Relief descends (we all heave a collective sigh) and watch as she closes the window and proceeds back to her peaceful spot …
Only to find the real intruder grabbing her from behind her bedroom door with a dagger!
Plot point A: She saw trouble where there was none.
And …
Plot point B: She didn’t see the real trouble where it lurked.
Yep, that just about summarizes how denial works in the life of one who has indulged this distorted focus—whether out of fear of what might be found or out of fear of what it might personally cost.
Here’s how it works in married life:
Your spouse may tire of you constantly sounding the alarm and criticizing the small problems you see in him/her or even in your situation, while you seem to ignore the “big hairy monsters” lurking in your own life.
Does this sound familiar? If it’s reflective of your life, then consider Jesus’ admonition in Matthew …
“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” Matthew 7:5-3 (NIV)
Only problem with this is … we often (pardon the pun) “lose sight” of the way to take that speck denial out of our lives.
There are many ways, but I want to highlight two important ways I’ve found to be helpful:
- Ask God to reveal the sin. Pray the prayer found in Psalm 139:23-24 daily, being open to and watchful for what God reveals to you.
- Open up to trusted, Christian friends. There’s a helpful technique developed by Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingram called the Johari Window that helps us to see how increasing our self-disclosure to safe people will increase our ability to see our own faults and sins—crushing denial.
Once we are armed with this knowledge, we can hunt down our inner monster denial and save the day save our marriage and spouses a lot of pain and frustration!
How have you allowed denial to blind you to the true dangers lurking in your marriage and life? What will you do today to attack and take down the danger?
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on Worthy Bible Studies
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