Lysa TerKeurst: Overcoming Rejection, Betrayal, & Heartbreak | Women of Faith on TBN
Lysa TerKeurst: Overcoming Rejection, Betrayal, & Heartbreak | Women of Faith on TBN
Lysa TerKeurst shares how God has brought her healing from deep wounds of rejection, betrayal, and heartbreak from those closest to her. Join us as we explore the transformative power of faith and God’s love in overcoming life’s challenges. Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more inspiring content!
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I found out for sure that he was having an affair I really do think that my body just went into shutdown mode but here’s what I know to be absolutely true we don’t serve a do nothing God God is always doing something and that something is always pointed in the direction of good and I could not see the good in that season it was impossible for me to see the good in that season but what I could do is Trace God’s hand to faithfulness behind me and I could remember other circumstances where God was good there’s a lot of talk.
of rejection in the psychological world but I really feel like why not go straight to the one who made us the one who knows the DNA of our very Soul which is is the place really where our head and our heart connect and we we were made to give and receive love and um we weren’t made for rejection but God certainly can come in and help heal those wounds have you ever found yourself in a place where you think there is no hope I have tried everything I have read everything I have gone everywhere I have prayed every prayer and it seems as if
my prayers never go any higher than the ceiling if today you find yourself in a place of Despair and darkness I want to invite you to join me on this program and you’ll discover that God is still moving that God sees you and that you are loved too many times in my life I have tried to carry the weight of all that I’m facing and I work my emotions into a tangled Fray and I work my fingers to the Bone trying to figure it out or fix it but you know some of the most powerful scriptures that I’ve clung.
to especially the past 10 years come from Mark chapter 14 and it’s right when Jesus right before he’s about to go to the cross and his prayer is so almost brutally honest to the Lord where he says my soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death and when I hear those words I think about this Jesus because he was perfect Divinity and full Humanity he was sinless but he was very much sinned against so Jesus had access to all the answers he knew it all and yet even having all the answers his soul.
still cried out that he was overwhelm a sar to the point of death and so Jesus had the answers and it didn’t fix his sorrow so I could spend my whole life seeking out answers to why this happened and you know what good is possibly going to come from it ever I could seek those answers or I could just simply trust the Lord in that moment and just say Lord you are good you are good to me and you are good at being God so therefore I don’t don’t have to carry that weight I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody.
Express that one particular thing of Jesus had all the answers but he was still in anguish that’s that’s huge well it was huge for me because I’m I’m a girl that likes to take all the facts and try to figure it out and I feel like if I can figure it out then I can get through it but that’s kind of the opposite of Faith you know if if if it’s only dependent on what I can see and what I can do what I can figure out then that’s not really me stepping into the fith that will really get me through.
what I’m walking through I remember happened with our son who was five and my father-in-law lived with us for a couple of years and Christian and I were the only two home the night that he died and I saw in the days that passed Christian went from grief to anger and I remember asking him about that and he said I asked God to save my papa and he didn’t so it’s not that I don’t believe there is a God I think there might be but I don’t like him and I’m not going to talk to him anymore what do you say.
to somebody who feels like because here’s the two things we believe that God is all powerful and we believe that God is love so if you’re all powerful don’t let this little one die if you’re just love then you wouldn’t so that means you’re not all powerful yeah what do you say to that first of all I would say I understand and I think your feelings are valid of course we would feel that way right um and then going back to Mark 14 where Jesus is in the garden right after he prays that his soul was overwhelm AAR to.
the point of death going a little further he prays this God everything is possible for you take this cup from me in other words God you are capable of anything so don’t let this be my story don’t let this be the way things go um take it take it away from me and I just think what a gift Jesus gave us that again Jesus knew the plan and he knew that it was for good he knew everything on this Earth was temporary he knew that it’s eternity that’s going to be forever he knew all of that and he still said to.
