10 Mile Markers of Healing

Welcome to “Therapy & Theology.” When you’ve experienced hurt after hurt, it’s easy to wonder: “Will I ever feel like myself again?”

Friend, pain will try to overtake you, but it will not be the only makings of your story. Healing is still possible. Hope is still possible.

In this episode of “Therapy & Theology,” Lysa TerKeurst, Dr. Joel Muddamalle and licensed counselor Jim Cress will walk through 10 mile markers to identify healing after you’ve been hurt or wronged.

Hi, welcome to another episode of the Be and Theology.
I’m Lisa Turks with Doctor Joe Moon Male, right? Doctor.
Now, this is, this is a new title that you worked for for a long time.
So it’s exciting to say it. And of course, we have Jim Crest.
He is professional licensed counselor and he happens to be my counselor and I’m so thankful for both of you and the influence you have in my life.
You know, sometimes when we experience physical trauma or a physical wounding, it’s when we ask the question, how do I know if I’m healing?
The physical healing is a lot more apparent.
It seems to be that we can see the scab, we can see maybe that we’re putting medicine on it.
We can go to the doctor and there’s just a very visible reality that, you know, when it’s healing and when it’s not emotional wounding, emotional trauma is a lot more mysterious.
And so today we’re answering the question, how do I know if I’m healing?
So, Jim, I know that over the years, you have done a lot of work with people who have been through pretty significant emotional trauma.
And so you’ve developed some mile markers that we can look for when it comes to healing.
Now, in a previous episode, we talked about the stages of the impact of a trauma hitting us.
So, you know, we talked about kind of like moving through the stages of grief, moving through those stages of the impact from a trauma.
But today we wanna talk about mile markers of healing. How do I know if I’m healing?
So, a quote that I’ve used here before uh on, on this therapy and theology uh programs videos podcast, I’ll use again.
It is from Rene Brown and it says that you either walk inside your story all of it and that means your new story of the relational trauma that you’ve gone through the relational pain.
You either walk inside all of it when we tend to want orphan off parts like I don’t wanna talk about that part.
So you either walk inside your story all of it and embrace it, deal with it, deal with the facts and the impact of it or you’ll spend your life walking outside your story, numbed out, disconnected, whatever and hustle for your worthiness.
Just wonder can I be worthy with God or a new person in a relationship?
So, doing that necessary story work, especially coming out of relational trauma is to stop pause, hopefully be with a good friend, maybe a therapist, a pastor, someone who can walk with you and to say here again are the facts and the impact I do fit, you know, F I T facts.
This happened to me impact, what did it do to me?
And what track t, what track do I wanna take going forward these M markers?
And I can share them if you want to right now.
We’ve got about 10 of them here and uh you can rewind the, either audio podcast or the video podcast and write these down if you want, not necessarily in this order, but these are some of the ones that I’ve seen in working with people and quite frankly, in my own life as a client, I’ve been in therapy for years myself working on my life again.
One, I’ll put down a address, the facts and the impact of what went on.
Take a good look at it, not a superficial look.
Number two, identify, what am I truly willing, willingness is used to let go of maybe even deeper.
What is God asking me to let go of here? And what will I need to release?
That’s all through scripture, the rich young ruler at one level. I wanna follow you. I wanna work your plan.
God says, here’s what it will cost you.
It’s always a cost to being able to let things go in my life. OK?
So I want to touch on this.
So you’re saying that this is a sign of healing that you get to the point where you’re willing to release.
Now, what are we releasing? Well, so let’s release the impact of what went on. Ok. That would be one.
And that is to let, let’s release control another program coming up. Uh We’ve done before.
We’ll do it again on codependency. I wanna release the idea that they got by with it.
That person was able to hurt me. I have to say they did. Yeah.
So I’ve been doing some work, some theological work around this one.
The releasing because, you know, with therapy and theology, Joel brings the theology Jim brings the therapy, they both actually bring a combination of both of those and then I bring the issues, right?
