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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.
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 mentalhelpcoach.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. So, today, I want to step into that moment where either because of discovery or disclosure, you realize you are in fact being betrayed.
I remember this moment so crystal clear, and I'm not going to go into the details of the situation, but I do want to explore the emotional fallout, the emotional trauma, the complete shock. So, I'll never forget where I was. I was putting on an event at my house, and I had just finished the last details before I went to bed. The event was the next day, and I took a picture of how pretty the house looked. I remember standing there thinking, I love my life, and I was so excited about the next day. It was a very big event in the life of my family, and I took that picture. I treasured that moment. I went to bed. When I walked into my room, I found a device and just seeing it told me my worst fears were probably coming true.
The amount of shock that I felt in that moment, I truly felt like something really huge had just crashed into my life. Suddenly, I was observing it and trying to figure out, Is this a nightmare, or is this reality? I literally, for a solid few minutes, could not figure out what was happening, and I couldn't figure out, Is this real? Is this not real? Surely, this cannot be real. Then I just slipped into this moment where I just sat stunned and could not figure out how to even process what I was facing. Today, I want to autopsy that moment of shock, because even if your shock of betrayal, even if it hasn't been infidelity in your marriage, maybe you overhear two friends talking about you and the shock of that betrayal stuns you.
Or maybe your teenage child steals your credit card and you realize, Wow, things are not as they seem with my kid. Maybe you're at work and a co-worker takes credit for something you did, and then they take accolades and awards and the thing just spins out of control. It's too late to get it back, and you feel so incredibly betrayed by that co-worker. Or maybe your parent says that they aren't feeling good enough to take that trip and come to your house only to find out that during that same time frame, they went to your sibling's house and they were able to make the trip for your sibling. I don't know what that betrayal moment is for you.
Whether it's a big-T trauma or a small-T trauma, all I know is that you can call this trauma and the severity of how betrayals play out in the context of your own life ... it is severe no matter if it's something that may seem smaller than infidelity or bigger than a friendship betrayal. Whatever it is in the context of your life, pain is pain. I want to talk about this today because I think that moment of betrayal is one of the greatest shocks that we will ever face. I pray that you have not faced what I faced, but if you have, and many of you have, I think today's discussion will be helpful.
So, Jim, I want to turn to you because you and I had some very interesting conversations. Obviously, if you've been listening to Therapy & Theology for a while, you know that Jim is my therapist of record. Is that how we say it?
Jim Cress:
Sure, you can. Yeah.
Lysa TerKeurst:
Over the years, we have worked together in the role of counselor-patient. Am I your patient?
Jim Cress:
I would rather say client. That's what they say.
Lysa TerKeurst:
Client, OK.
Jim Cress:
You've been very patient actually in many ways, but that's different.
Lysa TerKeurst:
This is true. This is true. So, that's how our relationship started, but then over the years, I started to recognize that more people needed to benefit from your wisdom. So, we started this dynamic of adding in conversations that maybe you and I would have in your counseling office, but we want to make it a conversation, [and] we invite other people in, because we found that people find this very beneficial. So, you and I were talking off camera, and we came up with this thing about the layers of betrayal. Joel, I cannot wait to invite you into this discussion as well because you have let me know that betrayal is all over the Bible. I know you have a lot to say about it as well, but let's talk about these layers.
Joel Muddamalle:
Yeah.
Lysa TerKeurst:
So the first layer is what I call “slow-growth betrayal.” The reason I call it this is because you're sensing something's off and you're picking up on red flags, but then your heart is so invested into this relationship, and you want to believe the best about this person. So, your heart and your head come in conflict. In my new book, I wrote about this, and I want to read you what I wrote. The hardship of discernment is that it doesn't always give you details, but just because you don't know everything doesn't mean you shouldn't pay close attention to the red flags you do see. I like to think of discernment as the very intimate way God cares for me, leads me, redirects me, warns me and reveals things to me that I otherwise may miss on my own.
It's almost like we have the facts and then we have the feelings, and God's gift of discernment helps bridge that gap, but it doesn't always give you details. So, I go on to admit that so many times when I'm feeling a moment of discernment, my brain and my heart will come into conflict. Especially when it comes to relationships, I very much want to continue, and that's the rub here. When this betrayal is a relationship that I treasure, that I very much want to continue, and I'm sensing red flags, but I don't want those red flags to mean what I fear they mean, my head and my heart come into conflict.
