Helping Hurting Women Heal

Dannah Gresh: When God transforms someone’s life, Dr. Juli Slattery says it takes time for healing and change.

Dr. Juli Slattery: None of us would say, “When I came to Christ, I was completely free from every sin, from every addiction. No, it’s a process, and God is gracious with us in that process.

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast for Wednesday, May 22, 2024. I’m Dannah Gresh with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Adorned: Living Out the Beauty of the Gospel Together.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: I want you to think about a time in your life when you’ve gone through a difficult season, some kind of suffering, trial, hurt, maybe trauma. Now, who came alongside you in those challenging times? How did they help you through it? Or, how do you wish people would have been there for you?

And then, here’s the next question: how can you be there and do that for someone you know who needs help? Sometimes we just don’t know the right things to say or do, and we can be uncomfortable talking about others’ suffering. 

There’s a verse in Romans chapter 15 where the apostle Paul said this to the believers in Rome (keep in mind that he probably hadn’t even met most of them yet). But he told them, ”My brothers and sisters, I . . . am convinced about you that you . . . are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and [get this] able to instruct one another” (v. 14 CSB).

How could Paul say that? “You’re able to instruct one another.” You think of that as being maybe for pastors or professional counselors. Paul knew that these believers could actually help one another because he had such confidence in the power of the Word of God and in the presence of the Holy Spirit in their lives.

Yesterday, Dr. Juli Slattery and Erin Davis began a conversation about how to care for the women around us who are hurting. Juli is a trained counselor and Erin is a seasoned teacher of God’s Word. They’re back today to share with us as followers of Jesus some practical tips about how all of us can be involved in this ministry of helping other women.

Erin Davis: Okay, take us to your office when you were seeing patients, or even now as you’re meeting women at conferences and through Authentic Intimacy. Awoman comes to you with a big hurt, say it’s a childhood trauma. Get real practical for us. What are the steps that you take, or that you want to, in an ideal situation? How do you respond to that woman?

Dr. Juli: Well, first of all, I just want to thank her for sharing that with me. For a lot of women, when they share something with me, it may be the first time they’ve said it out loud. Part of the healing begins by saying it out loud. 

There are an awful lot of women who will realize, “Wow, what I experienced was abuse—in my marriage, in my home, growing up. I never saw it as abuse before.” Jesus heals by bringing things to light, by exposing things. 

 

And so we really want to honor that space where a woman is saying something out loud that is hard to say, and thank her and encourage her and pray for her and encourage her to pray to the Lord, “God help me. What’s my next step?”

The other thing, Erin, that we have to remember is healing. The Christian life, all of it, is a journey. I think sometimes we want the quick fix, like, “How do we make the pain go away? Jesus is the healer, so He’s going to get rid of all the memories.” That’s not always how God works. He doesn’t always heal, but He always redeems. 

So, we want to walk with that woman, as much as God allows us, on that journey of healing knowing that it might take years, it might take decades . . .and that’s okay.

Erin: And it might not be healed this side of glory.

Dr. Juli: But it will be redeemed, this side of glory. But I often think of the women that I’ve walked with, their healing journey sometimes feels like wandering in the desert because they’ve left “Egypt,” the place of bondage, but they’re not yet in the “promised land” of freedom.

There are stretches on that journey where a woman will actually say, “I want to go back to ‘Egypt.’ It was easier before I really had to face what happened to me.” or “I had to work through the trauma and feel the achiness.” Sometimes we get worse before we get better.

A marriage gets worse when we bring out the junk, and we talk about the pornography, and we talk about the betrayal. You want to “go back to Egypt.” It was in bondage, but at least . . .

Erin: There were garlics and leeks! (see Num. 11:5).

Dr. Juli: Yes, there you go! And so, really giving women space to be on that journey, and to encourage them of God’s promises. Sometimes people need to borrow our faith, because they don’t know what to cling to. So, to encourage them, “Hey, just take another step! God is there. He’s with you. Just keep going!” Pray with them, again. Encourage them that it’s okay if this is a long journey; it’s okay if there are periods of time where they feel like giving up.

