The Hard Good: Lisa Whittle

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Again, that's FamilyLife.com slash 500 hours. I think one of the hardest things and most difficult things in marriage is trying to deal with the hurt from our spouse. Like we don't know what to do with that. Why are you bringing that up?

It's been a while, like a month. What do we do with the pain? Because all of us experience pain in relationships. And I think a good question is we all get that pain.

What do we do with it? Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Dave Wilson. And I'm Ann Wilson.

And you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com or on the Family Life app. This is Family Life Today. You know what I do?

I stuff it. I'm not saying that's good. I'm just saying my natural process, watching two alcoholic parents, walking through divorce, I didn't know any of this when we got married. But I became a, you know, go to my room, shut the door and pretend I'm living outside of all that pain rather than process it. And then we get married and I did the same thing.

Yeah. Well, I think I probably did the opposite. You chased me into the room. But I think when people deal with pain, I can't remember who I heard say this, but you either self-promote or you self-protect.

And I think you were probably self-protecting and I would jump all over you wanting to know what was going on. Well, we need help. And our listeners need help.

And we got Lisa Whittle in the studio back today to give us some help about how to deal with our pain. Not that you're a woman of pain or anything like that. It sounds like you're the pain woman. I also don't know if I'm an expert on this. I'm thinking to myself, am I the help?

I'm looking behind me going, where is the help? I'm looking to this guy, the H, the capital H help. What I will tell you is that this is something that hits close to home for me. Every chapter I wrote in The Hard Good hits close to home for me. That's why you can write it, right?

That's what authors do. We write about things we deal with. Opening your heart again when it's been hurt. For me, that's been one of the great struggles of my life, honestly. God, how do I become open again when what I really want to do is stay closed off? Whether it be with the church, whether it be in my marriage, I have to say that in my marriage, my husband has been the one to pursue me.

And thankfully he has because I don't know where we would be otherwise. I know not every marriage has that situation, but I'm grateful because I think there are a lot of times in a marriage there is one person that tends to close off and the other one who's the pursuer. If we're both closed off, we're in trouble, right?

But it is, again, the help of God that helps us to stay open because all of us have gone through things that our history would tell us. Don't open your heart again. You know you've been hurt before. You know you can't trust again. I think this is a chapter, I believe it's chapter 7, for people with trust issues, which I have historical trust issues. Again, with the church, with relationships, with friendships, because if you've been hurt in those situations, you don't want to— We got to talk about that a little bit.

You brought it up twice now, and we mentioned it yesterday a little bit on the program. You have hurt trust issues with the church. Where does that come from? Obviously, it's connected to your dad being a pastor, but dive in there a little bit. My dad being a pastor. My dad was a pastor, and so I live my life as the daughter of a pastor, and I loved that role. I loved being a pastor's daughter. I really did.

We get a bad rap sometimes, PKs, but I loved it. It was the life I knew, and my parents were great to sort of nurture that love for the church for me. It consists still, and that's why I pour into the church now. But it was hard when my father lost the church over, really, for lack of a better way to say it, a scandal with the IRS. Because of that, it just led me to a place of questioning, and so there was a lot of pain there. Then there was a lot of trust broken there. Who can I trust?

Who's going to really love my family? A lot of rumors were spread in the town. It hurt me with my father, who was on this massive pedestal for me as a daddy's girl. Then I thought, oh, maybe I can't trust my father.

Maybe he was the one to blame. There were just a lot of issues there. Even in my adult married life, my husband and I started a church, and then we closed it in 13 months. There was some pain there as well. Listen, if you're in the church for very long, it's going to be a place sometimes that you have struggle.

You know why? Because we're all human, and we're all in the church, and we all hurt each other sometimes. I've inflicted pain on others in the church, as we all do, because we are all human. But that's a place sometimes where if we just live in this tender space of, I've been hurt before, that's my history.

Therefore, it must be my future. We will not open our heart back up again. I believe in boundaries. I believe there is a very important space.

