Over the last few days we posted our top five viewed posts of 2011. As I was doing the research to determine the top five posts of last year, I was shocked when I saw the single most viewed post of 2011. This post wasn’t even a post that was written in 2011 so I didn’t include it in the top 5.  In fact, this post is almost 2 years old, written in January 2010. But literally thousands of people found this post in 2011 through a Google search.

Seeing this post be the top post wasn’t just shocking, it broke my heart. I know that there were thousands of people in 2011 that were desperate for help; desperate for hope; desperate for direction when they searched and found this post.  I wanted to re-post it today, because January is a tough month for marriage. Over the weekend I received multiple text messages from people looking to help friends that were caught in affairs or admitted affairs.

Trisha wrote this powerful post that we pray will a resource for you or someone you know in 2012. (If you or someone you know is the person that had the affair, here is a post I wrote to help:

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5 Things You Must Do When Your Spouse Has Had an Affair

The pressure of writing this post is a bit overwhelming and my heart is heavy. Not because I think I have all the answers but simply the reality of the broken person who will search for this resource. Remembering that surreal and painful moment of hearing “I’m having an affair.” And now knowing that I may be speaking into your “moment” causes me to stop and pray hard that I don’t mess this up.

As I, write I am reminded that this isn’t about what I’ve done. This post is all about what Christ did for me in my “moment” and how He continues to restore and bring HOPE in what was a very hopeless situation! This post is for YOU the hurting and broken spouse whose world is being turned upside down. I pray my words are encouraging and hope filled as you begin your journey of healing.

1. Grieve!
The Grieving process is a gift from God. As Christians we often feel guilty for being angry, sad or depressed. Knowing your spouse has had an affair is like being told they have died. All that you have thought to be true about your marriage and your spouse is now dead. It is OK to be angry! It is OK to feel depressed! It is OK to feel confused! It is OK to feel hopeless. Just because you feel these emotions it doesn’t change who God is and the love he has for you.

Grieving is the start to the restoration process and maybe not for your marriage but for you as a person and child of God. While it can be unhealthy to get stuck in one of the stages of grief it is essential to grieve and understand that with grieving comes healing!

2. Get Help! You Need Community.
When Justin said “I’m having an affair” it seemed that all my community disappeared. The affair was with my best friend and staff member of our church. The two people I should be able to turn to in a crisis were no longer there. It was SO LONELY. I was confused, tired, disoriented and in desperate need of help. The Lord brought an amazing group of women who despite hurting themselves loved me, embraced me and helped me SURVIVE the next few days and weeks.

I don’t know who this is for you. Pray that God would bring people to mind and trust those people to help you. I know it’s hard. Here I lost the two people closest to me and now had to trust others? Community may not be easy but IT’S A MUST. You need community for the sake of your family, your mental health and for a covering of prayer.

3. Create Boundaries / Create a Plan
I often say that just like with parenting there are general principles we can apply when parenting our children but if you’re a parent you know that each child is different. The same is true for your marriage. Although there are general steps you can take for your marriage, each marriage is different and your boundaries and plan will look different from mine.

Justin was NOT broken at the beginning of his confession! He was cold and made it very clear he was not in love with me and was not coming home. This was MY reality and I needed to create healthy boundaries. I kicked him out of our house. I created a new checking account and took the majority of our money. I had someone help me understand our finances because Justin did everything. I had a couple that helped me connect with Justin to take our boys since I wasn’t speaking to him. The list goes on and on. But with a plan and clear boundaries it gave my boys and I stability when my life was falling apart and time and space to begin to heal.

4. Counseling. Counseling. Counseling.
Let me first say that just because someone is a counselor that doesn’t mean they are good at what they do! Justin and I were so blessed by two amazing counselors Kathy (JD’s counselor) and Dan our marriage counselor. I don’t care if it takes you 5 tries to find a counselor your comfortable with YOU NEED TO GO.

