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Have you ever looked at a situation you’re facing in utter disbelief and thought, "How will I ever get over this?" Lysa TerKeurst understands. After years of heartbreak and emotional trauma, she realized it’s not about just getting over hard circumstances but learning how to work through what she has walked through. Now, she wants to help you do the same. That’s why Lysa teamed up with her personal, licensed professional counselor, Jim Cress, alongside the Director of Theological Research at Proverbs 31 Ministries, Dr. Joel Muddamalle, to bring you "Therapy & Theology." While Lysa, Jim and Joel do tackle some really hard topics, you’ll soon find they're just three friends having a great conversation and learning from each other along the way.
Shae Hill: Hi, friends. Welcome back to the Therapy and Theology podcast brought to you by Proverbs 31 Ministries, where we help you work through what you walk through. I'm your host, Shea Hill, and I'm so glad you're tuning in today. If you've been listening to the season 10 episodes so far, you know that Lysa, Dr. Joel, and Jim have been sharing topics from their new book that just released called Surviving an Unwanted Divorce.
In light of that, today's episode is part two of these Q&A style episodes where you're going to hear live questions from listeners just like you, followed by answers from Lysa, Dr. Joel, and Jim. These episodes are some of my favorites that we've done because we're getting to hear straight from you, the people that we really want to help the most. Okay, are you ready? Let's dive into part two.
Question #1: I would like help in making peace with the part I played in the death of the marriage. It's hard when my ex-husband's family has one narrative and my family has another. I also have one, but it puts the blame with him. He left and moved in with somebody else. How can I discern truth? And does it even matter? I carry so much shame as a Christian with a failed marriage, and I want to prove to myself that the betrayal is real and I didn't bring it on myself. I want to prove to myself that the betrayal is real and I didn't bring it on myself. But perhaps I just need to let go of clarity.
Lysa TerKeurst: Hmm. Well, yeah. Yeah. I think, how can I discern truth and does it even matter? Truth does matter, but you may not get all of the answers that you want. You know, sometimes when you're talking about people's narratives,
You may not ever be able to understand someone else's narrative about a situation. You may never get to some of the baseline truths that you want. Why did this happen? When did it start? How could I have missed it? How could they support their son or how could they support?
this person who's caused me so much pain. I thought I was part of the family and now they've just, you know, tossed me aside. All of those things. You may never get some of those answers, but we can't spend the rest of our life doing two things. We can't spend the rest of our life trying to seek answers for these questions that may never come. And we can't control someone else's narrative. Boy, have I wanted to.
Boy, have I wanted to step in and hand somebody a piece of paper and say how you're thinking about this, how you're talking about this. The narrative you're repeating yourself is wrong. Do you want the truth? And you know what? I've never had that epic conversation, even though I wanted to, to correct someone else's narrative. But I do think it's important that we understand the pain with divorce is not just usually the
only with the soon-to-be ex-spouse. The pain is also other people that are around you who, like it or not, some of them will pick sides. It always drove me nuts when people would say, you know, there's two sides to every story. And what I wanted to say is this is not a spectator sport. This is a family being decimated on the field. Why don't we just all step in and help rather than having so much commentary about,
what went wrong and whose fault it was and all that, that stuff really doesn't matter. Let's just go where the hurt is and see what we can do to help.
So I know you guys have a lot to say about narrative as well.
Dr. Joel Muddamalle: Yeah. One, I want to tackle this word discern because the question is like, how can I discern truth? Once again, I'm going to do a quote from Charles Spurgeon. Spurgeon has this great quote on discernment where he says discernment isn't simply the determination between right and wrong. It's the determination between right and almost right.
