Sharon Jaynes: Your Story, Made Breathtaking

The people that we choose not to forgive, they don't care. Most of the time, they don't even know. We don't forgive someone because they deserve it, and we're not saying that what they did isn't wrong.

What we are saying is we're going to give the burden of justice to God, and we are going to be free. 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. I think I know what you're going to say, but what would you say was the lowest point of our marriage? Oh, no doubt. Please don't say yesterday or today.

I'm guessing our listeners would know this answer. It was our 10-year anniversary when I told you, I've got nothing left. I've lost all my feelings for you. And I felt in my heart like, I'm done.

I've got nothing, and I didn't even have hope. That was 31 years ago. So now when you think of that moment, what do you think? God used that moment to catapult us into what he designed for our future. Whereas I look at it and I think, Satan, his design was that our marriage would end. We would be hopeless.

You would be out of ministry. That was his goal. And God said, wait till you see what I do with the lowest point of your life. Yeah, that's what I thought you'd say, because it's interesting to think what we felt in that moment, which was absolute despair, dark, hopeless, don't know if we're going to make it. And even if we do make it, it'll be our little secret. It'll just stay here.

That's what I thought. I felt like no other people in ministry have felt this, have gone through this, or have failed at this so miserably. And now we can look back and say, God was in that moment.

And he actually uses, still using it. We're sitting here right now in the studio with Family Life because of that moment. And I don't think he said, oh, I want this to happen. It was our own sin. It was our – That was my sin.

Go ahead. You can say it was mine. It was mine too, because I made our marriage an idol. But isn't God so gracious that when we try to hide things, he says, let me have it and wait till you see with the miracle that I can do with it if you let me. And I think what we discovered in Is the Truth of God, he uses all stories and he turns them to a beautiful story if we let him do it. And that's what we're talking about today with Sharon James. We've got her back in the studio. We talked about her story yesterday. But Sharon, welcome back to Family Life Today.

Thanks. You are a person that we just keep having back because we relate to with what you're writing. You're giving listeners, especially women, so much help in areas that we feel like we're broken and we're lost. And you give us hope. And in your book, When You Don't Like Your Story, and the subtitle is What If Your Worst Chapters Could Become Your Greatest Victories, again, you give us that hope.

I mean, that's what you told us yesterday. I mean, we're all in the studio in tears with your – you know, Sharon, yesterday when you were talking about your story with your dad, drinking problem and the fights – The abuse. – and running to the corners of the home to avoid it. That is exactly my story. I mean, I was sitting there like, oh, my goodness, with my sister.

She and I would go hide away from – but we would hear the carnage out in the family room, and it ended terribly. But by the end of yesterday's, we're like, look at what God – I mean, God saved you, saved your mom, brought your dad to Christ. And again, if you missed yesterday, go listen to it.

You don't want to miss it. But God took exactly what you say, your worst chapter, and turned it into something beautiful. And I want to say, too, when you were saying, you heard my story and thought, that's just like my story. And a lot of times when I'm teaching or I'm writing, whether it's about this or something else, someone will say, I feel like you're talking just to me. And you know why? Because we all have similar stories.

We've got the same enemy that wants to tear us down and the same Savior that wants to heal us. So we do have similar stories. And Sharon, you know that, too, because you've written 25 books.

You travel, you speak to women. And are you hearing the same story that women are saying that over and over? Over and over, they say it. And if someone's listening now, just to know, you are not alone. Whatever you've gone through that you feel ashamed of or that you've been hiding, you are not alone in that. And it's the devil, the enemy that wants you to think you're the only one and you're not. And by the way, there's two women sitting here and you're talking about women feeling this, men feel it, too.

Yes. And even yesterday, Sharon, when you said as your dad was doing these things and your family was in just chaos, you thought there's something wrong with you. I felt the exact same thing. When dad left, I never said it out loud, I don't think, but I was like, what is wrong with me that dad wouldn't stay? And Dave, I felt the same thing because of sexual abuse that happened to me. I remember it happening with a new person. And at that point, at seven years old, it wasn't why is this happening to me?