So, I go on to say my brain will be firing off a warning, but then my heart will try to override it because I want to believe this person I love would not deceive me. I want to believe this person I love truly cares about me. I want to believe that this person really does have my best interest in mind like I have their best interest in mind. So, my heart will make excuses to try to quiet down the warnings my brain is sending, and that's from my new book, I Want to Trust You, but I Don't. So, Jim, you taught me something really important because first, I was saying, “Am I living in denial at this point?” You said no. You think it's rationalization. Unpack that for me.
Jim Cress:
Well, the brain autonomically, we believe and I do believe in the way of the brain research as we've said on this podcast before, the brain's wired for confidence in knowing. You don't have to do anything. It's going to go out and say, "I believe this. I believe that."
Lysa TerKeurst:
So in other words, I'm in a situation, [and] my brain is automatically assessing: Are you safe trying to figure —
Jim Cress:
Without even being fully aware of it. I remember not long ago, we were taping; it was indeed the last series we did either on Therapy & Theology or another video series that we shot. Outside this building we were in, the thunderstorms began to come through. So, obviously, a mind can think, Wow, how big is the damage? I mean, is it raining at home? Yet we're present shooting videos, but the brain will automatically wonder, Is there going to be thunder coming again? As a longtime broadcaster with this incredible crew we have here, I'm thinking, When are they going to bust tape? When are they going to have to say, "OK, we’ve got to stop. The thunder’s too loud"? I wasn't trying to think that. Matter of fact, I had to keep coming back, like stay present in the broadcast.
So, news comes at whatever level or whatever layer, the brain's automatically going to go out and say, "I bet this and I bet that." It will try to fill in the blanks. I hope everybody will give oneself grace there versus somebody confronting you saying, "Well, you just need to not think that." The brain's automatically doing that. Then you go to the heart ... that the heart is there, and I think along with the heart is story, is narrative, that says ... You had a book. Remember the first of this ... four books that you've got out? It's not supposed to be this way. You start off the program today with ... I literally said, "Oh, what a beautiful evening and my house and I take a picture" to literally immediately go in and find another device. Something has invaded, has entered, that world.
The human brain in that moment should not say, "I knew it. I know exactly what's going on." It should go into a bit of rationalization and say, "But maybe it's not what I think." Now, if there's been a long trail as we're talking autopsying, some type of betrayal, I saw this sign and this sign and this sign and this sign, and then there's this sign, then maybe you say, "No, I knew the brain rationally can say this makes sense," but you literally move from a beautiful scene, what we would call “homeostasis.” It's a steady state in its home to going and find[ing] the device. So, the heart's coming in to say, "Please don't let it be true. I don't want it to be true, and then what do I do?" Those both can coexist.
Lysa TerKeurst:
So the reason I wrote this first layer is slow-growth betrayal is because that is that season where you don't know for sure. It hasn't been disclosed to you. You haven't discovered that undeniable evidence. So, it's this weird stage of “I think I'm seeing this, but surely I'm not seeing this,” and I remember my rationalization was we are in a season of lots of change.
Jim Cress:
There you go.
Lysa TerKeurst:
So we were in a season of the kids were growing up, some were going to college, my ministry, his business ... we’re at a stage where they were really growing and busy. We were hitting mid-age or that midlife maybe for some crisis time frame. So, there were so many ways that I could explain away what I was sensing, what I was seeing, the red flags that I was picking up on. That slow-growth betrayal for me was a season of just saying, "Yeah, it could mean that, but I'm so confident it doesn't."
Jim Cress:
In that moment on an airplane, literally, you went and I heard the volition, the choice, of turning off the autopilot. All of us have autopilot. I bet it's this. I bet it's that. That may only last a few seconds, but you then turn the autopilot off, and you were aware; I believe in listening to you, aware of the rationalization. Let us not make “rationalization” a bad word here. It could be this instead of the brain automatically filling in the blanks; you began, I heard it right there, filling in the blanks with some self-talk, some self-counseling. It could be this and midlife and all like that.
Lysa TerKeurst:
Also, I think there's one of two groups of people in the slow-growth betrayal time, somebody who wants to discover —
Jim Cress:
That's a point.
