Trauma and Truth

So what do you think out of the pandemic and all the hard and 2020 the year the year what do you think was one of the best things that you did or that we did? Did anything work out well that you thought, oh, I'm glad this happened? The last thing I ever thought I'd do ever regardless whether it's in a pandemic or not was go to a counselor. Why? Why do you think you would never do that? Did you have a stigma?

No, I just thought I'm good, you know. Welcome to Family Life Today where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson and I'm Dave Wilson and you can find us at familylifetoday.com or on our Family Life app. This is Family Life Today. The last thing I ever thought I'd do was go to a counselor. There was a lot of stuff I just had never really dealt with and because of the sort of slow down in ministry, there was this window and because of some hurt that I went through, I'm like, I need to talk to somebody. Why do you say it was one of the best things?

Because that can be scary, it's hard, and you would admit that you hate dealing with conflict or internal things. Yeah, and even when I jumped on my motorcycle and rode five hours over to sit down with Greg, I was not excited. I was like, oh no, this is going to end five hours later after our first sort of half day. Remember, I came home like there was so much that God wants to draw out of me. I wish I'd done this 30 years ago, but I'm doing it now. So I'm going to do it now.

I'm going to do it well. Which is interesting because we've had conflict in our marriage. Oh, just a little bit. We all have conflict in our marriages. Yeah.

And you know, the truth is we all need outside help. It could be counseling like I did recently, but it could be going to a conference. I mean, we went to the Weekend to Remember. We still speak for the Weekend to Remember. And that was one of the best things we ever did for our marriage.

Oh, yeah, I think it saved us. The weekend to remember is a great thing. They're back. The Weekend to Remembers are back all around the country and they're half price right now.

Do you hear me? Half price. So you can go right now to a conference near you. Just go to familylifetoday.com. Sign up for a Weekend to Remember anywhere you want.

Go for half price. And I'm telling you, God will literally change, maybe save your marriage. And He'll make your good marriage even better. And I know for us, we almost didn't make it. And that wasn't just you. That was me as well, because we both carried so much baggage and so many expectations into our marriage.

And I don't think you would have said that you needed that in the past. Again, I was in denial. Yeah. You know, and so it's interesting. We have Lisa Turkers with us today who writes in your latest book a little bit about your journey that was very similar in terms of you sat down with somebody that opened up some things. So I can't wait to hear what you talked about. Collect, connect and correct the dots is a beautiful way to say it. Lisa, welcome back to Family Life Today.

Thank you so much. I love this dialogue. I could just sit here and listen to this dialogue. So carry on. Everybody kind of knows that about us.

No, I'm thinking you're normal. It's so refreshing. And I'm really glad, Dave.

Like, I think our kids, I feel like for you to make that step into counseling, I feel like our sons really respected that and watched that in you. And they were excited to hear what was revealed and what God was revealing. Yeah, because they saw it their whole life.

And they're like, Oh, now finally, Dad's seeing some of this stuff. But Lisa has written a book called Forgiving What You Can't Forget, and the subtitle is Discovering How to Move On, Make Peace with Painful Memories and Create a Life That's Beautiful Again. I think even just reading that and hearing that subtitle, I think we all resonate with that and want that. And many of you have heard of Lisa. She's the president of Proverbs 31 Ministries. How would you describe Proverbs 31 Ministries? So I guess if you would say our tagline or really our driving mission is we want people to know the truth and live the truth because it changes everything. So we are very passionate about solid theologically researched, biblically sound doctrine.

We're very committed to truth, uncompromising truth, and at the same time, never stripping humanity from the divinity of the text. There is such a gracious gift in the Bible, and that is that God didn't tidy up the humans that were so very real. And it's funny, I was teaching about Jacob's family line and getting into the story of Joseph starting in Genesis 37. And right from the beginning, it's so apparent that there was extreme family dysfunction. And if you've ever heard of Jacob in the Bible, he produces through his heirs the 12 tribes of Israel. It's fascinating to me, you would definitely consider him and his clan a very biblical family, right? And yet his family was riddled with dysfunction. And so I've always thought you had to be perfect to be a biblical family. But I'm starting to realize the more I study biblical families, that dysfunction is just part of it. And if we were all honest, we could sit in a room of 100 people and pass their microphone around and we could say, okay, here you tell about your family dysfunction and you tell about your family dysfunction.

