Tag: Tiffany Montgomery

What I learned about distance in Christian marriage

I am delighted to welcome Tiffany Montgomery as a guest blogger today – she shares insights from when she discovered her part in creating distance in her marriage, and what God prompted her to do about it. That forms the basis of a new online course she is launching, Finding Hope and Joy in My Marriage – and there is one free place up for grabs below!

Do you remember when you were courting your husband?  (or he was courting you 😉 ).  Our romance began with long nights playing cards, drinking coffee and talking about our hopes and dreams, fears and failures of the past.  We were so close, the best of friends. What happened?  

We don’t talk like that anymore.  Distance. It came with time and hurt and life.

I don’t always tell him things and he forgets to tell me things. Now we have to have a time on the calendar to talk deeper than schedule things and kid things.  When did that happen? There was a time – in the past – when wild bulls could not have kept me from calling him to talk about the joys and sorrows of life.

As a woman I feel the pain of that distance deeply, but it never crossed my mind that he feels it too.  He put distance between us at some point – just like I put distance between him.

The man I love – who once worked day and night to make me happy – his need for respect is as real as his need for air.

When he feels disrespected, when his pride is hurt again and again, he starts putting up a wall to protect himself – from me.  I think of it as a dam – with walls that are high and wide – behind which he can hide the well springs of his heart.

My man is human – a natural mixture of good, neutral, and bad character traits – just like me.  And, just like me, he puts distance between himself and hurt.

Proverbs 21:19 says: “It is better to live in a desert land than with a contentious and vexing woman.”

This scripture describes a wife with a mouth that can maim her husband.   Can you relate to the conviction in those words?  

When I am not a safe place for my husband, he puts up a wall between us.

When I challenge him for the leadership role in our home, he builds that wall higher.

This wall grows and grows over the years until he has a built a huge dam.  Our husbands are protecting themselves from the pain of not being good enough for the most important person in their world… his wife.

When I think of it this way, my very soul is laid bare.

I created this unsafe place for him?  My words, my nagging, my putting my preferences first, my business and forgetfulness, my fear and taking the wrong side…  Have you created a similar place?

Did I really crush him so much that he can’t trust me with his heart?  I see the distance and know it is true. Can you see your husband’s lack of trust in you?  His uncertainty of how you will react to his flaws?

I just want to add a note here that the way he is responding is not all on us.  You must not take responsibility for his every mood swing. Often there is more going on in his world.  Hurts from his past create some of his behavior; wrestling with God can create some of it as well. He may struggle with insecurity or any number of other things.  I want to be sure you understand here that we are only to deal with what our attitude and actions are affecting.

Over the course of the past decade God has shown me how my words affect my husband –deeper than he lets on.  I have to look to how he responds to see the real results of years of nagging and disrespect. It took so much to heal this hurt and get my husband to let down the wall to the dam over his heart.

How did I create a Safe Place to remove the Distance in our Christian Marriage?

These I the things that I did, which I humbly suggest could help you too:

  1. Accept him – flaws and all.
    • This required a lot of forgiveness. Forgiving the past hurts.
    • It also required a lot of prayer – because some of those flaws are hard to live with.  I am now trusting God to change my husband in His time – instead of trying to change him in my time.
  2. Showing respect with my words and taking complaints and concerns to God instead of my husband.
    • Did I mention prayer?  Taking my words to God first –- letting Him be my filter – has changed the entire dynamic in our home!
    • God deals with the emotional side of what I want to say, then hubby and I can clearly communicate when there are problems.  And we can have more fun when there are not problems – because I am trusting God to handle the bigger things for me!

My Husband put distance between us because I was not a safe place for him to be real – flaws and all.  

Bit by slow bit I am trying to be a safe place for him.  To love him the way I want to be loved.

Does that fix all of our problems?   Nope.  He still hurts me sometimes and I still hurt him sometimes.  But we are accepting the humanness of ourselves and we can work through things now because neither of us expects the other to be perfect!

