our forum she posted it, but she would have also received so much love and support and input from many other Christian women who could relate to her as well.
So, if you need a place where you belong, where your thoughts are respected, where you have an opportunity to make a difference not only for your own life or for the lives of your children but also in the lives of other Christian wives just like you, then consider joining our kaleidoscope of butterflies inside our private community. Just go to joinflyingfree.com to learn more and join.
All right, here’s her question: “Why is my husband choosing childlike behavior and ignoring me and our separation? Plus, how do I work with him to move forward? I have been separated for ten and a half months now and had two mediations with our pastors. My husband barely responds to my texts or emails. He won’t speak to me without getting intimidating and angry when we’re alone or sheepish and withdrawn around our kids. I won’t talk unless there’s a witness.
Our pastors told us to get individual counseling before meeting with them for marriage support, so I did, for six months. Husband supposedly did too, but I think maybe only once or twice. After this time, I asked for a meeting with all of us to read my letter to him of why I left. I didn’t say that he was emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, and sexually abusive, like counseling had revealed to me. I said, ‘I have been living in fear and anxiety for 17 years, not just from him, but also from his parents. I never felt good enough for their son.’
My husband is meant to respond, but he has now stopped replying to my pastor’s texts, calls, and emails, too. It’s been over a month. I decided in my heart to finally separate finances and work towards divorce after twelve months of separation. I felt free enough to continue reading your book and hear the stories.
But my story seems different. He doesn’t love bomb me. He doesn’t try to lead or control as an outwardly strong man. He’s shy, withdrawn, and sticks his head in the sand. My daughters say they have to be the parent when they’re around him, and now one daughter doesn’t even want to see him at all because he doesn’t respect her boundary with her body. According to my husband, I am his possession and so are my daughters.
I’d love some insight into this type of man who is caught up in the evangelical Christian ethos and marriage. He’s also brainwashed by all the YouTube conspiracy theories and propaganda with world economic crisis and the Illuminati and so on.
Don’t worry, I am leaving as I have to protect myself and my kids so they learn that they deserve a respectful, loving partner in life. I was told in youth group to marry a Christian because then we are equally yoked, but now I know that we were still unequal. I was optimistic and saw the best in people. He was judgmental and always sees the worst. He uses the Bible against me. I use it to understand the world, God’s unconditional love, and to use it to uplift and encourage. Thank you for your ministry through Flying Free. It has saved me.”
So first of all, I just want to thank you for sending this question in. This is really the quintessential story that we hear over and over inside of the Flying Free Kaleidoscope. Yes, there are variations on this theme, but overall it’s pretty much the same. Now, she said her story seems different from mine, but I think our stories are so, so similar. When she describes her husband’s personality, oh my goodness, very similar to my ex-husband.
Now, I’m not going to go into my story here because I’ve already told my story in the book that I recently published this past spring called All the Scary Little Gods. And you can, if you want to read my story… It’s not just my story about my marriage and how I got out or what had to change in my life in order for me to get out, but it’s more of a spiritual memoir. The focus is more on my relationship with God, what I believed about God, and how that impacted my life and how it caused me to actually stay in an abusive marriage for so long. And so if you want to read that story, I tried to tell it in a creative way that is probably not like any other book you’ve ever read, but you can go and get it on Amazon in paperback, Kindle, or Audible formats.
So this woman raises three questions here. Number one, “Why is my husband choosing childlike behavior and ignoring me and our separation?” Number two, “How do I work with him to move forward?” And I think she means to move forward with this separation and divorce, probably. Like, how does she get him to keep moving, because he doesn’t want to. And then three, “I want insight into this type of man.”
So I just want to point out something, though, about all three of these questions. Do you guys notice what they all have in common? They’re all focused on understanding the abuser. This is like falling in a Florida swamp with some alligators, and instead of focusing on getting out as fast as possible, you stop and say, “You know, before I get out, I really need to know, why does the alligator choose to be here? Why does he try to eat things? Why does he pursue me even when I’m scared? Can’t he tell I’m scared? How can I work with this alligator to help him stop eating things and wanting to chase people? I wish I had more insight into what makes this alligator tick. I really need to know.”
If we were to focus on the alligator in that situation, we would probably lose our lives. Alternatively, we could simply accept that this is what alligators do, and we don’t need to understand how or why in order to just accept that this is the way they are and then get ourselves to a place of safety based on those facts and that reality. If our focus is on our own movement up and out of the swamp, and quickly, we may find that we have a future to enjoy. Otherwise, we will continue to be in conflict with an alligator who has no intentions of explaining or understanding himself.
Another way of putting this is to say that we can only control our own self. We can’t control other people. Our challenge is not to understand the psyche of an abuser. Our challenge is to gain self-awareness and understanding around our own psyche and what is driving us and our beliefs and our behaviors. This is where 100% of our opportunity lies.
I recently did a free workshop for anyone who wanted to come on this subject. It was called, “Can He Change?” because that’s the golden question everyone is always asking, but it’s not the right question. The question we all need to be asking is, “Can I change, and am I willing to transform my mind in order to make that possible?”
Now, I’m not talking about changing yourself in the way that your religious leaders want you to change. I was told by them many times, “You need to change. Quit expecting your husband to change. Focus on your own change.” And when I asked them what that change might look like, they told me that it would look like more submission, more sex, more reading good, Christian wife books, more obedience, more willingness to suffer, less complaining, less arguing my point, less expectations, less insisting that I had rights of my own.