My thought changed to there must be something wrong with me. And that's the definition of shame. Yes. Because shame takes something happened to you and you make it who you are.

Yeah. So let's say if it was failure, instead of I failed, shame says I am a failure. Or when you've been sexually abused, instead of a little child thinking they don't have the ability to even process, someone did this to me, it becomes who I am. And that shame goes on to little girls and big girls. I remember being in the car with a friend Lisa one time and her little girl Brooke was about five years old in the backseat and Brooke said, Mommy, is it worse to pick at mosquito bites or scabs? And Lisa said, we shouldn't pick at either one of them.

And I looked back and Brooke had done both. I mean, she had little bloody spots on her legs. And when I was thinking about that, I thought, you know, little girls aren't the only ones who pick at scabs. Big girls do it too.

What do you mean by that? And we pick at emotional scabs. And when we do that, men do it too. But when we pick at emotional scabs, we're not allowing it to heal. So to get from a place of like for me, for my family, my mom and my dad and myself coming to Christ, well, that certainly is not the end of that story. When you told me, Dave, your dad came to Christ and, you know, we were little girls and we became big girls and we had to deal with things that happened in our lives. But how are we going to deal with that? How, you know, and the subtitle is What If Your Worst Chapters Could Become Your Greatest Victories?

That does not happen naturally. Some things have to happen in order for us to have what I call have a better story. And I don't want to mention this to that I said yesterday, it's not usually the whole of our story we don't like. It's usually certain chapters. You don't you didn't like the chapter of being abused that one chapter, but not the whole story. But it's interesting, Sharon, because so often, the chapter out of 100 chapters, that one or two chapters, it defines everything.

Absolutely. And there's something in the actual makeup of the brain that we remember traumatic events more than happy events. So it's just the way our brains are wired. But when we go through a traumatic event, whether it's happened over a period of time, or it's a one time event, they can form what the Bible calls strongholds that we hold on to in some holding on to us, and we just can't seem to get free of it. Now, if you've got some trauma in your life that you feel like is defining you, then there's some steps you need to go through in order to have a better story. And I want to mention to you know, people can very easily tell you bad things that happened in their lives, that they can tell you difficulties they've had or how someone has hurt them.

They could tell you about the mistakes they've made less likely to do that. But in order to have an effective story, you need to be on the other side of healing, to have a story that's really going to help someone else that's going to glorify God. So how do we get to that place? Well, the first thing I think we need to do is to recognize that we have something that needs healing. And God asks us, Do you want to get well? Now, that seems like a strange question.

Of course, I want to get well, but do you really? And let me give you an example. In John 5, remember, Jesus goes to the pool of Bethesda, and there are men and women around this pool that are infirmed.

They've got all kinds of sicknesses, and they believe that an angel comes down from heaven and stirs the water, and the first one in gets healed. So there is a man sitting there. He's lame.

He's been there for 38 years. And Jesus comes up to that man and asks him a strange question. He asks him what? Do you want to get well? Do you want to get well? What a weird question.

I've been here for 38 years, so of course I want to get well. But you know what? The guy didn't even answer Jesus. He just started making excuses. He said, Well, when the water stirred, nobody's here to help me. It's not my fault. It's other people's fault. That was not a discussion question.

That was a yes or no, not even multiple choice, yes or no. Do you want to get well? And I wonder if he really did, because you think if this man got well, he'd have to make some major changes in his life. He'd have to stand on his own two feet.

He'd have to get a job. I mean, his life was going to be radically different, and this is all he had known. Do you want to get well? Well, he never answered Jesus, but Jesus just told him to take up his mat and walk.

Get up and get going. And you know, 38 years sounds like a long time, but it was about 38 years in my own life before I started really accepting the healing that God wanted me to have in certain areas because of my childhood. Do you think if Jesus asked you, Sharon, do you want to get well? What would you have said? I would not have known exactly what my sickness was.