Dan helped me navigate my emotions of the hurtful details Justin would share with me. He gave me tools to know how to grieve in a way that is healthy. He taught me that it was ok to “go after Justin” in sessions and demand the truth. He helped me to see my own junk and brokenness instead of hiding behind Justin’s. He allowed me to be angry but helped me not to become bitter. Each session we had to trust and choose to take ownership and action to step into that path of healing he was helping to provide.

5. Identity Thief / Finding Who You Are
It’s emotional to write this one. Who am I? What do I do from here? What will my family and friends say or do? What will my work do? Will I find a job to support my family? Am I really a single parent now? What if he marries her? How do I tell my kids? How do I walk my kids into school knowing half of our congregation will be there? God why? God what do I do? I worked so hard. I sacrificed so much just for this?

I no longer knew who I was. I hadn’t realized how I used so many other titles such as pastor’s wife, mom and friend to find my identity. The loss of so much brought me to my knees. Yet it allowed me to see that the only identity that matters is who I am in Christ. A loved daughter of the king and in time Jesus would teach me that this is enough.

This video is a reminder to us that God specializes in new beginnings. If you are hoping for a new start in 2012, this video could be for you. It may feel like it’s over, but it’s not over.

Each year during the week between Christmas and New Years we post the Top 5 Posts of the previous year. Today through the end of the year, we will post the top five posts of 2011. We hope you enjoy this short recap of the year and can’t wait to see all that God does at RefineUs in 2012.

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Like everyone else, I was overloaded with Twitter and Facebook updates yesterday reacting to the Casey Anthony not guilty verdict. People were outraged. People were appalled. Christians were blasting the judicial system; the judge and the jury. A lot of Christians were speaking as though they were the judge and jury.

I have not followed the Casey Anthony murder trial very closely. I know that there is some pretty incriminating circumstantial evidence. I know that according to what I’ve seen on TV, the case against her was pretty strong. I know it appears that she is getting away with murder. Based on all I’ve seen, I think she is. It is a scandal.

Everything within me says, “I can’t believe she is getting away with this.”

Then there is another voice in my head that reminds me of all that I have gotten away with. The lies I never got caught in. The lust that no one ever knew about. The hate I never showed outwardly. The jealousy I masked with self-righteousness. The consequences of sin I somehow escaped. But she (allegedly) killed her daughter. That is different than my sin. To me it is…then Jesus equates hating with murder and I know I’m guilty.

It is then that my heart remembers the scandal of my own “not guilty” verdict. When I deserved the death penalty, Jesus took it. When I deserved to pay for my crimes, Jesus stepped in and took my place. Grace doesn’t make what Casey Anthony allegedly did right…nothing would ever make that right.

Grace makes me thankful for God’s injustice…that He doesn’t give me what I deserve. It makes me thankful that I am not called to be the judge or jury, because I am at the center of my own scandal of forgiveness. This verdict is a reminder to me of how outraged most people would be if all of the sins of my life were known and the world was told that Jesus found me not guilty.

What are your thoughts, not only about the trial but about grace?

Each year during the week between Christmas and New Years we post the Top 5 Posts of the previous year. Today through the end of the year, we will post the top five posts of 2011. We hope you enjoy this short recap of the year and can’t wait to see all that God does at RefineUs in 2012.

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There is a litmus test in our marriage that has 100% accurate results. We can tell our marriage is drifting into mediocre when one word is used. As we speak at conferences and spend time coaching couples we hear this same word repeated over and over again. It is a small word, but one that carries the power to keep any marriage mediocre. That word is…… BUT.

