The Hidden Place: Where Pain Shapes Calling Pt. I

Are you working through your healing journey? This mini two-part series is for you! With love, care, and faith in mind--Brittany Janelle and Dr. Dequies reflect on their personal healing journey and share insights from lessons learned. Their goal is simple: to help women navigate The Hidden Place: Where Pain Shapes Calling

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:29

Hello, hello, hello. I am Dr. De Keese with the We Sweet Podcast. And I am Brittany Janelle with the Rayance Effect Podcast. And we are so excited to bring you guys this collaboration. Um, we have been blessed and fortunate enough to cross each other's paths, and we have such a similarity and symmetry in the things that we do, and we thought it best to come together and do this for you guys. And so we're just so excited to be here and talk to you today, talk with you. We know that this conversation is going to be a very, very transparent and real one. Um, and so we hope that if it hits some soft places for you, that you hit pause where you need to, um, because we want it to land and we want you to receive it. But if it gets to be certain spaces where it is heavy, we want you to honor what you need in that moment and come back to it where your heart is ready. And so what we're talking about today is the middle place where pain shapes calling. Um, and I think that we have so, so much we're gonna say about this, you guys. We're so excited. So I want to kick it off with this conversation, starting with when women face a challenge in life that is very painful, healing often feels like you're breaking or already broken. Okay. And so answers from heaven in this space can feel very silent and emphasis on feel silent, not that they are. And so today we're gonna tackle this first question. All right, Brittany, why is there silence on the healing journey and what does silence cost women? Let's talk about it.

SPEAKER_03 2:24

Yes. So, first and foremost, I'm so excited to do this episode with the girl because like it's so so much alignment because on my podcast, that's all that I've been talking about is healing as well, right? So when you ask the question pertaining to why is there silence on the healing journey and what does silence cost women? Um, for me, I'm gonna relate it to my own experience. The reason that I was silent throughout my healing journey is one, because I didn't want to be judged, right? And when I was going through some of my darkest times in life, I didn't want people to truly know how I was feeling. To look back now and now I can talk about it, right? But to understand that I actually was in a place depressed, insecure, anxious, right? Feeling very, very low because of what I faced. And I didn't want to let people in on that because the Britney that people knew was this jolly, you know, vibrant person. And when things start to hit heavy, I didn't even feel like myself. So why would I include people into some of the deepest, heaviest parts of my life?

SPEAKER_02 3:27

Yes, yeah. Brittany, yeah, I I absolutely agree with you. We we both have a lot of um alignment in what we do. And and I think it was so important for us to have this conversation together. Um, so thank you for like saying it. Um, but yeah, I think for me too, like it comes back to um one, shame. So sometimes, you know, it's hard to sit in that space of silence and and deal with the shame that you might be feeling or people might be feeling. Um and I think it it cost us I want to be careful with how I say this. There is shame, but there's also this weight that I have to heal in private. Um because I'm not myself right now. And so if people try to help me, if people try to give me advice, if people try to speak to my pain right now, I can't hear them without hearing them from a hurt space. Even if they mean well, even if they have good intentions, I'm not ready to hear what people have to say sometime. Um, and it's almost like the grieving process when someone passes away. People will say, Oh, you know, they're in a good place, right? That's not what I want to hear yet. I'm I may even know that, but that's not what I want to hear yet. And so I kind of like liken it to that. Sometimes we withdraw into that private space because we gotta kind of like lick our own wounds to be ready to come out and face the world. Um, and then there's the shame, like the the judgment and what are people gonna like say, and um that that aspect of it. I think that's like first and foremost what I would say. And then like what it cost us, aspects of our lives that we would naturally be going out living sometimes, things that we would naturally be going out to do. And there's so much that we could say about that because sometimes the silence costing you something is like a good thing, and I think we'll get into this, but like costing us certain friendships that we know weren't healthy for us anyway. So that friendship had to like like die off, right? Um, costing us a connection that we so, so, so loved and wanted if it's a guy that we were with and thought that this was gonna be the person, so it cost us like shedding the desire for that that I know is not healthy for me anymore. Because just because something ends, um, this is a deeply relationship talk, y'all. We're gonna refer a lot to relationship because this is that um it could apply to your friendships and things like that, but this is definitely relationship stuff. And so I think too, if I can say knowing someone is not for you, getting to a place where mentally you understand that, but your heart has to catch up to that. And so also being able to sit with the silence and costing you connections and people, places, and things that you used to be attached to. And sometimes your friendships that were intertwined, right? Because especially in regards to relationship, there may have been mutual people you hung out with that you talked to, and what does that look like now? Um, and then costing you your own probably friendships where it's not healthy to even be attached to that friend anymore. Because as I'm in my pain, I'm seeing the truth of people's character, I'm seeing the truth of who they, who's really for me, who really supports me, and who kind of was like preying on my downfall in the first place, maybe. Um, and then costing you versions of yourself you thought you were going to be. And we're gonna get to this, but maybe God is revealing to you that was never who you were supposed to be, the box you supposed to be shrinking into, the lifestyle you're supposed to be shrinking into, God might be showing you no, you were never supposed to fold into that. So I think the the silence cost you so many things.

