A Fight Bigger than a Freakin’ Bag of Chips

A bag of chips...that’s your biggest fight?

I’m sitting in a marriage Sunday school class, the leader shares how the biggest fight him and his wife ever had was over deciding what bag of potato chips they should buy, the couples laughed, but for me I sat still in my pain believing there was absolutely no hope for me or my marriage.

That was one of many illusions that led me to decades of wearing a mask, believing that I had to hide the pain, pretend my struggle was a freakin’ bag of chips instead of the emotional abuse, porn, and adultery that was truly invading my marriage...living oppressed in fear, guilt, and shame.

I honestly believed if I prayed enough, served enough, attended church enough that it all would magically be ok and a bag of chips would be my new normal.

But here’s the thing...had the bag of chips became my new normal I don’t believe I would have experienced God in the captivity that I have.

It was only in the brokenness, the pain, the heartache, the mess and chaos that I came to a place in my life where I had no choice but to cry out to a God I barely knew.

I came to the end of self and began to seek God wholeheartedly for for the first time in my 35 years of life.

I knew the Bible, I attended seminary, and I knew how to do the church scene so very well; but looking back I was only going through the motions of being raised in church. I had absolutely no real relationship with God. 

It wasn’t until I attended a women’s conference in 2014 that life would completely change for me. I sat in sessions with women who now lived and walked in freedom. They shared their freedom stories. Women who overcame addiction, adultery, porn, abortions, abuse...anything and everything under the sun.

That weekend I was comforted in knowing I wasn’t alone...after all those years of feeling alone, I now knew there were fights bigger than a bag of chips...and there was freedom in sharing these fights.

That’s why I share as I do.

I want that one person walking in my shoes to know they are not alone. 

And someone, somewhere there is a person walking in your shoes...and they too need your mask removed to know they are not alone.