Lysa TerKeurst:
— something bad has happened. I want to discover what this person has done, but then this other group, which is what I was in, I do not want to discover what this person could possibly have done, but I'm so convinced they haven't done this. So, those two groups of people will handle this very, very differently. And one group of people is eager for evidence. The other is in that rationalization. Yeah, I see that. However, when asked questions about it, I'm told that's not true. I want to believe it's not true. So, that's what I'm going to operate, and I'll just explain away these other things. Now, I think part of that, I had good intentions.
Jim Cress:
Of course.
Lysa TerKeurst:
Because I loved my family and I was experiencing enough good that it was easier to rationalize away the red flags I saw.
Jim Cress:
Notice you went of course very organically out of just your marriage, our words frame our reality we've said, to “I love my family.” So, I'm as a counselor sitting there, Joel would do that as a theologian, I'm listening to people's words. So, now we've broadened out like this autopsy. I love my family. It was beyond the marriage at that moment, whether you meant that or not. There was a sense of I'm thinking broader, pull out the camera and pull out of my family at that moment and what's the impact if this is true toward the family system, the whole unit.
Joel Muddamalle:
If I could make a couple connections, even theologically, the idea of the slow-growth betrayal, it sounds like it's actually also happening in four categories or four levels, and this is a theological view of it based off of the Hebrew word leb. Jim, you were talking about the heart. In our society and our culture today, we have separated the heart from the mind. So, the heart we would think is the place of emotion, but the mind is the place of intellect. The Ancient Hebrews did not understand it that way. They understood that the leb, the heart, so every time you're reading about the heart —
Lysa TerKeurst:
When you say that word, you’ve got to [spell] it, because there are people taking notes. If I was taking notes, I would be frustrated. I'd be like, "What is he saying?"
Joel Muddamalle:
Leb, L-E-B, is the Hebrew word transliterated with the English letters. If you want to be really detailed, over the E, you could put that hyphen, straight line over that E, as an accent.
Lysa TerKeurst:
I am detailed, so thank you for that.
Joel Muddamalle:
Yeah, so it's a little bit long. Anyways, all that to say —
Lysa TerKeurst:
Leb.
Joel Muddamalle:
Leb, yeah. All that to say that the heart, the way the ancient Hebrews understood it, was the wellspring of volition, right? It's the place of both emotion and intellect. It's the place of both thinking something rightly, feeling something rightly, and then doing something rightly. In this place of slow-growth betrayal, I want to add a fourth category to this. What I'm hearing is: You've got emotional reality, you've got intellectual reality, you have physical reality, and you've got spiritual reality.
Jim Cress:
Including why would God allow this to happen?
Joel Muddamalle:
Absolutely. You're sitting there in that room, and then all of a sudden, you see the device. You're actually going through I think probably all four of those things. There's an emotional reaction that's happening. There's an intellectual reaction that's happening. That might be the reasoning, right? There's the spiritual reaction of maybe frustration with the Lord. God, I thought we were in such a great place. How could this now be ... Why would You allow this to be happening? There is a physical reaction that's happening.
We know that as you guys have both taught me that the body keeps the score. There's a great book on that, but I think it might be helpful for us to just also try to take a diagnosis or a diagnostic of our own selves and say, "OK, where in these four areas in the slow-growth betrayal do we start to turn off a valve or do we start to ignore this part of it?" So we might ignore the spiritual part of it or the emotional part of it and overemphasize on the emotional or the intellectual.
Lysa TerKeurst:
I can tell you what I did.
Joel Muddamalle:
OK.
Lysa TerKeurst:
I think I turned off the other valves and turned way up the spiritual so that I could say in my mind, "We have such commonality in how we love the Lord, we serve the Lord. There's no way. There's no way —"
Joel Muddamalle:
No way.
Lysa TerKeurst:
"— that that would be crossed."
Jim Cress:
Which could have been a spiritual bypass. I don't know if it was for you, but the idea of a heart bypass, like the leb, to be able to just bypass and rationalize it spiritually, or some people I've seen, we've all seen, go quickly to Romans 8:28. I don't know what's going on right now, but all things work together, or Genesis 50:20: Someone meant it for harm, but God meant it [for good]. I have great compassion, Joel, as I say that, and you think about the scriptural side, Lysa. Instead of saying, "Well, you're just doing a spiritual bypass," I want to be gentle with my words, and I'm like, anything you do in that moment of overt crisis, which it is, all people say, "Does it make sense to me?"
