Category: Freedom in Christ

Control, Boundaries, and the Freedom to Let God Be God

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I’ve been working through the last few verses of 1 John, and John’s final warning has stayed with me: “Dear children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:21). The timing caught my attention because the leader of my support group recently shared a prayer that included this line: “Forgive us for making their recovery an idol that dictates our daily peace, our joy, and our sanity.” I’m not bowing down to a statue, but there have been times when I looked to my husband’s recovery for a sense of security and peace that I can only find in God.

That made me think about how much I wanted to manage my husband’s recovery. I was afraid that if I stopped watching, reminding, questioning, and trying to keep things moving, he might stop doing the work. I wanted him to go to meetings, work his steps, talk to his sponsor, and understand what needed to change. I wanted him to see what I could see.

I understand why I felt that way. After betrayal, I wanted to know what was happening. I wanted to feel safe. I wanted to believe that if I stayed alert and kept asking the right questions, I could prevent more hurt. I needed to ask and talk about honesty and safety. But I was also carrying the fear that if I didn’t keep his recovery going, it might not go at all.

That was a heavy burden to carry. I couldn’t make him recover by trying harder. I couldn’t make him repent, or create lasting change by reminding him what to do. His recovery is his responsibility.

I’m learning that boundaries and control are not the same thing. I can ask for honesty and transparency. I can speak up when something doesn’t feel safe. I can step away from a conversation that becomes hurtful. I can decide what I’m willing to participate in. Those choices belong to me. But I can’t make my husband choose recovery. I can’t make his choices for him.

That still brings up fear. What happens if I stop managing it and he doesn’t keep choosing recovery? What if our future doesn’t look the way I hope it will? I don’t have answers to those questions. I still care deeply about my marriage. I still hope for a healthier future. Letting go of control doesn’t make those hopes disappear. It means I’m learning that I can’t guarantee that future by carrying responsibility that belongs to my husband.

On Sunday, we sang a song at church that brought this back to mind. One line says, “I won’t bow to idols.” The verse also talks about standing firm in worship, even in the fire, and not letting feelings shape what is true. It made me think about how easily my husband’s recovery became an idol for me. It also brought up my fear that my relationship with him may never be what I want it to be. I want God to heal the damage in my marriage, and I want my husband to keep choosing recovery. But I don’t want fear about the future to shape my faith or decide where I turn for peace. I want to keep turning to God, even when I don’t know what happens next.

John also writes about the confidence we can have when we bring our requests to God according to His will (1 John 5:14–15). I can ask God for wisdom, truth, courage, and help to take the next step. I can pray for my husband and for our marriage. I’m still learning what it means to trust God with the future when I don’t know exactly what it will look like. I know I can bring Him my hopes, but I can’t treat prayer like a way to make sure the ending turns out the way I want.

As I’ve started releasing the responsibility of managing my husband’s recovery, I’ve experienced peace. The circumstances aren’t all resolved. I still need honesty. I still need to pay attention to what is true and keep the boundaries that matter. But I’m not trying to hold everything together by myself anymore. I have left my husband’s choices with him and asked God to lead me in mine.

I want other wives on this unwanted journey to experience some of that same freedom. I know how easy it is to feel responsible for keeping everything on track. I can’t tell another woman what God is asking her to do in her own circumstances. I can only share what God is teaching me: I am responsible for my choices. My husband is responsible for his. And I can trust God with what I can’t control.

Surrender doesn’t mean the outcome no longer matters to me. It means the outcome is no longer mine to control. I still hope. I still pray. I still take the next step in front of me. And I’m learning to let God be God.

Stop Chasing the Gerbil

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I recently read a story about a woman whose son got a gerbil. One day the gerbil got out of its cage, and every time someone in the family saw it running through the house, complete chaos broke out. Everyone would drop whatever they were doing and try to catch the gerbil. They would chase it around the house and under furniture, trying to get it back into its cage, but they could never catch it.

