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.
Lysa TerKeurst:
This is Lysa TerKeurst, and you're listening to Therapy & Theology. Before we get into today's conversation, I'd like to thank the American Association of Christian Counselors for sponsoring Season 7 of Therapy & Theology. I love the work that my friends and I get to do through this podcast that allows for therapeutic wisdom and deep theological insights to be accessible to anyone from anywhere, but we're really only able to scratch the surface. I know there are thousands of individual needs represented in our listeners as they navigate their own life and relationships, and that's why I always love recommending the American Association of Christian Counselors.
They know asking for help is hard, but finding help shouldn't be. They created the Mental Health Coach training program to equip you to know how to respond when a friend comes to you for help. Featuring some of the world's leading mental health and ministry leaders, this online, video-based Mental Health Coach training program teaches you how to talk through the tough issues, like what we talk about here on Therapy & Theology, and how to respond to them. Visit MentalHealthCoach.org to learn how you can sign up for their Mental Health Coach program, or visit the link in the show notes to learn more.
I was on another podcast recently, and we were talking about how different my life looks now than it did even four years ago, five years ago, 10 years ago, and I'm living a life now that I never saw coming. It's different, but as we talked about in a previous episode, different can mean really, really good. For those of you who have been following along with my story, you probably know this, but in case you haven't, I'll catch you up. I recently got remarried, and so on this podcast interview, the gal interviewing me, she and I are very good friends, and she said, “OK, Lysa, just be honest. Is it truly as great as it seems?”
And she went on to tell me that a friend of hers who got married in their forties had sent her a note that's saying, “Hey, I just want to say,” because my friend is single, “I just want to say I've gotten married now and I mean it's good, but there's also so many hard parts that is not as great as it seems.” And so I told my friend, “I was like, You know what? I have a different answer. I say it is as good as it seems.” And being married again, even to a wonderful man, with a healthy relationship, it doesn't fix anything inside of me.
The same parts that were broken before I got into this new relationship that is healthy and that is wonderful and with a man that I love and I know loves me, it is [still there]. The relationship is as great as I always dreamed and hoped it would be. And it doesn't fix anything inside of me because the parts of me that still need to be worked on, the parts of me that still need to be healed, that's an inside job. It doesn't automatically fix when our external circumstances are different and wonderful. So today I want to talk about the repair work that has to be done inside of us. And I want to start out by saying, here's where we're ultimately going here. We're going to resilience.
We've talked so much about the brokenness and so much about healing the relationships and even changing our perspectives and all of that. But I want to talk about what happens to a person who has been through so much hurt and so much pain and so much betrayal. Has their trust broken in so many different ways that they start to reduce their life down to the limitations of living hurt. And that's where I found myself a couple of years ago. I couldn't think about the future because I kept saying it's hard to walk toward a future I don't want.
And that's before I met Chaz. That's before I started dating. That's before I could even see what my life could possibly be. I was so consumed by all the hurt and all that was different. I started to reduce my life down to the limitations of living hurt. And I remember I'd gone on vacation with two of my friends. We went to the beach, and we were planning to go down and sit on the beach and just have a wonderful day. Well, I like my cold things cold. So my thought was first to prepare. I want to get my little cooler out. I want to fill it up with ice. I want to put my sandwich, my little soda, my water bottle in this little cooler to take down to the beach so that I can have things and it'll all be cold when I'm down there.
So I go to get the ice to put in my cooler, and the ice doesn't come out of the ice maker. And I can hear it grinding, but it's not producing any ice. And when I opened it up, there was like, the inside was totally messed up. And I couldn't even get my hand into the ice maker to scoop out ice. So there wasn't going to be [any] ice. And I had a very out-of-proportion reaction to the situation at hand. I literally started walking around the kitchen with my fist in the air going, if he would've never betrayed me, we would still be married. And if we would still [be married], he knows how to fix things, and he would fix the ice maker, and I would have ice. But because all of that happened, now I can't have ice because I can't fix the ice maker. And yes, I recognize I was being very childish, but also —
Jim Cress:
You couldn't get the ice, so you melted down.
Lysa TerKeurst:
Thank you, Jim. I can always count ... again, ta-da-da. Shh. That was really good.
Jim Cress:
But there's more coming.
Lysa TerKeurst:
There's more coming.
Jim Cress:
I love this story.
Lysa TerKeurst:
So I just started saying, I can't fix it; I can't fix it, and I can't believe this, and I can't believe that. And then all of a sudden, I stopped myself, and I had this thought, But what if I could fix that ice maker?
Jim Cress:
Yes.