Here's what I've noticed. I've noticed that people who don't know how to set proper boundaries, the ones that are very wise, the ones that have been worked through, are the ones that say, I'm just going to keep my heart closed. I have this saying that I think is very important. It is, the difference between a closed heart and a boundary is that one is about being wise, boundary, and one is about staying wounded.

That's the difference there. Staying wounded is when we live with a closed heart. Well, it's your subtitle, Showing Up for God to Work in You When You Want to Shut Down. We can all have that tendency. You talk about this even after your dad had passed. Talk about that a little bit when you were with your uncle and your dad's whole family. Yeah, that was a tough moment.

It's weird. It was a beautiful moment and a tough moment. This is the tension, the living and the tension of the both and, hard and good, which I believe life has lived in that tension. We have the beauty and the hard all at the same time.

This is the temporary life that we live. We had gone to dinner and my mother and my bonus dad, which is what I call him, were newly married and they live in a city that my whole dad's side of the family happens to live. We had gone to dinner with my mom and her new husband and my dad's full side of the family. You and your dad were close.

You went through some hard things, but you say he's your best friend. He was really one of the great loves of my life. My father and I were very, very close.

I felt like I understood him on many levels. We were very similar in many ways. This was a tender night for me. I was very excited to get to see all of his family, but we went to dinner and we went to this fish place that was one of my bonus dad's favorites. Here we were all sitting at this long table and my bonus dad was telling preacher stories because he was also a pastor. He was telling stories and I was sitting next to my favorite uncle. My favorite uncle and my father were very, very close. I just began to be filled with all these remembrances and stories of times that he and my dad would kind of hurt us up as kids into the car and all these things. All of a sudden, as stories and remembrances do and we're in grief, I began to cry. Everybody else was laughing and they were telling stories down there and I'm crying my eyes out. I all of a sudden just laid my head on my uncle's shoulder because in that moment, it felt like he was my dad.

He wasn't. I knew he wasn't, but I needed him to be a father figure in that moment. So I laid my head there and I let it lay there until I needed the tears just to go. It was that tension of feeling so overwhelmed with how hard this was for me to sit there with the family that I loved, a bonus dad, my mom, but the one person missing that I wanted to be there. But it was also the beauty of getting to be with all the people that my dad loved the very most.

I think that's what we go through. In that moment, I wanted to close my heart up because it was difficult for me, but I knew that I needed to stay open because I would miss the beauty of that moment as well if my heart shut. So I prayed like crazy under my breath, God, just help me. Help me just keep my heart open right now. It might sound simple, but sometimes that's the lifeline in that moment. That quick prayer. God, keep my heart open.

I think that's what's really hard for us. You shared yesterday a similar story when your bonus dad wore your dad's hat at the lake and you were able to show up in that moment. You're able to show up in this moment, help the listeners going, I can't get there. I want to get there when it's hard and my heart's getting hurt and it's getting hard and I want to do the right thing. I feel like I don't have the power.

What would you say to them? Well, I would say I deeply understand you don't have the power in and of yourself. Those are two things. I'm a pragmatist and I want to speak to you very practically. Because I think sometimes we talk in these lofty ways and I think it's very important for us when we're in our moments of pain to understand you're right, it is hard.

You don't have the power in and of yourself. Sometimes I feel like that's important to speak, to say that. I also think that we need to expect to be triggered sometimes. A lot.

Yes. I think sometimes we expect that this is going to be a perfection journey and that once we just decide to open up our heart, that's it. No, you're going to be triggered. You're going to be in a fish place like that and you're going to have a moment of grief or you're going to have a memory or there's going to be a tough moment.

Someone's going to say something to you and it's going to trigger you. And you're going to need to take a deep breath. You're going to need to whisper a prayer. You're going to remember a verse. That's why things like scripture memory. That's why things like having been in the Word, having prayed. That's why those spiritual disciplines are very important because they come into play in moments when your heart is breaking.

Those are important for those moments and you can't skip around that. One of the things that I talk about in the book in that chapter, and actually I have a free quiz on my website to help you with this. Your website is?

