“I just can’t understand… if God really cared about me… why would He have allowed this to happen?”
In more than 30 years of sitting with broken hearts, I’ve heard countless versions of that question.
From someone wounded by ministry.
From someone devastated by a spouse’s infidelity.
From someone carrying the hidden scars of abuse.
From someone crushed beneath an unimaginable loss.
Different stories.The same heartbreaking question.
This ‘particular’ question came from a man who’d just discovered that his wife had been unfaithful…with a minister from their church.
He was devastated.
Angry.
Completely disoriented.
Every one of those emotions made perfect sense.
In moments like these, there is a strong temptation to rush in and defend God. Sometimes we even feel compelled to correct someone’s theology before we’ve acknowledged their pain.
But I’ve learned something through the years …
When we rush to defend God, the wounded person sitting in front of us often feels abandoned.
I know that feeling personally.
Years ago, after losing my home, my marriage, my ministry, and the career I loved, I found myself sitting in the office of a Christian counselor.
I had driven an hour hoping someone could help me understand what had happened to my life.
Instead, after asking why God had allowed it, I heard these words:
“As long as you are asking questions like that, you will never heal.”
I never went back.
I remember that long drive home as though it were yesterday.
I had arrived carrying unbearable pain.
I left carrying even more shame.
Somewhere on that lonely drive, I whispered a prayer that quietly shaped the rest of my life.
“God… if You will somehow help me heal, I will spend the rest of my life helping people like me. And I will never say something like that to another broken heart.”
I didn’t know then what that promise would eventually become. I only knew that, I never wanted another hurting person to leave my presence carrying more shame than hope.
So, when this client looked at me through tears and asked why God had allowed this to happen, I didn’t challenge him.
I leaned forward.
I lowered my voice.
And I simply said, “I am so sorry. You must be questioning everything right now.”
He dropped his head into his hands…and wept.
That was the moment healing began.
People in ministry hold different places in our hearts and in our convictions. Our honor and affection for them fill a place in us where we hold our deepest sense of values.
When they fail and/or wound us deeply, our hearts are called upon to process the breaking of trust, only riveled by our deepest moments of abandonment.
Spiritual wounds are different. They scar parts of us. Deeply
Loosing trust is one thing.
But losing passion is another.
That’s a dead end we must avoid, because only regret awaits us in that place.
Healing and our willingness to trust again is where restoration awaits us.
1. Why People Wonder if They’ve Been Betrayed by God
“I guess the truth is… God is probably even more disappointed than I am,” my client said quietly.
“It’s just easier to blame Him than to try to understand why my wife made the choices she did…or how someone in ministry could stoop that low. I played golf with him. I trusted him.”
We began a debrief that lasted nearly two hours.
Betrayal creates far more than pain. It shakes the very foundation beneath our lives.
Everything we believed about ourselves…
about other people…
about life…
and even about God…
suddenly feels uncertain.
There’s a heaviness to this kind of betrayal of trust.
Everyone takes pride (in a good way) knowing we’ve been loyal to loyal people. As matter of fact, you don’t even give it a thought, until the one you’ve pledged your allegiance to becomes someone you never knew.
Life becomes a walking death.
The pain is so deep, and the disorientation so complete, that we instinctively search for somewhere to place emotions we were never created to carry alone.
Even our brains respond to betrayal in remarkable ways.
The very system that helps us know…
who is safe…
who can be trusted…
and where we belong…
is suddenly thrown into confusion.
It’s almost as though the compass inside us begins spinning like a fan on turbo-speed.
We lose our true north.
Not because we’ve become weak. But because betrayal has temporarily stolen our sense of safety. And we find ourselves walking in a heaviness.
“How do I know she’s really sorry?” he asked. “How could I ever trust that this won’t happen again?”
I explained that nothing about his reaction suggested weakness.
His attachment system … the part of us that helps determine when to trust, whom to trust, and how deeply to trust … had been shaken to its foundation. His brain was doing exactly what God designed it to do. It was trying to protect him.
That’s where the crossroads of extreme and/or balanced thinking meet.
