Jiron

I was taught that it was wrong for Christians to be hurt... I was told that dead people don't GET hurt... so to be dead (to our sin nature) in Christ means to never be offended. That lead to a spiral of denial like you would not believe.  I found myself wearing a hyper-spiritual mask that floated around and had only sage words of wisdom and never expressed negative emotions. ..... then my sand castle fell when I got married. My husband would make me angry and I had no idea how to handle it! There was no way to avoid him, no where to escape, and shutting down was only a temporary fix. My protective mask was stripped and I forced myself to handle conflict and to learned not to be afraid to express things like anger, disappointment,  offense, and indignation. I had to teach myself how to communicate all these dark emotions in a respectful manner and am now very grateful for the experience & practice. Unfortunately, I found that outside of my marriage this sort of honesty ...