• I know I have an anger problem…BUT
• I know I haven’t forgiven him…BUT
• It’s true that I occasionally look at porn…BUT
• I do use sex to manipulate my husband…BUT
• I haven’t been completely honest with my wife…BUT
• I invest more in my job than I do our marriage…BUT
• I am not where I need to be spiritually as a wife…BUT
• Yes, I’m chatting with my old boyfriend on Facebook…BUT
• I am a control freak with our money…BUT
• I make her feel guilty all the time…BUT
• I know I don’t stick to our budget…BUT
• I said I would change…BUT

There is a belief in all of us that we are a better spouse to our spouse than they are to us. That belief may not come to the surface every day, but it is driven out through conflict, hurt or difficult circumstances. That belief is expressed when we identify the role we play in our mediocre marriage and then deflect responsibility off of ourselves and onto our spouse. I know I have this problem, BUT she does this. I know I have this issue, BUT he does this.

We aren’t capable of changing our spouse so we use our spouse’s weaknesses or imperfections to justify our choices, behavior or character flaws. No one wins. You lose because you aren’t allowing God to change you. Your spouse loses because you are constantly keeping score of their mess-ups. Your marriage loses because it stays in a cycle of mediocrity.

Maybe today, you need to kick “but.” You need to identify the areas of your marriage you are trying to shift responsibility off of yourself and onto your spouse. What if you went to your spouse and just owned your brokenness? What if you said to them that you take responsibility for all of your flaws without brining up theirs? That is a game changer. That is you choosing to move beyond mediocre and give your marriage the chance to be extraordinary.

Do you struggle with BUT?

Each year during the week between Christmas and New Years we post the Top 5 Posts of the previous year. Today through the end of the year, we will post the top five posts of 2011. We hope you enjoy this short recap of the year and can’t wait to see all that God does at RefineUs in 2012.

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On Friday, Trisha and I were on our way to Indiana to show the house we still own to some potential renters. About half way through the trip, I got a call from a good friend. The conversation was sadly all too familiar.

“A few days ago, a really good friend of mine confessed to an affair”, my friend said. “How well do you know this guy, how close are you guys”, I asked. “He is a really good friend and I have been his accountability partner. What I’ve realized is that he has told me just enough to look accountable.”

That phrase rang in my head for the next two hours. For years, that was my life. I was transparent just enough to make people believe I was authentic. I was as honest as it was comfortable. I knew how to admit weaknesses and struggles that were socially acceptable and would score me religious points.

I’ve said this before, but it is still true: Accountability without transparency is useless.

Why do we hide so easily?
Fear of rejection.
Fear of judgment.
Fear of the consequences of honesty.
Fear of losing a relationship.

No decision made in fear is ever healthy.

I think it was Andy Stanley that said, “We fear the consequences of confession because we have yet to realize the consequences of concealment.”

I spent three years in an “accountability “ relationship in which I wasn’t transparent. It is an exhausting way to live. Lying to the people that are closest to you is never life giving.

In order to not go back to sharing “just enough to look accountable” I am consistently asking myself these questions as I attempt to be transparent…maybe they will help you today:

1. Am I telling the entire truth right now?

Shading the truth is easy. Exaggerating is often unnoticeable. As I am telling any story, but especially a story about myself, I want to always ask, “Am I telling the entire truth right now? Am I leave anything out or adding anything to this story? Am I lying when the truth will do?”

2. Am I sharing details that will make me look more spiritual than I really am?

You know how this rolls…we share parts of our heart with someone and 100% of our motivation is to show them how “close to God” we are. We want them to think of us as spiritual; we want to appear put together; we want to settle any doubt they may have of our relationship with God.

3. Am I trying to protect someone with only part of the truth?

I convince myself that if I tell the truth, it is only going to hurt a particular relationship. Truth does hurt a relationship…but it hurts like the setting of a broken bone hurts. There is tremendous pain in the moment, but then the relationship is set back in place to be stronger than it was before.

4. Am I telling myself the truth?

Sometime the person I need to be the most honest with is myself. I can deceive myself easier than anyone else. If I can’t be honest with myself, then I’m incapable of being honest with others.

These are four questions I use to be transparent, what would you add or take away?

