Themes: relationships, sin, love vs. entitlement and offense
Romans 12
Romans 12:2 is one of my favorite verses: “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” Working as a therapist, I have learned the importance in identifying our thoughts in order to replace negative, untrue thoughts with positive and healthy thoughts. If we feed negative and distorted thoughts, they negatively impact every part of our lives. In therapy, there are many different types of therapy models to help people heal. I have found, time and time again, that the Bible teaches us all these models. God has given me a passion to be a present witness with people amidst their pain, and for this I am truly honored and grateful. At times, it can feel like this blessing is a curse, but God teaches me that it is not me alone that moves people, but the good in me that is only from Him that moves people. He teaches me that He is the ultimate healer, and He will continue to encourage and motivate me to use my gifts to bring people to Christ. He teaches me that He is the one doing the healing, not me. If we dive into our Bible, God does give us direction, and He will transform our mind, hearts, bodies, and spirit. In that transformation, Paul tells us that we are supposed to be different!
Romans 12:3-8 talks about the body of Christ and using spiritual gifts. This verse guides me in so many ways. Verses 4-5 say, “For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another.” In my first reflection, I shared that I grew up in a home with distorted roles and chaotic boundaries. It was not a healthy system, and it did not function well. This verse tells me what it means to be a healthy individual as well as to be a part of a healthy system/group. This is what relationships are all about. God’s plan for us is to live in peace with ourselves and in harmony with others. This is a challenging thing to do for someone with an ego. The ego does not allow us to live in peace with ourselves because it is always trying to distort reality to make us feel better in the moment. Deep down, our ego knows that we are not enough. This was, and sometime is, me. Growing up in a co-dependent home, I am afraid to be alone, but I am also afraid to get too close that I will not have enough space for me. I grew up watching my mother have a need for independence, but she would give it away because her fear of not being lovable was too strong. Because of that, I’ve always felt like I was going to fight for my rights and my voice when I got older. I could not allow myself to be like her and be meek, weak, and walked over. I did not know what a healthy woman of God looked like. If what I was shown was it, well, I guess I was not going to be a woman of God then! This rooted belief was revealed in my marriage, and that developed big problems. I could not love myself, and so, therefore, I could not love others. God is teaching me how to be meek while being strong. God is teaching me patience while still reaching goals. He is teaching me how I can be myself in a relationship, while providing space for others to be themselves as well. I am so grateful that I am learning that I do not have to do it all on my own, but that I can also have the space to be me.
Romans 12:15 says “Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.” This verse is significant because it reveals that God expects us to be genuine and connected to ourselves and others through grief. He reveals that we have emotions of grief, and it is healthy for us to express and deal with them. I learned as a child to carry others' emotions and not mine. Being unaware of my own needs and feelings, I had little management over my own emotions. Emotions can be like fire. Without boundaries, they can run wildly out of control and cause damage to what is important to us. Emotions can also be like fire in that fire can be used in a way that brings good things, like warming our food, warming our homes, and cleaning our water. Often, we are taught that we can feel and express only pleasing emotions, and that we must hide and push down painful emotions. We say things like “suck it up.” and “just look at the bright side.” However, God releases us of this way of thinking and lets us know that both rejoicing and weeping are good and necessary. We realize that when we do so, we are blessed. When my brother Ruben died in 2020, my family did not grieve together, and some, not at all. It was during COVID so there was an online funeral, which did not make things any better. My family did not get together, cry together, hug together, or worship together. Everyone was separated and no one wanted to talk about it. It was like in the Disney movie Encanto; no one was talking about Bruno! When we do not talk about the reality of the pain we experience, we cannot feel any relief or be comforted. Going back to the shame I talked about in my first reflection, no one wanted to give up their shame.