And so I’m gonna bring some issues. Now, you bring a lot more than the issue.
Sometimes you bring the tissues too. I know, I know what it is. Actually.
I figured out there’s a discipline in the theological world called practical theology.
And you are our practical theologian and therapist maybe. And even though I have no qualification, yes, you do.
Come on. Can you, can you offer like an honorary, honorary degree right here?
My whole life just changed right here. OK?
But for right now I’m gonna bring some more issues. OK.
So I’ve been working a lot around this concept of release and it’s not as simple as just sitting down and saying, I’m choosing to release this person.
It really has to be a paradigm shift of acceptance. Like I’m accepting that I am releasing this person.
That’s really hard when somebody has caused you a tremendous amount of pain.
And when somebody has done something to you that altered your life, like it’s not even possible now for life to go back to the way it was, you’ve got to learn to move forward into a new normal and new reality.
But this releasing is complicated. And so one thing that’s helped me from a theological standpoint is realizing that I’m not releasing this person as in saying, it doesn’t matter what happened.
That’s not what I’m saying because it very much mattered.
I’m not releasing this person saying that, OK, what you did wasn’t so bad because in a lot of cases, it was really bad, right?
But what I’m learning to do is release this person to God because God says that vengeance is his and part of my resistance to releasing is that I want to know is this person ever going to realize the impact that they created?
Is this person ever gonna realize that their actions didn’t just affect themselves.
But it had a tremendous effect on all the people around them trying to do life with them.
And so when I started to pursue like, ok, this release for me is gonna be me releasing this person to God.
It wasn’t even so much that I want God to take vengeance on them.
It was that I want them to realize I want them to have that moment of sorrow that what they did was wrong and that they shouldn’t have done it.
And it’s hard for me to release until I feel like some justice is there.
And what God has been teaching me is when someone else sins against us, no matter if we ever see it or not, sin always comes as a package deal with consequences.
If we go all the way back to Genesis, it’s very apparent that when Adam and Eve sinned consequences were naturally unleashed in life because sin has two parts to it.
It has what enticed you in the first place which looks like. Wow, this is gonna be fun.
This is gonna be new, this is gonna be, you know, whatever this is enjoyable for a season.
The Bible says that so it’s got that part to it.
But we have to remember, it also comes with a package deal with consequences.
And so so I don’t have to see the other person’s um consequences to know that they existed and the consequences are for the purpose of bringing them to natural repentance and sorrow.
They may never get to the repentance and sorrow.
Maybe you’re dealing with someone who is absolutely refusing to learn from what they did, but they will absolutely suffer the consequences of their choices because that consequence was built into the sin that has helped me release, that has helped me to feel like there is some sort of justice here.
I don’t have to go after it. I don’t have to peel back the curtain and see it for myself.
I just can stand confidently and quietly knowing that that person chose to do something sinful and there were consequences built in and that has made it easier for me to release them to the Lord.
I, I’m at the risk of being a little clever here.
Uh And this just came to me, it’s how my brain works.
Um I like that you’re in a season of release because some of us who know you every now and then we won’t say Lisa will say Li and you’re re lease your name, reclaiming your life as Lisa going forward in a new normal.
And then the idea of I’m gonna borrow another one of releasing like you’re leasing a part of your life, you’re leasing the next part of your life.
And I’m redoing that to claim and re lease, re own where I’m going for.
A lot of us have given up ownership in toxic relationships, which is another program we’re gonna do and I’m, I lost myself.
We’ve said, coen people often don’t have a me that they know of.
I’m so managing everybody else and all that.
But to be able to sit and say, I want to release that and let it go and read Dash lease this new part of my life and take ownership to go forward it’s a new day and you don’t need anybody else to cosign that.
You can have advisors around you, trusted friends to say this is what I’ve got to do.