That's a great point, because I think a lot of people aren't aware. And I wouldn't have known. God sent another woman in my life. She was an older woman in my church at the time. It makes me kind of queasy saying that because now I'm her age. I'm that older woman. But as I was going to Bible studies and I was teaching Bible studies at the time, Mary Marshall pulled me aside, and she said, Sharon, I can see the insecurity in you, and God wants to heal you of that. And she took me through a process of overcoming feelings of insecurity and inadequacy and inferiority that I felt because of what the messages that I had heard as a child carried. And I knew Jesus. Listen, you can know Jesus, and be teaching Bible studies and be under a cloud of shame and a cloud of feeling like you are so less than everybody else. I mean, you're 38 years old and you're doing all these great things for the kingdom, and you're still carrying that question. What's wrong with me?

What's wrong with me? I did too. Still there. And that's what I was going to say. I think if someone had said to me, do you have shame? I would have thought, no, I don't. I don't know. I've never even thought about that. And then I would list off all the things I was doing for Jesus.

Yes. And yet, if you look at what are the symptoms and I think we need to do that as women, maybe as men to Dave. But I was so insecure. I had to self-talk of total like you're feeling you're bad at this. You're ugly. The self-talk I wasn't aware that was going on in my mind was a reflection of the shame I was carrying. And I could never praise any other woman. And I was in competition constantly because of my own insecurity. Those are all signs. But you probably if you were anything like me, you thought that's just who I am. Because I've always had it. Right. Yeah.

It's like this. My husband every day when he worked, he just retired. He would get up at five thirty, take a shower. He would put change in his pocket, put the keys in his pockets. He would blow his nose and make other noises I won't get into. And then when he left the house, the alarm would go off, the little beep beep.

And you know what? I never heard it. Why? Because I was accustomed to hearing it every day and my mind just shut it out. And we can get so used to telling ourselves lies. I'm no good. I'm ugly. I can't do this.

I can't do that. We can get so accustomed telling ourselves those lies that we don't know it. That's why David said, Awake, my soul. Who is he talking to? He's talking to himself, basically saying, Pay attention, soul. And we need to pay attention to what we are telling ourselves.

I love D.L. Moody once said, In order to tell that a stick is crooked, you don't argue about it or denounce it. You simply lay a straight stick alongside it. And we need to put beside what we're telling ourselves along beside God's Word and say, Is this true? And if it is not true, if it does not line up with scripture about what God says about who we are, we need to reject that lie and replace it with the truth. So that part of that healing was, Do you want to get well? And for me, with Mary Marshall Young, I said, Yes, I want to overcome this.

How am I going to get well? And we all have to make that decision. When she said to you, Hey, I see these insecurities about did you agree? I mean, did you see it as well? I honestly did not really understand what my identity in Christ meant. I knew the verses. I'd even memorized them, but I didn't really think they were true for me. I thought they were true for other people. And the bottom line is we have to decide, Does God tell the truth? Whoa, that is a big sentence. Does God tell the truth?

Does he tell the truth about who I really am as his child? It was a learning process of a couple of years, honestly. But let me say this, I never wrote my first book until after that time with her.

Wow. And it really took being well of that. And I'm not saying I never struggle with insecurities again or feeling inadequate again, I still struggle with that. But now I know how to fight the lies with the truth. And so that first step to having a better story is deciding I want to get well, and not allowing what happened to us to or, or not listen, it's not just what happened to me by other people, but it's also what has happened through me by the mistakes that I've made. Maybe someone's had an abortion in their past, or maybe they've been sexually promiscuous in their past, or, you know, they've committed a crime in their past and, and they've asked that God forgive them.

