S09 Ep15: The Aftermath: Healing After Leaving a Toxic Relationship

hi everyone and welcome to this episode of transformed you mark dejesus here along with my amazing wife melissa hello it's good to see you all here today we're continuing the subject of healing from toxic relationships and we're hoping we can land this plane a bit to talk a bit about the aftermath after you have left a toxic relationship a toxic environment a toxic group we've talked about many different aspects and what we want to focus in on is okay you've moved on you've seen the toxicity and you've realized i've had to move on from this now what what does it look like and this is going to take some practical advice and some areas that i think would be important to focus on and what we're gonna do is we're gonna take a little bit of our learning journey of the things we've been through and kind of look back and go what are the keys that were needed in aspects of our journey we're also going to look at all the people we've helped over the years all the situations we've worked through and what's helpful in that and we pray that you'll find yourself in your journey and some help for your own life and what you're going through we're also going to after this episode airs we're going to we're planning on at some point doing two episodes for q a at least two episodes depending on how many questions come in so after you've gone through episode one of this season all the way up till now and there are situations or questions you'd like to submit feel free to send them in we'll consider them uh we'll consider addressing them and we do plan on doing those shows live and um those who can't make the live episode you can still watch it and take in i love taking in questions i love hearing other people do so good with the questions i love hearing other people ask questions like oh yeah yeah i wonder what they're going to say about that so before we get into today today's episode if anything we talk about if anything we share with you has made a difference in your life and journey go to markdejesus.com join our newsletter you'll get updates on weekly articles videos podcast episodes we have books and materials our latest book is the heart healing journey which gets a lot into what does it look like to day by day have a heart that is ready open and teachable to what god has for you at each stage in this journey it gets into a lot of subjects like even touches on trauma and memories and what does it look like to begin the process and to start experiencing awakening healing and transformation in your life so again consider a one-time donation consider becoming a regular supporter if you can donate any amount on a monthly basis or you can also choose our transformational tribe pathways which those give you access to some video training audio training materials that are available and that are there so get into the aftermath like a strong word like aftermath of it all and when we look at this it kind of there's so many different situations so many different things and i'll look at all right what are some of the things that we've learned where do we kind of begin with this what's what's what's somewhat something that would be so helpful to begin in looking at all right with all that we've learned with everything that we've seen what's going to really help this process what's really going to help the healing well you know we hate to use the old adage of time heals all wounds time is super important though and i don't you know there has to be a word added to that time and i think it needs to be intentional there were so many times that we were going through a healing process after removing ourselves or whatever it looked like out of toxic situations and for me you and i handle pain in different ways i am very boisterous and outward and you know i get all worked up and i gotta talk about it like in a boisterous crazy i don't want to say crazy but you know like most a lot of women do we we're very i understand vocal um you do talk about things but you're different and how you process it which i wish i had had like you have a lot of like more well it can also my my way of approaching pain will be often to take that pain energy and use it towards okay i'm gonna push into this next thing or i'm gonna put my energy here some of that can be very fruitful a lot of that can also be a form of denial it could be so i can be along the path and i'm like feeling like i'm doing okay and then i'm like why am i having all these you know symptoms why do i feel anxiety all of a sudden all the time and i'm having a hard time connecting it to what's going on under the surface and it's revealing that i didn't give some room in time for that because it's uncomfortable this this time you know you you you said before we clicked record you said the key is going to really be intentional time not just time time doesn't heal it it's intentional time that heals because people could say well you know this happened 30 years ago and they're not able to talk about it when they do talk about it it's it gets very toxic at times and how they're expressing from a toxic relationship right so there's there's symptoms we need to be aware of that we're not handling it well and that's all right but i think that if i was to look back okay so let's kind of look back at a couple questions maybe 20 years ago melissa what would you say to her as far as time would you say to her as far as you know the healing process of what you needed at that stage in your life 20 years ago right well i think within how i responded to things i always created such chaos and i kept the pain constantly going i did not know how to kind of sit i would give myself advice of number one finding healthier people to talk to whether that was a counselor or somebody healthier to talk to because i didn't have any good coping skills it was um i kind of thought i guess i don't know i shouldn't say i thought i was okay but because i could look at a situation and call it out and get worked up and this is wrong and point out how wrong everything was that i guess i thought i was okay and really i wasn't i wasn't giving my heart a break i wasn't being intentional to recognize that you're