God God everything is possible for you so change the plan that’s so mindblowing to me yes it is but just like we see in Hebrews 2 there’s two reasons that Jesus came he came to make a atonment for our sin but he also came to be a merciful and faithful high priest in other words he came so that he could feel the weight of humanity the grit the grime and the grief of humanity and I believe he wants us to really look at what he did next so he prays like take this cup for me change the plan don’t make this be the
way the story goes just like I’m sure Christen Christian prayed over your um father and I prayed over so so many circumstances in my life I don’t want this to be the way my story goes but then Jesus utters these nine Earth shaking hell shattering demon quaking words yet not what I will but what you will God and so often in my morning prayers I will pray God you are good God you are good to me and God you are good at being God and right behind that I say after I make all my suggestions you know we have so many suggestions and I.
honestly think some of my suggestions are really really good you I’m sure are but um but I do I I have a moment where I sit with the Lord and I say okay all of that and I’m going to trade my will for thy will because I’m so confident you will God and I don’t have to see how it’s going to work out and I don’t have to know all of the answers I I’m sure with all of your heart you still wish that your dad wouldn’t have passed away I still wish with all of my heart the past 10 years of my life.
n’t have gone the direction that it went um and yet I do know that God is trustworthy and in the Physical Realm of all the pain that we see that is absolutely true we are experiencing real pain but at the same time with God there’s always a meanwhile meanwhile this is all true and what God is working out for good is also true and those two are operating at the same time I love that you brought up the mark 14 passage because for me how it’s helped me is I I Think Jesus processed his pain in the.
presence of his father because sometimes you know when we’re going through tough stuff we’re either trying to fix ourself or we’re trying to shove it down into the cellar of our souls or we’re trying a million one things but the fact that Jesus actually processed that Agony yes open handed in the presence of his father and I think when we do that when we tell the truth we make space for Grace I did a survey recently I asked our team at TBN would you give me a list of why people call in for prayer I I wanted to.
know like what are the particularly the last two or three years which have just been so bizarre so so many people are lonely devastated but I wanted to know what do people call in for prayer about and I found out that the a vast majority of the people are calling in because they’re having marital problems and I think the co epidemic exacerbated that because suddenly people were home together a lot when things were I mean Barry and I have been married for 28 years and I almost killed him during Co which I still think might have been.
technically legal during Co because he wakes up talking I mean he just talks and I like quiet in the morning all of that to say when when did you who always have this idea of how life is going to be when did you begin to think things were not going well in your marriage it was in 2013 and um you know at first I I could pin it to other things you know we had five children and so that’s a very busy household and some of our kids were you know graduating going off to college um and so I just at first attribute it to.
there’s lots of transition happening and you know sometimes it’s hard and then you know um my ex-husband was experiencing you know a birthday a significant birthday and so I thought well maybe it’s just that he’s kind of hit that place where he’s feeling like he’s getting you know older than he would like to be or whatever so I always had things that I could attribute what I was feeling and sensing to that were a whole lot less severe than what was actually happening and I didn’t find out for sure what was.
happening I got through 2013 2014 2015 um but I knew just there was something un it was like an undercurrent of of turmoil that um that I wasn’t used to and that made me very very very anxious and at the same time I think he was trying to convince me that I was the crazy one and so every time I would ask questions you know he would just say things like you know Lisa we really need to like work on your mental health and stuff and so I now know that the counseling term for that is gaslighting I didn’t know it then and um then in.
early 2016 the day of my oldest daughter’s rehearsal dinner um I found out for sure that he was having an affair I really do think that my body just went into shut down mode I knew I had to get through the wedding for my daughter and so I did but I was in a complete fog I was smiling on the outside while I was screaming on the inside just desperate to wake up and have this all be a bad dream but it wasn’t it was real not only that but it wasn’t something he was willing to walk away from where is God in all cuz I’m.
thinking of people who are thinking right now yeah that that is that is my story where where is God when things when he’s not answering your prayers in a way that makes sense well it’s a lot easier for me to answer that question now if you would have interviewed me that day I would have said I have no idea where God is you know and I I think it’s okay to be that honest and that terrified and and that broken but here’s what I know to be absolutely true we don’t serve a d do nothing God God is always doing something and that.