SPEAKER_03 7:46

Okay, then you gotta get the little clock at moment because everything you just said was it. So just to take it a step deeper into what you just mentioned, I want to kick it off by talking about shame, right? And I feel like I can best do this by letting the audience in on a little bit more of my story, right? So you know this, but I was married and I abstained prior to getting married. And um, once I got married, I found out about all the betrayal and infidelity. So to get married in a couple months into the marriage to learn about all this infidelity, it was one of the hardest times in my life because in my head, I was like, well, God did things your way, right? You said that this marriage would be blessed, all the things, right? And it was so difficult for me because now I'm sitting in the place feeling like I'm with somebody that I don't even know. I was supposed to trust you, and now I feel broken, I feel crushed, right? So as things continue to flow and as I learned that we just were not compatible and we got a divorce, I felt shame because now I just got married not too long ago and I'm still in my church home and I feel like people are looking at me, people are talking about me, and now I'm starting to conform a certain type of way based on what other people are saying about me, right? And when we think about that second part of the question of what does it cost you, it costs you the best parts of yourself because I wanted to shrink what you just said. I wanted to say, this is my story, I can't go any further. I wanted to say, oh, poor me, I'm just gonna like not be the person that God has already put into me. As we continue to evolve with the story, as you know, this I relocated, moved to Houston. I'm from Michigan, right? And I've been here now for about three years. And as I went through the journey, I started journaling. I started writing down how it was feeling, which turned into a book. And throughout that process, God was healing me from the inside out. So as you talked earlier about friendships, girls, nothing like when you go through your hardest times and you have to figure out who's truly there for you, right? It's nothing like when you're isolated and you thought people who were riding for you really not riding for you, like that's one of the most challenging things because it gets you to really look inward as well, too, right? And when you're healing, one of the most important things that you have to do is you have to be in a space in which you can sit with yourself and sit in your own emotions. And that's a very challenging thing to do. So for me, as I mentioned earlier, I had to learn all the things about myself that weren't healthy, all the childhood trauma that I never addressed, um, the insecurities, the anxiety, all those different things so I can get to a place of being whole and healthy.