And I think this is really, really important because what can end up happening is we try to pick, and Jim, you've mentioned this before, we want to pick black and white narratives. It's his narrative. It's my narrative. It's their narrative. It's not their narrative. And the process of discerning truth is to take an honest look at what is real, what is untrue, what is almost true. And it's those things that are
almost true is where discernment really matters. And here's what the analogy I would give. The analogy is like cancer in the body, a surgeon's first kind of thought
thought is I need to deal with the cancer. I got to get that area. And the second part is like, oh, if there's infected area around it, then I got to remove that. The first thought isn't take the whole body organ out unless absolutely necessary. There's a surgical process to this where you go in, you cut out the infected area, you give the right treatment so that you can restore and regain wholeness. And I think part of what ends up happening in this scenario is our discernment gets compromised, but
because we have our view of what the narrative is. And instead of assessing what is actually true, we're trying to demand what is true on all counts instead of kind of the discernment process. And so, yeah, I would just say discernment is tricky. It's a tricky process that has to be evaluated and done with the leading the Holy Spirit ultimately.
Lysa TerKeurst: And ultimately, you know, she's asking…
Mm-hmm.
I remember when Jim first poked at, you know, instead of, Lysa, you've spent years working harder on him than he was willing to work on himself. So now let's work on you and maybe some parts that you played. And I was so resistant to that. Not because...
I didn't want to work on myself, not because I wouldn't fully acknowledge that, of course, every marriage has difficulties. And of course, both parties contribute to those difficulties.
But it was just hard for me because I was not in the realm of just a difficult marriage. I was in the realm of a destructive marriage, and I wasn't making the big, huge, destructive choices. And so anything I would acknowledge that I had done wrong, it felt like I was helping justify the bad behavior, the destructive patterns that he brought into the relationship. And you really helped me see, Lysa, nothing that you did, nothing that I did,
justified anything that he did or caused anything that he did. He made his choices. You made yours. But there were some parts that I eventually needed to own. And for me, codependency was a big part where it was basically me saying, I need you to be okay so I can be okay. So how can I make you okay?
So that I can feel okay, okay? And then that spun right into enabling bad behavior, looking over things, ignoring things, minimizing the effects of things, preventing consequences that he should have naturally suffered because of some of the choices he was making. And look, there were good reasons that I had for that because his consequences would impact all of us.
And I was afraid of those consequences coming back on me and my kids. So again, these were all things, though, that you helped me go in, like Joel was saying, and with precision, not own what he did, but work on healing the parts that I needed to heal from. And that was a really important exercise. Yeah.
Jim Cress: Yeah, I would start with for this wonderful question with what we see these remodeling TV shows do with Demo Day. And that is to go, we're going to take the reality. And before you even get to the part, you may may have played in the death of a marriage at any level.
is to start with a demo, Day. We're going to take it down to the studs. We're going to take it down to ground zero, literally, and say, for you to give yourself permission to walk first through the trauma of what has happened to you, the facts and the impact of all that. And that takes some time to explore that. And then I think as you walk, here's our metaphor again, here is our preposition again, to walk through this, then to begin to very gently understand
look in the mirror a little bit kindly and say, and go vertical, God, is there any part that I played in this? And I think there should be some lengthy contemplation, not quickly rushing to owning things that aren't yours to run to and feel like this is something I need to own. But take that time. First, though, look at the damage that has been done to you. Two is another, I guess that's an infinitive, the word two.
But to look at that and then say, now let me look, Father, and really pray in the spirit, is there anything I've done here that I need to take ownership of?
Lysa TerKeurst: That's really good. And I like the concept of demo day because one of the most profound days in my healing that even got me to the place where I could look at myself and decide what areas I needed to improve on, heal from, you know, all of that.
was you told me to write out all of my hurt on three by five cards. And I wrote one thing on each card and filled up your office floor with those cards. And then you did something so profound, Jim, you stepped back and you said to me, I believe you and what happened to you was wrong. And that was the day that, that I realized I didn't need someone else to,
to like, I may never be able to have that epic conversation where he owns everything that he did and says he's sorry and says it shouldn't have happened. You know, I dream of that one day, but I probably will never have that conversation. But you believing me that day and bearing witness to my pain allowed me to drop down this hard exterior that I've built around me. And it was so profound just to have another human bear witness to my pain
and believe me and say, yeah, this was wrong. It shouldn't have happened to you. And once that was acknowledged, then I started to feel safe enough to look at myself and what I contributed and what I needed to work on. So, so good. All right, let's move on to the next question.