something is always pointed in the direction of good and I could not see the good in that season it was impossible for me to see the good in that season but what I could do is Trace God’s hand of faithfulness behind me and I could remember other circumstances where God was good circumstances I didn’t know how I was going to get out of and so that didn’t fully comfort me but it did remind me that I may not see the hand of God moving in the way that I think it should but that doesn’t mean God isn’t moving it just may mean he’s.
doing something different and what I was so desperate for was for God’s hand to move in a direction of complete reconciliation between me and my husband um but instead God God’s hand was moving but it became a rescue and he rescued me out and I do think sometimes God rescues us out of relationships sometimes God you know creates a Reconciliation opportunity but for that reconciliation to take place both people have to work toward reconciliation there has to be repentance there has to be a complete turnaround the the behavior that that.
got into you got you into that Brokenness cannot be the behavior that will get you out of it you know and I remember the day that I got the the divorce papers from my attorney and I didn’t know what emotion to have at that point you know it’s like do I cry do I thank God for rescuing me out do I grieve the loss of a nearly 30-year marriage and the answer is yes all of the above I’ve often wondered because I know what the Christian Community can be like you know we can be incredibly supportive and understanding and we can be brutal.
with one another I remember um posting a comment on Instagram one day a fairly insipid comment simply saying that it was the day when Joe Biden’s son Bo finally passed from his cancer and being a mom of just one boy it broke my heart and all I posted was praying today for the Biden family I got annihilated online by Believers saying you know this is how can you pray for a man like that and I’m like it kind of B my mind but I’ve often wondered for you you know we have these things within the church.
where these are the these are the regular sins that we all do um and these are the big no NOS right so how did you navigate those Waters of people who hold you in such high esteem believing that you shouldn’t have got divorced well it wasn’t easy you know I mean I was already suffering so much heartbreak on my own and then to add on top of that you know people well-meaning people but people putting pressure on me Lisa if you get a divorce you’re basically giving permission to a whole generation of women to also divorce.
their husbands and I just thought well first of all I’m not that powerful second of all I’m absolutely not giving permission to anyone and third of all I am just trying to survive a story that I didn’t want I didn’t want this divorce I I didn’t see it coming and there was nothing that I could do to change him if I had power to change another person I would have but all I had to do was you know all I could do was to save myself and um and save my sanity and and you know I did a lot of research around what.
helps kids be resilient after something is tragic as a a divorce and the research shows that the number one thing that can help a child be resilient past an a divorce especially an unwanted divorce like mine was is to have one healthy stable parent and if I wanted to be healthy and I wanted to be stable then I could no longer participate in the dysfunction that was going to take both of us out if I didn’t get out you’ve mentioned five children children and two are adopted am I correct in that two yeah darling boys.
are adopted how do you help your children in that process because I think it’s something that it’s the same as you know you know my story my story is to do more with mental illness which doesn’t just impact me it impacts our family it impacts my husband it impacts our son and I I was trying to think what would that have been like for you in the midst of your own overwhelming grief CU what people probably don’t understand understand is the years that you tried the year after year of extended Grace.
and forgiveness how do you help your children what do you say to them when they don’t understand I think when the trauma is not just one trauma but it’s over and over and over and it’s it’s this trauma and then that trauma and then this one and my kids were of the age where it’s not like I could I could sort of hide some of the impact of all of this from them um and so unfortunately they were kneed deep in the trauma with me not because I pulled them in there but because they were very aware of what what was going on and so I.
don’t know that I did it all right but I can tell you a couple of things that I did right and one is I made a commitment to my kids that if they had questions I would answer them truthfully but I also made a commitment to them that I wouldn’t continue to talk about things beyond what their questions needed and they even asked me as a very healthy boundary they said please don’t talk about our dad unless we ask you questions and you know I think part of that is I could get a divorce but they were not in that situation you know they.
can’t divorce their dad and so I respected that boundary and I think that was a really good healthy thing so I don’t know that I did it all right but I would say those conversations were important um and also getting good counseling and making that available to my kids so that they didn’t always feel like they had to process it amongst themselves or process it with me that they could go in a neutral environment and someone who was trained with with how to heal from trauma um giving them access to that was really.