SPEAKER_02 10:35

Not about me. Now you're talking about like revisiting like some childhood things and places where we're unhealthy, which deals with how we attach in the first place to certain connections. And we don't know that sometimes. But before we get into like unhealthy attachments, I want to share to my background. And, you know, one of the reasons why I started We Sweet, one of the reasons why I build a life off of empowering women, um, I could I could speak to like my Sunday school teachers that I looked up to. I could speak to a lot of phenomenal women in my family that shaped the version of who I am today. Um and all of those things would be very true. Like powerful teachers that I had growing up who were women, like I was just surrounded by phenomenal women, but where women's empowerment really, really became the theme of my life was from the greatest pains in my life, which dealt with romantic relationships. I have like published articles and things and interviews and stuff that talk about this. Um, and I think I've done like Voyage ATL and the stories are in there, but it deals with relationships. And everybody has their thing of where certain pains come from, you know. Um, and mine was rooted in that romantic relationships. And I had to learn from that where I was unhealthy attaching from sort of this like childhood belief that I had, and I didn't know I had that. And sometimes you know where you're feeling lack, and other times you don't even know until you watch your life play out a certain way, and then you start to realize like there's a pattern here that is unaddressed. So before I get into that, I just want to share that for me, you know, there were a couple of relationships I can revisit. I can revisit a few. Um, but I have to be honest and say that there was absolutely uh one in particular that did a number on me. And it's it's no disrespect to that individual. It's I also think it's very important on a person's healing journey not to let your story be about that person per se and about what God was teaching you about you. But that individual, I did learn a lot about myself in a very, very challenging time uh of my life, and things that were in so much misalignment that I didn't know. Um, because the things that you are, again, attaching to are the things that you've always probably longed for in a certain way, and then that person shows up and it seems like they are doing those things. So let's just say if you want to feel emotionally supported, heard, um, you want to feel like chosen, you want to feel like there's all these things, and we gonna we could get into chosen because you gotta be first. You know, you got you gotta go to the Bible and understand you're first chosen by Christ, and that that's the lesson. That's the lesson. So for people saying he never picked me, he never chose, you got to go understand that you can't expect a man to choose you. You must understand that your identity is in Christ and that you want God to choose you, and he has, but that's where that chosen has to be. If not, you seek out relationships in life to be chosen by someone who is not a lot of times probably even governed by anything, they're not governed by a Christ-like mentality. So you will always be reaching and reaching and reaching. You'll you'll partner with people that you're constantly like trying to be loved by but can never pour back into your cup the way you want because you have this lack of being wanted and chosen. And the lack of being wanted and chosen shows up as a theme in the relationships that you that you are partnering with, and that has to be with God. That has to be with God. So I I I really want to just kind of pause there to say um there's a lot of things in how pain shows up in the story of someone's life and partnerships. Um, if you do not feel validated in your image, you may choose based on that. You may choose um a person who is very attracted to your body. And when that happens, you're partnering with someone to feel beautiful. When that person is only attracted to your flesh, so now you're attaching all the time with who thinks I'm beautiful, who thinks I'm pretty, who's who who's attracted to me when I walk by. But attraction real healthy attraction has to be a man who sees your spirit first. And uh people people love to say that you know, men are visual, men are visual. That's true. But a man who truly is aligned with you will see your spirit. And if all a person can see is your flesh, that's a sign that you're attracted based on something inside. You gotta work on healing. I give like those two examples, the being chosen, the do I look beautiful, whatever, and and the relationship takes a physical turn, and you're like, Well, I want somebody who loves me for me. Like, I feel like people are attracted to how I look, or you know, or I want someone to be attracted to how I look, and you get so caught up in the image of the relationship because there's a deeper insecurity there. And insecurity is not a bad word here. Okay, like today, as we say that that's not a bad word, that is a signal that this is something that I'm working through. So coming back to some of my deepest hurts, friend. Um, I had a very challenging relationship where I felt like I was like longing for being emotionally supported, and I was pouring into a bottomless pit where I love to say I'm the emotional healer of the group. Like I go and I pick up the person that is struggling from a previous relationship. I don't know. I I just I'm right there with you. I was the I can help you, I can I can be there for you, I can, you know, and that spoke to my inner child. That spoke to the version of the keys, and this is a hundred percent, y'all. That spoke to the version of the keys that was seeking for someone to just say, Hey, I got you. I'm right here, you know. And when you're when you're not whole, when you don't have your wholeness in that, and when I speak to wholeness, I'm talking about Christ. When you don't have your wholeness in that, that God's got you, that God is there to, you know, pat you on the back, God is there to wipe your tears. When you don't have that wholeness, um, you're you you end up either performing that for other people, hoping that that'll that'll come back to you, or you end up just seeking that altogether, however you want to phrase that. And, you know, one of the things that I am most attracted to, one of those things I'm most attracted to. And you got to be careful when you say this stuff out loud because the Lord is listening, and so is the enemy. But so you'll get you'll get a counterfeit sent to you so fast off you. Just telling the truth. You know, the the wrong person will show up just because, just like God was listening to, you know, there's another spirit at play that's like, oh, okay, hurt that. Let me tempt her. So, anyway, coming back to the story. Um, one of the things I'm most attracted to is nurture. A nurturing person is gonna get me every time. But you gotta be careful. You gotta be careful, and this is where discernment is important to know who's really nurturing, who's really compassionate, who's really um pulling more from you than they're actually able to show up and do. So that'll look like in the beginning, they think they look like the best thing ever. They look like that there for you, showing up for you, supporting you emotionally, but then, you know, a couple of months into it, real quick, everything flipped the script. They have zero follow-through. Anytime you call, they can't never show up for you. They told you that they was gonna, you know, make sure, and it doesn't have to be anything financial, y'all. So don't go there. It could just be emotional, just whatever. Like, hey, I need to call you and talk about something. They're not available, they're busy, they got all the things going on, and that's that's normal for people to have things going on. It's normal for people to have their own life outside of you. I want to make sure I say that because some people will be very codependent, and we're not talking about codependency, we're not talking about codependency, but sometimes people will be um all the things in the beginning, and then later, the very thing that you so desired in in this partnership is the very thing that is so deficient that you feel like I'm just not even this. Is no the how this started is nowhere near like who I know myself to be, and I'm shrinking. And because of that, I'm I'm striving more for it to get it. I'm I'm I'm seeking it more. I'm trying to do everything I can in this relationship to hope it holds, but this person is literally barely doing anything. So it's unequal, right? So we got a we can say I'm gonna pause right there. We got a lot we can say, but that's my deepest pain. I I I connected with a person in my life that I felt like emotionally I was trying to show up for support. They were coming out of a previous relationship. Also, be careful with that too. Be careful with somebody who's very fresh out of a relationship that hasn't worked through their own healing. They have to work through their own healing. You know, you can't help them do that for them, they have to do that themselves. And so gotta be careful. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:33

You know, everything that you just said, first and foremost, I just want to thank you for opening up and expressing that because your story is so powerful. And I think what's even more powerful are the takeaways that you just walked me through because as you're talking, I was like, Yep, been there, experienced that, had that too. And it and I know we'll continue to evolve, but it it just shows us how our stories help us to become who we're meant to be, right? And I'm a firm believer in therapy. And I've gone to therapy in the past. And I usually do like a maintenance check in now. And I remember when I was in a session and my therapist was talking about anxious avoided attachment style, right? And she mentioned that because I say, you know what? I know I just went through a breakup, but I'm all right. I usually I bounce back, like I'll be all right. And as she started diving into that, I had to really realize where does this come from? It comes from a place of me wanting to always push aside the pain and pretend like it's not there. It comes from a place of saying, oh, I know this really hurt me, but I'm just gonna like just go ahead and pick up my life and be the vibrant Britney that I normally am, right? But when I was in the relationship, the um anxiousness of that would come from a place of I would just cling on to things so tightly because I didn't want to lose something that I thought that I needed, right? So if we would have arguments or if I would feel like I emotionally wasn't getting what I needed, I would be like, okay, Britney, what about you needs to fix something within yourself so that this person would stay in that space that you want them to be in. And as I took the time to reflect and heal, I realized how I was not in alignment with God's will for my life because I was trying to have my hand in so much. I was trying to change everything about myself just to keep somebody in my life. And that's not who was never meant to be in my life, right? So it literally took full transparency. Um went through a breakup last year, right? And it was very difficult. And as I took the time to really sit with myself and to really sit with the emotions of what just happened, I was in a place in which I could no longer avoid it. I had to work through these different things. And it birthed so much from that season of pain because I started to truly learn myself and learn what I wanted and what I deserved as a woman and what God has for me, right? So for anyone that's listening to this right now, even if you're in a season um in which you're in pain, you may have gone through a hard situation, just know that you're able to maneuver past this and always ask God, what are you teaching me throughout this moment? What can I learn from this? Because when you transition your mindset to that, it's like having gratitude in all things. I know that the storm is heavy, but God, I thank you because I know that you're gonna get the glory through this. And once I start transitioning my mindset to that, it just made things that much better.

