370 - How Can The Betrayed Heart Heal? w/ Barbara Steffens

Hello, beautiful people. I'm your host, Trevor Windsor, and you're listening to episode 370 of the Pure Desire podcast. Here joining me as always, is my co host, Nick Stumbo.

Into the unknown. Into the unknown.

That was in a key. I have yet to hear you sing.

The key it's in. I would have to go into my upper register, which kind of funny story about me. It doesn't always work and there are times I've tried to be funny.

If your head voice doesn't work.

Yeah, like the falsetto, Like, I just have kind of a break there that I can't. Certain times I can't get into it.

Got it.

So there have been situations where I've tried to be funny by then, like singing into that and it just, like, nothing comes out. Little embarrassing. So I kept it in a key that I could manage.

Yeah. Which was. Which was high. And that taps into a little bit of my story. I have a high register voice. I was a worship pastor for like 10 years and I had people constantly come like, could we just lower the key of the song? And I'm like, not if you want me to sing it and delete it.

So anyways, as we know, our worship pastor also loves to put songs in this.

We love you, Josh Putnam. Don't let what Nick's saying tear you down.

No, it's awesome for him. He's so good.

Yeah, he's so good.

The rest of us are like, wait, do I have to drop a key? What do I do here?

I can already hear at least two listeners being like, oh, my gosh, get onto the episode already. Okay. But that's Frozen 2, an incredible song, actually. And if you haven't listened to it yet, there's one on the soundtrack done by Brandon Urie, which is actually a better version than the actual. Than the movie. So just for anybody who cares. Okay, so again, another unique episode this week where we are featuring a previous summit session. And this One is from Dr. Barbara Steffens, who we've had on the show a number of times and was intimately involved in the appsats organization. But yeah, talk about Barb. Talk about her session a little bit.

Yeah. Was that Frozen two or is it Frozen one? You know, when those came out, my daughters were like, they were in the age demographic that movie was created for. So for a season, like, our house was all about Frozen, but that's been like 10 years now, and I've probably not watched it in that long. But yeah, I was focusing more on the phrase into the unknown. Because Dr. Barbara Steffens is so known for really being a leading voice in that area of betrayal trauma. And when it comes to addiction recovery, when it comes to struggles with pornography and other unwanted sexual behaviors, I think, thankfully, a vast majority of churches and leaders are starting to recognize this is an issue. It's something we've got to be willing to talk about. But betrayal, trauma, and the issues related to the impact on a spouse and a marriage, I think is still lagging behind for most people. And at Pure Desire, we're really trying to hold those two together. To say it's two parts of the whole. You've got to help the struggler and the spouse. You've got to understand the trauma of addiction, but also the trauma of betrayal. And that's, for a lot of people, feels like going into the unknown, like, what is this? This language feels new and different. It maybe feels like psychology and not scripture. But I think Dr. Steffens just has such a heart for couples, a heart for the church, and a heart for recovery. And she explains things in a way that you go, oh, this isn't that complicated. You know, I don't need a degree in psychology or a doctorate to be able to. To at least understand some basics here of what happens in betrayal, what happens to a spouse's heart and ability to engage in a relationship where we can't just say, well, if you would have sex more or if you would be more attentive or if you would fix you, things would get better. It's like, no, we're. We're understanding the damage that's created in relationships and what is needed to heal a couple. Dr. Steffan's session just really kind of helps lay out some of those steps. So that's what I love about her, is she takes what feels. Feels complicated, feels unknown, and puts it at a level where we say, you know what? We can do this. We can help couples in this area.

Yeah. And again, this is where the reason we use this is twofold. We love Barb. We love her heart. We think this is valuable content for anybody. Then also, this is a way to platform and really put in front of our listeners how valuable the summit event really is. So the summit event is coming September 20 and 21. And, you know, if you've been listening to the show even the last couple of months, you know that we are going to be releasing a brand new Barna research study that is really exploring the impact of pornography and sexual addiction in the church. And David Kinnaman will be a part The CEO Barna, he'll be there talking about this and you'll start to hear that we're trying to resource, really anyone and everyone on this journey to better understand how to help those people. And it really aligns with the heart of Barb and her session.