Are you longing for Hope and Joy in your Marriage?

God took me through a journey of re-learning how to live as a wife with a biblical worldview.  It is a joy for me to teach and mentor locally and I am thrilled to launch this new Online Course.

In this 9 week course we will dig into the Bible and find out how to restore our marriages – rebuilding them to last a lifetime!

This Marriage Course will include:

  • 10 self paced video lessons on:
    • Love
    • Forgiveness
    • Desires Vs. Preferences
    • My Mouth
    • Appreciation & Admiration
    • The Leader
    • Understanding Men
    • Respect
    • My Priorities
  • 9 weeks of personal study
    • 5 days each week that should take 10-15 minutes
  • 45 days of prayer prompts

I am excited to give away one spot on the course!

To Enter Click this Link.

 

 

Tiffany is a Kentucky Jesus Gal with a passion to encourage and equip wives and moms through practical biblical discipleship on her site HopeJoyInChrist.com. She loves to connect with other women to help grow their Christian marriages inside her growing Facebook Community. She shares: “My heart’s desire is to encourage the women – if we walk this life together we can do it better”!

Unmasked: letting go of anxiety

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To celebrate the launch of my book, Taking Off the Mask, and to continue to promote authentic community here I have started a blogging series called Unmasked: stories of authenticity. I am inviting guest bloggers to write about their own experiences of God calling them to be more authentic. I am delighted to welcome Tiffany Montgomery as the first blogger. She has a very powerful story – and I am blown away and humbled by how God has used my book as part of the process (I didn’t know that until I read her review and this post once she submitted it.) Thank you Tiffany for sharing so openly and honestly…

My two Little Blessings share a room in our home. It has to be the messiest place on the planet! Whenever I am missing something (a hairbrush, my favorite flats, the cute sweater I bought last week) I know where I have to go to find it. And inevitably, as I search the room I get hotter and hotter about the mess.  Can you relate?

As I get angry they begin their excuses. “Mom, I was about to put that away.” “Mom, A did that, not me.” And on they go digging themselves a hole there is no getting out of. I give them an ultimatum, “Clean this room or lose your screen time for the rest of the week!”

Can I be honest with you? I hate when they clean that room. It gets so much worse before it gets clean. The mess spills into the hallway. I have to referee bickering and step in to teach them new cleaning things…it is hard work.

Has God ever called you to clean up something in your spiritual life in the same way? Here’s how He called me to start removing my mask…

I am the controller, the peacemaker, the fixer, the go-to gal to co-ordinate a new ministry, the jack of all trades when life gets crazy, etc. Those are some of the names my mask might carry.

Is it wrong to wear my mask?

Well I can’t really say. It’s what has worked to keep me ‘safe’ in life. Comfortable in life. Un-noticed as I suffer.

You see I suffer from anxiety. My doctor calls it ‘High Functioning Anxiety’, which sounds like I am a very capable person. In reality I was just setting myself up to fall apart hard.

That’s what I am doing in life right now… falling apart.

I’ve had an anxiety disorder for as long as I can remember. My earliest memory of it was at age eight sitting nearly hyperventilating in a closet – hiding.

My anxiety is not the result of a chemical imbalance or neurological issue, but from the trauma of my past.

The past is not something I can change.

I just celebrated my birthday in the midst of a year of running from God about my anxiety. You see, He has been relentlessly calling me to dig deeper and find true healing all year. It started in March at a women’s retreat. He began to reveal the deep wounds that I cover up with my mask.

Deep wounds never stay covered for long.

My wounds are as deep as they are wide and I have been trying to run from them for so many years… and for the most part I have succeeded. But God said dig deeper. Did I?  Nope, I ran.

Have you ever tried to run from God?

Let me tell you it doesn’t work well. He has been so patient with me…because I am scared. He’s good that way. Never pressing faster or farther than He knows I can handle.