SPEAKER_02 24:31

Yeah. Sitting with your attachment style, and so many people don't realize that the attachment style is is a very, very early development phase, is childhood. And I think that we have to take ownership once we become an adult, because it doesn't make someone's parents inherently like bad or anything. It is what you learned as a child and learn how to navigate emotions as a child. Um and so the attachment style definitely comes from those early development places, but they are re-inforced. They're reinforced when you're not aware of those attachment styles, and then we start to pick people to align with in life that are totally out of alignment that force that space that hurts so much in the first place. Um, and so for me, I had a tendency to deny my own needs. I had a tendency to be the little warrior princess. I could take it, I could take it. You know, whatever you've been through, like I could take it, you know. I don't know. And and that was probably a little bit of ego, if I'm honest. Um because you can't play God. You can't save somebody. And we don't want to look at it like that. We don't want to look at it as this is my ego showing up because we feel like that's such a bad word. But you have to be honest with yourself. And you said I had to sit with myself. I had to sit with myself too, Brittany. And let me tell you how many long, hard nights that was. Um the tears and all the things. There's times where, and I talk a lot about the healing journey and a lot of stuff that I do because I'm very passionate about the work I do, but there's times in the healing journey where one minute you feel okay, you feel strong, you feel like you're navigating past this, you've developed new ways of navigating certain emotions, and then there's a day where something hits you, it comes crashing down, and you're crying, you begging God to just like remove this from me, and you want so bad to just be out of that season. But as we talk about this waiting season, when you're when you're navigating through all of that, that season is meant for you to go through all of those feelings because God is teaching you. And you talked about what is God teaching me? God is teaching you there is a sanctification process where the desires that you had that led you to that connection or that partnership in the first place, God has to strip that down. He has to strip you from the desires that Britney and DeKeys had when you when you were at that season of life. And he has to show you that your desires should look more like me. Your behavior should look more like me, your identity should look more like me, and you're not there yet. So, yes, this is painful, yes, this is hard, but I'm stripping it and I'm pruning it and I'm sharpening you, and I'm teaching you what you should be aligning with and the types of people that look more like me than what you were attracting yourself to. And not the people who are showing up as an imposter as me, because you got those folks too, those people who will act like they are Christ-like, that will act like they go to church, they do all the things they serve, you know. Um, and you gotta be careful with that too. The Lord says you will know them by their fruits. So not you showed up at church to serve and volunteer this week, not you go to church every Sunday. What does the holistic part of your life look like when no one is watching? Not that you sat down at dinner to hold my hands and pray, because that is that is something that you can do out of sheer performance. Like, what does your integrity look like? What does your character look like? You know, how are you able to handle conflict? Because this is where the fruit is going to show up. This is where I get to see whether or not the person that's going to church on Sunday, the person that just prayed for somebody is really who they say they are. Um, and and when you are in that season before this this pain has happened in the wait, you you're at a place, you're at a place where um you don't yet have that level of awareness yet, but it's coming. So when we're getting in that season of pain and you know, hurt uh reflecting on what went wrong, reflecting on how I showed up, uh, reflecting on sometimes when you you're blaming yourself or guilty about like aspects of you that like when something ends, you start to say, Why did I allow that? Like, how low did I get? Did I really myself sit in that type of situation? Um, and this is where God is allowing that mirror to happen. He needs you to revisit that, he needs you to sit with yourself, like you said.