Trauma also sends shock waves through the rest of our bodies.
Sleep becomes difficult.
Appetite disappears.
Energy evaporates.
Even simple decisions can feel overwhelming.
“This certainly isn’t the weight-loss plan I would have chosen,” he joked weakly. “Nothing tastes good anymore. I forget to eat.”
Then he said something I’ll never forget.
“I feel like a turtle shell where the turtle has pulled completely inside for safety… except if someone picked it up, they’d discover the shell was empty.”
I smiled gently.
“The shell isn’t empty,” I assured him.
“The real you hasn’t disappeared. He’s simply buried beneath more pain than anyone was designed to carry alone, because he’s faced with processing pain that he still can’t believe.”
Tears filled his eyes.
“I want to go to their house and destroy their lives. I want to disappear and never come back. One minute I want to divorce her and expose everything… and the next minute I want to hold her because I know she’s hurting too. Since I can’t make sense of any of it…it’s just easier to question God.”
I understood completely.
Deep down, I think we often know that God is strong enough to handle whatever we throw at Him.
The questions.
The anger.
The disappointment.
The confusion.
I believe He would rather have our honest hearts than our polished religious answers.
I’m not sure what the Apostle James totally meant when he wrote, “Confess your faults to one another, that you might be healed” but I do know and have seen too many times to count, what happens when a heart finds a safe place to share the honesty of their grief and confusion.
Only when we know what to let go of and what we need to accept, can the healing we long for be ours. For that’s how and where faults find their origins and owners.
2. Why Healing Is More Valuable Than Correction in Those Moments
“I just want my life back,” he whispered.
“I don’t know what I did wrong. I don’t know why she made those choices. I don’t know how to put any of this back together. I’m not even sure I can ever walk into a church again.”
I nodded.
“Every one of those questions deserves an answer,” I told him. “But if we search for those answers from a place of healing rather than brokenness and/or resentment…I believe we’ll find very different ones.”
He quietly agreed.
Healing didn’t happen overnight. But something significant happened that very first session. Hope quietly entered the room.
When his wife joined us, I immediately saw something I hadn’t expected.
She wasn’t defensive.
She wasn’t making excuses.
She looked shattered.
(When betrayal happens in a relationship … know this; something is amiss. There’s a deep connection to a need not being met. It’s not an excuse for infidelity, but that’s the power of unmet needs).
The shame she carried was almost as overwhelming as the betrayal he carried.
With gentle coaching, she began sharing what had happened.
Slowly.
Honestly.
Painfully.
It became increasingly clear that the betrayal hadn’t just devastated her husband.
It had devastated her as well.
Over the months that followed, we walked through disclosure, repair, individual healing, and the slow rebuilding of trust.
Then one day something beautiful happened. The husband turned toward his wife and quietly said, “I wasn’t innocent in all of this. My work became more important than our marriage. I wasn’t emotionally present for you. I know you’re afraid God is going to abandon you because of what you’ve done.”
He reached for her hand.
Knelt beside her chair.
Looked into her eyes.
And said…
“I will not abandon you. I will forgive. I will do whatever it takes to restore our marriage. And maybe .. .through that … you’ll discover that God would never abandon you either.”
She melted into his arms. The room became completely still. No one hurried to fill the silence.
Sometimes healing announces itself without saying a word.
“We’ll find another place to worship,” he continued. “God didn’t betray us. We need Him now more than ever.”
Healing hadn’t simply restored a marriage.
It had restored their ability to experience the heart of God through another human being.
There was no need for correction.
Healing had brought its own course correction.
I’m not sure why or how it happens. But when we surrender, we move towards God and God moves towards us. And when God moves towards us, healing moments just happen.
3. How I Believe God Shows Up Through Us
“Thank you for not telling him to divorce me,” she said quietly during one of our final sessions. “You could have. Maybe some people would have. But if you had…we never would’ve found this beautiful place.”
She paused for a moment before continuing.
“And thank you for not judging me. Thank you for giving me a safe place to pour out my heart…to understand where I got off track…and how wounds I never realized I was carrying, quietly shaped the choices that almost destroyed everything I loved.”