So it's not just what has been done to me, but making a decision, I want to be well, once you make that decision that yes, I want to be well, and you're willing to do the work, the second step is to forgive those people who've hurt you. And, you know, I was sitting at a college football game one time, and I was sitting on the end of a row, and people kept tripping on the step right beside me, they had popcorn, they'd had their drinks, and they kept tripping and spill a little bit drink. After a while, it got kind of comical, don't think badly. I was trying not to laugh, nobody got hurt. But at halftime, I went and measured that step and the other step.

Wait, you measured because you know, why are people tripping people tripping over the step and, and it was about a quarter inch higher. Now, that's how forgiveness is in our life. I think that is the step that many Christians trip over in their stories. And yet, it's what our faith is based on. Our whole faith is based on forgiveness.

And yet we struggle with forgiving other people. And I love what the, you know, the New Testaments written in the angry Old Testament in Hebrew, and the actual Greek word for forgiveness in the New Testament is called a fee me. Now, and it means to let someone loose to cut someone loose to let someone go free.

Now, in my southerness, they have a little app on my phone that helps me say these difficult words that a fee me doesn't just roll off my tongue. And so what I always say, I kept saying off of me. Oh, off of me.

Yeah. Isn't that what forgiveness is off of me. So to forgive someone means really basically to cut someone loose. And unforgiveness, what would be the opposite would be strapped someone on. So when we choose not to forgive someone, it's like we carrying that burden of unforgiveness around with us. And it's such a heavy burden to carry. But when we forgive them, we cut the burden loose, and we let them go free.

It's interesting. I was just thinking of the scripture that Jesus said, I have come to set the captives free. I did not write the sentence and it's so great. And I don't know who said it. Forgiveness is setting the prisoner free, but realizing the prisoner was you. Yeah. Lewis Meade's in his book, Forgive or Forget.

Yeah. And that is so true, isn't it? And another quote is unforgiveness is like drinking a poison and waiting for the other person to die.

I don't know who said that either, but I don't know. But I mean, I've been on a similar journey with forgiveness with my dad. And our listeners right now is going, yeah, but you don't understand how hard it is because this person destroyed my life. Yes, we do. We do understand it really is hard. I was 35 before I forgave my dad.

I started the journey when I was like 30. And I'm like, I'll forgive him next weekend. I know this, you know, Ephesians 4 32. Forgive us. You've been forgiven.

I'll forgive him next weekend. Took me five years to walk that journey. You went through your own healing process.

Oh, yeah, just I'm sure you did the same thing. Well, when I was in my 20s, I had gone to school for two years. And then I went got a two year degree, associate screen dental hygiene. And then I worked two years and I felt like God was calling me back to school, but I could not hear from God. I just I was praying and hitting a brick wall the first year I felt that I should go back. Second year, same thing, not hearing from God. And I went to one of my mentors, this precious man.

And I said, Can you pray for me because I really can't get an answer on this. And he read me many of those verses about asking you shall receive, but wouldn't you know it, he put it in context, don't you hate it when people do that. So he read the verses before and after. And every one of those verses had a passage of forgiveness. And he said, Sharon, I feel like the reason you're not hearing from God is because you still have unforgiveness, brother, Father.

Yeah. And even though my dad had become a Christian, every time he did something wrong, that anger came back and hurt came back. And that night, I did forgive my father for everything he'd done.

And you know what, I started hearing from God again, I knew what to do. And I'm not saying that once you forgive someone, you're going to strike it rich and all your dreams are going to come true. But I do know that when we have unforgiveness in our hearts, then we can't hear from God, as we should.

There's a block there. And you mentioned, and that we don't forgive because we feel like they don't deserve it. Yes. Well, absolutely. They probably don't deserve it.

But guess what? You don't deserve it. None of us deserve God's forgiveness. And yet he forgave us. And Scripture tells us to forgive as Christ has forgiven us. Well, they might not deserve it, but you deserve it. Because the people that we choose not to forgive, they don't care.

Okay. And most of the time, they don't even know. Well, we're trying to punish them. We're punishing ourselves.