Each year during the week between Christmas and New Years we post the Top 5 Posts of the previous year. Today through the end of the year, we will post the top five posts of 2011. We hope you enjoy this short recap of the year and can’t wait to see all that God does at RefineUs in 2012.

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Last Monday I got a text message from a good friend. The text said, “I need your help. A friend of mine is a pastor and he has confessed an affair. I don’t know what to do to help.”

The text broke my heart. It broke my heart for this pastor. It broke my heart for his wife and his kids. It broke my heart for the church that found out yesterday about his unfaithfulness.

There is a verse in Proverbs that came to my mind as I thought about this pastor…because it not only applies to him, but to me and maybe to you.

There is a path before each person that seems right, but it ends in death

As I was thinking about this verse, I thought about the path to an affair. There is a definite path to choosing an affair. It isn’t one big step into sin, but rather several small steps and compromises here and there.

Here is the certain path to an affair:

• Believe that it will never happen to you

• Choose to equate accountability with transparency

• Find your identity in something other than Christ

• Be willing to tell little lies or leave out part of the truth when it will benefit you

• Place more of a weight on what others think about you than what your spouse thinks about you

• Pretend to be closer to God than you really are

• Overcome your insecurities and low self esteem with a false pride and arrogance

• Ignore sexual brokenness from your past and believe it won’t affect your marriage

• Romanticize a relationship with someone else as being more fulfilling than your relationship with your spouse

It is easy to look back on an affair and see the choices and compromises that were made along the way. What if we didn’t wait until the choices we can’t undo were made before we changed? What if we changed the direction of our marriage now? What if you chose to walk a path that leads to life in your marriage, today?

What if more people recognized the path before they were on it? That is why RefineUs exists.

We are fighting for you…and so is God.

We just wanted to say Merry Christmas to you and your family. We can’t thank you enough for being a part of our community. It is an honor to experience life and marriage and family with you. We hope you have an amazing day!

We love you guys.

Justin, Trish and boys.

But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. Galatians 4:4-5

You don’t have the capacity to redeem yourself, but you do have a Redeemer.

You don’t have the capacity to change yourself, but you do have a Transformer.

You don’t have the ability to forgive your sins, but you do have a Forgiver.

You don’t have the power to heal yourself, but you do have a Healer.

You don’t have the strength to sustain yourself, but you do have a Sustainer.

You don’t possess enough control to protect yourself, but you do have a Protector.

You don’t have the capacity to deliver yourself, but you do have a Deliverer.

You don’t have the power to create yourself, but you do have a Creator.

You don’t have the ability to fix yourself, but you do have a Restorer.

You don’t have the strength to save yourself, but you do have a Savior.

Thank you, Jesus for Christmas. Thank you for creating, restoring, delivering, protecting, sustaining, healing, forgiving, transforming, redeeming and saving. It is truly a Merry Christmas.

One of the promises of Christmas is peace. Right after Jesus was born, angels appeared to a group of shepherds and announced that Jesus would bring peace on earth and goodwill toward men. The Bible promises those of us that are followers of Christ that we will have a “peace that surpasses all understanding.” Jesus was called the Prince of Peace…yet for many of us, if we are honest, peace eludes us this Christmas. We wouldn’t describe our life as “peaceful.”

Isaiah 32:17 gives a perfect description of peace:

And this righteousness will bring peace. Yes, it will bring quietness and confidence forever.

A simple definition of Godly peace is a quietness of heart and a confidence in God. That is peace. But every single day, in your life and in mine there will be forces that try to rob you of peace. There are enemies of peace in each of our lives.

 1. Unmet Expectations

For many of us, we had a vision for our life, our marriage, our career, a relationship…and the vision that we had and the reality that we live in are worlds apart. We live with unmet expectations. You expected to graduate by now. You expected to be out of debt by now. You expected to be married by now. You are married and you expected to be pregnant by now. You never expected to get divorced. You thought he’d apologize. You thought she’d forgive. You thought he would never leave. You thought she’d never lie to you.