Erin: As you’re saying that I’m trying to think of times when anybody told me that whatever I was going through was maybe going to be a long journey. We just try to fast-track it. You can’t fast-track some things.

Some forms of grief or some of those things can do to your body, at just like a brain level, you try to accelerate it, but it’s not going to. So you’re giving some freedom just in explaining that sometimes this is going to take awhile.

Dr. Juli: Yes.I think people feel a lot of shame when they’re not immediately healed, when the urge to pornography doesn’t immediately go away.

Erin: Because we hear of people for whom that does happen.

Dr. Juli: Yeah, but that’s rare. That’s usually not how God works. It’s a process of surrender. It’s a process of healing. It’s a process of knowing that He’s with us in those wounds.

Erin: Okay, you’re speaking to something that I bump up against pretty frequently with women which is this tension between, “I do want to live lives of freedom.” And that’s our tagline at Revive Our Hearts. We call women to “freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness.”

I do want women to live free. That’s from Galatians 5:1, “It’s for freedom’s sake that Christ set us free.” But sometimes they are in a place of bondage, so they’re not totally free. How do I encourage women to move towards Jesus and seek freedom, without minimizing the hurt in their life?

Dr. Juli: Yes, I think again that it’s recognizing that it’s a process. One of the things that I see in the story of Lazarus is that when Jesus calls Lazarus forth, Lazarus—who was dead—is now alive! We have a song in the Christian faith: “I ran out of that grave!” Well, in reality, Lazarus did a mummy-shuffle because he was still wrapped in the grave clothes.

Erin: Right! Scripture says he stunk! (see John 11:39).

Dr. Juli: Yes. Now, why when Jesus raised him, did He not make those grave clothes fall off? And then if we see what Jesus said next, He did not say, “Lazarus, unwrap yourself!” He told the people around him, “Unwrap him and set him free,” which is a process.

And when we know the Jewish culture, we know that the people around were probably very hesitant to touch Lazarus because he had been dead, and those linen cloths probably smelled like death, and if they touched the linen cloths they may be considered unclean.

So I kind of have this picture of them being like, “Do we touch him? Do we not touch him?” But the reality is, he’s not going to get set free unless the community gets involved. And I’ve seen that happen with women and with marriages, that God calls something that was dead to life. He calls us to come out of the tomb! 

But we’re not completely free yet, and it takes the community around that couple, around that woman, to get our hands dirty, and to talk about things that might be unpleasant to talk about to really set that person free.

And it is a process. None of us would say, “When I came to Christ, I was completely free from every sin, from every addiction.” No, it’s a process, and God is gracious with us in that process.There’s a road to developmental maturity that we’re on, and so we also need to have that grace with one another.

Erin: I love that picture of unwrapping each other! That’s so beautiful! Okay, Dr. Slattery, I’m going to put myself “in the chair” because I, right now, am in a period of lo-ong suffering! My mom is sick. She’s been sick for years; it’s terminal, she’s going to be sick until the Lord takes her home.

What I’ve noticed is, people who were very interested in being involved the first six weeks, the first six months, the first year . . . and now. It’s not because people don’t love me, they don't know how to walk a long road of hurt with someone they love. 

Dr. Juli: That’s really true.

Erin: What encouragement would you give to the woman listening (you can use me as an example) who’s going through something that has lasted years, decades! It’s a different kind of hurt.

Dr. Juli: Yes. So I’ll put it back on you and ask you the question, “What keeps you from reaching out to your friends and telling them this?”

Erin: Well, I do. I’ve learned better than to isolate; everything in me wants to isolate. I’ve done that. It’s not good for me. My brain gets crazy, and I think things that just aren’t true. So I just, even a couple of weeks ago was like, “Hey, guys! I know that I ask for prayer about this a lot, but I still need prayer!”

