Lysa Terkeurst: Conquer Life’s Trials

Lysa Terkeurst shares her testimony on TBN’s Praise, and tells us how God led her through her greatest trial.

“Feelings are indicators, not dictators. They can indicate where your heart is in the moment, but that doesn’t mean they have the right to dictate your behavior and boss you around. You are more than the sum total of your feelings and perfectly capable of that little gift . . . called self-control.”
― Lysa TerKeurst

When we attach our hope to outcomes of our own making, we’re setting ourselves up to possibly get epically disappointed because Really, there’s nothing in this world that we can attach our hope to and have it be permanently wonderful.
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 it ourselves or we’re trying to shove it down into seller of our souls or we’re trying a million in 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, because that’s one of the things that I have seen throughout your life as long as I’ve known you.
I mean, the tragedy of, uh, little one, and one one that you’ve considered almost like this is my little girl.
Than, um, the tragedy of the abortion, which I’m sure broke your heart into a million pieces.
Now, so that was the end.
If we could just write a book now and and then these looked happily ever after, but that’s not been true.
You’ve gone through so much heartache. When you graduated from college, what did you did you imagine your life?
What did you think
you would be doing? Well, I thought I would marry the guy that I dated in college Um, and I thought that we would have these children that I had imagined, you know.
I think I think the hard thing about a woman is we don’t just look forward to the future.
We make plans as if the future is already real.
So I had already named my kids you know, that I would have with them.
I already imagined our home, everything.
And then when that relationship fell apart, I not only grieved the loss of the relationship.
But I grieved the children that I would never have and I grieved the vision of what I thought my life would look like.
Um, so yeah, I think coming out of that, then I just thought now what?
Like, what do I do now? And so then I decided, okay, well, maybe I’ll just be a career woman.
So I jumped right into a career. And, um, and that was wonderful until also that was not wonderful.
And I think I look back now and I see that I was very attached to outcomes of my own making.
I I kinda have this checklist thing. Like, I know what will make me happy.
It’s to get married, have kids, have, you know, the cute little house with the minivan parked out front maybe not the minivan, but that was part of the dream.
And then, um, you know, and then, uh, an amazing career.
And I think what I quickly realized is when we attach our hope to outcomes of our own making.
We’re setting ourselves up to possibly get epically disappointed because Really, there’s nothing in this world that we can attach our hope to and have it be permanently wonderful.
There’s thousands and thousands and thousands of women, not just here in the States, but around the world who are profoundly grateful for the ministry that you head up.
Proverbs thirty one. How did you go from I’m going to be a career woman to suddenly proverbs thirty one woman?
That seems like quite it it was quite a leap because, um, I eventually did get married and then right away got pregnant and had a little baby.
And, uh, now all of a sudden I was a stay at home mom, and that was amazing, except I still did have this drive inside of me to do something.
And so I was trying everything.
I remember I went and took some classes to learn how to arrange flowers, and I thought, great.
I’ll open up my own floral shop, and that didn’t work.
And then I thought, okay, now I’m gonna sell cooking utensils.
So I sold cooking utensils, but in one of the demonstrations I was doing, I was telling them how safe the slicer geyser was.
And I cut off the end of one of my fingers, and so I was
like, yeah, this sales is plummeted in that company. So this
is probably not supposed to be my career.
But then one day, um, a gal approached me and said, She was starting a little newsletter to encourage other stay at home moms, and she wanted to know if I would help her.
And I said, yes, I’ll do the marketing. But I don’t ever wanna say anything upfront.
I don’t I don’t ever wanna, you know, be upfront in any way. I’ll just work behind the scenes.
And so that how it started.
It was just this little newsletter that people really friends and family would send us fifteen dollars a year and they would get twelve newsletters over that year.
And that’s how the whole thing started.
And then exploded clearly. Yeah. 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 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 COVID epidemic exacerbated that because suddenly people were home together a lot when things were, I mean, Barry and I have been married for twenty eight years, and I almost killed him during COVID, which I still think might have been technically legal during COVID because he wakes up talking.
I mean, he just talks and I like quiet in the morning.
All of that to say, when did you who always have this idea how life is going to be.
When did you begin to think things were not going well in your marriage?
It was in two thousand thirteen.
And, um, you know, at first, I I could pin it to other things.
You know, we had 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 card.
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 kinda 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 two thousand thirteen, two thousand fourteen, two thousand fifteen.
Um, but I knew just there was something, and 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 lighting. I didn’t know it then.
And, um, then in early two thousand sixteen, the day of my his daughter’s rehearsal dinner.
Um, I found out for sure that he was having in a finger.
I really do think that my body just went into shutdown mode.
I knew I had to get through the wedding for my daughter, and so I did, but I was in a complete 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.
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 because 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 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 and 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 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 gonna 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 hand to move in a direction of complete reconciliation between me and my husband.
But instead, god god’s hand was moving, but it became a rescue.
And he rescued me out. And I do 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 know, 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 divorce papers from my attorney.
And I didn’t know what emotion to have at that point. You.
You know, it’s like, do I cry? Do I thank god for rescuing me out?
Do I grieve the law loss of a nearly thirty 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, posting a comment on Instagram one day, a fairly insipid comment, simply saying that it was the day when Joe Biden and 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 kinda blew 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 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.
Uh, 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. Yeah.
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 as 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 gonna take both of us out if I didn’t get out.
You’ve mentioned with five children and two are adopted. Am I correcting that to, yeah, darling voice 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 stories to do more with mental illness, which doesn’t just impact me, impacts our family.
It impacts my husband. It impacts our son.
And I was trying to think, what would that have been like for you in the midst of your own overwhelming grief because what people probably don’t 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 knee deep in the trauma with me, not because I pulled them in there, but because they were very aware of 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, that 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 the 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. 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 would next week, I just can’t believe this.
And then the next week, I just can’t believe it. And finally, my counselor says, really? You can’t believe it?
Cause 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 under a mental health as a commitment to reality at all costs.
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 those feelings could locate 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 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 so new from from almost the very beginning of this that it was not gonna be something I could get over.
It was something that I was gonna have to walk through.
Yeah.
And there were not gonna be any shortcuts.
And, 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, a 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 wanna 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. Yeah.
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 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.