How blaming others kept me trapped

By Rebekah Beecher (04/10/2018)

I am a recovering codependent, and one of the most powerful issues I have faced is the desire to blame others for all my problems. I have believed that if the people around me would get their act together, life would be reasonably good. But, through the years, this has proven to not be true.

My hope for a long time was that someday my husband and the other people in my life would change and then things would finally be good. Unfortunately, this desire to blame others did not go away as my husband changed. I still blamed him for my problems.

I watched him change and grow. This is what I had always imagined would bring peace to my life: people around me getting their act together. But, I still did not feel peace. And, because I was not willing to consider that maybe there was a problem inside me, I simply found someone else to blame. I had plenty of messy people around me, so I figured they were the problem. I turned my attention to them.

I spent many years like this, and, unlike my husband, those people did not change. I was faced with a dilemma: other people were still creating problems in my life and refused to stop. I felt hopeless and trapped. I could not make them change, and I could not stop their behavior. I blamed every other hardship in my life, no matter how small. It was always something other than looking at myself.

After a lot of tough feedback from healthy, strong people, I looked at a simple yet difficult idea:  Maybe I needed to change.

Well, that opened the flood gates: I found that a lot inside me needed to change. In fact, I have come to realize that at the core, I am exceptionally unhealthy. As unhealthy as my husband. I just have different issues. I may feel my issues “look better” on the surface than his issues do. But, in truth, they are just a different kind of ugly.

Amazingly, this ownership I feared became my greatest blessing.

When I stopped blaming others and started looking at myself, I found freedom. I saw that God was revealing what I needed to do all along. I was not a victim. I saw that, in Christ, I am a victor. I did not need to fear my issues. I did not need to fear others. God would empower me to do what was right no matter what the circumstances were. And He has!

“No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” Romans 8:37

Now that is freedom.

I seek to lead other women on this path to victory, knowing that God is capable and willing to transform the most horrendous of wrongs into my greatest strengths.  If you would like to learn more about how to have this freedom in your life, contact us today.