And if we got to someone that said, no, I have no family dysfunction, whoa, they are probably the source of the family dysfunction. They just don't know about it. It's so interesting. I think that's so true and so healthy. I was with a group of women not too long ago.

There were quite a few of us, and I noticed that some really opened up. And when one person opens up to reveal the inner turmoil or the doubts or the pain or the depression, then what happens is other women feel the safety. But then why haven't we done that and why don't we do that often?

Well, and I think we have to be careful too. You know, we aren't labeling the individual as a dysfunctional toxic person, because that can be a very heavy, hard, insurmountable kind of label to put on a person. But when you get humans together who all have pain and who all have unresolved hurts in their life, and we all have this, none of us are perfect. When you bring a bunch of humans together, it's just inevitable my pain is going to bump into your pain and my unhealed hurt is going to bump into your unhealed hurt.

And that's just the way it works. So when I say dysfunction, it's not labeling individuals as dysfunctional. It's saying that the function of human relationships has to be worked on, and there has to be intentionality there. And counseling is a great intentional step to take.

My counselor's name is Jim Kress. He's a phenomenal individual, but he always says what is not worked out will be acted out. It's like we got to work out and work through our stuff and learn how to apply, not just sound emotional healing principles, but sound biblical principles. So at Proverbs 31, we combine these worlds. We combine the worlds of getting emotionally healthy and spiritually healthy together. And we present it all with sound theology and with absolute transparency and authenticity that we're not speaking because we're the experts. We're speaking out of our own need, and we just know it'll help other people too. And I think that's why it resonates with so many women, is because we feel we can have the knowledge in our head, but we still feel stuck so often.

And we're trying to figure out, how do I get out of this? And I think that you really offer hope through Jesus and through theology and the Bible, which I love that combination. And I found it very interesting as I was reading your book. There's a part of me, and I'm sure a lot of people, and I've felt this as a pastor, that people, even in our church, when Anne and I would get up on stage and share our struggles, and me were very honest, they still thought, you don't really struggle. Not like us, because you're a pastor and you write. Or you don't struggle anymore. You used to, but not anymore. Yeah, they don't believe it's as bad as what their struggle is. I don't know if that's what you've experienced. But when I was reading your book, I'm like, Lisa Turkhurst doesn't struggle like we do.

She's a world-renowned leader ministry guy. So, you know, as we've already talked about your struggle to forgive and the betrayal and the pain. I mean, you're so honest. I'm like, whoa, she's writing in a way that this is not covered up.

She could barely function. And then you get to this whole section of the book that I just, it was like my journey of the last year. It's like, oh, I don't even know what collected dots, connected dots, corrected dots means. So tell us about that, because that was fascinating to watch your past into your present and how it influenced you. And I think this can really help people understand who they are and why we live the way we live in the present. If we need to go back and do some work to understand what's going on.

So help us do that. So I'll tell you a little bit more of an extensive exercise that I did. I didn't cover it in the book, but those chapters will mean more to you now that you hear even more of the activity that my counselor helped me work through. And also, when I sit down to write a book, I know more than being taught. My reader wants to be understood and to the level that they know I've experienced a depth of pain that's similar to their depth of pain.

That's to the level that they'll trust my advice. And some of my favorite words from Jesus in the Bible are from Mark, Chapter 14. It's this profound moment where Jesus, perfect in His divinity, absolute sinless in His humanity. And at the same time, because He was wrapped in the skin and the emotions of a human, He knew what it felt like to be betrayed. He knew what it felt like to be abandoned. He knew what it felt like to experience the grit and grime of some of the harsh realities of doing life here on earth. He says, My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. And then He even acknowledges, God, everything is possible for you.