Yeah, I mean, you don't want to miss the session, the summit, because we're going to be releasing this data. I think it's going to be compelling. We've also got Joshua Broom, you know, someone whose life transformation from being in the adult film industry to now being a passionate preacher and someone who's using his life story to glorify Christ and call people to true identity and, and really exposing the lies that our culture believes. Even if we're not in the adult film industry, we're being impacted by a very sexualized culture. And I, I think he's going to be a powerful voice. Dr. Nancy Pearcey and her understandings of God's creation of the human body and what the current culture narrative is doing to undermine that, it just. There's gonna be so much good stuff. And to me, the. The Barna report and the ways that it's going to expose the help people need is just like the cherry on top. And so don't miss. And if you hear this session with Dr. Barb and you're like, man, that was so good. Like, yeah, that's how good the summit is.

Yes.

And so join us online, Join us in person. We'd love to have you and can't wait for it. Yes.

So if you do want to check out the summit register, get all that. Maybe you want to host a watch party, just go to PureDesiresummit.com and with that, let's get into this session from Dr. Barbara Steffen. And it's from last year's Pure Desire summit titled how can the Betrayed Heart Heal?

How can the Betrayed Heart Heal? So we talked about how it's injured partner trauma, we talked about betrayal. We've talked about all different kinds of things. But I want to give you kind of a framework of understanding the healing process after betrayal. And this is going to be really helpful for those of you who are partners and were betrayed. But it's really going to be helpful for those of you who want to stand alongside and help your loved one heal as well. So it's for both of you as well as for the family. So I know that you've heard this theme several times over this summit, and I just love it. But it's that healing starts in community and Relationship. It starts with being seen and known and especially being heard, and being heard in a deep way. The kind of hearing where you can get where they're at, that's the most important thing. So for the person who's in pain, who is traumatized, the best thing for us is a safe witness. When I was doing counselor ed, I was teaching these new counselors to be. And they're learning all their, you know, methods and processes and models and everything. And I said, the most important thing you need to know is that you are a witness to whatever this experience is that people have had and that they bring to you. But in healing, when there's relational betrayal, when there's brokenness within the relationship, being a safe witness is important as well. So I want to be a safe witness for my husband when he shares things with me, and I desperately want him to be a safe witness when I need to say things to him. And we do that pretty well. But that's what brings about healing. The other thing I want you to know around the healing of this betrayed heart is the ultimate goal is not to have the pain go away, although we want that to happen. We want the pain to reduce and for you to have ways of managing it. But the ultimate goal after trauma, after any kind of crisis, is growth is change. We don't want this time to be wasted, right? That it's not. Something just happened, and we're going to put it in a box and walk away from it. I kind of think of it as, okay, I had a jigsaw puzzle. How many of you did jigsaw puzzles during COVID Oh, my gosh, we have a whole stack. But it's kind of like your life, your marriage, is this box of a jigsaw puzzle. And then you're almost done with it, and then something happens, and all the pieces are all over again. And now you got to put it back together. But the good news after trauma is you get more choice in terms of how you want to put it back together. You're in charge. You can make decisions for yourself on what you want it to look like. So we want growth, and we want transformation, and it leads to a new thing. Now, a lot of times, I will hear partners ask me, when will my marriage be the same again? What's the answer? It won't. It can't. I remember going to a presentation one time, and a woman was up on the stage, and she was trying to describe what it was like for a betrayed partner. And she took this beautiful glass heart, and she Wrapped it in a napkin and she put it on the ground and she smashed it. And that was just to demonstrate whatever that was. That's not going to be put back. It's not going to be put back the way it was. But the good news after trauma is there is growth, there's restoration, and then there's traumatic growth, and then there's the ability to gain resilience. So you're learning new skills as you are healing and going through this process. When I first started learning about crisis intervention, I was told that a definition for crisis is that it's a dangerous opportunity. So it's dangerous. It hurts a whole lot. Things are being shattered, things are different, but it's also an opportunity to put it back together