Figuratively speaking, they want their women to shut up, lie down, and spread their legs on command without any murmuring. That’s what it boils down to. Can you imagine saying that to a kidnapping victim?
If you were a kidnapping victim and then these people came up to you in front of your kidnapper and said, “You know what, your life as a kidnapping victim would be much better if you would just submit more. Give more sex to your captor. Read more books about how to be a good Christian. Be more obedient. Be more willing to suffer. Be less complaining, less arguing of your point. Have less expectations. You shouldn’t really insist that you have rights of your own,” that’s just ludicrous, and yet, that is what they’re saying to Christian women who are in abusive relationships.
So all of that to say, I am not talking about that kind of change. I’m talking about taking your God-given inheritance in Christ and living into it. I’m talking about believing the good news of the gospel, that there is no distinction among humans anymore and that in Christ, all the nations of the world are saved, that we are all called as brothers and sisters to this glorious opportunity to share this good news—and it truly is good news—with everyone by the way that we live in freedom (not in bondage), in truth (not in gaslighting) in love (not in lust and hate), sharing the power of God to lift people up, not exploiting it and using it to hurt people and tear them to shreds.
You guys, we live in a time of great need for missionaries of the good news. Not to the bars and the dance halls, but to the church. We need missionaries who will spread the good news of Christ’s love to the church because right now the church is lying in a heap of bad news.
So let’s go back to the three questions this woman had, though. Number one, “Why is my husband choosing childlike behavior and ignoring me and our separation?” Two, “How do I work with him to move forward?” And three, “I want insight into this type of man.”
So here are my answers, but you know what? I think you already know them deep down inside. Part of you might be in a little bit of denial, and maybe that little part of you is plugging her ears and going, “Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I can’t hear you, I can’t hear you, I can’t hear you,” when your other part is trying to tell you the truth. So I wonder what it would be like if you could connect with that part that is afraid to know the truth and just let that part share what her fears are.
I usually do this, I connect with my parts by just journaling. I’ll ask a part of me who is really struggling, I’ll ask that part of me a question and then I’ll write down whatever comes up for me inside. And I’ll write it down, and oftentimes that part of me really feels heard and seen because I’m actually writing down what that part of me is thinking.
So first of all, “Why is my husband choosing childlike behaviors and ignoring me and our separation?” I believe it’s because somehow it protects him. When he acts like a child and puts his head in the sand or pretends, he doesn’t have to take adult responsibility. He does not have to own his own shadow side and make peace with the fact that he has one. He can pretend that nothing is his fault, and that makes him feel better.
Instead of asking for you as a Christian woman or Christian wife who’s married to this person, instead of asking, “Why is my husband choosing this behavior and ignoring me in our separation?” what if you asked yourself this? When that thought comes up for you, just stop and just go, “Why am I choosing to revolve my life and my thoughts around this other adult, meanwhile, ignoring my own sanity and health?”
It’s just a little bit of a reframe that might get your brain focused on a different problem, a problem that you can actually have control over because we really can’t control over why he’s choosing childlike behavior, and we really can’t honestly know what’s going on inside of him for sure. We can make some guesses based on psychology, but honestly, at the end of the day, we don’t really know why he’s acting like that and why he makes the choices that he does in his life.
And it doesn’t even matter for our lives why he does it. What matters is the impact that it’s having on us and then the subsequent choices that we need to make for our own life as a result.
So number two, “How do I work with him to move forward?” Well, you can’t. Just like you couldn’t control him or make him do anything before, you can’t control him or make him do anything now, nor should you. We want to have the people in our lives and the other adults in their lives to have autonomy to make their own choices. That is respecting of other people. That is giving him the respect and honor that he deserves as a part of the human race to make his own choices, even if his choices suck. And then we also give ourselves the same respect and honor to make our own choices.
Now, if you meant, “How do I work with him to move forward?” some women actually ask that and what they mean is they would like to help their husband heal and get better. And my advice to that is just to say, “Yeah, that’s an option to stay with him and just let him be a millstone around your neck.” You could continue to hope that he might one day magically turn into an eagle instead of a millstone. You could go back and do what he wants you to do and be what he wants you to be. You could disappear and never give him anything true of yourself so that he could continue to feel good and be deceived into thinking that he’s done a good job with his one life.
But I recommend that instead of asking, “How do I work with him to move forward?” what if you asked, “How do I work with myself to move forward?” He may never be able to move forward, but you can move forward without him.
And then finally, she said, “I want insight into this type of man,” but we all know there are literally thousands of Instagram and Facebook accounts, along with hundreds of books, classes, and online articles—I have several of them—and podcasts that will educate you on all the ins and outs of every style of abuser, including your husband’s style.
And I know people who are—I was one of them—who are professional… They have consumed so much information and read so many things and listened to so many things over the years that they could probably confidently call themselves a professional when it comes to understanding abusers. If you want insight, it is there. So I don’t think that’s really the question that you could be asking yourself that would open up some more opportunities for you.
So instead of asking, “How do I get more insight into this type of man?” what if you decided to say, “I want insight into my own mind and beliefs so that I can evolve into the next version of who I was created to be.”
And if that’s a question that you’re asking, that’s where I would love to help you. Not just me, but this beautiful Kaleidoscope community of Christian women, including six coaches who are also inside of our community and myself, who are ready and willing to talk with you and be a part of your life. You belong with us. It is a place where you will belong, and it’s also a place where you can have impact, where you can have influence on other people, and it’s a beautiful community and I would love to have you join us. You can learn more about it and join today by going to joinflyingfree.com.