in pain you're in pain and you've been hurt right um and and giving giving that space to then be able to say well how did i contribute to this because i don't think you can fully look at yourself either on wait what did i contribute to the situation why was i in it why was i drawn to it you know and that's that's a journey to get to that that takes maturity to be able to with sobriety takes a lot to recognize yeah because we don't do that we make everybody every situation everything else the demon we demonize yeah cause doesn't doesn't shame cover so much of our pain so what shame does is shame will often react in blame so we we villainize a person and we're not saying what they did wasn't wrong but what we do is we we villainize someone else and it doesn't allow us to then just look at our own journey with healthier eyes and many people don't know how to take that because they'll say well then you're telling me it's my fault no that's a shame response when you get free from shame it's no longer about anyone's fault it's now about how do i heal now at first you kind of need that i feel like you need a little bit of that boost of that irritation of that like this is dysfunctional to get you out right i i don't i don't hear anybody like say it like this but it's just reality i think it's like sometimes that like anger if this is so dysfunctional kind of needs to help you to make that decision to get out but love is really what's going to help you to sustain the journey sometimes we need that like enough this is i'm tired of this and you make a decision out of that like enough is enough but then we we're like yeah that church or that business or that guy and we we villainize villains villains be careful that that doesn't become the permanent thing because then i meet people they've been divorced for 30 years and they're saying statements of like yeah he's still alive like like whoa and they can write like a rolodex what that person did to them that was 30 years ago that's a sign of not working through the healing it's a sign that shame's still there when shame gets into the narrative you're not gonna heal effectively right so in the aftermath if i was to look back i think there was a lot of shame i felt over my life and over my journey at different stages like when we left the first church when we got married and left took a huge step in that you know and even people to this day go man when you talk about that like that was makes me nervous hearing you tell the story that was kind of crazy and looking back we're like wow that was a was a drastic step it was bold it was bold but we needed to i think that i i realized i carried a lot of shame in it because the next step didn't open up quickly so i carried a lot of i did i do something wrong what did i do wrong let me figure out what i did wrong and actually it was nothing about it was about anything wrong it was now i need to enter the journey of healing but the journey of who i am the journey of the new things like i had to really let that unfold and i don't know that even if somebody had told me at that time here's what you need i would have been like yeah but what's the thing i need to like fix [Laughter] you know this obsessiveness would kick in and i think that you said something that i think is important but that's the hard stuff there's some people that may hear this section and just tune right out because they're like how dare you say what i need to work on about me and i think being able to look at yourself in kindness and go yeah there's times where i look back and i go yeah i wasn't safe in that moment i wasn't safe in that moment and i could easily blame this person this person this person but you know what i made some decisions too and i'm learning so time needs to be a part of it with intention so like intention meaning that i'm gonna work on some things i'm going to give space but it needs kindness right it needs the power of god's loving nurture and it it takes it will take longer than you think it will take way longer so take how long you think it's going to take double it maybe triple it and that's just to start and for many people they go that's too long they go back to their world and i'm like that's fine but years down the road you're going to see symptoms and you're going to be in somebody's office and they're going to go yeah it was from back at that time and so if you're willing and able to hear okay i got some things i got to work on and i got some things i got but it has to all be done in the atmosphere of kindness otherwise the devil will get in the enemy will get in accuse you shame you guilt you then you'll start blaming others you'll blame yourself you'll blame god so so i had to let go of the i had to let go of the blame you know the blame game the world of of blaming because once i oh i loved the blame game i was so good at it i was a professional yeah because it it well here's distracts you from what you really need to heal from yeah because even when um i'll use a an example from my own life of um years ago and i've shared this in an earlier podcast i had a relationship with someone who had a drug problem and he wooed me in and sucked me into his life and poured love on me which i hadn't received from a man in that way you know and so it was like magical magical and then the whammy came well by then i'm already hook line and sinker so now i'm invested so i spent years and it was always well if he could just get right if he could just get right if he could just get no there was a lot of that that could be true and i could say it could be true but deep down as i got rid of that relationship and got sobriety about why i was in relationship with him then i looked at well it's my dad's fault my dad didn't give me i still okay yes there's a layer of that why i entered into that but i still had to deal with that shame piece is so big but why didn't love myself enough to say enough and and leave that was that was a big aspect of being involved in a severely toxic relationship like that and understanding how i perceived love and what love looks like and that can go to you know a relationship it can go to church it can go to family it can go to friendships all kinds of things of