I say everything makes sense even if it's a spiritual bypass versus pathologizing it and saying, "Why?" Of course, you could have done an emotional bypass. I love how you've layered these based on Lysa's layering. Whatever route you take, I say, “Tell me more,” instead of, "What are you doing ... a spiritual bypass?" I'm like, "Why wouldn't you?"
Lysa TerKeurst:
I love that you're pointing that out, Joel. So, layer one is the slow-growth betrayal where things seem off, but you're not really sure. The second layer is that moment of discovery or disclosure. That's the moment where you can no longer deny. There is no rationalization. Reality has hit you in the face.
Jim Cress:
That's a relational 9/11 at that moment. You're at ground zero, whether you know it or not. We were all over our head when 9/11 happened for real. All of us were over our head at that moment, and you're like, "What has just happened?"
Lysa TerKeurst:
For me, my greatest fear had come true. I could no longer dance around it.
Jim Cress:
Why was it your greatest fear?
Lysa TerKeurst:
That's such a good question. I used to say I can handle anything because this relationship will always be intact. I would often hear of bad potential things that could happen, but I would go, "OK, I can face it because this relationship is intact." I'm sure there were healthy reasons and unhealthy reasons for that. But yeah, my greatest fear was that my family would fall apart and having a betrayal in the mother-father, husband-wife relationship of a family, that just seemed like it would blow apart so much. I wrote in the book this statement that broken trust complicates every bit of the part of love that should be comforting, and there's so much about how God intended love to be.
That's a comfort to the two people participating in a relationship where there's love. Broken trust, betrayal, complicates every bit of that. You no longer know what's true, what's real, what's not true, what's not real. You thought you really knew this person, and that's why you trusted them so much. Do you really know this person or what happened to this person? Where was the break? I don't know.
Jim Cress:
I call that “relational vertigo.” I have never had vertigo, but I've been with many who have, and they're like, "You don't understand." It could be flash photography sets them off or something, and they're spinning. They've got to sit down or lie down. So, I've used the term I've just made up called “relational vertigo.” In that moment, there's no need to try to be logical. Good luck in that very moment, everything spinning as it should.
Lysa TerKeurst:
I remember in that moment of discovery, because for me, it was not a disclosure; it was a discovery. I discovered it.
Jim Cress:
And kept discovering it.
Lysa TerKeurst:
And kept discovering it, but I remember in that moment, the first words that came out of my mouth were eerily calm. It wasn't this big explosion. I wasn't screaming; I wasn't yelling. It was a very almost unusual calm, and I just said, "This isn't who you are."
Jim Cress:
Who's the who?
Lysa TerKeurst:
To him.
Jim Cress:
Who's the you?
Lysa TerKeurst:
Yeah. I just said to him, like to my husband, at the time, "This isn't who you are. This isn't who we are."
Jim Cress:
I asked that because some people would turn it internal and say, "This is not who you are." This is whatever I wanted to clarify in this autopsy, but you were saying in your mind or verbally said to him, "This is not who you are."
Lysa TerKeurst:
But then some statements were made that I quickly went from an eerie calm to walking into my closet, curling up in the fetal position, and wanting the whole world to go away, and just feeling like I cannot acknowledge this, I cannot face this, I cannot get up. If I just curl into the fetal position and wheel the world away, maybe somehow life out there will fix itself enough to where I can handle it, but right now, I can't handle it. It was a devastating moment for me.
Jim Cress:
In that moment by your own narrative here, and, Joel, you see this so obviously here, it took a moment, like you said. At first, I had this, which could be there a response or a reaction, and then something happens, and I'm in a fetal in the closet. Sometimes it's not always the first thing. It's like it takes time. We know that with real death. Of course, a lot of this ends up being the death of a marriage or the death of a relationship, but people will sit, which I always think is so foolish ... someone had a casket and say, "She lost her husband, and she was encouraging everybody at the casket." Well, give her some space, and then three weeks later, let's go visit her and see how she's doing.