Um I I my markers here right for, for really these signs or, or road signs like going up an interstate of healing.
Uh Am, am I still obsessing over the trauma done to me? It’s the right word.
Just playing it over and over. Remember neurochemically in your brain that’s gonna fire dopamine.
It’s gonna feel really good to obsess and it’s gonna be numbing and medicating it.
Sometimes again, we referred to this last time as I could be shopping for paint.
Don’t make that innocuous because again, I’m firing a lot of numbing chemicals in my brain.
We’re searching for safety and, and sometimes I say it this way, it’s just the way I do it.
If you try to make sanity out of another person’s insanity, you’ll go insane.
But you try to name it and say, but look what they did and, and somehow I gotta figure it out.
No, it is what it is. It’s insane. It’s unhealthy, it’s sin.
It’s how did Solomon at the end of his life in First Kings 9 10 11 do the stuff he did.
It’s all been done before, right?
So the idea is saying, I don’t wanna try to make sanity out of a person’s insanity.
I think when you talk about obsessing over something, it for some people myself included, it is trying to figure out why this happened so that it won’t happen again.
Notice the control the prediction of the future so that it won’t happen again.
But I wonder if really a stage of healing is choosing instead of trying to figure out what happened, so it won’t happen again.
Instead me making my thoughts turning that energy of my thoughts around.
What now like what do I need to know now to make better choices or to engage with better relationships in the future or to um use this as an opportunity to do some self reflection and become a healthier version of me.
So what you’re saying is the releasing is you can know that you’re healing when you’re releasing and you can know that you’re healing when instead of obsessing about what happened, maybe you’re progressing towards something better and thinking about appropriately yourself and what do I need to do here?
What would God not? What Scott try to teach me?
Think about what is God wanting to do in me during this time?
CS Lewis would say Narnia, he would want to take you further up and further in God.
What are you wanting to do with me and in me during this time now I’m focused on me and what God is wanting to do in me versus what that other person did and why was I back there?
It’s all this stuff back in the past the past is over. So is over.
So two ft notes, uh you know, the academic says the footnotes uh analogy, one is at least when you’re talking about the release.
Um Really another word for that is forgiveness. That is exactly what we’re talking about.
And you wrote a book about it, an entire biblical theology forgiving what you can’t forget.
And the two words there in Greek are a which is a forensic release. It’s a canceling of the debt.
But the other one is very unique and it’s Paul’s word that he uses.
And he kind of Paul is known for making words up.
He’s, you know, a man after my own heart in that sense.
And he’s got a word called, it comes from two Greek words which means grace and Z which is a compound word that leads to for forgiveness.
It is a gracious forgiveness. Now, here’s the issue that rubs me the wrong way and I think any justice seekers out there, it’s gonna rub them the wrong way because what that means is there’s no conditional cause a charite type of forgiveness doesn’t come with a condition clause of will they ask for repentance, will they’ve done all the right things.
No, because why if you don’t do the the gracious release that’s required of us, we are bound in the prison of our own pain and, and that is an unfair added trauma we talked about in the last episode an unfair trauma to put ourselves in.
The second thing that you’ve just talked about here in Paul’s language. This is Romans eight.
Um It’s, it’s setting our mind not on things of the flesh, but on things of the spirit.
Now, what happens when we set our mind on things of the spirit? This is the end of verse seven.
Um And where are you at? Joel?
The rest, Romans eight, verse six, it says for to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the spirit is life and peace.
And that phrase set your mind. It’s talking about having a guard rail for your mind.
It, it’s about not letting it run rampant but setting up guard rails to guide you and to direct you uh in the way that you’re supposed to go.
And that’s, it’s kind of like when I, I love to take kids bowling because they put up those guard rails.
So you cannot get into the gutter. That is such a fun way to bowl, right?
And so Joel, how do we set up guard rails?
Because basically what that means is our thoughts are coming down just like the ball comes down toward the pins, right?
