The lies we tell ourselves aren't harmless. I spent many years feeling sorry for myself, not trusting my own judgment and blaming other people for my problems because I perceived myself as a victim (that realization didn't come until after many years, a lot of therapy and a lot of prayers). I told myself lies and I wonder how many I still tell myself that I'm not aware of. The strange part was that I didn't realize I was lying to myself. How often do we lie to ourselves and not even know it? Jeremiah was inspired to write: "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it?" (Jeremiah 17:9).

I was afraid to follow my dreams—I couldn't even voice them because my belief was that dreams don't come true for people like "us." I thought I needed to "stay in my place" as a poor person and as a child from a broken family. If I failed, to me that meant I was a failure so it was better to not try at all, and just settle for whatever life handed me.

I became a very hurt, angry, unforgiving person because in my mind that was what could be expected from someone who had experienced such a hard life, and was still having a very hard life. When people let me down, sinned against me or hurt me, I felt entitled to lower my standards and treat them and whoever else was around however I felt in a moment of anger. When I had rage, I was sorry but thought I was out of control—because I had somehow given myself permission to treat other people the way I did, especially my husband and children. I couldn't see the harm my anger was doing and the pain it was causing. Sometimes I knew that something needed to change, but I honestly did not know how. I just kept blaming my behavior on circumstances, my childhood traumas, and the fact that my husband was a heavy drinker who didn't provide for our family properly.

With most people outside my immediate family (my husband and children), I was a coward who wouldn't stand up for myself or my family. I told myself I was "taking the high road," when in reality I was just too afraid to rock the boat. I was more afraid of being abandoned than I was of continuing to put up with being treated badly. 

I would give in when coerced by someone to do something I knew was wrong, because I felt like I had to have some "peace" sometimes, and at least they left me alone without hassling me for a while. 

I had an awakening of some degree when I gave birth to my youngest son in 1987, because I knew when I looked at that helpless little baby, I couldn't do to this child what I had done to my two older ones. But I was still in a lot of denial and had a long way to go; by that point I was very mentally ill.

When my husband died in 2006, I had to start looking at me instead of having him, my childhood, other people and circumstances to blame for how I was. I had kept a journal for years, but it took a new direction. I was also praying for God to help me to become a new creation. It wasn't as if I hadn't wondered where my fault was in all the mess we were living in, but the person I had probably blamed the most was gone. Was I going to stay angry at him and blame him for the rest of my life? I started doing what Dr. Phil calls doing an autopsy on a relationship. For months, journaling for hours was not uncommon for me—looking at how things had been, what my husband had done, what other people had done and how I had reacted, how I had become a reactionary person instead of a thinking and reasoning one, and how I was a coward who was too afraid to change the status quo. This also led me to look at my childhood—the lies I had told myself, the excuses I made for my behavior, my failures, and my inability to go after any dreams or even acknowledge that I had them.

How could God still work with the mess that I was? Despite it all, He did. I can truly say that I am a different person now, but that doesn't take away the consequences of all the lies I told myself and believed, the hurt I caused and the pain my family is still in. I suffer almost every day because of those lies I believed, and the actions caused by those wrong beliefs. I may have to suffer until the day I die because of the choices I've made and the dysfunction it has caused in my family. I still pray for God to do miracles in my family, and He has, but it may take a lifetime for them to recover.

I've realized that I can't undo how I lived, and I can't enable bad behavior in my children, no matter how much it hurts to see them struggle. With God's help, I can endure and pray even more fervently, "Thy Kingdom come," so my family and the whole world can finally be set on a right path by our Savior Jesus Christ.