Java with Juli: #521 How to Know if Your Marriage can Recover from Betrayal
Full Transcript
Sexual trauma in your past can be so devastating that you might wonder, can I ever overcome it? Can I ever have victory in it?
You know, one thing I would encourage you to realize is that this kind of growth and healing is going to be a long journey. It’s not going to be immediate. It’s going to be taking steps towards healing and really God’s redemption in your life. One way to think about it is that here on earth, your end goal isn’t to get to the place as if that trauma never happened, but it’s getting to the place where that trauma no longer owns you. Instead of being an open wound that’s going to fester and hurt and impact your relationships, it can actually become a healed scar that tells a little bit of the story of what you’ve been through. And so that’s a healthier goal than just wishing that this would go away.
You might be asking, well, what steps do I need to take? As I mentioned, it can be a long journey, and I think that journey involves a few things. It involves having the space where you can process what happened to you. The more we learn about how trauma affects our bodies and affects our brain and our nervous system, the more we are learning that you actually need to be able to tell your story. You need to process what happened to you, and you need that safe environment in order to do that. For most people, that’s going to be a trauma-informed therapist who knows how to get you to talk through things in a way that’s going to be healing and helpful. The second thing you need is you need people on the journey with you, not just your therapist, but community and friends who do life with you and encourage you and can help you understand how you’re growing and how to have healthy relationships and attachment. That’s a very key aspect in recovering from trauma. And I’d say the third thing that is really, really important is to build your relationship with God. Now, why is that so important? It’s important because He’s the one who made you. He’s the one who can speak truth into your life. I’ve never met someone who’s experienced sexual trauma, who isn’t at some level believing lies, lies about themselves, lies about sexuality, lies about the goodness of God, and the only way for us to be able to identify those lies and to walk towards truth is to know the one who is truth. And so your relationship with God is going to be critical in your healing journey. Again, don’t think about this in terms of just erasing the trauma, but walking towards actually seeing God redeeming your trauma in such a way that it’s still part of your life, but it doesn’t have victory over you anymore.