It's lisawiddle.com. Okay, good. I tried to make it as easy as possible. If you're like me, I can't remember much. But I talk about the four types of responses that are common when you are having a moment that you are wanting to close off your heart.

And it's really important because these are just tendencies. I talk about this one of tornadoing, where when we don't deal with the wound, this is a process that incurs other drama. It's like a pain cyclone. Torpedoing, where it's sort of this under the surface pain that shoots out and hits others and it catches them off guard.

Tailgating, where it's this pain that sort of follows you everywhere you go. And then torching, which is like this inflammatory pain that incites and burns everything to the ground. These are different ways that we respond to it. I think one of the things that's really important, we're not going to know how to deal with things unless we know how things affect us and how we respond to things. So I think that's one of the most important things in knowing how it affects us personally. Because we know, maybe for others, how what they do affects us. But how does this pain affect us? So you're saying like, get to know your heart.

Be listening to what's going on in your mind and your body and your heart, your emotions. I was leading a Bible study one time and I could see in our room, I was looking at this room of women and I knew this woman, her husband cheated on her several times. This one, she just lost her mom.

And a lot of them were new to the city. And I had brought this fake heart, it looked like a heart, in the shape of a heart, and I put it on the coffee table. And I said, the tendency is, is when we get hurt, and I had this little cage thing, is we want to put this protective cage around our hearts because we have loved so fully and our heart has been so exposed.

This is awful. This feels so wrong right now. But I took this little knife and I just poked it several times, this heart, and said, it feels like we cannot survive another poke in the heart because our hearts will shut down.

We put the cage to protect it. And I said, and we forget who holds our hearts if we give it to him. It will be God holds our hearts.

And in the midst of the pain, we can say, Jesus, I'm hurting so bad. I need to feel you holding my heart. I need to know that you are my protector, you are my shield, you are my comforter, so that we don't live in that seclusion, that protectiveness. I think what you're saying is so important because sometimes we do feel like it's all up to us. I have to self-protect. I've had that feeling many times. And it's not like I want to do that. It's a natural feeling of protection. Yes. And again, boundaries are super important in these spaces.

I just think at the end of the day, it is about God holding our hearts so that if and when things happen that we can't control, because we can't control other people, that we will be okay no matter what. I remember I had a girlfriend that her husband was doing some things online. He was involved in some internet porn and had some extramarital relationships and so forth. And I remember she asked a counselor once, well, how do I know he's not going to do it again?

What can I do to ensure that that won't happen? And he said, you don't, you don't know. But what you can do is to have your heart be okay so that if these things happen again, because she had decided to stay with her husband and they had reconciled. He said that you need to be okay, you and the Lord, so that if these things happen again, you will know how to walk forward in these things. And I think, you know, people have asked me before, they said, Lisa, can I live with a closed heart?

And my answer was always yes and no. Yes, you can live with a closed heart. I've known people who have lived their entire lives closed off. They have gone to the grave with a closed heart. They have been closed off folks. They have not joined communities.

They have lived very hard shell lives. Yes, you can. That's a choice that you can make. But if you want to live, if you want to thrive, then my suggestion is no, you actually can't. Because it's hard to live with a hurt heart, but it is harder to live with a chronically closed one. And I've tried for times in my life to live with a heart that was closed off because I was so hurt, because I thought this is the better way to live, because I'm self-protecting, because oh, someone won't hurt me now. But in the process, I've been so hurt myself by my own walls that have put up. I have not been used by God to do things that He's wanted to use my life to do. And we know that the most beautiful life is a life that is used by God in a powerful way.

And so my suggestion is no, not if you really want to live. You can't live with a closed heart. So how do you, I'm sitting here with two married women who've both written books about this kind of stuff. I know you've been hurt by your husbands, because I know my wife sitting here has been hurt by me.

And I've hurt you. I don't write books on marriage though, by the way. So I defer to Anne. Yeah, but all this stuff applies to marriage.