what we endure because that lens of love you turn that notch just a little bit to the side so it looks like love kind of goes to our a whole occult stuff from last week of the occlusion of of what true light and true love is right it looks like it in a way but you turn that notch a little man it can send you on a spiral for for years if we're not rooted properly in what really loving kind relationships are so anyways um there was something that that i i just thought of as you were sharing that in my journey and a lot of people i see when you come out of a toxic relationship of any kind group person marriage whatever there is this driving force of getting your story out there i don't mean just like on facebook although that's a part of it or social media i mean like when you're around friends and people there becomes a driving compulsion uh whether it's compulsion impulsion whatever there's this thing that you feel like you got to get your story because there's a need for you to feel validated about your side and your reasoning so if i was to look back it would be seeing that with greater kindness of there's almost a addictive kind of push to get the story do you know what happened i got to tell you what happened oh i was the queenie of that and we we focus on we focus on hard not to do don't gossip don't gossip gossiping's bad and you're gossiping right and i don't know that it's that black and white because we have to be able to process our st our journey you got to be able to get it out so someone else can look at it the problem is that we do with a bunch of friends or we do it with acquaintances or we'll do it to whoever will listen and we don't we we don't have wisdom in the moment because our brokenness just drives our need to like share the story and share the thing then we end up sharing it with people we probably shouldn't share it with right that's the truth so what do you feel yucky yeah so when when you get out of a toxic situation one you really need to get away from it and when i say get away from it you need to get away from it in every every form you need to you need to realize it's time to start over so if you know friends acquaintances relationship you may need to move geographically depending on your situation if you leave a church and you're still in that same vicinity and you're seeing each other at the grocery store and it's like i get that i've seen that i've watched i've experienced experience it get re-traumatized over and over and over right right and it's it's not honoring to your journey because then you feel like you got to tell the story and then and then you feel like well i want to be forgiving and and i i don't want to let fear ruin my life and then you're walking down the aisle of you know target and you're like uh you know or you're you know you you're going to pump gas in the car and you're like oh here goes this awkward interaction um you have to respect the tenderness of where you're at in that stage so with that in mind you need to be in we talk about intentional time you need to find people that are highly skilled in these kind of things and usually it involves a counselor it involves somebody who is very well versed in in in these kind of battlegrounds who has nothing to do and doesn't know anything about i think that's important because there were times where i would look for the help and the people the person knew this knew that knew this and it was like it was the best i could get at the time but it would have really have helped i think the water a bit i find that somebody who has like no connection at all because here's what's important it's not just getting the story out it's also allowing the mirror to come up right so i think this is the cornerstone of mental health that's not always really talked about is that i need to i need to submit what i'm feeling and going through to someone who's safe but in the process allow the nurturing feedback to come back where it's like oh all right i need to adjust that part of my story because my story is stuck you know there's certain places where my story is stuck and it's leading me to a victim place and now i have no progress forward and i've got the story down pat because i had areas where i had the story down pat was almost like i could just it's like you hit that that track on the song hit play and whenever that area of my life would get touched in conversation it's like yeah and then the next 15 minutes on my story and it's it's okay if we do that but i had to realize wow this the track is on repeat and it's not productive and so i think people don't realize that you need time you need safety kindness you need you need voices into it you may need to make major changes you may need to move you may need to make a geographical move you you may need to overhaul your friendships you may need to and and and that's the arena that i think that gets really tricky and and and but those things pull you back in because it's not just you know i'm thinking of like you know breaking up with the abusive boyfriend it's not just like the moment where you go we're done that's the first decision you're gonna have to say we're done probably 50 more times to yourself probably to him when he calls texts sees you or talks to your friend the friend talks to you so healing involves like a series of decisions that we make in new directions right to guard our our space and our safety and we learn that after a while yeah we learned that after a while of like you know what can't do it can't do it there'd be people from old areas or old groups and they want to kind of pull in the stories and it's like ah yeah we're not doing that anymore well really it's the word detox you know yeah whether it's a an actual drug addiction because usually if you're involved in any kind of a toxic relationship there is an addiction type aspect to the relationship that you were part of with the person i know that i could say that about several friendships i had there was a codependent addictive behavior i had to um in interacting with them because rejection was in play most of the time constant rejection yeah is that a recommended place of inner work is that like when you when you leave it's like all right i got a 