Joel Muddamalle:
Yeah, this is interesting. So, as we keep going through this, it's like therapeutic analysis, and then I'm going to just keep doing some theological ones.
Jim Cress:
Please.
Joel Muddamalle:
So moment of discovery, I think the moment of discovery actually exposes the object of dependence. The moment of discovery, when you discover something and it shakes you at all those levels, it really highlights, it puts out in front of us, what is the actual object of our dependence. I think this is something that shouldn't be despised, and it shouldn't be something that we are angry at ourselves for, but it is something we ought to be honest with. John Stott is a brilliant theologian, and John Stott has this incredible statement that he says that "If honesty and humility go together, then pride and insanity go together."
Jim Cress:
Wow.
Joel Muddamalle:
So if honesty and humility go together, and they do, then perpetuating pride will lead us into a chaotic, insane living. So, at this moment, when the object of your dependence is presented in front of us, the question is, "What do you do with it?"
Lysa TerKeurst:
Now, here's where that's complicated for me because aren't you supposed to be in somewhat of a dependent relationship when you're married?
Joel Muddamalle:
Oh, yeah. OK. I mean we can go now, or we can save this for just a little bit later, but let me —
Jim Cress:
We're on the edge of our seat here.
Joel Muddamalle:
— let me point this out though.
Lysa TerKeurst:
Because I'm just thinking —
Joel Muddamalle:
No, no, you're right.
Lysa TerKeurst:
I want to say, "Oh, absolutely, I depend on God and then all my other relationships." If you're in that deep of a relationship, aren't you supposed to also be dependent on the spouse?
Joel Muddamalle:
100%.
Lysa TerKeurst:
You're dependent on God, but also —
Joel Muddamalle:
So let's do an autopsy of our favorite story in all of scripture, Genesis 1 and 2: the story of Eden.
Lysa TerKeurst:
The reason he says “our” is because we have studied theology together for thousands of hours, and we always go back to Genesis and back to Eden.
Joel Muddamalle:
It always does. I think it's really important. I was at an event once, and I came to this conclusion that I'm really worried that the way we study humanity is actually upside down. We start with Genesis 3. So, our anthropology, our study of humanity, starts with the fall. It's not that the fall is a bad place or that we shouldn't pay attention to it, but before we can even get to the fall, we actually have to deal with the ideal of humanity. So, our anthropology actually has to start in Genesis 1 and 2 so we can understand the devastation of Genesis 3 and the fall, and then we can make sense of what God is doing in the process of renewing and restoring all of creation back to the ideal of Eden. So, I want to go to Eden and look at how God creates everything in Eden.
In Eden, the created order matters. Adam and Eve are the pinnacle for sure of all of created order, but I think there's a purpose for why they're the last in the created order, and here's why. God is the One who is the One we're supposed to be dependent on, and all of creation, the sun, the light, the grass, the animals, all that stuff is reliant on Him. So, when Adam and Eve come together, they actually learn mutual dependence. My language is going to be precise and important. They're learning mutual dependence that is actually first and foremost conditioned on two individuals that are dependent on God.
So, if you have mutual dependence with each other, that leaves responsibility for husband-wife, friend-friend to first and foremost be dependent on God, but when the dependence on God is fractured, instantly, the dependence on each other is broken as well.
Lysa TerKeurst:
Wow.
Joel Muddamalle:
Eve fractures her dependence on God when the idea is presented to her that maybe God's not good, and it was actually that fracture that takes place that brings into chaos relationally Adam and Eve and now we know all throughout humanity. So, I say that all to say, Yes, you're supposed to have healthy and mutual dependence on each other up until the point we realize, Wait a minute ... The individual responsibility that we have to be dependent on God has actually been broken. When that's been compromised, it's like a river that flows downstream. It's going to absolutely have impact on the human to human-dependent relationships. So, that's where the chaos happens.
Lysa TerKeurst:
Also, I would propose in the Adam and Eve dynamic too, if you look at the consequences and when their eyes were opened, it wasn't when Eve took that bite. It was when Adam who was right there with her took the bite, and then the consequences were unleashed. So, I would propose to you —
Joel Muddamalle:
100%.
Lysa TerKeurst:
— both broke dependence on God.
Joel Muddamalle:
Absolutely. It's a chain reaction.
