a familiar hell

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly.” ~ John 10:10

Sometimes, I think we choose the familiar hell simply because we know where all the exits are.

A friend of mine was recently telling me about someone she loves choosing to spend her hard-won free time with someone else instead of with her, and I found myself immediately understanding why the people around her felt so protective of her; when you love someone well — faithfully, loyally, sacrificially — it stings to realize they didn’t choose you in that moment.

Especially when you know they’re hurting.

Especially when they know you would’ve shown up.

The more I get to know my friend, the more I see how deeply loyal and giving she is. She and her husband have opened their lives, their home and their hearts to this woman for years. They’ve offered support, stability, wisdom, practical help and genuine love without expecting anything in return. And yet, despite having people around her who would help carry her out of the fire, she continues to remain in a life that’s slowly consuming her.

And I think I understand why.

One of the things we talked about in my Bible study group last night was the idea that every day, we choose whose voice we’re going to listen to: God has a plan for our lives and Satan has a plan for our lives, and somewhere in the middle of those competing voices is our own inner critic whispering fear, shame and hopelessness into our ear.

You’re stuck.
You can’t do this.
You’ll fail.
At least this pain is familiar.

And sometimes, the seductive pull of familiarity — even when familiarity is painful — is stronger than the possibility of freedom.

Because freedom is unfamiliar.

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.”
~ Galatians 5:1

I think a lot of people stay in situations that are quietly killing them because they can’t conceive of heaven being available to them. Even an unfamiliar heaven.

Especially an unfamiliar heaven.

They may intellectually believe a healthier life exists somewhere, but emotionally? Nervous-system-wise? Spiritually? It feels unreachable. Unsafe, even.

And that’s the thing nobody really tells you: when someone has lived in emotional instability long enough, peace itself can feel threatening. Calm can feel suspicious. Healthy love can feel disorienting because it removes the coping systems they built to survive chaos (“Hello, people pleaser. Present and accounted for.”).

Chaos, at least, is recognizable.

I think that’s true in marriage too.

So many people walk into marriage expecting the movie version of love. The wedding. The honeymoon. The beautiful house. The effortless intimacy. The shared dreams. The Mr. Darcy striding ardently toward you through the morning mist happily ever after.

But the fantasy version of marriage dies pretty quickly once life becomes truly life-shaped instead of movie-shaped.

No one plans for the terminal diagnosis eight months after the wedding.
Or the foreclosure.
Or the addiction.
Or the depression.
Or the caregiving.
Or the betrayal.
Or the exhaustion of trying to hold a family together while you’re quietly bleeding out.

Life happens. And life is messy.

I know this because I’ve lived it.

When Jeff was sick and having seizures, I lived every day bracing for impact. Fear sat in my chest constantly. I was always waiting for the next terrible thing to happen. Later, even with Michael, there were seasons where I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop because hypervigilance had become my normal state of being.

When your nervous system gets used to surviving chaos, peace doesn’t automatically feel peaceful. And I think that’s part of why people stay stuck. Not because they’re weak. Not because they’re stupid. Not because they secretly enjoy suffering. But because familiar pain can feel safer than unknown healing.

Even healing asks something of you.

It asks risk.
Change.
Work.
Surrender.
Responsibility.

Healthy marriages, especially, require an extraordinary amount of intentional work. The kind nobody really prepares you for when you’re young and in love. My friend said something recently about her marriage that I understood at once: “We put God first and did a lot of hard work to get where we are.”

Yes.

That’s it exactly.

“A bruised reed He will not break, and a smoldering wick He will not snuff out.”
~ Isaiah 42:3

Long-term love isn’t luck.

It’s humility.
Sacrifice.
Repair.
Forgiveness.
Showing up again and again and again even when things are hard. Especially when they’re hard.

It’s choosing each other in a thousand unseen ways.

And when someone is emotionally starving inside their marriage or their life, eventually they begin searching for nourishment somewhere else. That doesn’t excuse harmful choices, but it does explain how people drift into emotional affairs, unhealthy attachments and dangerous coping mechanisms. Not because they’re bad people, but because they’re trying to survive.

This is something I know firsthand.

I think many people secretly believe heaven exists for other people, just not for them.

So they settle.
They survive.
They stay.

Not because they can’t imagine something better.
But because they can’t imagine it belonging to them.

And honestly?

I understand that more than I wish I did.