150 150 yeah yeah exposing the rejection minds so people have written in already saying you know where do i begin in these kind of things it's one aspect to realize because rejection is at the root system of every place where you've not been loved properly it's gonna come in and it's gonna it's gonna create mindsets and disempowering ways so it's important to to realize to recognize that i think tailing off of this rejection subject so whenever we have a wound rejection comes in right some people they just like spiral right without any productive healing other people go into high performance mode so if i was to look back at a couple stages we've been in i in the in the in the change felt like i had to like okay what's next what do i got yeah you were the performer and i spiraled don't you think that would be well yeah i went one way and you went the other way you were the performer i was the performer you spiral i would perform and then spiral so like i i just had a longer way to get we were quite the little crew yeah and and really in in in those seasons because there's a number of seasons i look at it was like i needed the wisdom of you don't have to do anything right now like like why and i think uh if i look at 06 where we started a new ministry you know from scratch i think you wisdom in the learning it's not like oh what we did was wrong and i got to go back i can look at it now with different eyes to go oh i i could have just you know not done any of those things i did give him my time to discover you have a finances in this and that like listen the finances were tough no matter what so i might as well use the time to really discover some things and instead i was under constant pressure daily pressure daily and it didn't help the healing process so it took me much much longer to heal because i had so many other things in new drama and i think what i needed was it's going to take longer than you think and it's okay you're not out of god's plan you're not missing something you're not missing the boat this is exactly for you so i wanna i wanna ask this question to you um in a clear way so you may have to help in how am i because i know you're gonna know where i'm going with it do you think what do you think the outcome would have been for us when we were exiting the church making the decisions we were making if you had grown up in a home where like your dad because he's a great guy don't get me wrong but like all of her parents went through their own stuff with someone who gave you like wise peaceful counsel as opposed to not having that like what what what do you think the difference because we i at the end of the day we still even though even if you ultimately grew up with great parents you still have to go through stuff but what do you think it would have looked like if you knew how to access like what proverbs 4 talks about in the instruction of a father and mother and understanding god's nurture and wisdom what do you do you think like if you can't negate going through things but what could it have looked like with wisdom i know that's a big question well i first say i think i needed to go through what we went through to learn what i learned in a good way i learned so much since those days i can't even recognize the person i am since that you know since those days but i think there's there's components of at that time i was such in a place where i was feeling such an awakening that i was like no matter what i'm moving on so i think i think what wisdom could have looked like at that time is yeah you're moving on let's talk about a plan maybe that that would have been really let's talk about it it would have been ex uh receptive to here because we were like very like day to day we're on our own and we're on our own and it was it was like falling off a cliff right it was like we're starting all over right and then we're like we're exhausted like we're constantly like just passed out on the couch you know like like where we go we're trying to we're trying to discover new relationships and and then those we rushed into some of them and many of them were toxic and it's like really what would when i sit down with somebody who wants to make these kind of faith decisions i want to leave everything and pursue ministry i want to do this and i want to be an entrepreneur it's like i want to validate the zeal because i saw many people squash the zeal i never want to like never want to like put a fire out you never see in the bible the instruction putting the fire out in fact paul would to me a very fiery church was a church of corinth a lot of fire but then a lot of issues a lot of crazy sex drugs and rock and rolls kind of stuff going on right he's like whoa whoa whoa no don't do that right that's an example of fire and passion that just needed needed some fathering so it's like don't want to squash the flame at all but let's let's create a plan like some plans and give permission this was the thing i didn't do i didn't give myself permission to discover who i really am yep and flow out of that yep that's so good so i was like i was like oh you need an evangelist to do an evangelist meeting yes i can do it i can do it good i'll do that i can be that it's like why don't i just go now i don't want to do that right okay i don't want to do it i don't really want to do that because my thing was like oh there's something there and i'll miss out if i don't do that and i think i never knew what that was like i never knew what that was like to just go i don't have to say no i don't have to answer that phone call i don't have to do that date i don't have to i can hear it and i don't have to i can say no and it's all right i had no really good babe yeah there's a there's a christian undercurrent of we kind of say yes to everything because god's in it all and he loves our service the church is asking you it must be from god right so i think that what i do today is it's like let's look at like perspective plan let's let's give you something where you feel like you have some steps and it's going to be it's going to be slow movement it's going to be slower than you think it's going to take longer than you than you think i think that um i was in a rush to get started on