Tedder's Blog, page 29

How to Trust (and look for God) when You’ve Been Hurt

Whether you’ve been a believer for 6 days or 60 years, you will continually be learning to trust God.

This is never a lesson learned. It is always a lesson being learned.

On this side of heaven, none of us will ever be able to say “I trust God” always and completely without fail. I realize that now and I’m starting to make peace with the process.

Trusting God is simply believing that He loves you and knowing He’s good, He has the power to help you, and He wants to help you. 

I used to have a habit of trusting only myself. I formed this habit through years of trusting people, getting hurt and finding out I couldn’t trust them. 

Proverbs 3:5-6 says, Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths. 

God doesn’t want us to worry or to feel the weight of the world on our shoulders. He’s called us to bring everything to Him in prayer, stop obsessing over the details, and trust Him with our lives. In what area can you trust God today?

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Teaser Tuesday

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The audiobook A Prisoner by No Crime of My Own is back with the audio editor. It will be available after final audit within two weeks. Several copies were already purchased and I apologize for the minor flaws that were included in the first publishing. If you purchased the audiobook and would like the newly edited edition, just let me know and I’ll send you a free code. This is such tedious work!

Thank you for supporting this book! The many purchases have been great and the reviews encouraging. A relatable story that brings validation to your world.

Chapter 3 – Indoctrination

““But I think I know so well the pain we children clutch to our chests, how it lasts our whole lifetime, with longings so large you can’t even weep. We hold it tight, we do, with each seizure of the beating heart: This is mine, this is mine, this is mine.” 

—My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout

. . .

Today, I’ve learned that I don’t need this tool anymore, but I certainly did at one time. I’m grateful it was available to me. The images of body parts I couldn’t unsee, the smell of an old motel room that I couldn’t stop, the sound of a strange scream – experiences that were in a constant projectile made it impossible to tolerate more than simply getting through the it all. To sustain the memories then would have been a demand too tall for my little frame. Withholding it all from memory was my gift to survive. Contradiction was my gift to allow play. Disagreement with reality my gift so I could sleep. Oh, the truth still happened by every now and again, but at least for many uncalibrated moments, I got to breathe.

These tools handed down ultimately became weapons I would use against my father. I developed some of my own tools as well. I stayed constantly vigilant in my observation of him, memorizing the way he exerted control and manipulated others to get what he wanted. I was a soldier being indoctrinated for war. Mundane family projects became training opportunities for surviving the battleground of childhood.

. . .

Worthy Wisdom

I read once when you’re not meant to be in a certain place, career, relationship, or situation you’ll start receiving nods or messages that it’s time to leave. But if you fight it, God will make you so uncomfortable with yourself that you’ll be forced to part ways.

This was me for many years. Marred by trauma and unhealed childhood wounds, I never felt good in my skin or right in my shoes.I always feet this nagging sensation that something was off. A buzz of anxiety right below the surface. I had dreams, nightmares about certain people or choices I was making. I woke up in sweat. I felt constantly uneasy but I refused to address the thing I knew, just beyond my periphery, that I was ignoring or suppressing because I was too afraid of change.

I kept wanting God to save me. I wanted a grand sign. I never got one but I didn’t get many signs of over the years, every day of my life.

When I began to step into my own spiritual journey – everything in my life began to align.

People who were meant to be in my life stayed. Behaviors that I had tried so hard to control seemed to melt away. The trauma and anxiety and accompanying depression that had plagued me for years just seemed to drop off my shoulders.

And somewhere along this journey is when I discovered my power and my own spiritual gifts. It’s a beautiful thing; to be aligned with your highest self. To live in your purpose, do what you love, and create with passion.

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Mirror Mirror ~ Courage in Suffering

Introspection — what better way to start a week.

Question – Have you thanked yourself for the courage it took to withstand the suffering you lived through?

Many of us that came through severe and lasting childhood traumas don’t make it out alive. Suicide is real in our world – very real. The moment that we feel our suffering is overtaking us we contemplate how to end it. How does it end if not through death?

I have had those thoughts throughout my life.

If you are reading this today, you are still standing. You made it out this far. You should reflect on the courage that took. A magnitude of suffering takes its toll on a person.

When that courage seems to be running out, cling to Jesus. Paul tells us in Ephesians 3:12, “In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence.” This is my secret power — approaching God.

Reflect today on thanking yourself for the courage it took to make it!

Jewels, Gems & Gunpowder

I would love to hear from you! Sharing Saturday with you.

A Jewel: Be kind. Period. My husband’s father used to say, “It is just as easy to be nice as it is to be mean.” He’s right – be nice. You never know the backstory of the human being next to you. Why are mean people mean? I don’t care. I try to be nice anyway.

Treat people the way you want to be treated.

A Gem: Reviews on the book A Prisoner by No Crime of My Own are coming in. They make my heart sing and my eyes drip dew. These beautiful words came in from one reviewer:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding expose of unspeakable evil and the courage it took to overcome! Reviewed in the United States on May 17, 2023

The author is a very eloquent writer who is able to convey the unspeakable abuse and horror she experienced at the hands of her abusers in a way that the reader can genuinely understand.