Lysa TerKeurst:
It is a chain reaction, and we have broken apart that story —
Jim Cress:
It's a zone of autopsy special.
Lysa TerKeurst:
— layer by layer, word by word, phrase by phrase. So, let's get back to these layers. So, we have the slow-growth betrayal when you don't know what's going on, but you sense something is wrong; then you have the moment of discovery, which is that complete shock. You just can't even function almost, or at least for me ... I don't know. It was truly just a moment of complete shock.
Jim Cress:
Which to me, I normalized versus "What are you thinking? Whatever." No, that's how it should be in that moment, especially to the degree that you had hoped for great things, including integrity and relationship, the shock, I think, should be bigger, even if you thought, Well, I knew this could happen. It's one of my greatest fears. Now we're at 9/11, and personally and relationally, it has happened. Some people say, "Oh, I was so shocked." It's like because I was. I want to normalize that shock and awe.
Lysa TerKeurst:
And then the third layer of betrayal is the person's reaction. The person who betrayed you, what is their reaction? Sometimes their reaction will be complete denial. So, then it's almost like they're doubly betraying you. They're doing this.
Jim Cress:
They are actually.
Lysa TerKeurst:
You know they're doing this, and the facts are not lying, but they are lying and telling you that the facts you're seeing either aren't true or that you're crazy or whatever.
Jim Cress:
Straight up gaslighting at that moment.
Lysa TerKeurst:
Straight up gaslighting.
Jim Cress:
That's the pure term there.
Lysa TerKeurst:
So it could be that ... it could be that the third layer of that betrayal is because they will not admit to the truth, and you know it's true now, or they admit to the truth but then justify it in a way that it's your fault. I would hope that they would in that moment own what they did and be very tender, but that's not the way it played out for me. So, that third layer is compounding. To me, it compounded the shock because I realize in this moment, I know the facts now, and you're still denying the facts. What else have you been deceitful about? It just opened up. It was like an atomic bomb then goes off when I realized like, Wow, it's this but probably so much more.
I was terrified. That's where the shock turned into terror and then immediately super exhausted and just thinking, The world has tilted on its axis, and I'm falling off, and I don't think there's anything that will catch me. That's the way it felt. Then that fourth layer and this one ... I had to do so many hours of counseling about this fourth layer. The fourth layer is when I finally got up the courage to start telling a few other people. Some of my close friends, they believed me and they stepped right in and they were supporting me and doing everything they could. But then other friends —
Jim Cress:
Turned on you.
Lysa TerKeurst:
— didn't believe me.
Jim Cress:
Didn't believe you.
Lysa TerKeurst:
Either they didn't believe me or they blamed me and justified the actions of the betrayer. I remember I had one friend who just said, "Well, I mean it makes sense to me. I mean, look how much you travel."
Jim Cress:
People say some really dumb things. I'm sorry for that language: stupid, foolish. Give me a Bible word. I think a lot of words actually.
Joel Muddamalle:
Foolish is probably good.
Jim Cress:
Yeah, it's like, "Really?"
Lysa TerKeurst:
Not compassionate.
Jim Cress:
“Are you saying that?”
Lysa TerKeurst:
Uneducated.
Joel Muddamalle:
Unwise.
Lysa TerKeurst:
Unwise.
Jim Cress:
I'm going to argue [inaudible], which I have zero doubt about this, that many of people are going to say things to any of us, any of you listening or watching, they're in their own story. Dr. Kristin Neff from the University of Texas ... [in her] great book on self-compassion, if you look at that, calm means with passion to suffer. They're not going to be calm, passionate with you, maybe like Job's three friends to sit with you in that or to be curious and say, "I have no words," or "Tell me more." Because they're in their own story with their own fear, they're going to be betrayed, or lo and behold, they were betrayed; maybe not in adulthood but in childhood, they were betrayed.
Who knows what? There's so many betrayals. They are legion, right? So inside it's like Whoa, what's going on here? From whence are they speaking when they do that and say, "Well, hey, maybe you travel too much"?
Lysa TerKeurst:
Yeah, and another common thing that people would say, here, I'm coming to them. It was just a small group of friends. It wasn't like I was announcing it at church or anything. It was a very small group of very trusted friends. I really thought we all had a common belief that infidelity in marriage was wrong, period, but some people were just like, "Well, there's always two sides to every story."
