Betrayal trauma hinders our brain’s ability to process information. Our state of mind causes us to constantly evaluate our safety. We look around and ask question after question: Who can we trust? Is this truly reality? How can I ever move past this? Where is God?
That last question was a struggle for me – as it is I’m sure for those reading this. A crisis of faith rose up in me as I began to tick off the “things I had done for God.” How could God let this happen when I’d given up my life and traveled a foreign country and shared the gospel with those who had never heard? How was this my reward for keeping God the center of my family’s life? What was the point if this was the way God showed up for me – betrayed, hurting, and facing a very scary future alone.
Despite all my questions, anger, and distrust, I realized that without God, I truly had no way to face my current circumstance. I decided to simply be real with God, give him my pain about not only what my husband had done, but also how I felt about God allowing it to happen. Somewhere along the way, I discovered He was not afraid of my questions, anger and distrust. He was content with my showing up to speak to him each day.
On one of those particularly difficult days, I came across a way to keep God close during my crisis. It was simple and something I forced myself to do each day while I was deep in my pain. The process consisted of me journaling the answers to three questions every morning before my day started.
What do I know to be true about God?
While I might not have been able to see God’s hand in my current marital problems, I had seen him move in my life before. I chose to look for him in those earlier life moments and write down what had been true about Him in each of those situations. When I discovered my teenage daughter was secretly involved in a very healthy relationship, I remembered how God chased her with his sweet love and tender grace. I watched His love and tender care for her during that year transform her and return all that had been stolen. The truth about God that I KNEW: He chases after us with goodness and mercy and is not afraid of the ugliness of our lives.
What am I declaring about God today?
The answer to this question often lay in what I needed God to be for me in that coming day. If I needed to know that He simply “sees me” then I went to the word and found a verse that declared just that. (Genesis 16:13, Proverbs 15:3, Psalm 33:18, Jeremiah 1:5). That verse became my declaration for the day. I often put it on a notecard or wrote it out on large paper with colored markers and put it somewhere I could see it over and over. Those declarations kept me focused on truth, not the lies that Satan wanted to feed me.
How am I worshiping God?
The days following discovery are a blur, but as the brain fog begins to clear, I began to look for ways that my behavior and thoughts were evidence of my worship to God. This concept seems counterintuitive when you are hurting and feel as if God is to blame, but this small act of obedience is life-giving. By acknowledging how I was worshiping God, I began to feel a connection. I recognized my relationship with him and those small acts of faith were quietly strengthening me. My journal from those days reads like this: “I am worshiping God today by thanking Him that I have walked this storm for one month and I am STILL STANDING!”
When experiencing betrayal, a faith crisis of some type is almost inevitable. Satan only wins that battle when we choose to run away from God in our pain instead of taking it straight to him and speaking candidly about our feelings, hurt, anger, and distrust. Hear this: He is not afraid of your doubt! He longs to prove himself once again that He is near.
This daily practice allowed me to hang on to even a sliver of my faith. Without God, I truly had nothing to hold on to. My weak grip on his pinky finger enabled me to face the next ten minutes and then the next ten. Just as he did for my daughter, he met me in that pain and chased me with his goodness and grace. Lauren Daigle’s new song says it best:
I don’t know who I’d be if I didn’t know You
I’d probably fall off the edge
I don’t know where I’d go if You ever let go
So keep me held in Your hands
I don’t know who I’d be if I didn’t know You
I’d probably fall off the edge
I don’t know where I’d go if You ever let go
So keep me held in Your hands.