or to form a new thing. Early on in my recovery with my spouse, it was really clear that our marriage was not going to be the same marriage. It had to be a new one. It had to be a different one because the old way was not working. And now it works really, really well now. Will I say that I wish it had never happened? Absolutely. Absolutely. But there are so many things that God has done to grow me, to grow him, to grow us together with probably more transparency and honesty than we had before. So it's had a good result. And in my own life, God didn't waste it, and he allowed me to grow and to thrive. I hope it's okay to share this, Steve, but just a few days ago, I forget what the. What was going on, but he looked over at me and he says, you are different. You used to be scared all the time and you're not now. I get a little scared, but. But not like I was. I was petrified. I was terrified. But there's something about going through and coming on another side of a really difficult time where you grow and you learn that you can do things you never thought you could do. So I just want to say that that's something for me to say out loud to you, but also I hope it's an encouragement to you, you that you will not be at the same place a year from now. Right. You will not be. So I want to talk a little bit about what it takes along the healing journey. And to do that, I am going to give you a real quick overview of a model that's a trauma resolution model that I discovered. Oh, gosh, I don't know, 2006, maybe 2007, something like that. And then once Appsets was formed, association of partners of sex addicts, Trauma specialists. Too many words. We Adopted that model, and we call it the multidimensional partner trauma model. It's a lot of fancy words, but what it is, it's a framework for trauma resolution and healing after interpersonal trauma. So trauma that occurs because someone else did something in terms of causing the trauma, like betrayal. So the original model came from a psychologist named Judith Herman, and her book is Trauma and recovery. So it was initially put out in 1992 and then revised later on. She just put out another one that I'm halfway finished with. But it's a really wonderful model because it's just a frame. So many things can happen within the frame. But I want to give you just a picture of what's in this frame so that you can gauge kind of where you are in your process, but also where you are going in the process. All right. So the first part of the model, the first stage of this trauma healing process, we call safety and stabilization. Safety and stabilization. So safety is just what it sounds like. I need to feel safe, but I need to feel safe in a variety of ways. Because what happens when you're traumatized, there is nothing safe, right? There is nothing that feels safe. So the first step is finding ways to start to feel like there is safety, at least enough safety for you to start to move forward. So safety is not just physical. A lot of times when we hear the word safety, we think, well, I'm safe. No one's hurting me. But safety is also feeling safe in myself. What in the world is going on with my emotions, my behaviors? So finding ways of managing and calming things that help someone feel safe in themselves. Other ways that especially the betrayed partner might not feel safe is if, let's say, she is the one who did the Discovering an initial discovery. Discovery. And then a week later, she discovers something else, or two days later, her loved one discloses something else. And so it's this kind of staggered discovery disclosure process that does not feel safe. It's kind of like an earthquake. Earthquake's over, but now you're waiting for all the aftershocks. So when that is happening, you cannot settle and rest and say, okay, I'm safe now. So I know you guys have learned through pure desire not to do staggered disclosures. But this is your friendly reminder. Don't do that. Just don't do it. Because it does. It prolongs the trauma. What someone needs who's been traumatized, they need to know, I'm not going to be hurt again right now. And that is next to impossible for a betrayed partner. Early on because they want to believe that they've heard it all or that they know it all and that there's not something else that's going to jump up and hurt them and bite them. But they also get the information right away. Well, it's very normal when they start to disclose or when you discover you're going to get bits and pieces of the truth. So one thing that we have been doing as an organization at apsats is encouraging a full therapeutic disclosure just as soon as possible in the healing process, because that then can put some boundaries around what has happened. Because a traumatized person wants to know what just happened to me, and I want to know it's not going to happen again. The reality is we're not really going to know that. There's no promise of that, but we want to know that at least the person that injured us is doing everything they can to help us feel safe again. So no staggered disclosures, because it just prolongs it. But even if there's no staggered disclosures, in this first phase or stage of