#110 S4 EP 20: Faith's Triumph Over Trauma: Lindsey Smith's Inspirational Journey

We beg you for forgiveness for anything we might have said , done or thought that's not pleasing to the sight . That you would gracefully forgive us and cast us back into the picture .

Put the enemy on notice right now and let him know that any tricks and things that he do will be sent back into the picture where it came from , because it has no power , no dominion , no authority over God's people . I ask you right now , lord , just to have your holy and maximum name . Thank you , thank you Amen , amen , amen , amen .

I mean I'm out of it now , but I'm working with helping women in the same areas as me , just coming out of trauma , allowing God to heal that , allowing Jesus to heal that within me , and it's just been a really beautiful process .

But really , when I think , what really was the point where it all got really bad was when my father left the family in like a very shocking way , a very shocking way , and that's when I think , I started to realize what had happened all those years leading up to that .

That I wasn't actually really aware of , because the child's mind doesn't really understand , like what's going on . But when I was 12 years old , my dad just said hey , I'm leaving , you know , I want to get a divorce . So this is my mom . And said kids , you know , I got to talk to you .

So we came into the room and he said I'm leaving your mom , and he just left that night .

Now I had , I guess I had idolized my father in you know the way we do and we're kids and I didn't realize who he really was . And then over those years after that , like it was very shocking when he left , it was really scary . But I actually started to realize over the years following that he was not who I had thought he was all those years .

So I started feeling strange ways , like like I didn't like him touching me , I didn't want to be around him and I was like did something like happen here , you know ? And then I realized like my mom was like , oh he , he was an alcoholic and I actually had never noticed that when I was a kid .

And then I started seeing like when , when they got divorced , I started noticing like one time he didn't show up for my birthday because he was drunk .

And then I started to put the pieces together that I actually had been sexually abused , but I didn't have any memories of it , just a few little weird things that didn't like make sense , that were very shameful , very shameful feelings that I had .

But even though I didn't remember what had happened , like it lives deep inside me , like this , feelings like I'm bad , I'm wrong , I'm not worthy , so it's just so much shame .

And then , after all that happened , of course , like in the family that was , she was because my sister had also been sexually abused and we dealt with it in different ways and she was really , you know , going through a lot herself and and my dad wasn't wasn't wanting to pay child support , and it just became years of like fear , misery , suffering , just it was

just really difficult , um , and it just left me this feeling of like life is so bad , you know it's so bad , and I just thought , oh , that's just the way it is , you know . And so , like I took that like my adult years , but I was always trying to like run from this feeling , you know that .

And then I always thought , okay , I've been sexually abused , like there's something wrong with me , like I've got to try to fix this right .

But I didn't like know how , and I that ended up me getting into , like you know , dating , obviously picking the wrong men , you know , because the the way my father was , I didn't know how a man should treat me , choosing the wrong men . And then I met my husband the ex-husband when I was 24 and at the time I felt like it was love .

I mean it felt like crazy love , but you know , I didn't see that it was really unhealthy the relationship and those years I was in that marriage for 18 years and there was just so much insults , criticisms , threats to leave , like I just , and there was a lot of other things I don't really want to even .

You know I don't need to share all the details , right , but it was not good , but I didn't even know . I actually was just so miserable in that marriage I just thought , oh , this is the way marriage is , this is the way life is . And that's when God , you know , had to pull me out of that , but I still I I believed in a God at the time .

You know , I had been raised believing in God , had been raised going to the Catholic church , but I don't like Jesus wasn't really a part of , you know , the picture . At the Catholic church there's not really a relationship built with Jesus , and the relationship with God in the Catholic church is a little , it's a little different .

It's more like kind of a judgmental figure . There's a lot of rule following confession and all that stuff . And so , you know , and my father to take care of me , you know he hurt me and you know so that my idea of a father figure was not good , and so I think I projected that onto God . But that obviously isn't who got in right .

So he was still there . I couldn't see him right , you know so .

But eventually he was like had to pull me out of that marriage , um , and I didn't know it was God doing it at the time . I thought it was maybe the universe or whatever you know universal energy , stuff like that .

But I was definitely get you know it was being revealed to me happening in the marriage and then when I decided to leave , it all happened very quickly and it which you know , I had been 18 years and I was really stuck in that marriage . It wasn't easy to get out of it but it happened so fast because God was really working .

But even after that it was a lot of healing that needed to be done . After the childhood of abuse , like I still hadn't healed that . I now had all , all the , all the years of 18 years of abuse to heal that . Just going to therapist after therapist , all you know , any technique you could imagine . I was trying it and it just really wasn't working .

I was actually getting worse . I feel , um , and that's when Jesus came into the picture and it like almost too good to be true . You know , because you know , basically , when we accept what Jesus has done on the cross , we become new , right , and so I literally am born again . What that means that those that happened to me they , they didn't happen to me .