‘But it’s time,’ I’ve heard Him whisper over and over again.

Hope

When I was a young woman, trying to make sense of a distorted, warped life, I knew nothing except trauma and Jesus. I don’t even remember when the word came to me, but it is in every journal since I was 15. Hope.

  • Hope that God would miraculously heal all the broken warped pieces of my life, heart and body.
  • Hope that I could sleep through the night without the nightmares.
  • Hope that no one would ever pry deep enough to see the wounds and pain that live deeply inside of me.
  • Hope that I could live a normal life and be happy one day.

Joy

In my twenties God gave me another word. You see I never found happy. Happy always seemed to be so far out of reach. Even with doctors and medicine, counselors and Bible studies I always had the anxiety.

I always had a smile too… but it was a mask. My smile was rarely heart deep.

I made a friend in college who had a serious health issue – yet always seemed happy.

He explained to me that he was not ‘happy’ at all, he was actually in pain daily. What he had was joy.  He knew Jesus and embraced the Holy Spirit in a way I’ve never seen before. He focused on God’s love when days were hard and it filled him with joy.

I was in pain every day. Sleepless every night. Fearful of the trauma that wounded my past.  I took his advice and began to read the Bible like a woman with an addiction. When I could not sleep I poured through the psalms. When anxiety became crippling I memorized verses. I found joy.

For years I have clung to hope and joy like a lighthouse.

But I still wear my mask.

I cling to hope and joy while I hide behind my mask. Why? Fear. Some fear that is based in reality. People in my past who knew my condition and the cause of it were hurtful. I have had to learn how to forgive and move past.

I’d love to share the pathway I found to truly forgiving the pain, abuse and betrayal that stole so many years of my life. I was stuck, unwilling to forgive.  I had to learn to release people, so I could walk in freedom! My story is available in a free download here.

But I still keep my mask on to prevent a repeat of that pain.

Brave

In March I heard God calling to take the mask off. I have run for months all the while pursuing the last thing God called me to. In October as I journaled through my birthday and this year’s work I heard a new word. I had to be brave because God has a new work for my life. He gave me Isaiah 43 to hold onto as He worked through it all.

‘Bravely take off the mask.’

God has said that to me so many times this year! When Claire mentioned her book I was just eager to help a friend and learn about publishing a book. Honestly it was just something on my list to do because I plan to publish a study in 2018 and I have so much to learn. It didn’t even register to me what the book was about until I sat down to read last month.

As I sat fuzzy socked at Starbucks I began to inwardly cry. The words began to fly off the pages as my journal filled with quotes and resources to help me in this journey. God put the right resource in my hands to find practical steps for taking off this mask and moving from hoping to healing.

To get healing from my anxiety I have to be willing to let everything fall apart. Since reading the book I have begun to step back from leadership in almost every area…because the attacks will get worse before they get better. I have found time to go back into counseling because I have to let myself remember the horrors of my past. I needed courage to let God into those broken pieces to begin healing them.

‘Without a mask on…everyone will see.’  ‘I am so scared’ I pray over and over to God.

Taking off the mask

I don’t know where you are in your story. Are you hurting? Have you dealt with things that are still unhealed?  Claire’s authenticity has given me the courage to bravely begin taking off my mask and seek help.

Brave.  Such a small word. But God is gracious enough to give such inspiration to underscore that work in my life. He will do the same for you if you let Him.

I know it feels scary. But I also know that the messiest room can be cleaned. It will certainly get messier still in the process, but when you pull everything out into the light you can identify it and put the pieces back where they really belong. You may even find things you didn’t know were hidden in the mess. Just like I found my lost hairbrush 😉

in HIM

Tiffany

Tiffany Montgomery is a Jesus lover, wife, mother, blogger and homeschooling gal who is passionate about equipping and encouraging wives and mothers in Biblical discipleship! Find out more about her at http://hopejoyinchrist.com or connect on Facebook or Pinterest.