Romans 13
Romans 13:8 says, “Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law.” For me, this brings up the topic of what a healthy relationship is. This is a complicated topic, because what it means to have a healthy relationship and love someone is unique, since everyone is different and has diverse needs and experiences. Our mental health is significantly affected by the relationships we have in our lives, and the health of our relationships relies on our ability to pour love into our relationships. Learning how to do that can be the stressor that our pain flows from because there are so many things that can affect our ability to pour love into our relationship. In today’s culture, we are taught that we deserve things. We feel entitled to being happy and feeling good all the time. We have a bad relationship with pain, and we can’t endure it because we think we are not supposed to. We hear things like, “If he/she doesn’t make you happy, then just leave.” Our ideas and expectations are distorted compared to Jesus’s example. I also used to think it was my husband's job to make me happy, and if I wasn’t happy, it was his fault somehow. This led me to experience such anger, disappointment, grief, and pain. I did not know how to let go of what I thought he owed me. It wasn’t until I read the book Boundaries by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend that God started to change me. The song called “Changing Me” by Anna Golden is a song that helps me to feel grateful and open to the changes that God is doing in me. I was in awe as I was confronted by God with the fact that I was responsible for the emotions I experienced. I still struggle with this today, but I am so grateful God is patient with me and will never give up on me.
Romans 16
In Romans 16:18-20, Paul talks about division and offense. When we think we deserve something, we can feel entitled, then we experience offense, and this causes division. When I felt entitled in my marriage, it leads to offense. This leads me to serving my own belly! I learned how to manipulate as a child, and I became smooth with my words and quick to identify emotions. I relied on my emotions alone to make sense out of the world and my relationships. Through subconscious strategic manipulation, I could become the victim in most any situation. If I was the victim, then I was not the offender, and my ego was safe. In my marriage, I was focused on all the bad. I learned how to feel powerful by getting offended and causing division! This caused slow, but great, damage, like a slow leak in a boat. With the water piling in little by little, you may not notice at first, but through time, it surely will sink the boat. The thing about offense is, when we get offended, these are only projections of our pains. This offense actually reveals to us where we need healing. When we project this onto others instead of dealing with our own pain, it brings division and more pain.
A symptom of trauma is manipulation and relying on unhealthy ways of gaining power and control. Many of the dynamics in my family of origin that I learned stem from generational trauma. Both of my paternal grandparents grew up in Mexico and have unique stories, which I only know little about. Some of the small pieces I know includes that my grandfather grew up with a single mom who worked as a sex worker and had 3 children. He was the oldest child, and at 2 years old, he was being raised to be the man of the house. This is called parentification. When a child is given adult responsibilities, that disrupts their development, both emotionally and mentally. As my grandfather got older, the burden of responsibilities continued to pile on him and he was responsible for the finances and protection of his 2 younger sisters and his mother. When he came of age, he went into the Korean War. This brought many other traumas and harmful behaviors that grew as his family grew. My paternal grandmother grew up extremely poor without a father and was separated from her family as she got older and moved to the U.S. My maternal grandparents have relational dynamic roots in denial, avoidance, and isolation. There are many other stories that I don’t yet know about my family, but what I do know is there is trauma. If we look at our family line and the generations before us, we can likely see the sin more clearly. We can be comforted to know that it didn’t start with us and whatever pain was put upon us as a child is really because of sin. People do things not because they don’t want love or want to hurt others, but because of the root of pain and sin. When we can see and make more sense out of why certain things happened to us as a child or why someone treated us the way they did, it eases up more space to forgive. Forgiveness is the ultimate act of love and replaces offense and division. The devil wants to keep us ignorant to our family's history, so he keeps us isolated and blind. The devil wants us to think that God is not in us, and we are all bad because of what others have done or what we have done. The enemy wants us to be entitled and offended so we will stay separated. When we look at the truth of our stories and face the pain without sin, we can see that the enemy is not each other, but sin!
Romans 16:19 says, “Be wise in what is good, and simple concerning evil.” Sin can be simple. We are kings and queens, sons and daughters of the most high God! We do not have to rationalize, go back and forth, or be open to sin. We do not have to compromise because Jesus paid the price! When we trust how God created us, we can notice evil and walk away. Anything that is not of God is evil. When we spend time with God, we know what his voice sounds like. We can learn that anything that does not sound like His voice, is not anything we have to walk towards or listen to. We can be confident to know that when we walk away from sin, our God of peace will crush Satan under our feet!
I pray: God, I praise you and I thank you that when we cry out to you, you are there, that if we ask you to open our eyes to our pain, that you will so gently and lovingly show us so the scales on our eyes will fall. I thank you for Spirit of God Fellowship and the opportunity we have as your creation to worship you and feel your presence with us that will allow us to also discern the difference between good and evil. I pray your Spirit continue to come and move in and around us! Amen.
Jessica Cooper