SPEAKER_00 29:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:45

Um and so I just I just really feel like the the teaching is the sanctifying, you know, when you sit and remember, oh my gosh, girl, like I remember when, you know, he did this in front of my face. I didn't even do nothing, I didn't even say anything. I I just I just let that go on. Like, I don't know why I did that. You know, he literally was talking to another chick in front of my face or flirting or whatever, and I just sat with that, you know, um, or he constantly compared me to another female all the time. Like, and I just I let that go on. And now I can't believe, like, hindsight is 2020. I can't believe I was okay with the fact that this person said that to me, um, or did that in front of my face, or whatever the case may be, or told a bold face lie when I can see, like I got two eyes that God gave me, I can see, and you tell them both face lie. And it's like, how did how did I not like just in that moment say no? Well, um, when you when you're reflecting on all of that stuff, that's what God is showing you. He's showing you your value, he's showing you your worth. It's painful, but he's showing to you. He's showing you this is where you had to choose different. This is where you had to accept who I was showing you who are, you have to accept that I never said. Like, does that sound like my voice? If my children know my voice, they know when somebody is saying crazy things to them. I've been made fun of for for being the church girl, I've been made fun of for going to church. And back then, back then, instead of me saying, Oh, uh-uh, absolutely not. I don't know who you think I am, instead of me getting another level of confidence, you know what I did? I shrunk myself. I can smell about I can smell about that today. You know, I've been compared to someone else who had a different type of job than me. And I and I and the crazy part is that that was so in hindsight humiliating because this person didn't even have, you know, so it's it's like you can sit with that, you can sit with that now. You can sit with that now, but like when it's happening, there is shame, there is guilt, there is pain, and then there is confusion because the heart in some ways knows that there were aspects of this that weren't right, but the heart is still hurting over that person. So then you are blaming yourself for still caring about that. Um, and you start to just sit with God and really ask about your worth. Really ask this is not for me, but that's the enemy, though. Just want to plug that, y'all. That's the enemy, you know. You know, maybe worthy of this. Maybe you know, I messed up. You know, God loves you so much, He loves you so much, He would never just punish you like that. You know, now there is where the Bible speaks to God's wrath coming against sinners and stuff, but there's people who won't turn away up from their ways. But children of God who are in a repentant place and who who really do feel like, Lord, why was this my experience? Why did I have to go through that? I lost, I lost years of my life, God, and you know, things like that, and you just start to feel punished. That's the enemy. Enemy is telling you that's punished, and you got to see that because he wants to kill, steal, and destroy it. He wants to kill your purpose, he wants to kill your identity, he wants to kill your self-worth because if this one painful season, or for some people, a couple of failed relationships, there's several painful seasons. If you go through this over and over, there is ministry that is planted in you that you gotta see. But if you don't see it and you just give up and lay here and die, okay, Job, then you will listen to the enemy tell you you are nothing, you will never be nothing. This was for nothing, and God don't love you, He's punishing you. If you believed that, if you believed that, you would not have we sweet, you would not have Radiance effect, you you would have you would have given up. And I know that there were times in a process of my healing where I know I have sat on the phone with my mother a couple of times and and cried so heavy that you know you start to heave a little bit in your cry. I have cried running. I have cried like that to my mom, and my mom, being the mother she is, wanted to remove my pain, but you know, you can't take your child's pain. And I know that even in that, I was still seeking for someone outside of God. I love my mama, but I say this because you in your healing, you can't seek someone else to resolve that for you outside of God. Yes, your your friends and your community, your family can be there for you, but you have to do the work, and the work is that stillness where you don't hear God. Um, and I'm gonna stop here and and you know give it over to Britney to chime in, but where that silence gets loud and you feel like God is not answering is because God is really allowing the pruning, he's allowing the reflection, he's allowing you to not depend on a friend getting in a new relationship too soon, um, a parent or someone that can help you escape the sanctification process. So sometimes it's lonely, sometimes it's it's very quiet, sometimes it's like God, you don't hear me, I'm hurting. But God is saying, no, I'm sharpening and I'm building and I'm sculpting. If I just if I step in right now and snatch all the pain away, what do you learn? What do you build from this? Who do you become from this? I gotta let you feel this, and I got to let you get in your word over this. I gotta let you pray. You praying now more than you have in your whole life, and that that's that space, that's that space.

SPEAKER_03 36:35

What you just mentioned was so powerful, and I know you saw me tearing up over here. I I I knew it was gonna happen.

SPEAKER_01 36:41

I'm fighting it.

SPEAKER_03 36:44

But everything that you just said just hit home for me because when you're in the dark sides of the story, it's like you just want to quit and you don't want to keep pressing through. And everything that you just say, you can talk to your friends, but that doesn't always take away the pain of how you feel, right? You can talk to your family members, but you still have what you're going through, right? When I was going through my lowest moments, that's when I found my relationship with God. I grew up as a PK, I did, but it wasn't until I got to the place of being like, I can't turn to nobody else but God, that's when I really truly found the healing that I needed. And it's interesting too because something that someone asked me in the past is, Brittany, would you change your story? And I said, No. And the reason being, right in the moment, I was so low mentally, emotionally, spiritually, all those things. But like looking back on the story, I'm like, God, I see what you're doing. You're pruning all the areas of me that need to become this version of Britney that I am today. And it's crazy because I even used to feel intimidated, right? This is a whole nother thing that when you're healing and you're growing into the person that God has caused you to be, that I didn't feel like I was qualified for who he already told me that I was, right? So I got to a place of being able to speak to women who were uh maybe even older than me. And I'm like, do I know what I'm saying? Like I'm second guessing the gifts that God has already put inside me. But it's like wisdom is not based on age, right? It's based on experience. And now as I look at like what you and I are doing, it's like we're able to be in this space because of all the different things that we've experienced, which has shaped us into purpose. And now, like I just sit here and I'm like, there's no way that I would not give God the glory, honor, and praise because I see what he's brought me out of.

