99: When God Won’t Fix It | Dr. Zoe Shaw

Grab a cup of tea or listen as you go, ladies. This is your hour with Dr. Zoe, your life and relationship coach. With encouragement, on-point insight, inspiring guests, health tips, and advice, Dr. Zoe helps busy women keep their mind in the game by redefining your superwoman. You're listening to the Dr. Zoe Show.

Welcome to the Dr. Zoe Show, Redefining Your Superwoman. I'm your host, Dr. Zoe. I'm a licensed psychotherapist, a motivational speaker, a life and relationship coach, and I can work with you virtually to help you get unstuck. You can connect with me by texting the word JOIN to 38470, or just go to my website at drzoeshaw.com. Today's topic is when God won't fix it. And we're talking about whatever thing you might be struggling with right now in your life. But first up, Superwoman win and Superwoman fail. I'm going to try to be brief with this so that we can get onto the actual topic of the show. My fail is that I accidentally broke a friend's confidence and that kind of broke my heart. Long story, I won't go into it, but I told another friend something about somebody else that I didn't realize was told to me in confidence. When I spoke with my friend, she wasn't upset. So it's not like we had a conversation and she told me that it was private and not to share it. As a grown woman, I should have asked her first before I shared it. And I shared it in passing and didn't realize that I was really breaking her confidence. It's a fail because I do not ever want to be perceived as a woman who cannot be trusted, as someone that my close friends can't share their stories with and that they won't be held tight. So I had to really kind of think about and evaluate, why did I share that information? What was the purpose? Was I gossiping? But as I really thought of it, I wasn't. I explained to my friend why I shared that information, how I thought it was going to be helpful for the other woman. But bottom line, I should have asked for permission before I shared that information. So that was my fail, and we live and we learn. And I'm so thankful to have friends who give me grace. My win is that if you were following my last episode, I talked about the library book issue and that I have trouble getting my books back to the library. Well, my win is that I got all the library books back. I attribute it to paying attention and calling myself out. When you see that you are failing in something and you're determined not to do it anymore, write it down, call yourself out, tell somebody so that you become accountable. Leave yourself with little excuses, and it really does make a difference. Now, of course, this is just one week. We'll see what happens after that, but don't hide your deficits. Face them head-on, conquer them. That is why I talk about my fails. It's not just to talk about my And share and be vulnerable. It's to demonstrate that we've got to call them out so that we can change them. And I've told you before that some people feel that I'm speaking negativity when I call out my failures, but that's what they are. Sometimes we lie to ourselves so much in the guise of being good to ourselves that we don't give ourselves a place to grow and change. We don't give ourselves a need to grow and change. So yes, My failures are always lessons. Yes, there are positive aspects to my failures for sure, but they're still failures. And my successes are crazy amazing, and they deserve all the medals and trophies that I can get my hands on. You have to honor both. I didn't quite mean to say that all today, but there you go. So on to the topic today: when God won't fix it. And I don't talk about God much on here, or really even in my public speaking at all for that matter. And honestly, I don't really feel that I'm qualified. I have a doctorate in clinical psychology, and I know a lot about psychology, but I've never been formally educated in religion or Bible school. But I do understand human psychology, and I know how we mess ourselves up with faulty thinking. And so I felt compelled to speak about this today, and I'm learning that when I feel compelled to speak, I should. It's also very easy for me to appropriately separate my faith from my work in my office with my clients. clients, because when I'm working with my clients, it's about them. And I've been trained to do that work super well. But in my speaking in these last few years, I'm realizing that I can't really separate my work and my faith because my speaking is just as much about me as it is about you. I'm sharing myself with you in hopes that you will learn, grow, be inspired and motivated. So I'm not even going to try to separate the two anymore. And if I offend you, I understand. If you need to leave, I get that too. But hopefully you will stay and what I say will be helpful. Now I want to make it clear, I don't care what your religion is, but most people do believe in a God. And today I'm talking about my God and a little bit about psychology too. And so I hope that this is all going to relate. Sometimes You have something so big in your life, something that's so messed up that only God can fix it. But sometimes God just doesn't. He won't fix it. And that can mess us up psychologically. We create negative self-talk around things like that that is so damaging to our mind and our soul, and we've got to stop it. And that's why I wanna talk about it today. And all the motivational Bible stuff is good. You know, people will tell you to just have hope. Believe, pray, your breakthrough's coming, or God's going to fix it. But sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes your sick child doesn't get healed. Sometimes your marriage still ends. Sometimes you lose your home, or sometimes you don't get that job. Sometimes, as Melissa Maimone said it so beautifully in her book Radiant Midnight, sometimes God doesn't heal your depression. Sometimes His answer is no. That's where our self-talk can really get out of control. It can literally take us down, and let me tell you why. Now, I know what well-meaning people will say to you, just pray. If you have the faith of a mustard seed, right, then God's gonna move mountains. But what happens is that the flip side of that statement, what you hear loud and clear, is that if God doesn't fix it, then your faith must suck. You're doing something wrong and you aren't good enough. I know that there are struggling people out there that are blaming their current circumstance on their lack of faith and feeling like they're doing it all wrong or that God would have fixed it by now if they