the new thing and it was very clear god was like ah we're going to do some identity work we're going to do some you know this is going to get some clean up to do yeah so take a seat we've got some cleanup to do so i find myself saying something i never thought i would say i said to you the other day there are many many prayers i'm glad yes we say this a lot we're not answered yeah i mean is that the truth i never thought i would be saying that but i'm saying that today is there's a lot of prayers of what i thought i wanted that i go thank you thank goodness thank goodness so with that in mind i think what i learned and something i share with other people for the sake of your heart don't rush into the next thing don't rush into the next dating relationship don't rush into the next marriage if you had to leave a marriage don't rush into the next church like if you've been a part of a toxic church like a toxic faith environment you're going to need way more time than you ever think to probably not do anything and people have been involved in heavy like cult spiritually abusive legalistic environment that's the thing so like there were times i had such guilt because i was like oh i don't i don't have this fellowship or i don't have this tribe or this and it would just once a week it would just gnaw at me and what i needed was permission that you don't have to do anything anything because the change from abuse and toxicity is a movement out of lack of love performance legalism all that stuff moving into grace moving into true love groundedness now you're moving into organic steps so i encourage people many times people they'll they'll go through an um some kind of abusive situation and then they're quick to blog about it video about it and it and and i i i get very concerned not for any other reason but i want to guard your healing this is not you're you're still tender right now i see people up on stages prematurely and i'm like no no like no this isn't gonna end well you need time like like like i know you're i know you're you know you're a rock star and people love you and love your material but all you need to give it time i'm not saying you're disqualified that's not even the subject it's not even the subject because people kind of get into that like well it needs to be two years and then there's there's really not a stamp for anyone i think there's a minimum like you give it a lot of a lot of time definitely i i'm not even going to put it a specific time it's not about like being good enough or qualified like i've seen pastors you know with their fallouts and in healing process and they're like okay you need you need this many months and this made time it's like well might take triple that and you know because it's not just him it's how he was groomed it was how he was you know encouraged because the healing is not going to be the same person coming back so what's that going to look like you know so for your journey i i encourage people don't like even when we talked about the subject of spiritual abuse we took a lot of time to let our journey marinate and it's not like oh we're perfectly healed so now we can talk about it no but we got to let the dust settle a little bit we got to let ourselves ponder and then god will organically so what we try to do in our ministry work is we let the subjects organically bubble up i like to just organically bubble up i kind of just i have hundreds and hundreds of things in in in in documents in my files on subjects that are all in what i call marinating right there are things i learned and i went oh i said i'm gonna let that marinate for a while and some of them sit for years while i just marinate on them and then people say hey can you talk about that subject and i'm like yep it'll come it's on the burner it's about 12 burners back i've got this giant stove but i'm only working on the pot of mixture of food that's on this stove that's what i'm that's what i'm that's what i'm stirring up so even the subjects this is after many years of us working on us us working with situations most of which we'll never talk about because we're honoring the privacy of what people have gone through that's what makes this tricky doesn't it because we have so much stuff we're like oh this this story is a great example but man when my parents eventually die i have a lot i don't mean that i'm just saying you guys have a sense of humor or if my parents see this my mother i love you but i know no um so i said a lot no you did but i was gonna add on to that that it's so much better when you talk about topics when we have personally gone through them like and we've gotten perspective and we've worked through a lot like to me that's what i i feel very proud of how what people love about us i think that people can sense the genuine part of who we are that like we've been through a lot of this stuff and stuff we haven't even shared yet like so just know that we get it we get how hard it is yeah and you know and mark has the better way i tend to be more blunt or sarcastic but that we eloquently talk about these topics we're not trying to say it's not easy i mean that it's not hard because it is hard and we know it's hard so let me talk to you about something and you help me to process it because if i was to summarize what has really helped me the most from things that deeply wounded me toxicity pain emptiness neglect whatever friendships betrayal if i scan the whole story there is something that is misunderstood that needs to be a part of the healing journey and it's the power of true emotional acceptance okay and i know that we're going to define that a bit mm-hmm because because when i when i say acceptance there is um forgive me if i don't even remember what they are but like there's this thing that's called the um the pathway of grieving yes right what are they the the first is like denial right then there's anger bargaining bargaining right you know and then there's this at the end of it is acceptance there's depression somebody whip that i had they had a card with it all on it one time and showed it to me and was like this is what you're going through right you remember that and it was like i didn't think of that well it was it was it