And they’re very good to respond, and they’re also pretty good to say, “We don’t know what to do.” I don’t know what to tell them to do. So I am okay with saying, “Hey! Still hurting over here, still need your help over here!” But I’ve had to learn that the hard way.

Dr. Juli: Yeah, and a lot of women won’t do that because again they feel like, “I should be over this by now. My friends have compassion fatigue. I don’t want to be a drain to them!” 

I have friends who are walking through hard things, and one of the first things they always say to me when they call is, “I feel like I’m being a burden!” 

I say, “No, we’re meant to bear each other’s burdens! That’s part of the family of God!”

Erin: Well, even the burden language is positive in Scripture. “You actually are a burden, let somebody else carry that for you!”

Dr. Juli: Yes, that’s right. So I think asking for help without always having to qualify it and without feeling ashamed. Some people right now, you’re walking through a season where the burden is too much for you, so letting your friends and loved ones know that. But then I think also, be tangible about what would help. 

You might be like, “I don’t know what would help.” Well, you can think of something. Would it help for somebody just to bring over your favorite coffee? Would it help for someone just to sit with you? Would it help for someone to take your kids for a day so that you could just go and be away with the Lord?

People don’t know what to do for you, so that falls on us to be prescriptive, “This is what will bring relief for me.”

Erin: Yes, and all of those things you’ve mentioned, I’ve experienced, and they do help! A great friend in the church texts me, I don’t know, every three months, and says, “I’m dropping dinner off at 5:00. If you’re not home, I’ll leave it on the porch.” 

She doesn’t say, “What night is a good night for you? What does your family like to eat?” She’s just super proactive. Or, friends that will go visit my mom for me so that I can have a day off. It’s not their mom, that’s probably not comfortable for them. Or friends will take the kids. Or, “Hey, you just came to my mind; I want you to know I prayed for you today.” Those things can maybe seem like throwing pebbles into a pond, but I can tell you, they’re not! When you’re hurting, they have a tremendous impact!

Dr. Juli: Yes, not only a practical impact, but I know when I’ve been through situations like that, often it’s been an answer to a secret prayer. We’re praying, “God, do you see me? I don't know if I can get through this!”

Erin: “Where are you, God?”

Dr. Juli: And then when that person comes with a gift of love, you’re like, “God, You did hear me. You did see me!” I love to see how God works that way when we’re in that wilderness of wandering.

Erin: Yeah, when my mom was diagnosed, I was on the phone with a friend, and I said, “We are ready to walk into the valley of the shadow of death, but I think there is gold embedded in the walls.”

And there is, but the gold embedded in the walls is the other saints. It’s what they are willing to step up and do, and how they care, and how they intervene, and how they pray! We say it enough that it sounds cliche, but, being the hands and feet of Jesus means that you practically love someone, you practically show compassion. And everybody can do that. 

You mentioned a cup of coffee. You got four extra bucks? Yeah, you do. You can probably bring someone coffee.

Dr. Juli: The ministry of coffee; it’s a beautiful thing! 

Erin: It’s a thing, definitely! What about when we feel out of our depth? So, maybe it is the marriage where the husband had an affair. I’m thinking of a friend whose child had a terminal diagnosis. I had no idea what to say. Do we need to do some sort of homework? Is it okay to say we don’t know what to say?

How do we respond when we want to love a hurting woman, but we are really beyond our own expertise or experience?

Dr. Juli: I don’t think there’s anything wrong with saying, “I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to help. I haven’t walked through that. But I’m here with you.” Again, that ministry of presence. And then I think sometimes we can lead a woman to help. So, “I don’t know what to say, but let’s find somebody who understands this journey. Let’s find a resource, let’s find a mentor or a counselor who has expertise. I’ll help walk you through this.” So you might be that friend who is a source of comfort. But, when you’re going through something really difficult, you don’t know where true north is.

Erin: Sometimes your brain can’t even work well enough for you to find a counselor on your own or get the medical help you might need. You’re not functioning at that level.