SPEAKER_00 38:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:39

And as I sit here and as I think about one of the most pivotal points in healing for me, I remember it like it was yesterday. It was September of 2024. I was sitting in my kitchen, I was cooking, I had some worship music playing in the background. You know, I had at that point moved, left where I was, but I still felt heaviness, right? I don't know what was going on, but I just still felt low. And then I heard God whisper, like, you have to forgive. Okay, and I was like, forgive? What do you mean? Wait, all the stuff that he did to me? Absolutely not. But it was like, forgive him, because at the end of the day, I had all this heaviness inside of me that I was carrying because I couldn't forgive him. So in that moment, not only did I forgive him, I said a prayer for him. Because I had to release all the things that were weighing me down and not allow me to step into the person God has called me to be. So for those who are listening, yeah, they may have done this, they may have said this, they may have tarnished your name, whatever it may have been. You may have lost the reality that you thought was supposed to be yours, but you gotta move forward and you gotta forgive. Because if you don't, that's gonna keep you from being the person that you're called to be. So that's the biggest thing that I would say that I want people to take away in this very moment. I know we're not done, but that's one little nugget I have to drop.

SPEAKER_02 40:03

Um, I'm trying to calm my heart rate down. Girl, mine too. So as soon as you said what you were saying before you said the word forgive, before you said it, and you said, I remember where I was, you know, September 2024 in my kitchen. My mind, before you said the word forgive, my mind went back to standing in my bedroom by my dresser one day. And it was daylight, so it may, and it was I wasn't working, it may have been like a Saturday or Sunday, I don't know. And I just remember standing there, and I remember saying, Dr. Keish, you gotta forgive yourself. You have tried to forgive the person that created a very deep hurt in your life, but you haven't forgiven. And until you do that, you won't be able to really move beyond the things that you carry in your spirit. Forgiveness is really a major key to unlocking other aspects of your healing. And it's very hard because, you know, one of the things from my story is again, I was at warrior spirit. So like I had certain people, even when I like first met the person that um, because I was, you know, in a very um, I would say communal space at the time, we all, people all around us knew each other. And so there were people who would say, you know, little things. And in hindsight, me being the little warrior spirit, you know, or thinking, oh, this would be different. Um, I wasn't listening. Um, I was fighting, but I wasn't listening. And there were people that would say little things, you know. Um, and for me, I think in the quote unquote healing part of it, it was going back to being able to understand where I ignore certain feedback. And in present day, how do I still have that warrior spirit and trust myself? Because the same thing that is your strength can oftentimes be your weakness. Like being being headstrong, being decisive, um, being a person who feels very like I know myself. I'm not easily swayed by other people's opinions. Like if you tell me to go left and I feel like I need to go right, I'm not gonna go left because the group is going left. Like I know myself, right? And you can be so tin toes down on your beliefs and things like that. You can be a leader in your community, and people can praise you for being just, oh, they're a natural-born leader and all these things, which I'm not gonna get into the natural-born leader stuff because leaders born and made, that's a whole other conversation. But my point in saying all that is that you get to a point where your discernment is tested because you're then at that point, like, well, what part of me was ignoring the voice of God, and what part of me was trusting Holy Spirit, my instincts, and my gut? And then you have to go through a season, again, where the whole identity, the discernment, the sanctification, you have to go through a season where God sharpens your discernment. But one of the hardest things through that deep layer of hurt is questioning your ability to trust yourself, to know, to know God's voice. If this thing happened, if it went wrong and it didn't work out the way I thought, what part of me didn't hear God clearly? What part of me, you know, didn't have good instincts? What part of me, and and then you're wrestling so hard with beating yourself up over whether or not you were smart enough to see this, whether you were stupid, whether you were fighting for, you know, your this person. And then in your case, Brittany, because I I was in a relationship, I wasn't married, but in your case, marriage, like fighting for my vows, fighting for, you know, like my union is between me, God, and him, not the world. And I can't be listening to all these outside voices. What part of me was not listening to wise counsel? What part of me was not listening to God? What part of me was stubborn and listening to my heart and not my or my emotions and not so you go through this phase where some of the pain shifts from just being what the person did to now the pain becomes, I'm the problem. I I let this happen. I didn't see this the way I should have seen it. And so I remember standing in my bedroom and just saying, you are beating yourself up. You are not forgiving yourself. And at this point, because of the phase of where I was in this, it was like, you know, some years past. I was like, you're not even at the point of needing to forgive the person no more. You're at the point of you just want to forgive yourself. You have trapped yourself into this very deep isolation where you're punishing yourself. And that was the moment for me that I can remember that okay, from here on out, something's gotta shift. And I want to say this to women who are also in that waiting isolation still moment is that when you punish yourself so much like that, help me, Lord, you have to know what phase of the healing you're in. Because sometimes you're in a phase where you need to be still, you need to see what God is teaching you. And then other times you got to get to the phase of the healing where you've learned a lot from it. God has revealed a lot to you. You're starting to kind of heal and come out of certain aspects of it, right? But you blame yourself and punish yourself so much that whatever God does have for you is blocked. When you go out in public, you so terrified you won't make eye contact with a man. If a man comes up to you, you so triggered you can't even like, he's just being nice. He might not even be attracted to you. He's just being nice, he's just holding the door, say, Oh, miss, you dropped a pen on the ground. And you instantly just, oh yeah, yeah, okay. You you don't want to make eye contact, you don't want to talk to anyone. If somebody reach out to you, you're so hyper-vigilant that you snap on somebody. Well, look, yeah, I'm walking, I'm walking y'all through how I got through this thing. So, you know, you you know, other people come into your life, and if God were to position, because you're in your waiting season, right? If God were to position someone in front of you, it is not going to be permitted to progress or move forward when you have so much fear in your heart that you're reacting in such a way out of fear, out of shame, out of previous hurt that you block yourself from attracting what God does have for you. Uh, so sometimes it's like, well, I've been going through this for so long, I haven't met anyone, this is so hard for me. Um, I've just been through so much. Well, first of all, how you speak, how you're speaking is a sign of whether or not you really are at a healthy side of that healing journey. Because if you meet someone and your language often starts with, well, I've been through so much, you're automatically setting the tone for someone else to be your savior. You're automatically setting the tone for someone else to feel like I gotta, okay, I gotta carry all this weight on my shoulders about what somebody else did to her. I can't even come in and just get to know her as a friend and see if there's a possibility, like, oh my gosh, it's already looking like damage control over there. That is very, very important for women in the healing ground, the waiting ground to realize because the first situation that got you into this pain was one attachment. If you don't work with that and how you show up, you will move into the very next person carrying that burden of the pain that connection won't work out either, because it's another attachment of pain. You walked into it carrying pain. You walked into it, well, you know, it's just been hard for me because you know, I've been through this and I just went through all of this and so someone is sitting there like, okay, this is a project. Like, this isn't gonna be an equally fair situation to get to know this person without carrying, what if I hurt her? What if I do the wrong thing? What if I say the wrong thing? What if I mess up? Is she gonna just like fall apart? Is she gonna freak out, or is she gonna have grace for me? If you haven't worked through that, if you're starting new connections, spiraling, saying all this stuff happened to you to a new person, you're connecting again off hurt, not healing. And so I'm not saying this because I I I got a perfect. I'm telling you because I know what I did wrong. Yes, I know what I did wrong. Okay. So it's it's so much to this waiting ground that that we don't see. Like so many people, oh, I'm ready for, I went through that, I'm just ready for my part. I'm ready to just like I just want to be happy. Okay, well, somebody else can't make you happy. Um, but it is that space of really understanding identity in Christ and wholeness in Christ before coming into agreement with someone else. And I think it's so important too to say coming into agreement. Not I'm chasing someone, not I'm forcing someone, not I'm saving someone because their mama was never there for them. They they they were a fatherless child, their dad wasn't never there for them. They come from very strict parents who didn't see them for who they really were. So now I gotta make them feel seen and validated 24-7. Um, you know, all of these other little things out there, you have to come into agreement. This person is coming in with agreement. This person is coming in with agreement. It is not I'm doing more labor than them. I'm trying to be enough for them. I'm trying to convince them of my value, I'm trying to convince them to pick or choose me. See, when we're at that space, when we're operating out of striving, okay, that's Ecclesiastes, then we are not operating in agreement. There is a friendship, and the friendship births something deeper. There is an acknowledgement of your spirit and my spirit, and how there's a harmony that we see in each other's spirit. When that is not how we're partnering, we are most often often partnering from a heart wound.