was premature for her to did you stick that in your face because it was like you needed to be understood in that moment but there is truth to that that that's what we're writing because yeah now what is acceptance acceptance is not saying that what anyone did was okay that's not even never ever that's not even right acceptance is not saying you should accept toxic environments acceptance is truly coming to terms with what happened so people say well what's the sign of that the sign of that is you could see it for what it is not worse than what it is you can see it from multiple perspectives right that's major maturity what they did was wrong but i get how i was misinterpreted that's why we we really even when we were pastoring drove home understanding people's stories but go ahead yeah so i think back to when we left our we got married and we left the church i was working out there's there were certain pains but also i can understand how they why they did what they how they process correct things look at their history with other leaders they had in the church other problems they had some of that they were transferring on me and acceptance was yeah i get that i get that yeah it's um wasn't the best and then there were further interactions and conversations where even some people i i bumped into in leadership there were like yeah we wish it didn't go down like that yep you know no that shows okay healing on their end still needed to move forward on my journey my trajectory there's no changing that so it's it's being able to look at broken people and go yeah i get why you start to move into that posture that jesus had when he he got to it quick because he's on the cross and he goes father forgive them they don't know what they're doing so he came to that posture you want to talk about being in the ultimate pain like we don't even we can't even i i get a sliver and i'm out like right the ultimate experience of pain and he still was able to forgive yeah that's that shows that shows the ultimate place that he lived and walked in unbelievable for the joy set before him the bible says right so i it okay so whatever toxic thing you're going through many of your symptoms reveal you're still on the journey of acceptance say it again many of the symptoms you have reveal you're on okay so you're still on the journey of accepting you haven't accepted it yet and it's not this it's not like a clipboard um you haven't accepted and somebody looking at you with their glasses down you know that's that's not what this is it's just like okay in in kindness because when i finally came to a place of accepting i i see it for what it is now i pay attention to what i really need to pay attention to i could give an example of that i could tell it's like after we even left the church and we were still in the same area and i'm thinking like i've walked through verbally heart wise i have forgiven i feel so good and then i go to the grocery store and i see someone from church and they come up hey how you doing and this thing wells up inside of me to regurgitate out all of a sudden i'm telling my side of the story now i leave and now i feel yucky and i'm like ugh i still got some rejection to deal with yeah i i stress yeah you know what i mean like i struggled with interactions like that where afterwards i would beat myself up that i wasn't more confident totally that i wasn't more like why didn't i just why did i why did i go on that that weird tangent why did i talk about that you know and i'd almost i'd almost look at myself with with contempt over it yeah and looking back it was like no that you're in a tender space and it just wasn't it wasn't a safe moment for you and you got to be kind to yourselves that you can let it go and go all right all right i'm still healing so i i talk about this a lot in in max's journey with the most powerful place i've experienced with his journey in autism is really coming to that acceptance that this is where he's at right now and i thought i did that early on but it's like this it goes like this yeah i accept him so now what yeah acceptance is not what if you're like yeah except so now what it shows you're not understanding acceptance well isn't the true level do you have something you want to finish with i don't want to interrupt you no go ahead but i want to add to that when it comes to him and then we can apply this to other situations the true high level is acceptance but still keeping hope yeah but when i'm interacting with him right i'm i'm no longer trying to change that battle that he has i'm no longer sitting there with that's the focus my focus is relating now in the relating i see where i've chipped away at some things where i see some improvements in who he is and how he's developing right and i credit that to because sometimes we we equate acceptance as this will never change i think there is an aspect to that though that is true that you need to be okay if it doesn't right it's just weird dynamic it totally is so when people say you know acceptance no because i'm gonna i'm gonna keep fighting it doesn't mean you're not fighting i'm gonna give you the perfect example perfect example jesus goes to the funeral of lazarus and lazarus is dead he dead he gone right lazarus is dead so jesus there's so much in this story i could i could talk for hours about jesus shows up a few days late was it like four days late i think shows up late so that's already an ish like yeah like dude can you imagine you you can't be four days late to a funeral because everyone be gone they're like 25 funerals later if you go to a funeral home right he shows up late and the people are throwing the guilt on white if you were here this would happen right he goes up to the tomb now let me fast forward for a second let's pause he's going to raise him from the dead in about i don't know i don't know how long but it's going to be a few minutes probably he does not enter the funeral and go hey everybody because if i had resurrection power flowing like that we're at funerals he's like boom i'm here yo like weep not thou people is talking in the king james right we best not thou over this for thine redemption draweth nigh that's good right that's good jesus looks at