NOTE: Hi Everyone!
Just so we’re all on the same page, this article is the final piece to a 4 part series . Since each lesson builds upon what the previous article laid out, I hope you’ll go back to “Look for the Thread” (part 1), “How Hidden Beliefs Shape the Way We See the World” (part 2), and “Question Your Motivation” (part 3) before moving forward. These can be found on the right-hand column of the BTBAB homepage.
Today’s Message:
When you can’t change your circumstances, you can still begin changing what they have taught you to believe about yourself.
We’ve spent the last three weeks looking for the threads which have been woven together to create the fabric of our lives.
We started with what happened—and the meaning we gave to it.
In week two, we examined the lens those interpretations and beliefs can create.
Last week, we went underneath our patterns and asked a harder question:
What is this behavior really getting me?
And now, here at week four—and the end of this mini-series— we’ve arrived at the question I think is hardest of all:
What do I do with what I’ve discovered?
Because this is where I don’t want to give you a ten-step plan.
I don’t want to tell you to simply leave a difficult marriage.
Quit an unfulfilling job.
Set the boundary.
Start over.
Take your power back.
Become confident.
Build the new life.
Yes— Sometimes those things are exactly what needs to happen.
And sometimes they simply aren’t possible today.
Maybe you don’t have the money.
Maybe there are children involved.
Maybe you’re financially dependent.
Maybe you’re caring for someone else.
Maybe you’re afraid.
Maybe you have nowhere to go.
Maybe you’re still trying to understand what is actually happening and you’re wrestling with grief.
Maybe you have very few options that the outside world would consider reasonable.
And if that’s where you are, I don’t want to add another burden to your shoulders by suggesting that your inability to change your circumstances means you’re failing to change.
Because it doesn’t.
Maybe Transformation Isn’t Always “Changing Your Life” the way the world defines it.
Transformation does not always begin with changing your circumstances. Sometimes it begins with changing what those circumstances have taught you to believe about yourself.
There may be things about your circumstances you cannot change today.
That does not mean there is nothing you can begin changing today.
If you can’t leave today, that doesn’t mean you have no agency.
You may be able to begin questioning the lie that you’re crazy.
You may be able to stop interpreting someone else’s betrayal as evidence that you’re unlovable.
You may be able to recognize:
“This is happening to me, but this is not who I am.”
You may be able to stop apologizing for having feelings.
You may be able to begin trusting your own perception again.
You may be able to whisper:
“Something about this isn’t right.”
even if you aren’t yet able to do anything about it.
Those are movements.
Tiny movements.
But movements nonetheless.
Sometimes the First Step Is Simply Listening to Yourself Again
I think this may be one of the most important places we can begin.
Because chronic invalidation can do something devastating to a person.
If someone repeatedly tells you:
You’re imagining things.
You’re too sensitive.
You’re crazy.
That didn’t happen.
You’re remembering it wrong.
You’re the problem.
Eventually, you can stop trusting your own internal compass.
You can become so accustomed to questioning yourself that you begin arguing with your own experience before anyone else even has the opportunity.
So perhaps the first question isn’t:
“What action should I take?”
Perhaps it’s:
“What am I actually experiencing?”
And then:
“Can I tell myself the truth about it without immediately arguing with myself?”
That is huge.
Not diagnosing the other person.
Not making a grand declaration.
Not pretending we know every fact of someone else’s situation.
Just reclaiming the right to say:
“This hurts.”
“This isn’t okay with me.”
“I feel afraid.”
“I feel betrayed.”
“I don’t understand why this keeps happening.”
“Something about this doesn’t feel right.”
That’s not weakness.
That’s awareness.
And sometimes awareness is the beginning of transformation.
Seeing Yourself Is Not the Same as Fixing Yourself
Notice what we’re not saying.
We’re not saying:
Fix yourself.
We’re saying:
See yourself.
Know yourself.
Tell yourself the truth.
Separate your worth from what is happening around you.
Take the next honest step.
Because sometimes the circumstances around you are genuinely painful.
Sometimes someone else’s choices are genuinely wrong.
Sometimes someone is lying.
Sometimes someone is betraying you.
Sometimes someone is disregarding your boundaries.
Sometimes someone is treating you in a way you never deserved.
And your first job isn’t to figure out how to make that person behave differently.
You may not be able to.
Your first job may simply be to stop allowing their behavior to become the voice that tells you who you are.
And What About God?
This is where I want to say something very clearly, especially to the woman who has been praying and praying and still doesn’t see the circumstances changing.
You may be asking:
“What am I doing wrong?”
“Why hasn’t God changed this?”
“Am I not praying hard enough?”
“Don’t I trust Him enough?”
No.
Your suffering is not proof that you have failed God.
Your unanswered prayer is not evidence that you don’t have enough faith.
Your difficult circumstances are not necessarily a spiritual report card.
And Scripture itself gives us permission to say:
“God, this hurts.”
That’s lament.
The Bible doesn’t sanitize suffering.
David asks, “How long?”
Job speaks honestly from his pain.
Habakkuk looks at injustice and asks how long it will continue.
And Jesus Himself weeps.
Lament is not unbelief.
Lament is what faith sounds like when faith is hurting.
There is room in faith for:
“God, I know You are there, and I don’t understand this.”
“I love You, and I’m angry.”
“I believe, and I’m exhausted.”
“I’m praying, and I’m still hurting.”
There is room for all of that.
You do not have to add spiritual shame to the pain you’re already carrying.
