13 Women You Should Never Marry by Mary Colbert

Author:Mary Colbert
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781617955631
Publisher: Worthy
Published: 2015-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

YOU CAN’T ALWAYS RECOGNIZE AN ADDICT BY THE TRACK MARKS ON HER ARM

I want to be very clear about the kind of woman I’m describing in Addicted Annie. I’m not detailing a woman who’s had moments of poor judgment. I’m not talking about a woman with a few failures in her past. I’m describing a person who has repeated and repeated and repeated this pattern of self-soothing behavior.

There are women who’ve endured very difficult circumstances but have done the emotional and spiritual work they needed to do to become healthy people and great wives. There are women who’ve truly conquered their addictions and will remain sober for the rest of their days. I want to be clear that God has the power to redeem the most compromised lives.

The Addicted Annie I want to warn you about is the one who’s been unable or unwilling to truly deal with her past. Rather than accepting the hard work of grief and forgiveness and healing, Annie has stuffed down her pain. She’s walled it away. And, hidden from the healing power of light and air, her deepest wounds have continued to fester rather than heal.

I happen to know that this particular Annie I’ve mentioned had an eighteen-month period of sobriety in the time leading up to her wedding. Her fiancé knew that she’d wrestled with addiction but assumed that because she wasn’t drinking she had conquered it. But “not drinking” isn’t the same thing as redemptive transformation.

What I want you to hear from me are the words I’d want to share with my grandsons if they brought home a girl who was still in the process of redemption: “Be careful.” I’d want them to know that, like walking barefoot in a parking lot, they need to be extra cautious to keep from being hurt.

I’d also want to say, “I can understand some of the reasons you’re attracted to Annie.” If you struggle, or have struggled, with your own addictions, Annie might make you feel better about yourself. Or if you’re a rescuer, you may notice the impulse to help Annie get her life together. I can’t stress how important it is, as you consider the wife God will give you, to pay attention to what’s at work inside of you.

Remember the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego? The Bible reports that when these three guys, who’d been thrown into the fiery furnace, stepped out of the flames, they didn’t even smell of smoke. So as you consider the big-picture view of a woman, understand that although your eyes and your ears will give you some information, so will your nose! Do you recognize the fragrant air of the Holy Spirit? Or does the smell of stale smoke—tobacco? pot? meth?—continue to linger in the life of this woman?

Guys, your mission is to find a helpmate, not a mate to help. If you’re serious enough to consider marriage, practice due diligence by not only staying alert to the signals Annie might be sending to you,

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