A virus is an abuser--and we're all learning how to wash our hands and keep our distance so the toxic Coronavirus will make fewer people sick--especially those at high risk.

Sometimes our relationships make us sick with a different kind of virus. In toxic relationships, lies can attack our integrity and weaken our emotional immune system.

U in the LOVE IS FEARLESS alphabet stands for UNWILLING. Love gives us permission to be unwilling to live a life without healthy boundaries.

This episode offers these TAKEAWAYS:

• Make two lists: willing and unwilling. (Doug and Janet share their lists in this episode.) Start building an operating system based on love and truth, not fear and lies. Be unwilling to continue on a path simply because it's the way you've always done it if the way you've always done it is not LOVE.
• We're invited to live with fear as our servant, not our master. Trusting God, we're invited to live in the boundaries of freedom, not bondage--and not control. Love protects our freedom because whatever is coerced is not love.
• Free will is a part of every love story. If we are to live a love story, we must come to a place where we are unwilling to navigate relationships with manipulation, scorekeeping, misplaced responsibility, or shame.

We also offer these minimum requirements, quoted from Bob Hamp, to determine if an abuser is demonstrating true repentance (as in, their brain (their heart) is truly thinking differently):

1. They take responsibility for their harm (w/specificity and w/*no* excuses).
2. They act and speak with empathy (which demonstrates to you that they see you and they care for you and they realize the harm they've done to you).
3. They do this over time (it becomes their consistent and long-term way of interacting, *not* just a few times).
4. They also take responsibility and act with empathy over time in a *public* way (not just in private or in a therapy session).

There are also two specific ways in which the "victim" demonstrates that their brain (their heart) is truly thinking differently:

1. They *must* give back the responsibility to the abuser for the abuser's actions, feelings, thoughts.
2. They must stop carrying what is *not* theirs; and instead, only carry what is theirs to carry (their own thoughts, feelings, and actions).

Other resources mentioned in this episode:

Our work to build schools without fear https://www.john15academy.com/

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Together, there is great hope.