Dr. Juli: Yes. So, within the body of Christ, there is somebody who has gone through what you’re going through. “Let’s find that person.” Within the body of Christ there is someone that God has equipped in giving wisdom to navigate that challenge, so let’s find that help. You might be the person who really does that homework for them.

Erin: Wouldn’t that be awesome? Okay, I’m winding down. A couple questions: deconstruction, it’s a big topic. My theory is that behind every deconstruction story is a lot of hurt—often church hurt.

So there’s the friend who’s hurting, who is in church every Sunday, and she’s still coming to Bible study, and she knows she needs the Lord. Then there’s the friend that’s hurting, that walks away from all of that. She stops coming to church; she stops attending your Bible study. Your gut feeling is that if you tried to put your hands on her and pray for her, she would stiffen.

That happened to me recently. Some friends came over to pray for me, and my friend said, “You’re in fight-or-flight!” 

I said, “There ain’t no flight in me. I’m in all fight right now!” There was some resistance in me.

How do we react when hurt causes a woman to walk away from the Lord?

Dr. Juli: Yeah. Well, if we really look at deconstruction, what we’re looking at is (and I’m going to use the psychological term) cognitive dissonance.Cognitive dissonance is when I’ve experienced something that challenges my core understanding of how God works or the world works.

We all have that experience. We all naively put our trust in, “Okay, God is good. This is what that is supposed to look like in my life, so I’m going to follow God. I’m going to obey His commands.” And now my husband has an affair. “Well, God, if you’re good and I was doing everything you told me to do, how could this happen!?”

That’s cognitive dissonance right there. Now I have to try to make sense of a God who would allow something horrible to happen, whether it is an affair . . .

Erin: . . or your child to die, or we could list lots of things. 

Dr. Juli: Yes, right! And we can’t make sense of it, so if we look at the book of Job, that is what the book of Job is. It’s a book of . . . Job thought the world worked a certain way, and then he experienced things where he had an existential crisis with God. He was deconstructing. His friends kept trying to say, “No, it’s all your fault, because. . .”

Erin: Actually, they white-knuckled him, like, “You can’t ask those questions! You’re sinning in it!”

Dr. Juli: Yes, exactly! And so that’s, Erin, what we as the body of Christ sometimes do, where it pushes people further away from God. We try to answer questions that can’t be answered. So if a woman says to me, “How could a loving God allow a four-year-old to be sexually abused by her father over and over again?” I can’t answer that.

Erin: Yeah.

Dr. Juli: If I try to answer that, I’m not helping.

Erin: Well, I think often we weaponize Scripture in that situation.

Dr. Juli: And so I’ve learned to say, “That is a profound question, and the only One I know to ask is God. I encourage you to take that question to God. I don’t know how He’ll answer you, but I do believe He’ll meet you.”

I think the journey of faith is, at some level, a journey of discovering the depth of God when our formulas beg . . . So what we want to do with a woman who’s in the midst of that is? We want to validate the question. We want to validate the pain, we want to stay with her in it without trying to wrap it up nicely.

And again, sometimes that can be six months, that can be years, but to stay in it with her. It’s that presence. It’s refusing to give a pat answer to a question that carries a lot of pain with it. But then, also, continuing to point to God, to His sovereignty. We don’t need cliches about Him, we need God Himself!

Erin: Hmm. I’m going to put that on a bumper sticker. That’s so true! I think we don’t have to panic. I mean, a woman ceasing to go to church for a few weeks or a few months or a few years doesn’t mean God has given up on her, so we don’t need to be reactive.

Dr. Juli: And it doesn’t mean she’s given up on God either. I know people who felt like they had to stay away from church for a year because their son came out as gay, and they were wrestling with the Lord over this, and they felt judgment from people at church. They needed to hear directly from God.

I think we need to be sensitive with each others’ journeys. We always want to point to the Lord; we always want to be there as a source of encouragement, but God is going to break all of our formulas at one point, because He wants us to know Him personally.