Jim Cress:
That's one the worst things ever.
Lysa TerKeurst:
“I know what they did. What have you done to cause this?” I remember that compounded my shock.
Jim Cress:
You did have two sides of your story. I've seen you be so wise so often to think, "Yeah, there are two sides to a story." Many of you today listening and watching could say, "This side is infidelity. My side is fidelity." There are two sides, but to equal them and say ... I mean, wow, the things people say!
Lysa TerKeurst:
And then the other thing that was probably just incredibly damaging to my already fragile heart at that point, and again, I don't want to make myself sound like a victim, I'm just autopsying the layers of this, but they were like, "Well, yeah, I mean he did that, but you need to stay completely quiet about this, and you don't want to be the one to break up your family." In other words, by me reaching out to other people asking for help, I was the one who was going to break up the family. That was so brutal on my heart, and that was another layer of betrayal that I just didn't even know.
Jim Cress:
So you have a person close to you — i.e., in a marriage — and many other people listening and watching will have that ... and notice ... It's like a pebble in the pond: the original betrayal. These waves go out. These ripples go out of ... now you're being betrayed by who you thought were close friends or intimate people or one of who would care for you. I say that people are [inaudible]. It's like, "Are you even aware of the power of your words when you say that to a person?" No wonder ... back to the Jewish people [they refer] to “sit shiva,” meaning stop your mouth from talking, just sit and be with a person. That's something we can take away today. We need to be sitting shiva with people more and just be with a person and not try to offer foolish counsel.
Joel Muddamalle:
Something's happening while you're doing that sitting. You're being patient, you're being observant, [and] you're listening — not just to words but emotionally like listening and [being] present with people.
Jim Cress:
You're present with people.
Joel Muddamalle:
You're present with people. Lysa, as you're talking about this, I think of the layers three and four, the person who has done the betrayal and how they react, but then the last layer of the people that are around you and their response to it. I think of the story of King David in 2 Samuel 14, 15 and 16 — interesting for all the amazing things of King David. It seems that him as a father, there's a lot of questions, a lot of question marks.
Jim Cress:
A few.
Joel Muddamalle:
But maybe one of the most significant betrayals for him is the betrayal of Absalom, his son. So, Absalom murders another son Amnon for a horrific reason. You can go into the text and read all of this in 2 Samuel 14, 15 and 16. But there's this moment of kindness and compassion where David calls him out of the wilderness and brings him back. So, think about the betrayer, right? Here's Absalom, the betrayer. You would think that in that moment of experience, compassion, mercy and grace, he would come back and have a shuv. That's the Hebrew for turning. It's not just a turn, but it's a turning away from something and a turning to something. So, turning away from your rebellion and your betrayal and turning toward faithfulness.
Instead, it's so fascinating what Absalom does in 2 Samuel 15: He begins to sit outside of the kingdom like the palace, and his people are coming to get help from King David. He sets court out there himself. Long story, but there's a little phrase here that's fascinating: “Absalom did this to all the Israelites who came to the king for a settlement. So Absalom stole the hearts of the men of Israel” (2 Samuel 15:6, CSB). The outcome of this moment is ultimately Absalom stealing the kingdom ... David running away for his life and living in that. Here's what Absalom's done. He has tripled down on his betrayal.
Then the amazing story at the end of this is you would think that the ones who had been with David, who had gone through the wilderness, all of these amazing things ... there's this sense that a lot of people betrayed David himself as a friend. But there's one person, it's this gentile Ittai, who comes, and he's like, "I'm going to go with you." David's like, "Why? You're brand-new. You're a Gentile. You have nothing to do with our people." Basically, he [Ittai] says, "I see the king that you are. I see that the man that you are. I, my people, my soldiers, we put our lot with you."
Jim Cress:
Wow.
Joel Muddamalle:
So in the midst of this betrayal, there got to be this honesty of, "How do these people see? Are they seeing clearly? Are they unable to see?" If they're unable to see clearly the impact and the acts of the betrayer, then that tells us a lot on what we ought to do and the boundaries that we ought to create. But I would just say as an encouragement, I think God in His kindness and His providence often might bring an Ittai to you in that moment. In our hearts, we want the people that were the closest to us this entire time to be those people.