So we don't forgive someone because they deserve it. And we're not saying that what they did isn't wrong. What we are saying is we're going to let it go. We're going to give the burden of justice to God. And we are going to be free. Yeah. And they may not be, but we will. And I've experienced that.

You've experienced that. But here's the thing. I know you said there's four steps. You've only got two. Can you do the other two? Absolutely. All right.

What are they? Well, the third one is we call forgiveness coming out of the pain place. The next one is coming out of the shame place. And that, like I mentioned, sometimes it's when someone has hurt us, and sometimes it's the decisions that we've made that are causing us to be stuck. So receiving God's forgiveness and letting it go, coming out of the shame place. And the fourth step is so important, is once you feel like you are ready and healed is to tell your story. We're going back to where we started with my dad coming to Christ because there was a man who was willing to tell his story. And once you tell your story, how God has healed you and brought you through the difficult chapters in your life, then they will become your greatest victories.

Yeah. And again, we sort of come back to where we started yesterday. Second Corinthians one. He comforts us in our affliction so that the purpose is those stories literally are what God uses. It's like weakness, brokenness. God just redeems to connect with other people who are living in that same valley and saying there's a way out. His name's Jesus.

You can have victory. That's how he changes broken stories to beautiful stories. Many of us have heard the phrase, hurt people hurt people.

But the opposite is also true. Transformed people transform people. As we see God work in our lives and help us overcome the shame of our past, our history, we are offered forgiveness, we receive forgiveness, and then we're able to extend that forgiveness to others and people as a result are transformed. When we intentionally receive the grace of God, we are able to step out of the shame of our past and then tell our story and watch God work in the lives of other people as well. David and Wilson have been talking with Sharon James today about her book.

When you don't like your story, what if your worst chapters could become your greatest victories? We believe in this book so much that when you head over to family life today.com and make a donation of any amount, we're going to send you a copy of this book as our way of saying thank you for giving and advancing the gospel effort of family life today. You can find it at familylifetoday.com or you can pick up the phone and call us at 1-800-358-6329. That's 1-800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today.

Make your request there and you can receive a copy of Sharon James' book. Thanks in advance for your support and we hope you enjoy this fantastic resource. Watching God heal brokenness is something that we've seen done in so many different ways, particularly at the Weekend to Remember event. I have the president of family life with me here today, David Robbins. And David, you've had lots of opportunities to see God work in the midst of the brokenness. I so appreciate the conversation today about how hard chapters and even the worst chapter in our lives can be the things that shape our stories and that God moves in greatly. What we see all the time at Weekend to Remember getaways is that people come in and the realities of life had drifted couples apart. And really the simplicity of what we do is certainly offer up truth from God's word, but also get people looking in the eye and having conversations that really just the speed of life doesn't allow you to have. And no matter what chapter you're in and your life currently, getting time away to spend time with one another and focus on one another could be something that God restores and starts a new chapter that you've been longing for in your marriage.

Yeah, that's right. And you can enjoy three days of romance and reconnection with your spouse. You can head over to familylifetoday.com, find different locations about where the Weekend to Remember events are, find a time, sign up, and watch God do amazing things in your marriage. Again, you can find us at familylifetoday.com, or you could give us a call at 1-800-F-AS-IN-FAMILY, L-AS-IN-LIFE, and then the word TODAY.

And there is a Weekend to Remember conference that's happening in Charlotte, North Carolina this weekend. We'd love it if you'd take a second to pray for the couples who will be attending this upcoming weekend. Now on Monday, we hope you can join us as we talk about restoring our lasting values that can amplify God's greatness. James Merritt is going to be joining Dave and Ann Wilson next week. If this content today or any of our Family Life programs have been helpful for you, we'd love for you to share today's podcast with a friend or a family member. And wherever you get your podcast, it could really advance what we're doing at Family Life if you scroll down and rate and review us. On behalf of Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time 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.