I mean, and so I want to get real practical. Like, okay, if it's your dad or if it's a neighbor or it's a pastor or somebody in a church, it's one thing to process that hurt when it's your spouse. And it can go the other way. Maybe it's your wife. But a lot of wives are listening and they're hurt by their spouse. And it isn't a hurt that was five years ago. It's daily. Oh yeah. They feel it every day because it's in their marriage.

How would you help that woman process this hurt? I mean, you wrote about it in chapter seven. I was going to defer to Anne.

I still defer to Anne. But I will say in this book, I do have a literal section that says steps forward because we need that. We do need actual steps. And really, a lot of the things we've been talking about here are steps. But the first one is acknowledge what you wish had been different, which again, all of chapter one is about that.

And I'm telling you, I started the book with acknowledge and accept what you wish had been different because that is where we get stuck many, many times. Well, it's confession. It's just telling the truth.

It is. I mean, honestly, it is one of the most important things. But that practice is really important.

So acknowledge what you wish had been different. Assess where you are right now, number two, and where your pitfalls are. And then I kind of give a little bit of a process right there. Three, keep giving it to God, which is a vital practice.

It is not a one and done. It is a continual practice. And number four, live your life forward and not backward, which is very important because we are here today living and breathing. There is purpose in that or else we wouldn't still be here. So while we can live in the past, the forward thinking, the forward process is where God wants us to stay. And so, sure, we need to assess and we need to acknowledge. We need to do that.

But after we've done that, we need to live forward so that we can allow God to use our life from this point forward. Yeah, I was going to also wonder, do you, as you acknowledge it and admit it, do you speak to your husband? Do you acknowledge, admit that, and confront in a loving, graceful way, but tell him, I'm hurt?

I mean, I absolutely would say yes. I can't imagine not having that communication with your husband. I would say that would be a problem if you weren't willing to talk about what the hurt was. I think that's crucial.

Is there a way to do it? Well, I was going to say, because I didn't- Because I've heard my wife on the phone coaching women, like, no, no, no, no. Do not sit like that.

I think we need ants coaching with this right now. It's because I did it so poorly for so many years, because just telling them and critiquing them and saying, this is what you're doing to make me mad or hurt or whatever, I mean, I continually did that. But I think what you said, Lisa, to stop and pray, and I would say take a day. I'm a verbal processor, so the things that come out of my mouth aren't always great if I haven't processed them a little bit. And so, for me, just to take that moment to say, God, I'm angry with Dave or I'm mad at Dave or I'm hurt or whatever, should I say something? To even ask that question, then how should I say it, Lord, because I want to speak the truth in love? I would a lot of times skip that love part. I'm just going to speak the truth because I tend to be pretty feisty too.

And even for those that aren't feisty, who maybe withdraw and pull inward, I think- She said the other day about one of my sons who's a pastor, and I was a pastor, you guys are all the same as she walked out of the house. That was the truth, not so much in love. I didn't say it many years. And you know what?

She walked out of the house. She's right. Well, that's because I said you were selfish. That probably wasn't the best way to say it. But you're right. I think just to say that prayer, Lord, help me to know what to say, how to say it.

I do think it's essential. And Dave, I'm going to turn it on you because I think a lot of times in marriage, we women can be sometimes more verbal, and we can be sometimes pretty critical in the tone and the way we speak to you guys. I see a lot of husbands shutting down.

So how do you not shut down your heart? Because I've been pretty rough on you over the years. We don't have enough time to dig into that one.

That's a whole other show. Because I do think that we talked about that a little bit yesterday, that men can really shut down too. Yeah, we've said this many times. And again, I don't want to get into our story, but for years and probably decade or so, I felt critique like I didn't measure up.

I wasn't the man you thought I was, and I didn't do things well, whether I didn't lead spiritually the way you wanted, whatever. So that, I think, and if you're a wife listening, I think you got to understand that shuts your man down. And again, I'm not saying we're not at fault.

We shouldn't shut down. But when we feel like we measure up other places and we don't measure up in our home, we go other places. And when we come home, we sort of shut down. And if you're sitting there going, my husband doesn't talk.