Question #2: My husband left me and the kids when I was one month postpartum. We had been trying to work through infidelity for about a year. And once he left, I found that he had an addiction to cocaine and was lying about a lot of things. Yet I received a text weekly saying he's sorry, he loves me, so on and so forth. However, he's not getting any form of help. And so how do I, you can hear my baby, how do I cope with these texts?
Lysa TerKeurst: This is hard. That's really hard. Her husband left her and the kids when she was one month postpartum. That is a really harsh reality. So sometimes we...
smush together or conflate together the terms forgiveness and trust. And you can work on forgiving someone, and that is a command by God, but it is not an instant command by God that we must reconcile. Those two things don't go together. Just because we've forgiven someone does not mean we automatically have to trust them again. And I hear a lot of broken trust in this dynamic, rightfully so.
And I would just like to say that you can work on forgiving him, but when he's sending you texts
Sometimes maybe those are authentic and sometimes that could be love bombing because of just wanting to win you back. Keyword win, you know.
Jim Cress: She's not a prize at the county fair.
Lysa Terkeurst: Exactly. And so obviously we're not in this dynamic and I don't want to just make a lot of assumptions about this reality. But based on what we do know,
Trust takes time. It's broken in an instant and to repair it takes a very long time. And what I would need to see if I were you is time and over that stretch of time,
believable behavior that he really has changed. You said he's not getting any form of help. If he's not getting any form of help, that's making it really hard for me to believe that his motive is to get you back and
participate in a healthy relationship. Things like cocaine and infidelity, those are really serious offenses. Those are really serious destructions, destructive behaviors and patterns in a relationship. And if he's not demonstrating believable behavior, then
with getting help and healing for those destructive patterns, then it seems to me only logical that he's going to bring those right back into the marriage. No matter what he says, words are cheap. It's real easy to say, I love you. I want you back. I've changed. But what has he done to change? That's the big question.
Jim Cress: Yeah. And I, again, our words frame our reality. I've circled words that were written down, words that were said such as sorry, sorry,
The Bible calls us in Psalm 51 for a brokenness and a contrite heart to confess first, then repentance. Repentance, metanoia in Greek, is to stop where I am, 180 it, and move back the other direction. So I'm listening and watching for movement. He loves me.
already addressed of love bombing, not getting any form of help, and then these texts. So that's not coming in where I take men, especially in these situations, is I want you to do the individual work, sir. I know he's not here in this conversation.
And I want him then to get with his wife, not just what you did for yourself, but I want the guy to come in and go fact and impact. Will you forgive me? Back to offing Amy. There are other words to cancel the debt. So to be able to say, as I coach a lot of wives and say, well, you could say to forgive you for what? You're not being mean.
Forgive you for what? Well, you know what I've done. I'd like to hear for you to tell me, not in texts, what I've done. Matter of fact, even if we're divorced, we could go to a therapist if you're wanting to, out of the 12 steps, make amends, out of the Bible, make amends, and say, here are the facts I've done to you, and here is the impact, what I believe it did to you, before you get to what I call track.
And that is, will you forgive me? What debt are you canceling? And I think for a lot of these guys, they're wanting to do what I will call an ownership bypass. They're just going to bypass, right? And say, let's just move on all like that. I beg you to not do cheap forgiveness. That's not being a peacemaker. That's being a peacefaker.
Dr. Joel Muddamalle: Yeah. Lysa, Jim, and I do an event called Haven Place right outside of Lisa's house and teach a whole deal on forgiveness. And I'm going to try to summarize that the best that I can. Jim mentioned it already, but the primary Greek words that are used for forgiveness in the New Testament are afiemi, which is a legal cleansing of the dead, a legal declaration of the erasure of
And then the second word is charizomai, and it's an interesting Greek word that Paul essentially makes up. I love this about Paul. He's kind of a funny guy, and he takes two words and he brings them together, charis, which just means grace, and then zomai, a different word for forgiveness. And he brings it together to give us a kind of forgiveness that is grace-laced. Now, this is something that's very, very important.