You don’t have to pretend:
“I’m fine. God is good. Everything happens for a reason. I’m just going to trust harder.”
You can tell God the truth.
Perhaps that is itself a tiny step toward transformation:
telling the truth in God’s presence instead of performing okay-ness for Him.
Agency Is Not the Same as Control
There is another distinction I think we desperately need to make.
Agency is not control.
You may not control:
- whether someone tells the truth
- whether someone respects your boundary
- whether someone apologizes
- whether someone changes
- whether someone chooses faithfulness
- whether someone treats you fairly
- whether your circumstances resolve quickly
But you may slowly begin recognizing:
What is mine to carry?
What is not mine?
What have I begun believing about myself because of what someone else has done?
What tiny choice is actually available to me today?
That last question may be more powerful than it sounds.
Because the answer doesn’t have to be dramatic.
Maybe today the choice is simply:
“I will not call myself worthless because someone treated me as though I were.”
Maybe tomorrow:
“I’m going to write down what happened so I stop second-guessing myself.”
Another day:
“I’m going to tell one safe person the truth.”
Another:
“I’m going to spend ten minutes thinking about what I actually want instead of what everyone else wants from me.”
Another:
“I’m going to pray honestly instead of pretending I’m okay.”
Those things don’t necessarily change the marriage.
They don’t immediately change the bank account.
They don’t make the betrayal disappear.
But they can begin changing something deeply important:
the woman’s relationship with herself.
And that matters.
What Someone Does to You Is Not Who You Are
This brings us back to the thread we’ve been following all along.
Maybe the thread says:
I’m not enough.
Maybe it says:
I’m too much.
Maybe it says:
I’m unlovable.
Maybe it says:
I must have done something to deserve this.
Maybe it says:
If I were prettier, kinder, thinner, smarter, more submissive, more successful, more patient, more spiritual… maybe this wouldn’t be happening.
But what if we began pulling that thread apart?
What if we began separating what someone did from who we are?
Someone else’s betrayal does not make you unworthy.
Someone else’s dishonesty does not make you stupid.
Someone else’s rejection does not make you unlovable.
Someone else’s cruelty does not prove you deserved it.
Someone else’s inability to love you well does not mean you were impossible to love.
And your current circumstances do not get to become the final narrator of your identity.
Even when you cannot yet change your circumstances, you are not powerless to begin changing the story those circumstances are telling you about who you are.
That may be where transformation begins.
Not with a dramatic exit.
Not with a perfect plan.
Not with everything suddenly making sense.
Sometimes it begins with one sentence.
One truth.
One tiny refusal to believe the lie anymore.
You Don’t Have to Know What Comes Next
I think sometimes we believe we can’t move forward until we know where we’re going.
But what if you don’t?
What if you genuinely don’t know what comes next?
What if you’re still in the middle of the story?
What if all you can see is the next few feet?
Then perhaps you don’t need a ten-year plan.
You need the next honest step.
And sometimes that step is very, very small.
That’s okay.
You don’t have to untangle your whole life today.
You don’t have to become someone new overnight.
You don’t have to prove that you’re strong.
You don’t have to make a decision simply because someone else thinks you should.
You don’t have to know how your story ends before you can begin changing how you live inside the part you’re in.
And this is where I think we can finally return to the question we’ve been carrying through this entire series:
Does this thread still belong in the life I’m weaving?
Maybe the answer is yes.
Maybe something about that thread still serves you.
Maybe it needs to be strengthened.
Maybe it needs to be loosened.
Maybe it needs to be redirected.
Maybe it needs to be cut.
Maybe it needs to be replaced.
And sometimes, perhaps, it needs to be redeemed rather than discarded.
But you don’t have to answer all of those questions today.
Maybe This Is Where We Begin
Not with a happy ending.
Not with a solution.
Not with a bow.
A beginning.
Because now you can see.
You can see the thread.
You can recognize the lens.
You can question the pattern.
You can begin separating your worth from someone else’s behavior.
You can acknowledge what hurts without blaming yourself for hurting.
You can begin noticing where you have agency—even when your circumstances are limited.
You can tell the truth.
You can grieve.
You can lament.
You can take tiny steps.
And maybe the woman reading this cannot change her life this week.
Maybe she can’t leave.
Maybe she can’t fix the marriage.
Maybe she can’t make someone tell the truth.
Maybe she can’t make the circumstances change.
But maybe…
she can change one sentence she says to herself.
Maybe she can stop believing one lie.
Maybe she can name one truth.
Maybe she can recognize one thing that isn’t hers to carry.
Maybe she can give herself permission to lament.
Maybe she can take one honest step.
And maybe, for today…
that’s enough.
Because sometimes transformation isn’t about becoming strong enough to leave the hard place.
Sometimes it’s about becoming grounded enough to remember who you are while you’re still in it.
That doesn’t mean you have to stay there forever.
It doesn’t mean your circumstances don’t matter.
It doesn’t mean you should accept what is hurting you.
It means that you can begin becoming whole before your circumstances become whole.
And perhaps the woman who feels completely stuck needs to hear this most of all:
You are not powerless simply because you cannot change everything today.
You can still begin.
One truth.
One breath.
One boundary.
One honest prayer.
One moment of trusting your own perception.
One refusal to let someone else’s behavior tell you what you’re worth.
One tiny thing.
That’s enough soil for a seed.
And maybe that seed is where the next part of your story begins.
You are still becoming.
Not because you aren’t enough.
But because there is still life to be woven.
And perhaps now…
you get to choose the threads.
Until Next Time,