I'm not blaming you, but it could be part of the problem. You have critiqued him so much, he feels like he doesn't have a lot to offer. So when I told you that, you know, when I finally said, here's what I feel, and you heard it. It was so good that you told me.

It was hard to say. But again, over years, you've affirmed me and believed in me and you trust me. And I mean, I get teary thinking about it. Nobody believes in me like you do. And I know that now that helped me show up.

And again, I'm not saying it's on your spouse or on somebody else. That's me. I have to choose either shut down or show up.

I'm going to turn into the podcast questioner. All right. Why do you think this takes so long in our marriages to get there? Because I think sometimes this takes quite a number of years for the husband to say this to the wife and the wife to get it.

Yes. It's so true. I think I just talked about this with the young woman yesterday. Men generally don't go to their wives and say negative things. Generally, some do and some are critical. But generally speaking, they're just nicer than I am. I'm just going to say it.

No, you know what it is? I honestly, when you said that, Lisa, my first thought was fear. OK. I mean, there's a lot of reasons.

I'm glad you said that. I'm trying to figure out my husband right now. We're afraid. We are afraid. Afraid of what? The courage to walk in a room, a kitchen, a family room. Honestly, it's easier for me to stand on stage and speak to thousands and say something vulnerable than to walk into our bedroom or kitchen and say, I got to tell you something, I'm afraid or I feel like you don't believe in me.

I can stuff that and I can live pretty good. You know, and you and the wife is feeling I'm not getting his heart. You're not because he's sort of I did it.

I covered it up. And then when I finally said, this hurts, you feel like you're a little boy, you know, you're supposed to be man. And we don't hurt anymore.

No, we hurt a lot. We are just little boys in man bodies. And it takes courage to say, OK, God, I'm going to say something that's I don't know where it's going to go.

I don't know how she's going to respond. And this may be a bad thing. But back to your title, if you don't go through the hard, you're not going to get to the good. And so you have to walk into that valley, at least I would say today.

I think there's a couple today that would say, OK, I'm going to choose to step into the hard. And I'm going to ask God, it's Romans 828. As I read your book, I thought, man, this is Romans 828. He causes all things to work together for good. They're not always good. They work together for good.

But we have to be part of that process. Yeah, and I love that you brought that verse up because the one thing that I think people miss with that is they make the verse to all things work out. It's not all things work out. It's all things work together. It's the totality.

It's the process. And that's what the hard good's really all about. I think, too, if you're a wife listening and you're thinking, my husband would never come and tell me anything like that, I would pray about it and then I would go to your husband and say, Hun, do you feel like I've done some things that have been hard on I've been hard on you or things that I've done that have really hurt you? Because I think I need to learn from some of that and I want to hear your heart.

That'd be a good question to ask and a scary question. So I would say praise. And that takes a lot of humility to say I want to hear how I've been hard both ways. Yeah.

Either way. You're listening to Dave and Ann Wilson with Lisa Whittle on Family Life Today. You know, dealing well with the hard things in our lives goes beyond just us. It has ramifications on our legacy as well. And Dave's got a final takeaway on that in just a minute. But first, Lisa has written a book called The Hard Good. Showing up for God to work in you when you want to shut down.

You can get a copy at familylifetoday.com or by calling us at 800-358-6329. That's 800 F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. OK, here's Dave on the impact today's conversation can have on our kids and on their kids and on their kids. As I listen to this conversation about marriage, I think about our kids and our grandkids.

And I've read several different authors have said this, so I don't know where the origin is. But, you know, pain that's not transformed is transmitted. And if we don't process hard to good, we will transmit it into our legacy. We'll watch it in our kids and our grandkids.

And it's coming from mom and dad who really never really processed it. Join us next week on Family Life Today with Dave and Ann Wilson. They'll be joined by Kirsten and Benjamin Watson. Kirsten's an author, a mom of seven, and went through the unique experience of being the wife of an NFL tight end. Kirsten and Benjamin will be sharing the hardships of moving through life while staying in the game. That's next week. On behalf of David and 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.