I recently journaled about something that I never intended to write about but then one of my best friends wrote something so breathtakingly honest, and along the same lines of what I was going through, that she gave me the courage to write. (By the way, that’s what the best writers – and best friends, come to think of it – do for you if they’re doing their jobs…..they make you more brave.)

I had heard someone say the following sentence:

“If a person has hurt you, God wants to heal you and take that from you.”

A super simple sentence. But sometimes, things like that can just bowl you over, as did in my case. Because this is a portion of what I wrote in my journal right after hearing that:

Jesus, if this is true, then please, please heal my {men} wounds and take away the effects that I live with daily as it pertains to my other relationships. I can be needy and clingy and scared because of their words and actions. I am living under LIES. I have agreed with LIES.

And then, I wrote out my three biggest lies that I have taken on as my truth.

Lie: I am a woman who cannot be loved without having to convince someone to love her.

Lie: I am a woman who deserves to be spoken unkindly to.

Lie: I am a woman who, simply because of who I am as a person, cannot keep a man around.

These are sad, sad, broken words. These words have defined my choices for most of my life. These words have set up camp inside my heart and have taken over pieces of my mind, twisting around memories, shaping how I interact and feel and what I say and do, churning out a sometimes clingy, needy, forty-three year-old woman despite her deep desire to be anything but clingy and needy.

And I’m tired of it. And I’m sick of it. And enough is enough.

So then I wrote:

Lie: I am a woman who cannot be loved without having to convince someone to love her.
Truth: I am no more and no less deserving than any other woman of the love of a good man.
TRUTH: God loves me completely just as I am.

Lie: I am a woman who deserves to be spoken unkindly to.
Truth: I am no more or less deserving than any other woman of kind words from a man.
TRUTH: God speaks and sings tender words over me.

Lie: I am a woman who, simply because of who I am as a person, cannot keep a man around.
Truth: I am no more or less deserving than any other woman of being with a good man for a lifetime.
TRUTH: God has always been with me, God is with me right now, God will never leave me.

I then went on to ask for healing, using Isaiah 61 as my guide.

I am brokenhearted, Lord; bind me up.
I am captive, Lord; proclaim my freedom.
I am bound, Lord; open up my prison.
I am sick, Lord; take the infirmity.
I cannot lift myself up, Lord; loose me from this bond.

If I am ever to become more whole in this area, it’s bigger than me just trying harder to be more emotionally laidback. There is no more trying harder. YOU MUST HEAL ME AND SET ME FREE.

And since that day, I have been choosing to sit with the discomfort, to not numb it, to not rush through it (as I if I could), to not pretend it’s not there. I felt a shift in me that day, but that doesn’t mean I experienced an immediate deliverance from this lifelong woundedness. Instead, I am choosing to move forward. I am choosing to tell myself Truth. I am choosing to say out loud, over and over and over, that it’s all going to be okay. I am choosing to keep asking for healing. And I am choosing to believe that I am being set free and that I already am free.

What lies have you been telling yourself? What Truth should you believe instead?


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