Lysa TerKeurst:
And so I Googled written instructions how to fix this ice maker. I'm terrible at following written instructions so that wasn't going to help me at all. So then I YouTubed; did you know this thing called YouTube?
Jim Cress:
Oh, come on.
Joel Muddamalle:
I've heard of this.
Jim Cress:
Fix everything.
Joel Muddamalle:
Yes, I've heard of this.
Lysa TerKeurst:
And I thought to myself, what's the worst that can happen? I break it worse; it's already broken. I watched that YouTube video, and I want you to know the girl who really does not have a history of fixing things ever ... I fixed that ice maker. And when the ice finally turned and fell down into my little cooler, I did a dance around the kitchen. I was hooping, I was hollering, [and] I was cheering. And it wasn't just a victory because I had ice. It was a victory because in that moment, I refused to live my life and reduce my life down to the limitations of living hurt.
And it was an epic moment of victory because it was a moment of resilience. And then second thing that happened on that trip ... my friend Jess, I was with Jess and Ann, my friend Jess loves to swim in the ocean, play in the ocean, jump the waves, do all the stuff. And so when Ann and I say, “We want to go down and spend the day at the beach,” what we mean by having a day at the beach is we get our chairs, we sit them down near the water, but not too far, not too close in, not too far out. We like to have our book. We like to have our little sandwich, our little soda, our water, and we like to read our book and chill.
That's what that means. A day at the ocean to me and Ann, that's what that meant. To Jess, no. It meant taking boogie boards down there and playing in the ocean. And so she was like, “Oh, y'all need to grab your boogie boards.” Ann and I had our little cooler, and then we had our chair and our towel. And Jess was like, “No, no, no, you need to grab a boogie board.” And I was like, “Oh, I don't do oceans. There are sharks that eat people every day. Shells that can cut your feet, jellyfish that can sting, like, no, no, no, no, no, no.”
Joel Muddamalle:
Didn't you marry a guy who loves the ocean and he surfs all day, every day?
Jim Cress:
That was coming.
Lysa TerKeurst:
This was a foreshadowing.
Joel Muddamalle:
This was a ... Look at you, biblical scholar.
Lysa TerKeurst:
OK, so here we go. So I was like, oh no, I'm not carrying a boogie board down. But then as we're walking down, I glance over at Jess, and she doesn't just have one boogie board; she has three boogie boards. Tucked up underneath, with her chair, with her towel, with her stuff. And I was like, no, she didn't. And she was carrying these boogie boards down. So I thought, She's not going to trick me. I'm not getting in the ocean 'cause I don't do oceans. So we get down there without saying a word. She puts one boogie board in front of me, one boogie board in front of Ann, and then she takes hers and she goes, and she jumps in the ocean and is just having the time of her life. And I once again thought, Ugh, I don't do oceans. And I heard that “don't” statement. And I thought, But what if I did? What if I did?
Jim Cress:
Oh, wow.
Lysa TerKeurst:
And before my brain could kick into hyperdrive and overthink the situation and talk myself out of it, I just reached on, I grabbed that boogie board, and I went, and I jumped into the waves. It was a disaster. The wave tumbled me over; my bathing suit bottoms came down. It was a whole situation. And I stayed in the surf, and I laughed, and I played. And in that moment of utter joy, I had no issues. I wasn't living hurt. I was having so much fun. And all that time, I wasn't thinking about anything hard. I was just enjoying life. And as I thought back about that story, I thought, I think a big part of stepping into resilience is to listen for the scripts that we keep telling ourselves, using the words “I can't” and “I don't.” I wrote in my book this ... two words that indicated that I was stuck and not moving forward were these: “can't” and “don't.”
I can't deal with this. I can't do this. I can't trust people. I can't fix this. I can't change. Or I don't. I don't think this is ever going to get better. I don't want to try. I don't believe it's possible. I don't think God has a good plan for my life. I don't want to hope again. Now, please lean in close here. If we don't tend well to this kind of broken processing, our can'ts and don'ts will turn into won'ts. I won't deal with this. I won't do this. I won't trust people. I won't fix this. I won't change. I won't get better. I won't try. I won't believe. I won't trust that God has a good plan. I won't hope again. And so I realized, Jim, you wisely taught me, words frame our reality. And if we are filling up our narrative about our life with can'ts and don'ts that eventually morph into won'ts, we really are reducing our life down to the limitations of living hurt and refusing to rise with resiliency.