I looked at both of them, with deep gratitude.
“It has been one of the greatest privileges of my life to walk this journey with you,” I replied. “But we could never have arrived here without your courage … your honesty … and your willingness to look beneath the surface instead of settling for simple answers.”
Then the husband turned toward me.
“If you had corrected my anger toward God the first day I came into your office,” he said, “I honestly don’t think we’d be here today.”
He smiled: “Thank you for being kind…but firm. Gentle…but directive. You never let us off the hook. But you never made us feel condemned either.”
Then he quietly added the words that’ve stayed with me ever since.
“I’m pretty sure that’s what Jesus would have done.”
I was deeply moved.
As I train trauma coaches, I often tell them that techniques don’t heal people.
Information alone doesn’t heal people.
Even insight, by itself, rarely heals people.
People begin to heal when they experience a safe presence.
(That’s how it is when God is present).
A place where truth is spoken with tenderness.
Where accountability is wrapped in compassion.
Where shame loses its grip because someone cared enough to stay.
And get us honest.
I believe that’s exactly what Jesus offered every person He encountered.
He never minimized sin (missing the mark/the bull’s eye).
He never ignored truth.
But neither did He shame broken people for being broken.
He consistently created a place where people felt safe enough to tell the truth about themselves … And it was in that safe place that transformation began.
Perhaps that’s what it means to become Jesus with skin on.
I know what it feels like to desperately need that kind of presence.
Years ago, while healing from my own ministry wounds, I carried a secret fear that I rarely admitted out loud.
I honestly believed I might be going to hell because of a divorce I never wanted and never asked for.
I was young.
I was naïve.
And I was carrying a crushing weight of shame without any framework for understanding it.
Then I met Dr. John Bradshaw. I remember telling him my story. All of it.
Including the fear that God had somehow rejected me because my marriage had ended.
He listened quietly.
He never interrupted.
He never corrected me.
He simply opened the Scriptures and shared the story of the woman at the well.
He shared about a woman who’d been traumatized.
At least 5 relationships had broken her.
Jesus knew every failure.
Every regret.
Every broken place in her life.
Yet instead of condemning her …
He offered her living water.
A new life!
I looked at Dr. Bradshaw through tears and asked, “Are you saying that even though Jesus knows everything…He still accepts me?”
He smiled.
Leaning forward, he quietly said, “He doesn’t just accept you. He wants to use what you’ve been through.”
I burst into tears.
“Do you mean… I can be in ministry again?”
“It may not look the way it once did,” he answered, “But God will use you mightily.”
That moment changed my life.
Not because my questions disappeared.
But because, for the first time, I encountered someone who reflected the heart of Jesus more than the fear I’d been carrying.
*****
Today, when people ask me whether God betrayed them,
I don’t begin with correction.
I begin with compassion.
Because trauma asks questions that healing eventually answers.
If we never expose the questions, trauma will dictate our emotional state.
And the wonder of life that God longs for us to experience, remains unanswered.
The character of God assures me He would never betray us.
Yet in seasons of profound devastation, our wounded hearts may wonder.
If that’s where you find yourself today … please give yourself grace.
You don’t have to pretend your questions aren’t real.
You don’t have to hide your disappointment.
You don’t have to clean yourself up before bringing your broken heart to God.
He is not intimidated by your questions.
He is not offended by your tears.
He is strong enough to hold your doubt while gently leading you toward healing.
And as healing unfolds…
I believe you’ll discover something beautiful.
The place where you once questioned His presence … may become the very place where you recognize it most clearly.
Because healed people often become safe places where others encounter the heart of Jesus.
Finding life by losing it, was and is uncomfortable.
But Jesus knew the cost of stuffing trauma.
Religion and the Romans traumatized all of Israel.
Their mandate was … keep your feelings to yourself.
Trauma was a way of life.
He knows the feelings we refuse to face, confess, and heal keep us from finding life.
Perhaps that’s one of the greatest mysteries of healing.
The wounds that once made us wonder where God was…
can become the very places through which His love quietly reaches someone else.
There’s nothing more fulfilling than that.