Unmet expectations are the enemy to quietness and confidence. They seek to reek havoc and bring trouble to our hearts and fear to our soul.

 2. Unfair Circumstances

Maybe this Christmas, you find yourself the victim of unfair circumstances. You were the faithful spouse. You were the loving husband. You were the generous person that got taken advantage of. You were the health nut blindsided by a doctor’s visit. You were the loyal friend. You were the dedicated employee. You were the forgiving sister. You were the olive-branch extending son or daughter. You did nothing to deserve or earn the circumstances you currently have to deal with.

When you are faithful to God and then you find yourself in a situation in which it feels like He hasn’t been faithful to you, it is easy to lose confidence. We lose confidence in His goodness and His character.  It is easy to allow peace to evaporate.

There will be circumstances in our life that make it seem like the world has overcome you…but Jesus says, “Take heart, I have overcome the world.”

3. Unresolved Conflict

Ever been in a place where it felt easier to give up on a relationship than to fight for it? Resignation is the place where peace goes to die. It is easier to quit than to resolve conflict. You thought that ignoring the conflict would make it go away. You bought the lie that time heals all wounds. But time doesn’t heal all wounds…time only enables us to live out of our woundedness.

We can pretend things are okay when we go home for Christmas. We can pretend things are okay with our ex-spouse when we really haven’t forgiven. We can act like don’t have an issue with our sister or our dad, but we know its there. We can pretend. Pretending will never bring peace.

Which of these enemies of peace come at you the hardest this Christmas?

Divorce doesn’t happen all at once. Addictions don’t take hold overnight. Relationships don’t usually just implode. There is a slide into divorce. There is a gradual accent into addiction.  There is a subtle breakdown in relationships.

Most of the time, our character doesn’t deteriorate instantly. It starts with a willingness to rationalize. We are capable of convincing ourselves that the choice we are making isn’t that big of a deal.

Rationalizing is a slippery slope, and it doesn’t kill us all at once, it kills us an inch at a time. A small compromise here, a justification there, and little by little the convictions you once had fade away. Maybe you aren’t justifying an affair…but you are on the slippery slope of rationalizing other choices:

-withholding truth: You have accountability partners, and you have people with whom you are “doing life” and you have a spouse that you say you could tell anything to…but deep inside, you are withholding truth. Accountability is only as good as our willingness to be transparent, and you rationalize the truth you withhold as “not really telling a lie, and no one is really getting hurt.” So you withhold more and more and more of yourself.

-pornography: You know what pornography has done to other marriages, to other friends, to other families, to other church leaders…but you aren’t really “addicted” to pornography…and besides it doesn’t have the same affect on you that it does on other people. It won’t hurt your life, your marriage, your kids, your church, your ministry like it has other people.

-debt…You know you need to create a budget. You know you need to stop using credit cards. You know you need to share with your spouse how much debt you are in. But you make enough money to cover the minimum payments. You know you’ll be able to pay off the big screen in less than 90 days. You deserve the trip on Spring Break…you’ve worked hard. How could you not use your Macy’s card, it was an extra 15% off?

-drinking…Its not like you are an alcoholic. You can stop any time you want. You just like to have a good time. You just like to go out with the fellas. You just need to take the edge off. You know how to hold your liquor.

-flirting in the office…The sexual comments are common place at your office. The person you are flirting with knows you’re happily married. It is just friendly banter, it will never go any farther than that. You’re just charismatic, its part of your personality, its who you are…people think you’re charming.

The list could go on…the movies we watch, the music we listen to, the grudges we hold, the people we gossip about, the tempers we lose…we can justify it and explain it away.

It’s a small choice here, and a compromise there…and one morning we wake up and we have no idea how we drifted so far away from where we knew God was leading us. I have been there.

When we rationalize sin, we are telling the deepest of all lies…that is a lie to ourself.