Jim Cress:
Can I just for a moment, and whether this becomes yet another New York Times bestselling book for you, seriously, I'm back in time of about three minutes ago and I thought you dropped so many mic-drop moments. It's just who you are. I mean, you're a wordsmith. I mean, I felt myself. I don't think it's ever happened on Therapy & Theology, [but] I felt, which I would allow to happen, emotions come up for me. And it wasn't sadness; it was a depth of this. Your words were and you just threw them out: “I stayed in the surf.” And then you went on that, you played in the surf, but I heard you say, “And I stayed in the surf.” And immediately, for me, administered to me in the moment, I thought about our listeners and viewers of what would that look like for each of us to fear, be afraid ... maybe someone comes along the sign with a boogie board, but nonetheless you just say that's it, and you go all in.
But then you just didn't go in and out: “And I stayed in the surf.” How much are we missing out on life? When you think about, which we are talking about: resiliency, that there are people who are playing it, and I understand why, so very safe, and they're missing out on the very [inaudible], the very essence of life, by not getting out in the surf. And then for a moment, staying in the surf. I just want to honor that. I wrote it here: “I stayed in the surf” and I'm going to use that. Thank you for ... just to encourage people, what's your thing? “I stayed in the surf.”
Lysa TerKeurst:
Now, Joel, you kind of alluded to this before, but it really is ironic that here I am years later, years have gone by. And though it took me a long time to get up the courage to even consider dating, and you were very much a part of that process in helping not only me but also my kids just navigate: What would it look like if mom were to date, and what would it look like, Lysa, if you were to consider trying another relationship? And so lots of therapy work around that. But eventually I did date, and eventually I met someone. And I would've never in my wildest dreams thought that I was eventually going to marry a man whose biggest hobby, and has been since he was in the fourth grade, is that he surfs. He is a surfer.
I never saw myself being married to a surfer boy. Remember? I used to say, “I don't do oceans.” Now, I am at the ocean all the time. And while I am not out there on a surfboard, it's not because I can't and I don't. It's because I've decided that's not something I'm willing to give right now. But I just think it was such a sweet foreshadowing that as I look back, in that moment with my two friends, I dared to step into the surf. And then years later, as God would have it, He brought this amazing man who loves the Lord and he loves me and he's a surfer. So I just think that's kind of a funny way to bring that story back around. But, Joel, I would love your thoughts, and, Jim, your thoughts, too, about stepping into resiliency.
Joel Muddamalle:
Yeah, I think what you described is actually a connection between resilience and this concept of elasticity. If you guys have heard of elasticity, a lot with the memory and this idea of stretching. And there's this moment at the beach, Lys, where you had to stretch; you have to make this decision, I'm going to do this thing that's uncomfortable, and I've got to stretch. And there's this interesting passage, Romans 5, that I think is actually the blueprint for us on what the resilient life looks like. And it starts this way: Paul says to the church in Rome, “Therefore, since we've been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1, CSB). So this whole thing's actually bookended. In the first section, the first thing, it actually takes ownership off of us and puts it on God. So God is the one who has justified us.
And it comes with ... this justification comes with human responsibility. Verse 2: “We have also obtained access through him by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we boast in the hope of the glory [of God]. And not only that,” and this is where resilience steps in, “but we also boast in our afflictions” and I think at this point, everybody's jaw drops. And the church in Rome is like, Hold up Paul. I think you might have misread that. You must not have met a ... I think you're supposed to say, but we boast in our successes. We boast in our joys. We boast in ... But the problem is successes, joys ... there's no stretching there. There's no sense of suffering. There's no need for trust. There's no need for dependence here. But you know where [there] is stretching, where there is a need for dependence, is in afflictions. And so he says, “but we also boast in our afflictions because we know,” and here's what we know, “affliction produces endurance.” Gosh, endurance sure sounds like a synonym for resilience, doesn't it? And “endurance produces proven,” I love how the CSB draws this out, not just character [but] “proven character” (Romans 5:2-4, CSB).
Jim Cress:
I love that.
Joel Muddamalle:
Right? “And proven character produces hope. This hope will not disappoint us, because God's love has been,” now notice how it switches. So we go, what God can only do, that He's given to us, what we are now responsible to do, and now we are recipients of God's active work “because God's love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit,” it's bookended again by what only God could do through the power of the Holy Spirit “who was given to us.” (Romans 5:4-5, CSB). And so the way this is structured, it's to remind us: It starts with God. There's a cost for us to live this out, but it's sustained throughout the entire thing once again by the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is the One who produces this resilience inside of us.