This was very difficult to read for me, not because of how the book was written because it is written very well. What made this book so hard to read was because so many of her experiences and many of the things she did to cope with the fallout from them mirrored far too many of my own.

While this book is traumatic in the extreme I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to understand in some small way what goes through the heart and mind of a child who is forced to endure the unendurable.

This is the wind beneath my wings. I write for you. I write for me.

Metaphorical Gunpowder: I don’t always like God’s timing but I know it is perfect!

Please comment below by leaving your jewel, a gem or something you keep yourself free from with metaphorical gunpowder.

All love!

On Integrity

INTEGRITY.

It is such a big word in my life.

To follow our heart’s guidance is integrity.

To follow the Truth is integrity.

To discern through God what is truth and what is not…

Integrity is when our whole being is oriented towards the light, towards clarity, towards Truth.

Capital T truth. Many run from it, other hide it, so many of us are led astray.

At any stage, at any moment, you can do this: feel into Truth to the best of your ability and follow it. Don’t doubt, just follow. And then grace will come.

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F N’ F (Fear Not Friday)

On the discussion of fear — Do you fear wealth?

One definition for wealth is “plentiful supplies of a particular resource. ” I find that growing up with parents who took from me as a child and never gave left a belief in me that I will always have some sorrow and never have quit enough.

So, what would I do with too much of something? It scares me a little. Maybe it scares me a lot.

Would I trust having plenty? If I had enough would I focus on that and not the struggle? Seems silly maybe but these are issues of the my heart that remain. If I have meagar means I stay in the struggle of life. If I trust that enough will always be with me isn’t that a good thing? Isn’t that a Godly thing?

I have been in many bad relationships where the other person took and did not give much. That was my expectation.

What if I didn’t fear having enough? What if I lived with the expectation that my God will supply all my needs?

Do you fear having enough all the time? Do you want enough or do you want the struggle?

Making choices when you feel powerless…

My healing has been a long process and is one that is ongoing. But slowly, I am finding freedom. I finally believe the truth I had been too hurt to listen to for all those years. The truth that the guarded walls of my heart would not let penetrate.

I final started to believe I was loved, free & forgiven. God saw me and all my sin and still called me beloved daughter.

Until only recently did I ever feel like God was totally real to me.

I still feel that effect of the trauma I endured as a child and teenager, but when I let God come in and heal my heart, the effects lessen more and more each day.

I know now that the people who hurt me were battling unimaginable sin and evil in their hearts. I found the strength through God to forgive them, not because they deserved it, but because I did.

I am only now beginning to grasp the depth of Christ and His love and grace for me. However, I still have work to do. I am always going to be a work in progress. I will not “arrive” or be able to fully fathom and understand God’s ways in this life, no matter how much studying and praying I do.

But with a full heart, I am going to pursue Christ and His ways all the days of my life. It is only through His love that I have found healing and peace. His grace was and is sufficient to cover me, redeem me and use me for His glory. 

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Forgiving Yourself

Coping, changing, unchanging — all of it is messy. Healing is messy. Living can be dangerous. Surviving formidible.

I am still standing – after it all.

Sometimes I have lived in a lane of peaceful healing, talk is good, forgiveness seems easy. Other times, I am not peaceful, I feel hateful inside, I dispise other people who came from good.

At all times I do try to keep my heart in check. It is the avenue by which I guage living. I am watchful of what resides there. Am I keeping hate close or am I getting rid of it by processing? Do I hold envy? I ask myself honest questions, pray, and through retrospection and reading God’s word, I guard my inner parts.

Moving through the ugly feelings of emotions, betrayal, lack of justice — all of this is fine. What is not fine is for me to keep those pieces locked away inside.

You see you! By using this as my guide, I measure myself through the lens of me not comparing myself to another. By seeing myself, I take my eyes off of things outside of me — other people. The advantage of focusing on me is the edge that makes surviving possible. It removes the power for outside influences.

WWW | Wellness Words Wednesday | Contagious

When you learn how to trust your memories, they will return to you. The next time your mind tries to show you something from your past, you will allow it. It becomes contagious.

What do I mean?

Memories and tragedy sit inside you like a dead carcess eating away all the good. The rotting emulsion makes you sick – physically, spritually, and emotionally. The only way to expunge them is getting close to them, feeling them — returning to them. If you do not return, you cannot heal. Period.

When you are triggered, for the love of all that’s good, STOP, LISTEN, AND REACT.

The other day my girls found an old picture of me and sent it to me with a kind note. Here it is:

I am 16 in this picture. I was flying first class to Hawaii. It was a family vacation. The minute I received this picture, tears began to stream down my face. You see – my father made me stay in his room on this trip. While the other older kids got to go out in the evening, I was banished to him and my mother. I was raped time and time again on this trip.

The contagian of healing got me through those horribles memories. I felt them – raw and real. I cried. I screamed. I let them go.

By letting my memories free to surface, I move through them rather quickly these days.