Take this cup from me. And that's so mind blowing to me. But you see, because I know that Jesus knows the depth of human pain. My soul is overwhelmed to the point of death. My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Because I know that He has experienced the depth of what it feels like to be in that kind of pain and sorrow, I can trust Jesus's teaching in Hebrews 2 when we're told that Jesus came to make atonement for our sins.

Yes, we all talk about that. But what we miss is it also says He came to be a merciful and faithful high priest. And it's out of His mercy that I believe He took on the weight of humanity to make atonement and to be able to lead us, not void of understanding what it's like to be so very human. When I got into the middle part of the book, I start off, forgiving what you can't forget, talking a lot about the resistance that I had that had to be dealt with. It had to be acknowledged. I didn't want to fake it until I tried to make it with the forgiveness book. So, you know, one of the early chapters is about me standing there slamming my door because I was so angry. Oh, yeah. Talk about that a little bit. And there was a delivery woman standing on my front porch.

I never saw her. I was just trying to get out. Like, I need to slam something. I need to break something.

And I'm not typically, I'm a pretty peaceful person, but I had just gotten triggered an enormous amount of pain, and I just had to get it out. So I'm standing there opening my door, slamming my door, opening my door, slamming my door. And all of a sudden, because there's glass on the front of the door, I look through and the delivery lady is standing there. And she was just like, whoa.

And she sets the package down and scurries off to her truck. And I wanted to chase her down saying, wait, wait, can I get you a cookie, please? I'm so sorry. That was not directed at you. But then I thought, nobody wants a cookie made by a crazy person. So I guess I'll just let that sit right there. She'll probably write me a letter and said, I read one of your books and then I wanted to meet you. And then there you were slamming your front door.

Yay me. But you're saying like you've experienced that pain. I have. And even, I mean, I'm thinking you've had countless nights in your bed at night crying.

Yes. The worst hours for me were between 2 and 4 a.m. Because it's really too late to call anyone and it's too early to call anyone. And it's so dark outside. And the intensity of aloneness in those hours is just brutal. So I would often just pray this prayer while I was just crying and just thinking, this is too painful to survive one more minute. How in the world am I going to survive 24 hours or 24 days or 240 days or possibly the next 24 years? Like this is... You're overwhelmed. I'm overwhelmed. So the prayer I would pray is, I don't know much right now, but here's what I do know.

Jesus, I love you and you love me. And that just has to be enough for right now. I think this is true. I don't know if men do this, but those hours for a woman, we have all been there. Where you're awake, you can't go back to sleep because you're overwhelmed with fear or sadness or regret. It's the loneliest. Those are the loneliest hours in the night. And those are not just women hours.

Really? You think I know for women, like that's big, but I love the simplicity and yet the power of what you just prayed. And I would just say, yeah, I've done that many times. It may be a different thing I'm struggling with, but the thing you were very honest as well, Lisa, in your book that I've experienced, I know every listener, if they're seriously honest, would say the same thing. Part of the struggle is even though you say, I know I love you, Jesus, and you love me, there's that struggle. Where are you?

Why aren't you doing something? What is, you know, so talk about that because that was a real struggle for you. I know it's been for all of us.

How do you deal with that struggle? Going back to Mark chapter 14 when Jesus was in the garden and he was uttering those words, my soul is overwhelmed to the point of death. My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. I was thinking that if answers of why this is happening would give comfort, Jesus had all the answers. And he was still overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. If seeing how everything turned out eventually would bring the deep comfort, Jesus had that.

He could see how everything was going to turn out. For the joy set before him, he endured the cross. If being perfect would have comforted Jesus, Jesus was perfect. He was sinless. Had no regrets.

No regrets. And yet he still uttered those words, my soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. And so I realized it's not attaining something or it's not even figuring out something that will bring that kind of comfort.

It's acknowledging what is true in the midst of being uncertain about everything else. When I said that prayer, Jesus, I love you and you love me and that just has to be enough. It wasn't because I felt it. It's because my soul needed to hear my mouth declare it. And therein was the comfort because that is, was, and will forever be true. And I think when you've been hurt because you've been abandoned or you've been betrayed or you've been lied to, I think your mind goes into hyperdrive. If that wasn't true, what else is not true?