had done it better. That's just not true. Sometimes you might tell yourself that your past sins are catching up with you, that God doesn't care. Does He even really exist? If you were good enough, maybe you wouldn't have this depression. Maybe your anxiety would be healed. Your marriage would be fixed. Your child would get better. These, my dear friends, are all self-talk lies. Now, I'm not an evangelist, but I know that your faith has nothing to do with your struggle, and so many people intertwine those and mix that up. I'm not here to tell you that there's this greater reason for your struggle, although there is one that you might not fully understand for 5, 10, 20 years, or maybe never. Sometimes there's no explanation. There's no reason that makes sense in our understanding as humans. Sometimes there's no story or lesson to be gained from your mountain. When my daughter was born with a rare genetic disorder, I was terrified for her. I was terrified for myself, for our family, for our future. And I got really angry at God. I had a ton of negative self-talk, just like all the talk I just talked about. And I am only now, just now, 13 years later, Beginning to understand what a blessing some of my struggles have been to me. But honestly, some of it still doesn't make sense today. And I'm not here to give you false hope that if you pray harder, it'll fix it, although it may. I'm not here to tell you that you're going to gain so much strength in this struggle, although you can if you allow yourself to grow from it. I'm here to tell you that when God says no, When He doesn't move your mountain, it has nothing to do with your faith, and you're still going to be okay. When you have the knowledge that God can do anything and He could fix it if He wanted to, but He still doesn't, like I said, it messes with your psyche. I know God can fix it, but if He doesn't? God will walk you through it. He's bigger than what you're going through. He gives you the strength that you need. And you might not feel like it, but look, you are still here. You're still standing, so He has. Now, of course, it's easy to have faith when everything's good, but when the really bad storms come, some people leave God. I didn't leave. I stayed, but I wasn't talking to God at that time. I'm like, we're not talking because if you're not going to hear my prayers, if you're not going to heal my daughter, why should I even speak to you? Now, I never admitted this to myself, but 13 years later, I could admit that that's exactly what I was feeling in that moment. I was doing like a big F-you to God because I really felt that I wasn't good enough. I was angry at myself, and I didn't want that mirror in my face when I went to Him. Now, if I had seen Him as the God that He really was, though, I could have leaned on Him and cried like I did with my mother. You see, it's our self-talk that distances us from God. He didn't leave. We're just pissed and hating ourselves. He's not saying you're not doing it right. He's not saying this is your fault. He's not ignoring you. That's what you are saying. He's just saying no. And my self-talk created distance from God. So I'm here to encourage you to separate your self-talk from your relationship with God. Your brain can't hold 2 contradictory beliefs. So if you believe that if your faith is strong enough, God will move mountains, and you also believe that you're a woman of faith, your brain can't hold that. And so we develop cognitive dissonance, which is when your brain's trying to hold 2 contradictory beliefs. But what happened is your brain has to fix it. It doesn't like to stay in that state. It's too painful. So it makes up a story that will make this all make sense. And we decided to lack in ourselves. And so as we try to deepen our relationship with God, Our self-esteem goes down the drain, and we're wondering, what's wrong with me? And the result is that we pull away from God. And when we feel that someone is ignoring us in relationships, our human nature, once again, our psyche begins to separate, distance ourselves in order to protect ourselves. And we distance, and we ask, what's wrong with me? And my answer is, nothing's wrong with you. When you were a kid and you asked your parent for something that was super important to you and they said no, It wasn't because you didn't ask well enough. It wasn't because something was wrong with you. It wasn't because you didn't believe in them. They just said no. They had their reasons. God has his reasons. And you probably got angry as a kid too when your parents said no. I know I did. And it's okay to get angry now. Life honestly is not fair sometimes. Just don't let your negative self-talk make it about you, because you are good enough. Your faith is enough. Your past is forgiven. He's still there, and He hasn't changed, even when His answer is no. And so when the answer is no, that means it's time to start figuring out how to live in your now. How do you bloom where you're planted? That's your new job to figure out, because I promise you, you were meant to thrive. No matter what your circumstance, no matter how long you have left on this earth to live, You were meant to thrive. That group MercyMe has a song called Even If. Melissa Mamoni has a book called Radiant Midnight. Rick Warren had a child die from suicide, and he's written books and preached about when God says no. There are countless other people who have been in these places and have talked about their experiences after God saying no to them. These are strong people who have learned to thrive despite God's nos. And if they can do it, so can you. If I can do it, so can you. God doesn't say no without giving you the tools to thrive where you are. So accept the no. Go ahead, get angry. Check your self-talk. You are good enough. And figure out how to thrive while you're walking up your mountain. Thank you for listening to the Dr. Zoe Show. New shows go up on Tuesdays. Subscribe so you don't miss a show. If you'd love to connect with me, you can connect by texting the word JOIN to 38470 and check out my website at drzoeshaw.com. I look forward to connecting with you women over social media. Have a great week.

You've been listening to the Dr. Zoe Show, Redefining Your Superwoman, with your host, Dr. Zoe Shaw. Don't forget to sign up Sign up for her monthly newsletters to get encouragement, tips, and skills for keeping your mind in the Superwoman game. Connect with her now at www.drzoeshaw.com. Tell your friends and subscribe to her podcast on iTunes. Join us next time for another edition of the Dr. Zoe Show.