the healing process, there are other things that might not feel safe. Like who do I tell? And how are people going to respond if I try to go to them and talk to them about it? Will they cause more harm to me? And unfortunately, too often, let's say a partner goes to try to tell a friend or someone in their church, maybe even a pastor, and then they hear things like, well, that sure doesn't sound like anything I know about him. What would you doing to cause him to do these things? Oh, I really so glad you guys moaned. Sometimes I say things that people go, oh, okay, but no, that's not okay. It's just not okay. So that doesn't help. That prolongs the trauma. Right? It's another interpersonal trauma. We have a term called institutional betrayal as well. And so when the church is supposed to be, or we believe to be the safe place, and we go there to say, this just happened to me, and we get a response like, what were you doing? Or not doing? Or just don't tell anyone about it, that's another betrayal. And there's research that shows when someone who's betrayed goes to try to tell someone about their betrayal and then they're betrayed again, it increases the symptoms. It makes the trauma worse. So churches, any church community out there, be trauma informed, Listen, be a witness, do better. So other things that help with safety is just around even proximity early in recovery, a partner may say, I cannot be in the same bedroom with you. You Got to go someplace else. I'm going to go someplace else. Because even the nature of being in the same room or the same bed may be really triggering and really uncomfortable. So if you need things like that, speak them. That's your boundary. This is what I need to feel safe right now. But that's a common one. But what kinds of space do I need? And understand that space one day may look one way and the next day look completely different. So there needs to be some flexibility here to help promote safety. Wise tip, if you are trying to help your spouse who's been betrayed, and she says, I don't feel comfortable if you touch me and then you go ahead and touch her, that doesn't feel safe because you didn't listen, you didn't honor what she requested. It will give her information, but it also prolongs that sense of not feeling safe. I'll give you just a few examples of stories that I've heard of people trying to go and find safe witnesses to help them process. So I've heard women say that they had the response of, we'll just have more sex, that'll fix it. One I heard was, I'm surprised you're taking this so hard, or at least your spouse wasn't. Fill in the blank. So minimizing it, kind of brushing it away. And I know that that comes out of either their not being aware of how to respond or that they're really uncomfortable and not knowing how to respond. But those of us who are kind of in the role of the professional witness and being the first responders, we need to understand that when we say those kinds of things that we are only adding on to the pain. So finding safety takes time. It takes support. When I was doing a lot of counseling with partners, we could probably spend three, four, five time sessions just talking through what kinds of things would help you feel safer now. Because as soon as they started to feel safer, they started to be able to calm. They didn't have as many experiences of triggers, although the triggers were still there. They weren't quite as intense or quite as often because they were taking steps to take care of themselves. And the person that they were asking to help them be safe was responding to that and honoring that. So safety and stabilization. Stabilization means when I am triggered. I have some tools now to deal with that or when I'm angry. I know ways of managing writing about it, going out for a walk or a run, but finding ways of managing the emotions that feel uncomfortable inside another place where you might not feel safe. Is even in your relationship with God. Okay, God, where were you? How in the world did you let this happen? Why didn't you let me know? Why did you let me marry this person? Because obviously you knew this was going to happen. So finding safety there in having freedom within our faith communities to question that, to say those things, to be able to process that and say those things out loud with each other, that we don't understand what God's doing, We don't understand why he allowed it. We can be mad at him. As long as I'm mad at God and telling him about it. We are in relationship. I want to be in a relationship with the father. So this phase can last a really, really long time for some, especially if things aren't calming down in the relationship. So if boundaries are violated, it just really depends on a lot of things. So most people want this stage to go, like three weeks, we're done. It will not happen that way. And if it does, it might look that way, but it's probably because someone is just pushing it down, trying to push it behind, rather than walking through it and experiencing it and getting the help for it. So it can take a long time. Also, this is not like a linear process where you finish stage one and then you go, I graduated. Now