And so you can hyperanalyze everything and everyone in trying to figure out who can I trust and who can I not. So it was my declaration that Jesus knows what it feels like in this dark hour of the night. And he has promised to be there for me. And I don't have to feel it to know that it's true. I just have to declare it to remind myself it is true. Lisa, what would you say to the people that are thinking, I have prayed so long about God doing something. I doubt that he loves me because I haven't seen him answer this prayer that I've been praying for 10 years.

Well, first of all, I would say I am so sorry that that hurts and I get it. And I have the same thing in my life. Even right now, I have something I have prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed and wrestled. Like, God, everything is possible for you. Change this plan. I've even spent years making suggestions to God.

Like, OK, God, I know you're really busy. So here's what could happen. Here's what you could do.

Here's what you could do. Right. And I say that kind of tongue in cheek, but I mean, honestly, I have. And yet here's what I know to be true. I always limit the good that God could possibly do to the outcomes of my own thinking. I have drastically reduced the goodness of God down to my very imperfect human brain. And Jesus also acknowledges this in his dark hour of the night right before he's arrested. I mean, he said, God, everything is possible for you.

Take this cup from me. But then he utters nine earth shaking, hell shattering, demon quaking words, yet not what I will, but what you will. In other words, I think when we're wrestling with why isn't God answering this prayer? I've done all the right things.

I've checked all the boxes. Like, I've been obedient. And so I should be blessed, you know, or God, this other person over here just got that blessing. And I could give you a list of reasons why they absolutely should not have gotten the blessing.

Like, did the GPS coordinates get confused here, you know? And it can just make you go in a million different directions when you're wrestling through the why God questions. So what I've just had to train my brain is to say, God is going to work good from this somehow.

It's probably not going to be in my way and it's probably not going to be in my timing. But I have got to make my brain not run ahead, write out a script of the good that God should do, and then try to hold God accountable to outcomes of my own desire. Instead, daily, I have to trade my will for Thy will because I'm so confident He will. And it opens up the possibilities for the goodness of God way beyond what I could ever think or dream up.

And honestly, no human should have to carry the weight of being their own God. But so many of us work our emotions into a tangled fray and work our fingers to the bone trying to do just that. It's like we say, we trust God until we don't. And so I'm training my brain to do this.

It doesn't come naturally and it is hard. But I do want to get back to also the question you asked about connecting the dots, collecting the dots, correcting the dots. And what that really means is that we need to take an honest assessment of the things that we've been through in our life, start making connections of how those circumstances, events, traumas that we face, how they have fed a perception about how we look at ourself, how we look at God, and how we look at others. And if there are wrong perceptions, taking an honest look at them, that's our opportunity to correct those perceptions because the perspectives we have determines what we see.

And what we see is often what we will follow and what we will use to guide and direct our life. Here's an example. The activity that my counselor had me do is called a trauma egg. So I drew an egg on a big piece of poster board and divided the egg up into a bunch of little squares. And then my counselor Jim said, draw little stick figures in individual components. Divide that egg shape up into lots of little squares. And any time that you have been traumatized or abused or rejected, something really hard, even sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, any time that happened, it pops into your brain. From the time of your earliest memory until present day, draw little stick figure pictures inside the squares.

And represent that in some way. Well, I'm not an artist and I dreaded this activity, but I did it. The next session, Jim had me stand in front of him and talk about those individual squares. And what Jim was listening for is some kind of shame script that I have carried because of what I've been through that was not just formed in intensity, but is living out in intensity in my life right now and is changing my perspective about something, which is then going to change how I think and how I live today. And as I went through and described my little components, what Jim heard as my pervasive shame script is, Lisa, don't be an inconvenience. You are an inconvenience, so you need to always make sure that you never ask too much from people because it'll set you up for disappointment every time. And he heard that repeated in my story when I stood up and I was describing all these events. He heard it.