SPEAKER_03 51:52

Girl, everything that you just said was so powerful, and there were so many different things that were jumping out to me. And I think one of the words that came to mind was worthy, right? And the reason why that really landed with me is because I've been that person in which I would I've met amazing persons, right? And um parts of me will want to sabotage it because I was used to things being so unhealthy. I was used to people not being emotionally available. I was used to having to like, you know, attach, attach, attach. And um, that was never God's will. But then once I'm blessed with something, right, now I don't know how to even like react or respond to it because I'm so unused to it, right? And because I experienced so many relationships that were traumatic, I would get to a place in which I'm like, huh, well, maybe maybe this is all there is out there. You always hear what people say about the dating pool, right? So then I would start allowing other people's fear to seep into my reality. Like, oh yeah, you're right. There's no good men out there. No, I'm not gonna be able to find it, so I gotta settle, and I just gotta stick with like what I what I have out there just because I'm probably not gonna find it. Right. And when I was going through my journey, one of the things I also had to learn was unlearning what I knew about relationships and dating altogether. Because where I grew up, people would consider a good man as somebody who had a car, they had a job, believed in God, right? But it what you mentioned earlier was so important because I personally wasn't taking time to get to know the person and asking the right types of questions to ensure that we were even aligned in a certain type of way, right? And once I started getting to that place, that's where my discernment actually started to sharpen even more because that's when I start to be able to hear God more clearly. And this comment I'm gonna make is not to take a, you know, like a dart at anyone. It's just one of my personal realities, is I even had to get to a place of just stop going to people who may have had a certain title, such as minister or whatever it may be, because I was going to them relying on what they would tell me because I didn't trust my own discernment. And I'm like, oh, well, they know the word. Maybe they have a deeper connection to God than what I have. But sometimes I didn't always receive the best advice. That's the truth of the matter. And as I continue to maneuver throughout that process, I realized they already had connection to God. He already had placed discernment within me. It was just me being distracted by what was around me that I wasn't able to discern his voice clearly enough. Right? That was one huge reality that I had to have, is the more that I was able to sit, spend time with him, whether that meant like getting in my word, journaling, all those different things, and most importantly being obedient. That's when I was able to discern his voice more clearly. And it could be something as simple as girl, I'm trying to tell you, I gotta walk this journey. It might be something as simple as, hey, write this person. Okay, girl, like I did with you, transparently, and look where we at now. Or okay, pray for this person. This is what they need to be prayed about. But why? And the more that I started being obedient in those small spaces, the more that I was able to quickly discern through things that weren't right, right? And this is kind of a shift in what I was saying, but it's something that you mentioned earlier about um certain parts of ourselves. One thing that I had to maneuver from is I also was somebody that wanted to save other people. I have a big heart. I've always wanted to help people. But through that, I used to think breaking your heart is what's getting you in trouble. Maybe you need to change who you are, maybe you need to stop being so kind, maybe you need to stop doing all these things. But then I had to have a shift because if there's something that God has placed in me that's good, that doesn't mean that I need to change the good parts of myself just because I've connected with people who weren't able to nurture what was already placed in me, right? I just need to be more discerning with what God had already placed within me. So that was like a huge turning point for myself because it helped me to allow myself to be able to say, Brittany, you're exactly who you're meant to be. You don't have to necessarily change, you just have to listen to God.