I'm going to stage two. It doesn't work that way. It's more like grief, where I'm making a movement in this direction and then I move back a little bit, and then I move back this way. And all it takes, if you're starting to feel safe again, and then there's a significant boundary violation or a slip, partner is going to go all the way back to phase one again. I've worked with partners who have worked for two years and gone through this process, and they're doing really well. And then there's a relapse. And sometimes after relapse, stage one takes even longer because they had already started to regain some connection and some trust. So don't put timetables on stage one. Safety and stabilization. It takes as long as it takes. And it's dependent upon so many things other than what's in your control. Because if you're in an unsafe environment, it's going to be hard to start to feel safe. All right, I'm trying to think if there's anything else I need to say about that. I don't think so. All right, next stage is stage two. We call it remembrance and mourning. Remembrance and mourning. And during this stage, the focus is, okay, I am feeling safe enough now so that my day to day thoughts aren't around, am I okay? Am I going to be hurt? What's going to happen next? I can start to breathe and then the grief emotions start to come up. The realizing maybe of some of the significant changes that are about to occur come up. So it's that time of going deeper into what just happened. So it looks a lot like grief. It's identifying the losses, the changes, grieving dreams. So I'll share just a personal example. When my husband and I, when I had my discovery, we were at a stage where we were planning our 25th wedding anniversary and we have two daughters and, and one was out of the house and one was really, really close to being out of the house. So we were planning on what in the world was this going to be like? And we're going to have fun and we're going to go on these trips and this is our next stage of life. And then all of a sudden it's like it blew up and it was question, I was questioning whether or not we were going to survive it. And I didn't expect that at that stage of life. I expected, now I'm going to start playing planning for this. You know, kids are out of the house, grandkids, all those kinds of things. But there was this, this thing that needed attending to, it needed attention and it took, took us away from the joy of that time. So in remembrance and mourning, there's, I think the primary thing that's going on there is grief work. And I don't know about you, I don't like to grieve. It hurts, it's hard, it's exhausting. But identifying what the losses are, sitting with them, sharing with other people about what the losses are so that you can honor those losses and then you can determine what you want to do about those losses. But it takes moving into them, leaning into the grief and the loss. Now my, in my experience in the Christian community, we don't leave a lot of space for that. We don't do the best job of leaving space and honoring grief and loss. We might do a really good celebration of life service. If so, when someone dies, one of the hardest parts after betrayal is there's no ceremony, you know, there's no acknowledgment that something has desperately changed and something really has died in a lot of ways. A colleague of mine has a blog post or cast that she does and she calls it not a casserole widow. And it's phenomenal. If you want information, I'll give it to you. It's phenomenal. But she calls it that because when we're going through this kind of grief, this isn't the time where people come and bring us food and take care of our kids and ask what do we need? It's such a secret, shame filled kind of experience. Sometimes when our faith community can't, won't, don't know how to come alongside. A lot of times when I'm working with a partner in this phase and they're just so exhausted, we will talk about what kinds of things can you do. I know you don't have energy, but sometimes you just have to ask people for what you need. So can you request that your church help you have some food delivered or things like that, especially during the crisis time. But in our church communities right now, we're not educated well enough to know that that's what's needed during that first phase and the second phase that we need that kind of support. And like I talked about before, we tend to do the spiritual bypass, which is kind of jumping over from our pain into oh, but God is going to do wonderful things out of this. And so kind of jumping over the grief process. And we don't want to do that. And doesn't just happen when there is betrayal. There's a lot of different kinds of traumatic losses or events where we are so uncomfortable. We say mean things or cruel things or insensitive things in an attempt to not deal with our own discomfort. I had the honor for a little while of running a grief support group at a local cemetery. It was the most wonderful thing that this cemetery, who is serving people after the death of a loved one, approached me about doing support groups for the people they were serving. And some of the