Eventually, the woman just gave up trying. She didn’t stop caring about the gerbil or hope something bad happened to it. She just stopped dropping everything and joining in the chaos every time the gerbil appeared. Then one day, the gerbil came out, walked right up to her, stopped in front of her, and let her pick it up and put it back in the cage, where it apparently lived happily for the rest of its little gerbil life.

I think I have spent a lot of my life chasing the gerbil. When there is a problem, I want to figure it out. When someone I love doesn’t know what to do, I want to help them figure out what to do. When something doesn’t make sense, I want to understand it. When someone doesn’t understand me, I explain. When something has been forgotten, I remind. When someone is upset, I want to help make it better. Those aren’t necessarily bad things. In a lot of areas of my life, those qualities have served me really well.

But I am starting to realize that somewhere along the way, especially in my marriage and throughout this healing process, helping turned into carrying. Supporting turned into managing. Loving sometimes turned into taking responsibility for things that were never actually mine to be responsible for.

Every time a gerbil ran across the room, I chased it. Why did he do that? What does he need to understand? How can I explain this differently so he finally gets it? What should he do differently next time? What is he missing in his recovery? Did he remember the appointment? Does he understand why this hurt me? What does he need to do to repair this? What does he need to do now?

I have spent so much time trying to figure things out for him. Sometimes he even asks me to. “What should I do?” has become a question I am realizing I don’t have to answer. He can figure it out. That’s easy to write it, but it doesn’t feel simple at all.

Galatians 6:2 tells us to “bear one another’s burdens,” but just a few verses later Galatians 6:5 says, “each will have to bear his own load.” I am starting to learn the difference. There are burdens we are supposed to help one another carry. That’s part of loving people. But that doesn’t mean I am supposed to pick up someone else’s load and carry it for them.

My husband’s recovery is his load. His choices are his load. Remembering his commitments is his load. Looking at his own calendar is his load. Finding information that is available to him is his load. Figuring out what to do when he doesn’t know what to do is his load. His relationship with God is his load. His fear, disappointment, frustration, loneliness and uncertainty are things I can care about deeply without believing it is my responsibility to make them go away.

I think that is where not chasing the gerbil gets hard for me. It isn’t just about deciding I am not going to fix things for him anymore. I have to be willing to live with what happens when I don’t.

If I don’t remind him, what if he forgets? If I don’t explain it again, what if he never understands? If I don’t tell him what he should do, what if he does the wrong thing? If I stop trying to move recovery forward, what if he doesn’t move forward? If I stop trying to make our marriage healthier, what if he doesn’t do his part?

And maybe the question underneath all of those questions is the one that scares me the most. What if I stop chasing the gerbil and nothing happens? What if I stop doing the things I have been doing and he doesn’t pick up his load? What if he doesn’t grow? What if he doesn’t seek God? What if he doesn’t do the work? What if our marriage doesn’t become what I desperately want it to become?

That’s scary because chasing the gerbil gives me the feeling that at least I am doing something. Even when it is exhausting me, I can convince myself that maybe if I explain it one more time, find the right resource, ask the right question, point out the right pattern or tell him what I need, something will finally click.

But maybe part of my healing is accepting that I cannot make it click. I can’t do his recovery for him. I can’t make him understand something he isn’t willing or ready to understand. I can’t make him remember. I can’t make him stop and think before he reacts. I can’t make him seek God. I can’t make him learn from his mistakes. And I can’t make him become a safe husband by explaining to him how to become one. I can only pay attention to what he chooses to do with the information and opportunities he already has.

That doesn’t mean I am giving up on him. It doesn’t mean I am giving up on my marriage. It doesn’t mean I don’t care what happens. I think for a long time I would have confused stepping back with not loving someone enough. Now I am starting to see that there is a difference between loving someone and taking responsibility for them.

I can care that he is confused without solving his confusion. I can care that he is anxious without immediately reassuring him. I can know that he is hurting without making it my responsibility to stop the hurt. I can want him to grow without teaching him how to grow. I can want our marriage to heal without taking responsibility for making it heal.