Forgiveness is absolutely a command from God. We don't have any escape hatch from that. However, reconciliation is not demanded or commanded. It ought to be pursued immediately.
if possible. And so from a personal place of forgiveness, yeah, you, Afiame, you erase the debt and it actually has less to do about the other person and has so much more to do about your personal healing. So you can be set free to grow in your own trust, to grow in your own love, to grow in the beautiful future that the Lord has for you. Now, the question of
If reconciliation is possible, I want to look through three categories that I typically try to teach of the if possibility of reconciliation. The three things are humility, repentance, and accountability. So humility prefaces the entire thing. I truly believe that humility is the soil of the Christian life and humility is a three-part movement. It first starts with knowing God.
And if we know who God is, my goodness, should it create a sobriety of heart because we are aware of the greatness and grandeur of God. If we know who God is, we know who we are. And if we know who we are, we now know how to rightly relate to other people. If you do not know who God is, you will treat other people like pawns in a chessboard to get whatever you want. And love bombing is absolutely a path to
to do it. It masquerades as love. It masquerades as the fruit of the Spirit, but at the very center of it is hidden pride, and it is ultimately destructive. Repentance. Jim talked about metanoia. In Hebrew, the word is shuv, and it's a two-part word. It has in mind turning away from
but also turning towards something. The plight of the Israelites in the Old Testament is they often turn away from their sin, but the problem is they turn towards another sin. So you want to pay attention to what kind of turning is happening. Turned away from one addiction, but then replace it with a different kind of addiction. You see what I'm saying? Or are they turning away from their sin and returning to Jesus in a posture of humility? And the last one is accountability. Yeah.
If there is no accountability in this person's life, um, that every relationship that they have is a power dynamic, that, that somebody needs something from them. You know what I'm saying? Um, they're known to a lot of people, but nobody actually knows them personally. These are some red flags to really consider in the process because, um, if you cannot be known truly, uh,
then there is all kinds of playground opportunity to live a life of deceit. And I think of the famous saying, I think I first heard it from Jim, but it comes from the therapeutic world. And this is sometimes very hard to hear, but it's also true. When somebody shows you who they are, at some point, you just have to believe them.
Lysa TerKeurst: So powerful. Thank you, Joel. All right, let's move on to the last question.
Question #3: When, if ever, is it okay to approach your divorced spouse and ask for closure if you didn't receive that?
Lysa TerKeurst: Well, I've already confessed here that, you know, I would have loved to have had that conversation, but
where, you know, the one who hurt me owned what they did, said they were sorry, sought out in humility, repentance and accountability and all those things we just talked about. And I think sometimes what we're trying to get at when we say the word closure is that epic conversation where something makes sense. Yeah. And
I have so many Jim-isms. I have a lot of Joel-isms, too. But in a therapeutic sense, my mind is full of Jim-isms, truly. And you taught me one time, Jim, that when we try to make sense of something that makes no sense, we'll lose all sense. Yeah. And my mind is full of that.
my brain was stuck on a loop wanting that kind of closure. Very naturally in your brain. Very naturally for all of us. Yeah. And so when I said closure, I wanted it to make sense so I could pack it away, understand why it happened so that it would never happen to me again. And
And when that's the kind of closure that we're looking for, I think it's like we want to make peace. We want it to make sense. We want to know where to put it in our brain. But the thing is, even if we have all of that information, why it happened and all of that stuff, we probably wouldn't agree with those answers anyways. And so I think when we say closure, we have to be really careful about making sure that
that the closure we seek is not dependent on the other person, because you may be depending on them to make choices they're unwilling or incapable of ever making.