the tomb and the shortest verse in the bible john 11 45 i think digging back into my sunday school days he wept jesus wept he didn't cry he wept specific language used there and that's the power of what we're talking about here because when you truly grieve and process through the emotions and come to that landing place of accepting of this is where things are currently at and relate to the humanity of that jesus see we're not these just supernatural beings floating over earth we are in it we're not of it but we're in it and there's a humanity to what we're going through that god sees he feels and jesus reveals that connection to that so in that he connects to the pain of what's happening so in your healing process if you can just keep allowing the dust to settle it's okay that i'm not okay is a statement that i encourage people to use it's okay that i'm off and i accept this is what happened this is what i went through i've submitted it to some people that are giving me healthy feedback i've given myself room in space that yeah i talked it out too much with those people and i probably shouldn't have it's all right i was just i was just injured and and be kind to myself and then it's kind of like now what because when the when the acceptance comes in you pay attention to what you need to pay attention to so if i was to use the illustration of max i pay attention to when i'm with him what do i need to be mindful of and i start to have just these few things that i that i that i now create bond with him and out of the bond now that's a parenting example but if like i'm healing from a toxic relationship the thing that is so awkward is that emptiness right you leave and it's like so you want to fix that emptiness with an addiction or with something and you want to rush to the next thing and really just need to let yourself feel it to allow yourself to land in some of those lonely moments i think we're so afraid of loneliness we don't know what to do with it and just lean into it because the power of acceptance will let you see it for what it is it's not about my fault their fault anyone's fault it's just painful god i can look at it now so now what and many times god would say i'll just focus on this okay really that's it i don't have to do those 17 other things nope just this and now it gives me space and room to heal does that make sense yeah it does it does because i think to get to the level the next level of maturity that can come in i'm responsible for how i move forward i take responsibility for where i'm at um and all those other things need to be worked through because that's the higher level of like i have control of where i'm going to go now i have control of how and who i'm going to interact and what my decision-making is right and i think for the majority people we feel very helpless and underneath it all right yeah it's very true i was very important for me to make that switch in my mind oh i have power to choose yeah you're describing the the healing from victim thinking right which it takes some time to come out of that it's not a snap your fingers thing even forgiveness like we talk like many times in christianity it it gets when it does get talked about it's like this you need to forgive you forgive that's the problem forgive and then i realized that you could religiously do the act and think you did it right like i said about the church i'm forgiving forgiving and thinking i'm amazing and then all of a sudden i'm confronted with it and it's like oozing out of me like a slime yeah so um this is kind of like a this thought's bubbling up as i'm talking right now i'm scanning back to many times in coaching people say i know i need to forgive and i will go don't worry about forgiveness right now we're just getting started and i find when we can cultivate an environment of kindness and grace they're kinder to themselves and they give to others what they're cultivating in themselves because when you come out of trauma and you know toxic dramatic you know drama filled i should say it's kind of scenarios really you're hard on yourself and i realized when i let kindness and patience and self-acceptance flow now i give that to you and i give that to them now i see them through that and i would watch the forgiveness start to just flow like a river whereas many times we're like you need to say the prayer if you forgive the ring forgive them or else the torment will come true but we also we're big on following the grace which means what's the theme what's the thing god is seeming to highlight right now if it is forgiveness let's dig right down and we're going to tunnel down into that and we're going to see beautiful things happen but it's like don't force something just because it's a concept out there i need someone to pray and do this thing because we we look to all these like mechanics and it and it and it really derails us from going no it's just going to take time and for that person this was their key for you it may be this key over here but the theme in it all if we want to be helpful is the goodness of god needs to be received well i don't know if where god is i feel disconnected to him i feel like god caused it i feel like god wasn't even there there we go there we go so that's why i spend a lot of time just helping people to heal and recover and and reestablish what's your god lens because that needs to be taught and structured because that's at the root system of how we approach things we can't even grieve because we don't see the god of goodness in the journey right you know so true would you agree with the statement that a a one good sign that you're moving towards healing you've worked on healing and the aftermath of being involved in toxicity is that you can talk about it freely with a with a love perspective about it yeah i would say that's right on but i also don't want to accuse people that can't feel that um if you feel like you can't talk about it fruitfully give yourself permission for a journey correct absolutely because there were certain things there were certain things i couldn't talk about without it producing anxiety for first and foremost absolutely so what i did was i would avoid it i don't want to talk about that because