Now I'm a new person in Christ , but then it's the sanctification process , right . So some of the things just fell off , like some of the effects of the abuse , like I had a lot of addictions and things like that , not anything serious like alcohol or drug abuse , but like shopping .

I had a very bad eating disorder for about 16 years and I just couldn't stop doing it . You know that shopping addiction definitely pretty bad and I even had a romance novel addiction at some point , which makes sense because you know the doorway to sexual sin had been open at such a young age .

I couldn't stop like reading these romance novels , all those things . Those just dropped away , right . But now I'm still on the sanctification of some of the deep fear wounds and trusting the father , like the deep childhood wounds , but they've all actually been healed right in jesus . But it's like I just have to recognize that they've been healed .

That's , you know , that process that we go through after that . So I'm still kind of in some of that um , but like , and some of the things just just away after I came to .

That's the design of this earth , that's his rules , and he never breaks his own rules , so he will not . He can't actually physically stop a person from abusing someone else , because that would be going against the rules that he created , but but he , what he can do is he can be there with you .

Through it , he can make it as easy as he can like I don't remember a lot of it . Um , I do think that there were some times when I remember saying things to my dad like things like I've pooped my pants or something like that , when I was like in the bed . So I think that he wouldn't , he would not be interested .

I was trying to do things like that and those were things that God was probably giving me these ideas to do . And also he , my father , left me when I was 12 . He left the family . I actually never saw him again . I said for a couple of years he was still around and then , when I was 16 , he left to move to the other side of the country .

I actually never saw him again and that was a trauma , but that was God's gift . He did that . So he you know he couldn't force my dad to do that , but he probably , you know , influenced it in some way . And so what I see is that even what he does is he always uses everything for good . So every bad thing that happens , he works .

He has got a plan right away to make it good . It almost looks like that thing was meant to happen because he's so good at making good out of it . But it wasn't meant to happen . I mean , that's the work of the enemy , this abuse and these and these terrible things that were done to me .

But he has given me so much strength to move through it and now I'm going to help other people with it . But that , how good he is that he is finding a way to turn . Turn , you know , give us beauty for ashes , like it says in the Bible , right ?

You know , I think back about that because you know , if we only endured everything that we went through and remembered everything , every single detail , you know it will , it will run our mind crazy . And I think the reason why god , he , he blocks some of the things that we don't remember is because he knows that we can't bury everything .

And that's why he tells , in the description that he puts on us , no more than he can bear that we can bear , because he only allows us to remember certain details and certain events . And you know , with that it , it puts us in a mind of , and one one , and I , and I say this too , goes with it and my thoughts just rambling on mine .

But you know the song that says um , ask god to give us , give us his eyes for one moment . Ask God to give us his eyes for one moment . And every time I hear that song it makes me think of do we really want to see and hear everything that God hears and sees ?

Because he knows that we can't take it all and it will make us really go crazy if we really can see everything and hear everything guys hears and sees . That's why he get those moments where he blocks out some traumatic event but at the same time , our past . We have to realize that our past is the beginning of our future .

And I say it like that because if we don't have a past , what do we look forward to ? But the moment that we take our past and we dread on our past and that's the only thing we think of , how can we allow our future to take place ?

As we are always dreading on our past , and and I like it that that way , god had given me that because we had to realize that the moment we give up our past , he's he's not saying forget your past , but use your past as an avenue of your future , of where you can tell people , like we're doing now .

You know we , we share our story with other people , other believers . That helps somebody else get through that situation that they might be facing . I like , like it , I love it .

I at this point I don't want those things to happen again , but they did , and so what it led me to is that so much suffering that I went through that it's like the promise of the future is so much more to me than for someone else that hadn't gone through all those things . Right , and I know that god wants to restore everything that was taken from me .

And then some , you know , and so I get to look forward to that because of the past that I experienced , you know , and so it'll be that much sweeter .

You know , for somebody else it might not be as sweet because it's been all they've known , but for me there's been a lot of suffering , so those moments of peace just probably feel that even better to me than someone else you know that has had more peace in their life .

Do you feel comfortable ?

You know , like I have had to give , you know , release , forgiveness for what happened , not that I'm going to be , you know , having a relationship with that , with him again , and we don't have kids . Actually I think that was god's gift .

I had always not been sure about having kids with him , so it would make it a lot easier to leave and not have to be connected with him at all . But he was just under the influence of darkness , you know , when he did those things .

I don't really believe that the true man , the true person who he really is and was born to be , obviously would not want to do those things to me . Um , and so I , I have forgiveness and compassion for it . Again , I , we don't have any relationship at all and it it did a lot of damage to me mentally and emotionally .

Just a lot of way I have to recognize that that happened , you know , and and hand that over to God , because it's up to God to work out whatever needs to happen there . But I know , in this man and my father . They can't make up to me for what they did . That's not what they're meant to do , actually , right , god makes it up to everybody .