hardest part of sitting with those people at that time was hearing the things that were said to them after the death of their loved one. So I'll give you a few examples of what they heard. Oh, but he or she is with Jesus now. I love this one. God needed them, so took them to heaven and at least you can still have another child. Someone who lost a child heard that. But after betrayal we do similar kinds of things. Sometimes we say things like, well, just have more sex and you wouldn't be acting out. Or at least he didn't leave you. He's still here. I know, I'm hearing it. I'm sorry. Other ones I've heard are, well, it's only porn. Don't show your anger because your anger will push him away further. Just pray about it bumper stickers, right? Let go, Let God. I could tell you a whole lot more, but I don't want to right now. And I think I want to pause and say, if you are someone who has heard those things, when you went to get help, when you wanted to speak your truth and you were dismissed and not heard or trivialized, God knows that that happened, and that grieves his heart. That's not his heart for you. That's not his heart for us. One of the sweetest things being here with you this weekend has been seeing the community and the mutual respect and honor and safety that you are working so hard at providing for each other. So I want to thank you for that, because there are so many places where that does not occur when someone is in these. These places. All right, so stage one is remembrance and mourning. That's the grief work. Can also be the deeper trauma work that a partner may need to do for the person who's struggling with their integrity, with their sexual behaviors. This is where you're diving into, how did this happen? What set me up for this? How was I medicating? What was I trying to medicate through my behaviors? So this is digging deep into what's the root for you. You have to feel safe in how you. You know, knowing what to do to control your behaviors, to cease those behaviors that were not healthy and helpful for you, getting those under control so you feel stable enough to then go into the deeper places. I get concerned in some recovery circles where they dive so deep into trauma so fast with a person who's struggling. You know, your struggles are there for a reason. It's serving a purpose. It was a tool you've been using. It's not the best tool, but you kind of have some other tools. So community is your primary new tool. Right. Stay in community. But for you, the remembrance and mourning is looking at, how did I get here and what are my losses? And being willing to go there. And I think you can only go there if you're in a relationship, safe relationship with people who can stand with you and be with you when you do it. And if you do that, you are so brave, you are so courageous to go into that space and into that place. So stage one, safety stabilization. Stage two, remembrance and mourning. And then the final stage is. We're calling it reconnection. So this stage is, you've got a pretty good handle on, okay, my behaviors or my trauma is starting to be resolved. I may still have triggers, but I'm managing it. I understand what it is I've identified my losses and I am grieving well and I am honoring myself. And then you're ready to start working on reconnection now, sometimes reconnection, that's when perhaps the relationship or the coupleship is starting to reconnect. You're able to have more fun together. You have a rhythm in recovery and healing and you're ready to take steps towards what's next in the relationship. Sometimes in this stage, reconnection is just reconnecting with me. I'm reconnecting with who I am and who I want to be and take steps towards moving into traumatic growth in who I want to be. This may also be a stage where if one person, well, say the person with struggles with their integrity and with their behaviors is choosing to not do recovery work, this may be the reconnection for the partner to decide. My reconnection is to do something so that I am safe and separate. So that may also happen in this process. So the fun part of stage three is like I talked about before, all the puzzle pieces are up in the air, but this time you get to make the puzzle look however you want. So it's a time to take all the pieces and maybe throw some away, maybe add some new ones and develop a lifestyle, a life, a relationship that makes sense to you now. So it's a do over in a lot of ways, which can be really cool. Share 1. So when my husband and I were getting to this place and we decided, well, gee, we're in recovery right now and healing, let's, let's buy a new house. And so we decided we were going to build a house. I know, what were we thinking? We are still married 50 years, but. So 50 years. But we decided that building a house was a way of kind of having a marker, of restarting, of doing something new. But I am the kind of person that's a big picture person. I can walk in the room and I'll say, well, I really like that and I like that and I feel this. And my husband will be on the floor looking at the tiles and are they put together? Well, he'll pull out a refrigerator and look behind it. He's