important too how did you deal with the anger because I was trying which is impossible to put myself in your place knowing some of behind the you know story details of how awful it was at times what do you what do you do with that or were you angry or were you more grief stricken but how do you handle that I think I was shocked um that was my primary motion and I remember going into my counselor and I kept saying I just can’t believe this and then I next week I just can’t believe this and the next week I just.
can’t believe it and finally my counselor says really you can’t believe it cuz pretty much this has been a pattern now where I think you should believe it and he helped ease me to the place where I understood mental health as a commitment to reality at all cost wow and so part of my struggle was I wanted to and I needed to feel all the feelings for sure but I also knew that while the feelings could indicate things that I needed to address I didn’t want them to dictate how I suddenly lived my life and.
so I could feel angry and boy did I feel angry sometimes but I didn’t have to live as an angry person easier said than done obviously and I I would give myself lots and lots of Grace for certain moments that it was just a flood of emotion and that was it but I also knew from from almost the very beginning of this that it was not going to be something I could get over it was something that I was going to have to walk through and there were not going to be any shortcuts and um you know I’m thankful that I had wise people around me to give.
me some really crucial nuggets of advice that were very very important and one was my counselor his name is Jim Crest he’s amazing but he one time said Lisa as sign of true true healing is that you can go home and sit in the quiet alone with your own thoughts and be okay and I really did not like that answer because I thought that’s the last thing I want to do is go home and sit alone with my thoughts but it was absolutely important because it allowed me space to identify what I was really feeling and those.
feelings became pointers of the healing that needed to take place and so those feelings were like the indicator lights on a dashboard and I had to be committed that what I was walking through this really was as bad as what I thought it was and these feelings were real and and I didn’t want to get swept away with the feelings but I definitely wanted to pay attention to them because we have to feel the pain if we’re ever going to be able to deal with the pain and we have to deal with the pain if we’re ever.
going to heal from the pain and so from that Place one of the phrases that I always think of when I think of you and your journey is I believe that you have and honestly it brings tears to my eyes that you have stewarded your suffering well there’s a difference between walking through suffering and stewarding your suffering you have allowed the Lord to take the very things that have broken you and you have lifted them up and you have allowed God’s love to flow through these broken places to other women and for that um on.
behalf of everyone thank you I think rejection is such a tough issue to tackle because we’re all dealing with it in some aspect of our life we’re either healing from a past rejection which can be incredibly painful we’re dealing with some kind of painful present-day rejection like it’s right in front of us affecting us right now or we’re fearing an unexpected rejection could be right around the corner and we’re navigating relationships all the time to avoid rejection and I think many of us feel.
very ill equipped when it comes to rejection because it Taps into one of those core um really security foundational things we do not want to be abandoned and rejections I think it’s even more painful than losing a loved one to death because at least with when someone passes away you’re both clinging onto the hope of of you know tomorrow in and being re reunited in eternity right but when someone rejects you they purposefully have walked out of your life and they may even be happy to do so and so it’s a very difficult issue but.
it’s one I wanted to tackle because I think that God has set up our soul to be accepted by him and if we can really really understand how God has already accepted us how God loves us then I think we can weather the rejections of life in a much more healthy way you know I love how you’re saying that I remember when I first read this book Lisa um you know I was abandoned at Birth by my uh biological mother and um and then was adopted out and so there was a deep root of rejection that came into my life and.
and I’ve seen it continue to come into my life you know just when you think and I think I know there are people watching this right now and you think well I never feel rejection and often times we don’t even realize that we’ve built so many walls to protect ourselves um and we built those walls first to sort of so that we wouldn’t get hurt but then it’s become a prison and I I found you were so transparent and so vulnerable in this book um what are some ways that people can kind of let those walls come down.
where they don’t protect themselves that you talk about well first of all one thing we have to remember is that rejection often times steals the best of Who We Are by reinforcing the worst that’s been said to us that’s true yeah so I really spent some time helping us go back it’s not that I want us to focus on the past but like you were saying there are roots of rejection there that often times what will happen I don’t know if you’ve ever had this situation but uh maybe you get into a rather small.