And simultaneously, in order for there to be resilience, there seems to be the fundamental framework of suffering and affliction and of stretching and of uncomfortability and of looking at a friend who's saying, “Hey, here's a boogie board.” And all of a sudden you have been tricked; you are now in the water, and you are doing something; you're like, “Oh, I'm going to stay in the surf.” But every second that I stay in the surf has a cost. It's stretching me; it's pushing me. And the longer I'm stretched, the longer I'm pushed, it creates resilience, because now, the next time you get into that surf, you actually have a data point to look back to that says, I've been in that surf for five minutes before. I could probably do seven.
I could probably do 10. You're not starting from scratch. The beauty of resiliency is that it's consistently setting a new benchmark. And so every ounce of our suffering, every ounce of our affliction, every ounce of the unwanted realities that are placed in ... I was just at an event at a church speaking over the weekend, and I had a woman who came up, an avid listener of Therapy & Theology, and in tears ... with tears in her eyes, she just goes, “Finally, someone could just acknowledge that I had to go through this divorce that was absolutely an unwanted divorce, and I was left holding something I never wanted to hold.” And she was able to hear, like, oh, wait. In that moment when you're left holding something you never wanted to hold, there's resilience that's being developed and cultivated, and that becomes a benchmark because that now becomes something that you're building on for the next thing that comes until we wait for Jesus to return.
Lysa TerKeurst:
I love what you're saying here, Joel, and I want to point out a second sign that you're stepping into resilience is that you dare to look beyond your own mailbox.
Jim Cress:
Wow.
Lysa TerKeurst:
And what I mean by that is it's often our afflictions that equip us to help other people who are in that same affliction. It's often our afflictions that give us a different kind of compassion, a different kind of awareness. It brings to top of mind ... a sign of resilience is when it brings to top of mind that there are other people going through this. And I have experiential wisdom that maybe I don't have all the answers, maybe I don't even have all the therapeutic wisdom and theological wisdom, but I have experiential wisdom because I've walked this, and I'm aware that she's at the beginning of a journey that's going to be super hard. And my affliction has made me not only aware of her hardships but also compassionate to help if I can.
I recently ... when I married Chaz, I knew that he loves the country of Nicaragua, just loves it. And partly because he loves to surf so much and the surfing in Nicaragua is amazing, but also because there's a church down there that he just absolutely loves being involved with and [offers] a lot of mission work opportunities. Well, I don't like to surf. I like to watch him surf, but there's only so much surf-watching you can do. And so I like to do missions work when I'm down there, and in Nicaragua, there is this thing that the government is allowing between the road and where private property starts. There's a buffer area, and they are now allowing people to build a very simple home in that buffer land. And it's enough room for a small home and a little garden.
And so when I was down there this past time, I knew of a single mom at the church who is a hard worker. She was trying to leave an abusive relationship. She has three little boys, and all she needed was a home, a garden, and a way to get to church. And so I went, and I was able to donate a little bit of money and work on her house. And then we came back stateside, and I had already taken the week off from work later in that same month for my birthday. And we were talking about what kind of getaway could we do? And I looked at Chaz, and I said, “The only thing I want to do is go back to Nicaragua and help Maria.” And so we raised a little bit more money, and we went down there. And we were able to build Maria a home, a garden, and provide a way for her to get to and from church.
Joel Muddamalle:
That's amazing.
Lysa TerKeurst:
And I don't know that I would've had that same kind of passionate drive, that same kind of awareness of her need, that same kind of understanding of how hard her situation is and the experiential wisdom to help her and do something about it ... I wouldn't have had any of that if it wasn't for the affliction. But the secret is, we cannot reduce our life down to the limitations of living hurt. We have to look beyond our own mailbox and recognize part of the pathway to joy is to help other people with transferable wisdom, experiential wisdom that we've gained along the way. And I'm telling you, doing that for Maria gave me so much joy, and it's almost like helping her completed another little part of my own healing.
Jim Cress:
Maybe more than almost. Maybe it really did complete, yeah. Isn't that great?
Lysa TerKeurst:
And I think that, that's a beautiful part of being resilient. Jim, I want to hear your thoughts because resiliency ... I would imagine, as someone comes into your office and they're in the midst of a hard relational dynamic, I'm sure resiliency is not the first thing ... They're like, “Hey, Jim, help me be more resilient.” They're just like, “Help me survive.” So at what point do you go from surviving to looking into the future and determining like, this is not going to take me down and take me out?
Jim Cress:
Well, in resiliency, I'm confident you do not rise higher than the peak of the mountain, for where else can you go. So resiliency is never going to come from when you are on the top of the world. Resiliency to me comes from the valley in the beginning to walk your way out. So I meet people simply in the valley. People don't come to counseling for good times.