an engineer, very, very detail oriented. Whereas I said, I like these people, I want them to buy, you know, to build us our house. My husband was getting his spreadsheets out and looking at all this, but the wise man said, I'm putting my spreadsheets away. We're going to make decisions differently. So we went with the nice people and. And they built Us, a beautiful house. And it's a house that we love having people in. We built it so that we could be a safe community for other people and for the people that we love. So for us, it's kind of like a marker of our reconnection and moving forward. I don't recommend it. It was kind of a crazy thing when we did it, but it worked for us because when we were building the house, it was a metaphor for rebuilding our lives and our love. So. But that's the fun part of reconnecting, is thinking, who do I want to be now? Because the old me probably is gone. Or at least pieces of that old me has really changed. And so here's the time for me to determine, what do I want? What do I want this to look like? Who do I want to be? Another part of our rebuilding was I went back to school. Crazy, crazy, crazy. But God knew why I needed to do that, and he had things for me to do. So. But I went back to school and I remember our conversations. Are you sure that you can do that right now? We have all this and this. Yeah, I can do it. I want to do it. And so we did. So just in our relationship, how we make decisions changed big time. So I don't know what it's going to look like for you, but be courageous enough to shift things around a little bit and to make sure that within the relationship, if your relationship survives, that there's mutuality there and that there's mutual honor and respect in the relationship to make it what will really honor God. So this is post traumatic growth. This is meaning making. What does this mean for me? How do I make sense of this? This is the time of opportunity. Also. This is the time where we see people. I'll be working with a partner for a while, and she'll say, you know, I'm feeling like I'm doing really pretty good. And I just. My heart breaks for the women that don't have enough support yet. And then they say, I want to reach behind and I want to go and support and help someone else. That's the wonderful part of healing and growth after trauma is then we have an awareness of what the need is and how valuable having someone be with you through it is that then if you choose, you can find ways of encouraging and supporting someone else. So reconnection. How much time do I have? I can't keep track of time. All right, I'm going to talk about the importance of community. And I know that you have heard this over and over again, because that's what you are. You're a community. And it's a strong, vibrant community. But healing occurs within a community, community of safe people. So I have this wonderful painting that a friend of mine did, and I bought it from her. Isn't that lovely? So it's a picture of healing. So it's two. It's flowers there, but in my mind, these are two people and they're leaning into each other, and then that's either drops of rain or petals falling. But that's what happens when we're in community and we connect and we lean in and we share, and that's when healing comes. Healing comes in our community. So part of Judith Herman's model, the three stages, she ends it by saying, and all of this has to happen in safe relationships. So that's our group. That's our counselor, our coach, our group facilitator. It's the friend. But we heal in safe communities. If we don't have safe communities, it is so much harder to heal. So healing relationships do or don't do these kinds of things. They don't try to advise or direct, tell someone what to do. You don't avoid the hard emotions. You lean into them, you honor them, you sit with them. Safe people hope for us when we don't have hope. They can see it, and they can see the hope, and then they can even verbalize it. I know you're in a lot of pain right now, and I'm so sad, but I have so much hope because I can see you moving forward. So being able to speak hope to someone can be helpful. Safe people are present. They're real and they're there, and they're a witness. They're present. They're not problem solving. They're not working so hard on thinking about, what do I need to say to make it better. They are just with you. So I hope you have that in your life, in your community, in your groups. Those safe people be that kind of community that can be there with each other. I don't know if you've heard of Diane Langberg. She's a Christian psychologist, writes a lot about trauma, and she's really speaking into the faith communities. But I have a quote from her, and this is what she says. When you sit with someone who is suffering, grieving, sorrowing, you are sitting face to face with a grief that your Lord has carried. Isn't that beautiful? There is no tragedy, no sin, for that matter, that you will encounter in another's life or in your own. That he has not borne. Is that wonderful? So when I think of that, I think of that as when I am in the position to witness someone else. I'm not carrying that weight. Jesus