Even if they were to come to Christ , they would be forgiven of what they've done , and they would obviously not be able to make it up to me then either . It can't be done . It's god's job to make it up to me , and and he's going to , he is you know he's doing it now .

And that just brings me to another question . Unless you have a question , michael , okay , the next question I have is what do you think the most important part of healing from the trauma is ?

But if you've experienced a lot of abuse at the hands of men , it can really change the way you feel about men and even that masculine , you know , presence of God , and so it had me believing that like I had to earn favor from God . It's like I didn't even know that .

I thought God loves me , but then there was still these little pieces inside that felt like I had to , like , earn it or if I did anything wrong I'd be punished . There was a lot of worrying about being punished .

If I make a wrong move to something that God doesn't want me to do , I will be punished , and that's just not who God is , and so I just we had to heal that and only God can heal me in that , you know I can't do it myself .

So I mean I had to hand it over to God and allow him to do that healing work in me , and so it was with the father that I really had to do a lot

of the healing work .

Jesus always felt like a very safe figure to me , but there was also this feeling of not like accepting what Jesus has done Right , like that Jesus , what Jesus has done has , has saved us Right and it changed us and made us new , and like there was a lot of me just like not understanding what that really meant and also just not even maybe accepting it because

thinking , oh , it can't be this easy . I have to work , for I've been working my whole life towards this and , honestly , I didn't get anywhere . So , yeah , yeah , yeah , I didn't really get anywhere . I'm just tired out and more stressed and more anxious , you know .

And then when I ended up leaving the marriage , I was also looking at other ways to help women just kind of with stress and anxiety , because I'd always dealt with that so much and I had kind of gotten it under control but it wasn't fully healed until Jesus you know , jesus you know . But I was working on that .

But I just want to help other people that have just been through such difficult times , because it's literally taken me like I guess I've really been working on trying to heal this stuff for 20 some years and that's a long time . It's way too long for people to have to to try to be healing this and and to find some relief .

So I just want to like get this message out there to women Um and I also do coach women to like that that have gone through abusive things or just even dealing with anxiety , cause I you're against a lot of anxiety , a lot , you know over the years Um , so I I really um can help with that a lot too , because the only thing that really made the anxiety go

away again was God . There was so many different things I tried and they would kind of like help a little but like just knowing God is there , jesus is there , like literally right here , by my actual side . You know , um , like I'm seated in heaven , right and so , and I'm also existing in heaven and I'm existing on earth .

So that means that literally I'm at the right , you know , at the hand , right next to God and Jesus . So how could anything happen to me ? So when I would feel those anxious feelings , I would just remember and feel God there and this just goes away . But I just , you know , I just want to help people with that , and it's not always a quick thing .

Sometimes you need some guidance with it , even though some of the things really stopped right away once I just came towards Jesus , even just accepting what Jesus has done sometimes needs a little bit of help . And then healing the relationship with the Father , and I just want to help people with that , amen .

Uh , just no matter the trauma , whether it's physical , spiritually , emotionally , as long as jesus is there , you're gonna be all right . Amen , you're to be alright . So that's my final thought . Michael , you have a final thought .

tool that God gives us while calling . And I say that because you know , growing up with me , I was the type of person that was very suicidal and God used that for me as an avenue to help other people that are dealing with suicide . So just remember that everything we face in life is always just a strategic way that God uses .

We also got to realize that everything we face in life , whether it takes , takes five years , 10 years or 20 years to get things straight . We got to realize that we are always , forever getting our life straight . The day that we finish getting our life straight is the day we're home with him .

So you always want to go through things in life to get yourself straight , because if we had our life straight in 20 or 30 years , would we really call on God ?

Those are the things that we're going to have to suffer with . It's more like the , the , you know the , the , the , the daily things that we're dealing with . You know people are dying , or I mean that's never gonna end right , and then you know like we're struggling to earn a living or what , you know things like that .

But whatever happens , once we have jesus , like you said , katherine , he's always there , so the suffering isn't as bad as it was before , because we're not alone and actually God can make us find joy in suffering even so , I think that's just like important to know Right , yeah , amen , you know we're here .

We're not in heaven fully yet , you know , but God is still with us every moment . That's right , amen , and so , um , and for a prayer , I guess I just want to say that um , dear God , I come before you in the name of Jesus .

I just pray that everyone that hears this podcast is inspired by my testimony , to receive more of your love and to know who jesus is , know who you are , god , more fully , and to know what is offered by you for them and that you can come .

They can come before you with anything and they can know deeply in their hearts and bodies that you will make right everything bad that has happened to them and you will restore them fully to who they were meant to be and who you designed them to be .

God and you have a calling for them and that , no matter what they've been through , that calling has never changed and he and you will use every bit of suffering that they've been through , uh , to move them forward in their calling . And , god , I just thank you that you're here with us today and I'm here that you've given us this day .

Honor you and just thank you . Thank you , jesus , thank you God , amen .