I could have never heard it. I would have never had the awareness that I have navigated my life so much and navigated relationships so much so that I would make sure I'm never an inconvenience to someone, thus preventing a depth of bonding when people actually want to do something for me. And it has affected me more than what I cared to realize. And so I had to collect those dots, put them together, connect the dots, and now I can work on correcting the dots. So now when I start to hear that shame script, I recognize what it is. It's a lie that's coming against who I really am.

I'm wired for connection, but I was preventing connection so many times because of the shame script. And I'm working on correcting that so that I can have more authentic relationships with people and actually let people do some stuff for me every now and then. That's powerful. And Dave, that's kind of what we did when we went to counseling, too.

Yeah, Ann went with me to see Greg and very similar in terms of he was very gifted at identifying the script for both of us and then helping us see the truth and replacing that lie with truth, which isn't just one counseling session. It's like, I've got to live this out now. My biggest one was you've got to perform to be accepted. You've got to perform to be good for God, for people. You know, and everything I've done in my life is, you know, I'm in the limelight to perform. Obviously, that's not the gospel. The gospel is he died for that sin and I don't have to perform.

But, you know, as you take all that, you know, and I think it's such a healthy exercise for anybody to go through. And we're not sitting here saying you've got to go see a counselor today or tomorrow. But that journey, whatever way you do it, to collect, look at your past, connect the dots of that, and then replace the destructive emotions and destructive behaviors that you're doing in your life presently that's connected to something in the past needs to be replaced with truth. Even in being able to say what you said earlier, Lisa, that Jesus said, not my will, your will be done. I often struggled to say that because I didn't trust the Father, because I couldn't trust my earthly father. And I was alive. My Heavenly Father is not my dad.

He didn't walk out. So at the end of the day, in 2 a.m. or 3 a.m., I can go back to sleep because I can say, guess what, that was a lie. This Father loves me. He is here for me. I may not feel it.

I may not even believe it a hundred percent, but it's true. And I'm going to go to sleep because I can say, God, I'm going to do whatever you ask me to do. As hard as it is, not my will, your will be done, please take care of me.

And He will. I don't know if we realize it or not, but there is a connection between our relationship with God, our spiritual lives, how we're doing spiritually, and our relationships with one another. And if we're continuing to harbor bitterness or anger or hatred for someone, if we have not worked through the process of releasing those things and pursuing forgiveness and reconciliation, that's going to affect everything about your life and about your relationship with God. Dave and Ann Wilson have been talking this week with Lisa Turkhurst, who's written a book on this subject from her own experience. The book is called Forgiving What You Can't Forget.

Discover how to move on, how to make peace with painful memories, and how to create a life that's beautiful. This is a book we've got in our Family Life Today Resource Center. You can go online at familylifetoday.com to request a copy or call 1-800-FL-TODAY. Again, the website is familylifetoday.com. The number to call is 1-800-358-6329.

That's 1-800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word TODAY. And let me say, the issues of anger and bitterness, unforgiveness, these are issues that will show up from time to time at our weekend to remember marriage getaways. Couples who are coming who are locked up in conflict, who are experiencing pain in their relationship, and they need help and guidance to know how to pursue oneness with one another when there has been profound hurt in a marriage relationship. We have 30 Weekend to Remember Getaways happening this fall in cities all across the country. And if you register today to attend one of these upcoming getaways, you and your spouse will save 50% off the regular registration fee.

This is our incentive to get you to make plans now to join us in a city near where you live for a great weekend away together where the two of you can relax and refresh and reconnect and at the same time grow in your understanding of God's design for your marriage relationship. You can find out more about the Weekend to Remember on our website familylifetoday.com. Call if you have any questions. 1-800-FL-TODAY is the number. So plan to join us at an upcoming getaway and register today because the 50% off special offer we're making is available through Monday, September 13th.

So there's a limited time for you to take advantage of this special pricing. Again, go online at familylifetoday.com for more information or call to register 1-800-358-6329. That's 1-800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. Now tomorrow we're going to consider the relationship between forgiveness and trust because they're connected but they're not the same.

And that's important for us to understand. Lisa Turkhurst joins us again tomorrow. We hope you can join us as well. On behalf of our hosts Dave and Anne Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back tomorrow for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life, a crew ministry, helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.