it's just going to make me all knotted up and and and and i don't have to chase it okay anxiety we're gonna you know but when it organically comes up i go i developed a new response all right it's my time to face this it's my time because good for me it's good for me to face this it's been a very good thing in my mental health healing and and maturing um at times allowing when i'm working with someone who's helping me or even just talking with someone i trust and something said back to allow that to uh give me an invitation to challenge my story a little bit when i mean challenge i mean like you know kind of like their finger pointed at you but like hey maybe you know perspective yeah to adjust the perspective a little bit because all our stories i talk about the story you carry a lot the biblical word is testimony you know what's the testimony you carry we can carry a testimony of jesus we can carry testimony satan we can carry a testimony of what man says we can carry you know the testimony is a yeah relay of like where you've been where you are where you're headed right this is what god has done this is where i'm at and this is where i'm where i'm headed right now and for many of us our story our testimony has been infected and but you can't fix this in legalism you can't fix it with some kind of pressure so to answer your question that's the goal the goal is i want to be i want to talk about it and be like yeah i worked through the need for justice and at times felt like they need to get theirs and i realized that that's not going to heal that's just that's just resentment fueled it's just toxicity in me i gotta let that go i i gotta tell my story a few times feel better feel better and then i re i learned the hard way that when i told my story i didn't feel better never did you're like well if i tell this one detail they'll really get it it's like no a lot of times you feel like that yeah so if you can funnel that towards productive arenas where someone outside of your either and even outside your geographic like you can you can video call with you know with professionals or people that are highly trained you know and um that don't have anything to do with your you know your your geographic area or your you know um so yeah so i feel like what you said is is and i rejoice because there are areas of my life many of them that were really difficult and i can talk about them there's still some that you know you still work through like give her have those moments where you have those memories that come up you haven't thought about them for a long time and you just get that like that feeling of shame or embarrassment or yes indeedy criticism that gives me another opportunity to just practice kindness in that moment to shift the focus so that i can look at every story of my life with graciousness and kindness because if i'm doing that in my inner world then i'll give that to you we have trained a church culture historically give grace to others give grace to others ignore yourself ignore yourself and it was in performance oh god bless you child you know the lord loves we don't really mean it but we just said it because it's the right thing to say and we weren't cultivating within us and and it leads to um inauthentic you know environments that then we realize wow we don't we don't carry that within ourselves so we've been on a journey of that and god's healing and continuing to heal and and i know many of you you've had you've had traumas and you've had sorry i hit the wrong slide you've had traumas and things in your life that you've gone through and there's things that it's going to take some time i think that where we recommend there's there's a bunch of resources that come to mind if you really tune into that exposing the rejection mindset um that's really going to be a great place but a lot of things we talked about really land into the god loves me and i love myself territory you're going to need to you're going to need to learn the journey as i have where i remember the day and season and time where i was so frustrated and where i was at where things were happening in my healing process and what i was trying to move into and i really saw god brought attention to the reality that when times got tough i was really hard on myself and i want to release you from that i want to release you from that being hard on yourself because it was a gift of freedom in my life i also talk about that in the heart healing journey there's three chapters that really get into that acceptance patience kindness it's right in the middle of the book you can skip to it if you want you know this the heart healing journey is a book you can kind of skip around from subject to subject whatever sticks out at you i designed it that way but we we just pray that what we're sharing in our journey is a help to your life if you feel like you have some questions you'd like to have addressed send it to mark at mark dejesus.com so m-a-r-k at m-a-r-k-d-e-j-e-s-u-s dot com and send it with uh something in the subject of uh questions for podcasts try to write it in a way that we can just read it on the show that we don't have to edit it because we want to respect you know your privacy write it in a way that it can be read over in a show and and and we can present it and we'll keep you posted the plan is two weeks from now to do uh questions so we're going to give some time for the questions to collect and we'll do at least a couple episodes on that and we're looking forward to that anything else you want to say before we go i think we're good i think we're good too i think we solved all your problems we did anyways thank you so much everyone i keep hitting that slide maybe that's because people need to maybe see that video and watch that again go to martasis.com check it out we'll look forward to seeing you in future episodes god bless you guys thank you everyone

Channel: Mark DeJesus

Views: 1,139

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Toxic Relationships, Healing from Toxic Relationships, Aftermath of Toxic Relationships, Heart Healing, Relationships, Wholeness, Healing

Id: IhFBDu2AVTs

Length: 54min 55sec (3295 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 28 2020