And maybe the hardest part is that I have to let his choices give me information. If I stop reminding him, I get to see whether he learns to remember. If I stop telling him what he should do, I get to see what he chooses to do. If I stop explaining the same thing over and over, I get to see whether he seeks understanding somewhere besides me. If I stop moving the relationship forward, I get to see whether he does the work that makes moving forward possible. That feels incredibly vulnerable because I may not like what I learn.

But there is another part of this that I am just beginning to understand. When I am constantly stepping in, explaining, reminding, fixing, researching, teaching and trying to keep everything moving forward, I may not only be doing work that belongs to my husband. I may also be getting in the middle of work that belongs to God.

Maybe my husband needs to feel confused sometimes. Maybe he needs to sit with not knowing what to do. Maybe he needs to experience the consequences of forgetting something instead of having me remind him. Maybe he needs to wrestle with God instead of coming to me for the answer. Maybe some of the discomfort I have been trying so hard to relieve is the very discomfort God can use to teach him something.

I don’t know what God is doing in my husband. I don’t know what choices he will make. And I don’t know what will happen in our marriage if I stop trying to keep everything moving in the direction I desperately want it to go. That is where this becomes about more than not chasing a gerbil. It becomes about trusting God with the outcome.

Proverbs 3:5 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” I have always thought about that verse during the times when I couldn’t figure something out. But maybe there is another kind of trust God is asking from me now. Maybe it isn’t just, God, I can’t figure this out, so I am going to trust You. Maybe sometimes it is, God, I probably could keep trying to figure this out, but I am beginning to understand that this isn’t mine to figure out.

My responsibility before God is for my own choices, my own words, my own obedience, my own healing and my own heart. I can tell the truth without making someone understand it. I can have a boundary without making someone like it. I can walk away from an unhealthy interaction without convincing the other person that it was unhealthy. I can let another adult wrestle with a problem without jumping in and solving it. And I can leave room for God to work in places where I have been frantically trying to do the work myself. I think that may be the hardest part. I have to stop chasing the gerbil without knowing what happens next.

Maybe my husband picks up his load. Maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he grows in ways I have prayed for. Maybe there are things I learn that are painful. I don’t know yet. But I am beginning to understand that loving my husband does not require me to control the outcome. Trusting God does not mean believing He will make everything turn out the way I want it to. It means trusting Him enough to obey Him with what belongs to me and surrender what doesn’t. Maybe it isn’t giving up at all. Maybe it’s finally realizing that I don’t have to chase every gerbil that gets loose.

Some things were never mine to catch.

The Road Called Freedom

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I recently finished Session Five, Worthless, in Jennie Allen’s The Lie You Don’t Know You Believe. She ended the teaching with one simple sentence that I have not been able to stop thinking about: You free changes the world. I have been thinking about those words a lot.

Looking back over my life, I have realized that I learned how to survive at a very young age. My parents divorced when I was 5. My birth mother was not consistently present in my life. I lost my grandma, who was the one constant in my childhood, when I was twelve years old. At fifteen, my life was completely uprooted when we moved across the country. At eighteen, I became pregnant, and my son’s biological father walked away. Later came years of raising children with Cystic Fibrosis, hospital rooms, fear, grief, losing Melanie, fighting for Rosie’s life, losing Rosie, and eventually discovering my husband’s betrayal.

I do not say any of that because I want people to feel sorry for me. I say it because when I look back, I can see that survival became my default way of living. I learned how to keep going, how to handle the next crisis, and how to push down what I was feeling long enough to figure out what needed to be done. I learned how to function while hurting. Somewhere along the way, survival stopped being something I did during hard seasons. It became the way I lived.

Then came September 8, 2023. When my husband’s addiction and infidelity was disclosed, every bit of my energy went into surviving again. Every day became about making it to the next day. I spent countless hours trying to make sense of what had happened, trying to understand why, trying to decide whether our marriage could survive, and trying to quiet the lies that suddenly seemed louder than the truth. I carried fear, grief, anger, confusion, and exhaustion all at the same time. I was doing what I had always done. I was surviving.