does, he has, he will, and I am with him, listening and honoring somebody else. So may you be aware of that. Those of you are in roles where you are encouraging and supporting people that you are working with Jesus, and he has already borne it, he has already carried it. So we're partnering with him. Other things that help us heal after trauma and betrayal is pain being in reality. So I know that for people struggling with their sexual behaviors, you know that being in reality, not in fantasy land, you have to be here and now. Well, I tell partners, you have to do the same thing, be in reality not what you hope it would be, what you wish it would be, but what is really going on right now. So listen to behaviors, not words. So if someone says to you, well, I'm doing my recovery work and I go to group most of the time. But your observation says he goes when there's nothing else planned or he has room in his schedule and reads books only after you have a fight and you bring it up and then the books come out and they start reading. So doing the recovery work only when there is tension. So observe rather than asking about it, just be that interested observer. Observe what is real. And if you are hearing words that say one thing, but all the behaviors say something else, which do you believe? Behaviors believe the behaviors. That's being in reality. Pay attention to what you are noticing, what you're seeing, what you are feeling. Sometimes partners after discovery, they have trouble trusting their gut, their intuition again. And so part of healing is learning to trust it again in. In. Yeah, in good, solid ways to be able to trust. And part of that is noticing what's real, being in reality. Another part that's really necessary is being brave. This is very hard work, and it's courageous work. When someone chooses to come in and to talk about what's just happened and they're willing to go through a healing process, that's brave. There's ways you can try to escape. Can't escape forever. But turning into it and confronting it by saying, yes, this is real, this is what I feel. This is what's happened, that takes bravery. If you're a parent during this healing time, be the good enough dad or the good enough mom, you don't have to be the best. None of us are the best. Hopefully we're good enough. And good enough is what our kids need. They don't need you to be perfect. What would that teach them if you were perfect all the time? So be the good enough. If there are things going on that you feel like I have to attend to this, what? But you're really working on healing, Maybe some other things drop off for a while so that you can do the hard work of taking good care of yourself in healing. And I talked about this before, but I want to say it again. Values. Knowing what your values are really help you determine what you need and what kind of boundaries you need. So I'm just going to list a few values and if you, if I say one that hits you, to jot it down. But just think about what are the things that I want to be my drivers for how I make decisions. So possible. Values are faith, fun, honesty, fairness, justice, kindness, loyalty, peace, security, respect. You can go online, you can Google, and you can get list after list of values, but pay attention to those for you because that is going to help you as you move forward. That's going to help you feel true to you as you heal. And I always get the question, how long does it take to. To heal? What's the answer? As long as it takes. Good job. So I know that sometimes you hear it takes three to five years. I really believe that. That three to five years really describes how long it takes until this feels like a new way of living for the person in recovery, not necessarily for the partner. For the partner, it requires safety first. So if the partner is not feeling safe, safe, it might take a whole lot longer. Okay, so just throw that in. So I want to end, because I know we're just about out of time. I want to end by reading part of my favorite Psalm, which is Psalm 139. In the Psalmist, David said, where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there. If I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me. Your right hand will hold me fast if I say, surely the darkness will hide me, and the light become night around me. Even the darkness will not be dark to you. The night will shine like the day. For darkness is as light to you. So no matter where you have been, what darkness you have been in, or maybe perhaps you feel like you're still in, know that the Lord is with you, and he is light. And in him there is no darkness. So he is your flashlight. He is your beacon. He is your refuge. And he sees you and he knows you. And you are not lost. He finds you. So let me pray for us. Thank you that you are light. That even when we think we can hide from you in the darkest, darkest place, you are there. And you see us and you know us and you love us and you restore us and you lovingly bring us back. You lovingly remind us of who you are. Thank you that you are safe. Thank you that you are relational. Thank you that you are a safe place. Father, we love you and thank you. Jesus name. Amen.