SPEAKER_02 56:25

Sister, sister, so there's so many things. I had to like write down some things so I would not forget them. Um when you don't have a relationship with God for yourself, or you have one but you can't trust your own faith journey and walk, and you're constantly outsourcing other people's discernment and opinions and ideas, then a lot of times you have surface level connections because that deals with and I know this is very controversial, but that deals with death. When I know that may not make a lot of sense, so I want to explain that for ladies. You may have a connection with God, you may have a prayer life, you may serve, you may go to church, but a relationship and an intimacy with God has to exist before you can have any type of intimate relationship with a partner. And I'm not talking about physical intimacy, I'm just talking about intimacy. Okay, so intimacy shows up in how you navigate conflict, intimacy shows up in how you support people when there's grief and loss in the family with one another. Intimacy shows up when you feel vulnerable enough to share your ideas and the projects and things you want to do in life without feeling shame if they don't respond a certain way. You feel safe to be intimate with your thoughts, intimate with your ideas, intimate with your naked self and not your physical naked self. Your naked self is who you are, your identity. If you can't sit before God with that level of nakedness and intimacy and truth, then it's gonna be very hard to do that with a partner. You will live a life where either there is like a lot of kind of performing and just like showing up, being the thing that looks good to everybody, or if it's not performance, it'll just be this inability to allow my vulnerability to be seen. Being strong and having a shell is just how I navigate life. But you gotta be willing to be as raw as this episode, okay? And um so I would say that when they're when the relationship with God relies on me to seek out everybody else, there's a surface level where I don't trust myself to get that raw with God. I don't trust myself to get that vulnerable with God. Um and so then we're depending on other people to help cultivate what we think or believe about a situation, which will never be sustainable because it's not what I truly think or believe about it. It's what everyone else is telling me is expected or telling me is the right way to go or the right thing to do. But I have to be able to sustain what I truly believe about that. And seeking out advice is not wrong. But everybody on this side of time is flesh, including a minister, is still flesh, even though they are appointed, even though they are anointed for a certain assignment, they are still flesh. So you've got to be able to hear discerning voices, your spiritual community, your spiritual, you know, spiritually wise counselors. You gotta be able to hear them and feel safe going to them, but you still gotta be able to try it by the word. Nothing supersedes the word of God. Nothing, not your minister, not your mama, nothing. Um so you gotta try that by the word, but the word has to already be in your heart. If the word is not in your heart, you don't know how to try it by the word. So if I go and I listen to a minister say something to me, or a good girlfriend of mine who is a faithful, God-fearing Christian girlfriend of mine, and I go ask her opinion on something, but the word of God is not embedded in my heart, rooted in my heart. Not just I can quote the scripture, but I understand the context of the scripture. I understand how to apply that. If that's not there and I go listen to what somebody else is saying to me, I may still walk away misinterpreting their advice, or maybe they didn't give the best advice because they're still growing and learning in their faith. And so now I'm walking away, not really fully having understanding. But the Lord tells us that understanding comes from God, that that wisdom and understanding comes from Him. So I wanted to sit there first that the relationship has to be there, and the intimacy of that relationship has to be there with God, or nothing anyone else does or says is gonna create the level of clarity you keep desiring so bad. I want clarity, Lord. I need clarity, Lord. God, can you give me clarity on this situation? God, okay, let me go talk to a minister because I just know I trust them. Let me go talk to my sister in Christ, because I just know she's one of my God fearing prayer warrior sisters. So, and when she speaks to a crowd of people, like people feel that. So let me let me go get her advice, God. And then you go do all that, and two weeks later, you still asking God for clarity. Because their words won't mean much if you don't have God's word in you.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:10

I gotta ask you a question. Because when you say about having God's word within you, right, obviously it's based on a relationship, and this is obviously just your opinion. But for those that are listening, how do they get the word within them? Because as I go back, right, think about younger Brittany. I was going to church, right? I was actively participating a certain way, right? But I didn't have it within me. And I'm gonna be honest in saying that now. So, what advice would you give to someone? Like, what would that look like to be able to get to that place? All right, y'all. So thank you so much for tuning in to the first episode of The Middle Place where pain shapes call in. I pray that you got many takeaways and that you felt very empowered just by hearing the conversation between Duke and I. Be sure to be on the lookout for episode two coming real soon.