And so our thoughts are coming down. And so what are, what are some examples?
And Jim, I’d love your thoughts too.
Like what are some examples of guard rails to help us do that so that we really cannot set our mind on things of the flesh that lead to death, but set our minds on, on things above and and on things of Christ that then can help us find that path of life and peace.
Because I can find my thoughts running rampant when I am in the process of healing.
So I would reverse engineer this and start with, well, what is the outcome of setting your mind on the spirit, the where there is life in peace.
And so we had a Bible study, Lisa and I, we get to do a Bible study on Wednesday is one of my favorite early morning Bible studies that we get to do.
Um And one of the sessions we talked about when you walk into a conversation, if you walk into a conversation with a friend and you walk in with peace, but you leave without peace.
Well, some guard rails need to go up.
Some, some conversations need to be had because you, you entered in a, in a posture of shalom peace and you, and you laughed in a posture of chaos.
And so one of the first things I think that we need to ask ourselves, um are, how do we set our minds?
Well, what are the things in our life that establish peace in our lives?
What are the relationships that pursue peace in our lives and what are those things that don’t?
So this is again and we’re gonna talk about this later on with boundaries.
But sometimes it means that we’re going to say yes to some relationships and some relationships we have to say no to.
And so setting our mind um is not just framing but doing uh having that ability to do.
The other thing I think of is the for the spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness.
I mean, you know, all of this in Bible school and vacation bible school we memorize that.
Um Do we enter in and leave our relationships with those things?
How do we um I think about this in my family and my relationship with my kids.
Uh How do I set up systems and structures in the morning?
Because I’m not a morning person, you all, you need to know this right off the bat.
Like the most amazing theologians all got up at like three AM, getting up at three AM.
I’m I was at bed by three AM. I’m probably still reading at three AM, you know.
Um And so I have had to think about very like, OK, what are the systems that need to be set up in order to, to show love to my Children in the morning, kindness, um compassion, all of those types of things and simple.
It’s simple things like, hey boys at night.
Um It’s really, really important that your bag is put together at night.
So that’s scrambling in the morning if this is a type of guard rail that we’re putting up, that is, is saving our sanity and our peace.
And I think for me, I have to be careful, not just the people and the boundaries that we may need to set in order to set the stage for peace.
Um I also have to make personal choice of what is affecting my thought life.
And so, you know, if I’m watching something and it makes me suddenly feel like it intensifies my loneliness.
Well, then that’s probably not the wisest thing for me to watch.
And um or even social media, like if I, if I find myself saying, wow, when I engage with this first thing in the morning, then that’s consuming my thoughts.
That’s probably not the wisest way to spend my first thoughts in the morning.
And I know from doing research on the brain that when we wake up in the morning that whatever we put our mind to first will often saturate us so deeply and often start to dictate how we perceive everything through that day and corner.
So levels, the stress hormone are highest in the morning. So people have this morning anxiety.
And if you exacerbate that by doing what you just said biologically, the court, we’ve slept, the cortisol levels are highest in the morning, the stress hormone.
So feed that you’ve already got the body.
Like you need to, when you wake up, get up, when you get up, wake up, you need blanket victory.
Like get out of the bed.
People are scrolling and not realizing that that’s a bad time and place to be doing things that are not healthy.
If you’re Jim, what I’m hearing you say is that I’m no longer supposed to.
I wake up in the morning with my kids for my cortisone levels.
Is that like, can you write that down so I can take that home?
I think you are supposed to wake up with your kids.
You’re supposed to get plenty of sleep the night before. That needs to be a guard rail.
So that when you wake up with your kids in the morning, the backpacks are set and you reduce the stress and you’re kind, you set yourself up there.
I didn’t even say it. She took her and said, listen, there you go.
It, it reminds me a little bit of Philippians chapter four verse starting in verse eight.
Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true.
Whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things.
And so I think those are some good guard rails as well.