And that, again, is the story of Job. You know, at the end of Job, Job says to God [Job 42:5], “My ears had heard of You, but now my eyes have seen you.” That’s where God wants us all to be.

Erin: Hmm. Sometimes when a woman is hurting, she withdraws from all truth-speakers in her life. She knows that you might try to pray with her or quote Scripture to her or talk to her about the Lord, and so, in that case you can always pray. That can feel like passive activity, but it’s not. It’s an active activity.

Dr. Juli: And you can always be there. And even if you’re not, it’s not the time to speak truth. Just continue in that relationship, showing unconditional love: “I don’t love you because you go to my church. I don’t love you because you profess Jesus as your Savior. I just love you.”

I think people who are in the throes of that really want to know that the Christians in their lives do not see them as a project, as a reform project. 

Erin: Nobody wants to be a project!

Dr. Juli: And we’re not going to give up on someone just because of what they’re going through spiritually. Actually, it’s the time to press in and to sustain that relationship so that when the bottom does fall out, they know the love of Christ through how we’ve interacted with them.

Erin: Boil it down for us, one last question. What do hurting women need the most?

Dr. Juli: Hope. They need to know they’re not alone. They need to know that the hurt won’t last forever.

Erin: So good. Juli, would you pray for the hurting woman who’s listening to this conversation?

Dr. Juli: Lord, I thank You that You told us the truth when You said that in this world we would have many troubles (see John 16:32–33). I thank You that in Your Word we have Scriptures in Psalms and the book of Lamentations that show us that there’s a place for deep grief. 

In the Scripture we have the book of Job, of a man who suffers. But Lord, we also have the reminders that You are close to the brokenhearted (see Psalm 34:18), and that one day You will turn our tears into joy, and You’ll give us feasting and rejoicing.

I pray for that woman who right now says, “I don’t know if I can hang on anymore! I don’t know if I can do this another day!” Would you encourage that woman with Your presence, through Your people, through Your Spirit, through Your Word. Let her know that You’re with her. In Jesus’ name I pray, amen.

Erin: Amen.

Nancy: Amen. Jesus is our ultimate Healer, and what a joy it is to be able to tangibly show His love and His care to women around us who are hurting. As you’ve listened to this series with Dr. Juli Slattery and Erin Davis, I’m guessing that the Lord may have already put someone on your mind who’s struggling, someone you could come alongside and share encouragement from the Lord.

As you seek to serve your family and others that God has put into your life, we at Revive Our Hearts want to serve you by bringing you practical, biblical programs like this one, as well as many other helpful resources that will point you to Christ and His Word.

Dannah: That’s right, Nancy. We couldn’t do it without the support of listeners like you. When you give to Revive Our Hearts, we get to serve together and experience the joy that comes with helping women find freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

Now, we’re nearing the end of our ministry year, and we’re asking the Lord to provide $838,000. If you’d like to join us, you can make a gift of any amount by May 31, and it will count toward our fiscal year-end goal.

As our thanks for your donation at this very important time, we’d love to send you a copy of Living Out the One Anothers of Scripture. This 30-day devotional is going to help you apply the love God has shown you as you love the “one anothers” around you. Visit ReviveOurHearts.com to give, or call us at 1-800-569-5959 and ask for a copy of the devotional.

Sometimes it seems like there’s nothing you can do to help the women around you, but God can still work through you even when you feel powerless. We’re going to continue the theme of helping other women as Nancy begins a series on that tomorrow.

Nancy: In order to be helpful to others, we first need a heart to help—that’s the motivation, the want-to. Then we need the means to help, the ability to help. We don’t have either of those, left to ourselves.

Left to ourselves, we don't have the desire to help others, nor do we have the ability to help others. And I have good news for you. That’s where God’s grace comes in! God’s grace is that indwelling life of God that gives me both the supernatural desire and power to do whatever God has called me to do. That’s God’s grace! We need God’s grace in order to help others.

Dannah: Please be back for Revive Our Hearts.This program is a listener supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

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