They might come to coaching for some of that, and I do coaching as well, but there's a sense they come in and there's a presenting problem. We know that the presenting problem is seldom ever the real problem. So we’ve got to think beneath what is going on. So I begin to walk with them through the valley. It might be for them that valley of the shadow of death or a lot of betrayal or something has not worked out in life, or it might be their own addictions or something else. So just to get into their story and walk through the valley of their story. Now I know, as I say often, I've got to collect the dots, then connect the dots and then correct the dots.
I'm collecting dots along the way and listening, like when you did the trauma egg that you spoke of, I'm listening for historical moments of resiliency that they may be unaware of. They're dissociated from it, and I'm going to help them associate and say, “And look back here where you were resilient, where you got away from God and yet you came back. And then even as a child, this bad thing happened to you. And I heard you.” Whether it was, a friend of mine said recently, I was so touched by it when there was so much poverty in his family and irresponsibility financially as a young person, he went out and began to sell chewing gum in school and making some money.
Little moments of resiliency that I will do stuff to take care of myself. So I meet people usually where they are, and I don't want to dare jump to resiliency right away. That's counterintuitive to them and to me. But I begin to say, “Let's walk through the story.” But I'm always aiming and looking for ... “resiliency” to me is just a softer word for those of us who believe in Christ for resurrection. For one day we will lie down, and one day we will ultimately rise up. So literally as I help people with resiliency, just think of wherever you are as rising up. It's stepping into the surf and staying in the surf. It is to face your anxieties. Doesn't mean you're just super courageous that you feel it in the moment, but when you feel something, F-E-A-R can be forget everything you know and run or face everything and rise, F-E-A-R. Helping them face their fears. And then in the distance, and I literally do this from time to time, can you hear it? It's the beginning of the Rocky theme.
[Inaudible]. I literally will play that for individuals and groups. And I'm saying, it is time now. We've walked through the valley, we've dealt with the facts and the impact, and we don't want to be in a shampoo-bottle living of wash, rinse and repeat, either never deal with your trauma or that's all you do. Thinking five more times around your trauma story isn’t going to do anything. We begin to move toward resiliency, and I want to get them to catch a vision of rising strong and then walking with them and then eventually letting go and saying, “You walk on,” and they begin to believe that they can rise strong. When they do that, you can feel it. I see the dopamine in them. I see courage, and they begin to fix ice makers and get in the surf. And that's a metaphor for you, but they begin to do that. After a while, they have a regular practice of whatever hits them. Maybe there's something, again, five weeks from now, they know how to rise strong. I love it.
Lysa TerKeurst:
I have a video of me and a couple of my friends. We were traveling, and we were going to be kind of close to where the Rocky steps are, you know, that scene in Rocky. And so we went there, and we ran the Rocky steps.
Jim Cress:
What'd you feel as you rose up?
Lysa TerKeurst:
Oh, it was so amazing. Well, first of all, I had on high-heeled boots and jeans, so I was not ...
Jim Cress:
Tell me somebody's got a video of that.
Lysa TerKeurst:
I do have a video of it. And one of our friends said, “I'm going to participate, but I'm going to be the one to film.” So me and the other friend ... all three of us had gone through really traumatic and unwanted divorces. And it was such a visual moment again of us going, “You know what? This will not defeat us. It just will not defeat us.” And I've said before, but I just feel like I have to say it again: Having your trust broken, walking through betrayal, it is life-altering, but it doesn't have to be life-ruining. I want to read something that I wrote at the end of this chapter. This comes from my book I Want to Trust You, but I Don't in a chapter appropriately named “Ice Makers and Oceans,” and this is what I wrote:
“Please try this” — talking about doing something like for me: It was getting in the ocean and overcoming the fear of that, and also stopping that thought process of I can't fix the ice maker and at least attempting to fix the ice maker. So I said, “Please try this. I mean, you do not have to fix an ice maker or jump into an ocean, but don't miss an opportunity to overcome an ‘I can't’ or ‘I don't’ today. You will see progress today. You will build your resilience muscles today. And over time, the more capable you feel, the more empowered you will feel. The more empowered you feel, the more you'll trust your own discernment again. The more you trust your own discernment, the less you'll fear the risk of inviting the right imperfect people in. The less you'll resist trying to rebuild, rediscover, and remake your life that is so worth living. Really living. Not barely making it through. But better than it's ever been. How do I know that? Because we are growing. And growing means [we are] living. And living means there's more good that God wants us to participate in. Continuing to pursue relationships is risky. But the greater and more tragic risk is pulling inside of ourselves and giving up. The people who have hurt me can't make me give up. That's my choice. [And, friend, the people who have hurt you,] they can't make you give up either. That's your choice. So I choose ice makers and oceans and living,” and I hope you will too.