Jim Cress: Moving on, I would even posit forgiveness means the past, right? your marital past will never be different. There's a reality around that. Remember, mental health and spiritual health really is a commitment to that reality. Never forget the last part, at all costs. So the idea is, can you embrace today? And I think this is invigorating. It's full of dopamine and full of the Holy Spirit to embrace the fact that you can. I mean, it's reality. You can get individual closure today.
by, in, and of yourself with God without needing anything, as we've said on the other side of the street from your spouse, as much as you would long for. Now, when you're wanting closure, I would posit more questions here than answers. What are you looking for? And deeper than that, what are you longing for in closure and wait, trust, but verify?
Can you really trust, if it's a him in this case, a husband, an ex-husband, can you trust the closure that he will provide? And again, that is this peace faking, again, not real peacemaking, even within yourself. And then to look at, as you are there, a word we like in the therapy world, we like it in the biblical world. The Bible's filled with this word, agency.
Control what you can and let the rust alone. It might be a goodbye letter you would write. Dear ex-spouse, here's what I would long for you. And you might even take it out in the backyard and set it on fire and burn it, release it, bury it. I've had a lot of clients do that and to say, I release that I no longer, while I might want, I no longer need a type of closure, sir, that you might provide. Because if you provided it, can you really trust it?
Dr. Joel Muddamalle: Yeah, that's so good. I think when I hear the word closure, I can just speak for myself. I think what I hear is being misunderstood. And that is so painful to think that you've been misunderstood. And I want people to rightly understand me and I want them to know what I meant and what I didn't mean. And so I think there's a really honest place, a good place that this comes from. And yet we cannot force other people to get to a place that they themselves are not willing to go.
And so I would just say be on the lookout for some attributes in that other person that has the potentiality of a conversation. And I just always go back to the fruit of the spirit. I just feel like this is such a great indication. I'm fully convinced.
that the fragrance of the kingdom of heaven is the fruit of the Spirit, and the thing that actually moves the fruit of the Spirit into the earth is the gifts of the Spirit. But the fruit of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness. I mean, if you start to see the fruit of it, then there's an indication that maybe there can be a kind of clarification
closure that brings two misunderstandings together. But I think the other questions you have to ask, again, we're giving a lot more questions than answers, is what is the aim and the intent of the closure? Like, what do you want after it? And sometimes what we want after the closure is somewhat incongruent with the
the fact of the closure. And so you have to be honest with yourself, you know, um, are you aiming for something that honestly is not going to happen, um, or is impossible, or are you aiming for the return to peace, shalom, a rightly ordered world where you can live in happiness and they can live in happiness and, um, and you can pursue the Lord, uh, in the place that he has called you to. And so, um, just some things to consider. Yeah.
Lysa TerKeurst: You know, I wanted closure as well, so I understand this so much. And I wound up just creating a very quiet moment with me and the Lord that closed that chapter of my life. And it was very painful, but it was really helpful. I have a marked moment in time where I literally closed the book on that chapter.
that space and that time of my life. It was when there was this week that my childhood Bible was found by a girl that I went to college with. She had it in her, in her, in a box up in her attic. And it was just in a bunch of her college books. And somehow my childhood Bible had made it there. And she returned it to me the very week that I knew that, that,
that the divorce was going to be final. And when I got that Bible, I opened it up and I was flipping through it and I saw different things written in my handwriting. And there was this one little sentence that I had written in, and it was talking about with God, you can't serve two masters. But I wrote in there with your husband, he can't have two wives. And
And I just remember reading that and being so stunned. I have no idea what that meant, you know, from my childhood days, why I would have ever written that. But that's what I needed. I took that childhood Bible. I took it into my closet. I took my wedding ring off. I put it right in that section of the Bible. And I literally read.
close the Bible and put it on a shelf. And to me, that was the closure that I needed. And it was just between me and the Lord.
Shae Hill: Hey friends, I hope you enjoyed today's conversation. Before you go, I want to give a special thank you to the generous donors who give and not only make today's episode possible, but also ensure that it reaches the hearts of those who need it the most. If you'd like to help Proverbs 31 Ministries reach even more women with the truth of God's word, I want to invite you to give a financial gift today by simply going to proverbs31.org backslash give.
That's all for today, friends. Thanks for tuning in and we'll see you next time.