I would just encourage us to be like OK, and just maybe there is someone that God, I would say, providentially places in your path to be that friend that you long for, who is able to see rightly and to see you for who you are and say, "I'm going to put my lot with you."
Lysa TerKeurst:
Well, and I want to say, I pray that you have that friend. I did have some friends in real life that did that. If you don't, I want to be that friend to you. That's why I have done these Therapy & Theology podcasts and why we have ... because we want you to know that you are seen and we understand the pain. We know how hard this is, and we don't want you to feel alone.
Jim Cress:
On a more experiential level in person, that's why we have Haven Place.
Lysa TerKeurst:
That's right.
Joel Muddamalle:
I mean, that's like where we're really literally sitting with people, including sitting shiva and being and saying, "I hear you, I understand you, [and] I believe you." We're not to just say, "Let's have a room full of ..." You use the term of victims, but let's call people to healing and recovery, no matter what the betrayer has done to you, for there is one among us who remains faithful: the Lord Jesus Christ.
Lysa TerKeurst:
That's right. If you want more information about the work that we do at Haven Place, we'll put a link in the show notes for you. I want to close by saying this. There is a fifth and sixth layer. Joel, you've already touched on this a little bit, the sixth layer, but the fifth layer is feeling betrayed by my own discernment and asking the question, "Why didn't I see this coming?" or "Why didn't I call that red flag a really red flag?" So it's almost like, "How could I have betrayed myself?" I saw things, but then I didn't put it together. That's a brutal weight to put on yourself.
I remember when I went to your office, Jim, and sat with this, you said, "Hey, Lysa, when you know better, you do better." So that's also why, in I Want to Trust You, but I Don't, I spend several chapters going through "How do we find the roots of distrust, and what are these red flags that we should be looking at?" and also talking about the severity of the different red flags. Then layer six of the trail is ultimately, why didn't God stop this?
Jim Cress:
Because it's vertigo. It always does.
Lysa TerKeurst:
Where was God when this happened? You may even have to wrestle through a season of feeling betrayed by God. As I wrestled through that, I thought it's going to require an episode bigger than just a mention here. So, stay tuned on a future episode for that. Jim, Joel, thank you for stepping into this betrayal topic and helping me autopsy the layers that somebody may witness and may walk through and may discover as a betrayal is experienced. I think just even having the knowledge that this is normal ... it's normal to feel shocked.
Jim Cress:
Please, yes.
Lysa TerKeurst:
It's normal to feel so hurt by friends that don't support you. It is normal to have big questions about yourself, about the other person, about relationships and with God. So, I want to leave us there and just say, tune in for the rest of this series, because I think we're going to have a lot more help for you and a lot more hope for you than you have grief and issues. Thank you.
Shae Hill:
Wow, that was such a great first episode in this new season. No matter the specifics, I know all of us can relate to that feeling of being caught off guard when someone close to us breaks our trust. Maybe for some of you listening today, you've never defined a breach of trust you've experienced as a betrayal, but now you have better language to really process things. I hope you found as much comfort in Lysa, Jim and Joel's wisdom as I did. Before we wrap up, I want to make sure you know about a couple of things.
Like I mentioned, this episode may have helped you realize that you have more to process around this topic of betrayal, and there's a free resource by Lysa TerKeurst that I want to make sure you know about. It's called “When The Person Who Hurt Me Got Away With It: Three Days to Moving Forward.” You can visit the link in our show notes to download your copy. Next, you know we're talking all about trust on this season of the podcast. So, if you're enjoying these conversations, you're going to love Lysa TerKeurst's new book. It's called I Want to Trust You, but I Don't: Moving Forward When You're Skeptical of Others, Afraid of What God Will Allow, and Doubtful of Your Own Discernment. You can get your copy from the P31 Bookstore by clicking the link in our show notes.
Lastly, I just want to thank our friends at the American Association of Christian Counselors for sponsoring today's episode. You can check out our show notes to learn more about them. Well, that's all for today, friends; be sure to come back next week for another episode with Lysa, Jim and Joel. Therapy & Theology is brought to you by Proverbs 31 Ministries, where we believe when you know the Truth and live the Truth, it changes everything.