But eventually, survival was not enough anymore. One day, I drank so much tequila trying to escape the pain that I passed out. I couldn’t deal with the pain anymore, and I didn’t know what to do with it, so I tried to numb it. I wanted relief, even if it was only temporary. Looking back, I see that day as a wake-up call. Escaping was not healing, and numbing was not freedom. I had reached the end of myself.

I had spent most of my life asking, “How do I survive this?” God began teaching me to ask a different question: What would it look like to be free? At first, I thought I was looking for freedom. What I know now is that I was looking for Jesus, and He was leading me toward freedom.

Over the last year and a half, God has been taking me down a different road. It is not a road where all the pain disappeared, every question was answered, or my marriage was instantly restored. It is a road where He has been slowly removing the chains I did not even realize I was carrying. He has been showing me the lies I believed about myself: that I had to earn my worth, that I had to perform, that I had to be useful, that if I didn’t measure up I didn’t matter, and that my value could be determined by someone else’s choices.

Instead, He has been teaching me who I really am. I am His beloved daughter. I am loved before I accomplish anything and before I get everything right. I am loved because of who He is, not because of what I do.

One of the other things that stood out to me in the session was the idea that a relationship can be better than it was before because the people in it have gone through conflict and worked it out. That really hit me when I thought about my marriage.

For years, I thought my husband and I were going through conflict. The truth is, we went around it. We moved on. We got quiet. We let time pass. But we didn’t really deal with what was underneath it. You can’t work through what’s been hidden.

Now, for the first time in our marriage, we are learning to tell the truth, face what is real, and work through conflict instead of simply going around it. It’s slow. It’s painful. It’s painfully slow. But it is different. We are not just going through conflict anymore. We are trying to work it out.

I don’t know exactly what the final outcome of our marriage will be, but I do know that God is doing a different work in us. Maybe that’s what redemption looks like. Not instant change, pretending the damage didn’t happen, or rushing back to the way things were, but faithful perseverance. One difficult conversation, one truth told, one surrendered heart, and one step of obedience at a time.

The other thought that has stayed with me is this: People who are still chained spend all their energy trying to survive, but free people have something left to give. That sentence stopped me because I have spent so much of my life using all of my energy to survive.

When you are chained by grief, fear, shame, striving, control, or lies, there’s not much left for anything else. Every day becomes about getting through the day. As I have allowed Jesus to set me free, I have noticed something changing. I am beginning to have room again. Room to notice other people, encourage someone else, dream, serve from love instead of striving, tell the truth about what I have walked through, and let God use my story.

I believe God can use the circumstances of my life and the things I have walked through to help someone else walk through them. But I can’t help another person find freedom if I am still completely chained to the pain. That doesn’t mean I have to be perfectly healed before God can use me. It does mean I have to keep allowing Him to lead me out of captivity. I have to keep surrendering what I can’t carry, letting Him expose the lies, and follow Him.

Second Corinthians 1:3–4 says that God comforts us in our troubles so that we can comfort others with the comfort we have received from Him. God does not waste our pain. He frees us so we can point others toward freedom. He heals us so we can point people to the Healer.

I’m walking on the road called freedom now. I still have days when the old lies whisper, moments when fear feels familiar, and places where God is uncovering wounds I didn’t know were there. I still have a long way to go, but I don’t want to go back to the road called survival. Survival helped me endure things I had to walk through, but it was never meant to become my permanent home.

Galatians 5:1 says, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” Jesus did not set me free so that I could keep living as though I were chained. He did not bring me this far so I could return to the old road. He is teaching me how to live differently; not merely surviving, pretending, numbing, or striving to earn my worth, but rooted in Him, anchored in His truth, and walking toward freedom.

Maybe the free really do change the world, not because they are strong survivors, but because they know the One who broke their chains.

-Aimee
July 16, 2026