Episode 9: Bridget Trammell's Journey Through Divorce, Addiction, and Calling

▶️ Connect with Heart To Mission: https://hearttomission.com
▶️ Check Out Bridget's Book "Trigger Warning" HERE: https://amzn.to/4w3j5Un

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⏱️ CHAPTERS
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0:00 - Intro
2:20 - Bridget's Book!
9:17 - Traveling and Singing Family
21:24 - The "Dream"
36:38 - Help for Those Seeking It...
40:48 - How will you respond?
1:05:20 - Leaving and Growing
1:09:20 - Becoming a Woman CEO
1:16:00 - Meeting Her New Husband
1:27:15 - Recognizing and Handling Triggers
1:45:44 - This Side of Things...
1:57:50 - Jesus Is Good

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👥 ABOUT THE GUEST
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Dr. Bridget Trammell is a counselor, wife, mother,  speaker, and now an author of her Amazon best-seller "Trigger Warning"!

Check her out at: https://www.drbridgettrammell.com

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🎙️ ABOUT HEART THE MISSION
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Heart To Mission exists to develop leaders who finish well: pastors, planters, and everyday people carrying real weight. We have honest conversations with leaders who have lived through the highs and lows of real life.

#ChadMerrell #PastorStory #Redemption #NorthRockHillChurch #HeartTheMission #PastorPodcast #Christianity #Testimony

Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:00

I'm at the altar. My dreams are coming true. 28 years of faithfulness to God and fantasizing about what it would be like to be married. After this beautiful ceremony, hundreds of people attended. He just started opening checks. I remember my heart just feeling like something's not right. Something's not right. And a little bit of disappointment turned into a tsunami of sorrow. And he ran out the door in almost like a panic or a manic type moment. For two days, he didn't come home. I got jumbled text messages. I was sent a picture of a girl in lingerie, cash being taken out of our account. I opened the door and his pants are around his ankles and he just fell in the front door. You see your spouse, you see the person you love, but it's a shell of them and they're not there anymore. But coming to the realization that I was not enough, my love was not enough, my waiting five months through rehab faithfully for him at home and paying the bills and working a job to pay for his rehab and taking care of our daughters, it was not enough. You can have success and be very unhealthy. The pride of being able to be a woman CEO, a woman business owner, having freedom and having a voice for the first time felt like healing, but I also feel like pride was present in that. And I had to learn how to handle success and how to handle it with humility. And little did I know that the crushing and the pressing and the annihilation of everything I knew was gonna give way and was going to birth a vision where I was going to look, be able to lift up the name of God and say, God didn't do that to you. It might have been done in the name of God, but that wasn't God.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

Dr. Bridget Tremmel. Um I'm I'm so intimidated talking to a doctor. I don't know. You can talk to yourself. So not exact, not this, not the same kind. I I my degree came from the backwoods of South Carolina, so it's uh it's different. It's different, but but no, we are um so glad you are here. I mean Renee, and you've all always uh or have been friends for quite a while, and she's been telling me about you. And then I saw your book come out, and I was like, holy cow! I was like, this is this is amazing. So thank you. So you just recently released a book. I want you to tell us a little bit about it. It's right here Trigger Warning.

SPEAKER_05 2:32

I I released the book Trigger Warning on Amazon, and um, it was number one bestseller under the category of abuse and self-help for 15 days straight. And people have been getting a lot of help from it. I've gotten so many messages from people saying, Thank you for sharing your story, thank you for talking about the trauma you went through. And it's really unlocked a wave of permission for other people to tell their stories. Um, I've had um women message me that they're getting the confidence to leave an abusive situation, or women who have had children commit suicide and they they said it's time for me to grieve that and share that and write my own book. And so it's just been so humbling watching God use this story because it took me three years to press upload because I was terrified.

SPEAKER_01 3:19

Wow.

SPEAKER_05 3:20

But it's been incredible.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

That had to be really stressful though to think about just putting putting it out there for the world to read.

SPEAKER_05 3:28

Definitely. When you put um your intimate details of your trauma out there, um, there is always the risk of being called a victim or of becoming um dramatic, or obviously there are people that will try to discredit you, maybe even villains from your past, or um you know, it it it's scary and you kind of have to just trust God and overcome that and um and trust that the power of the story is gonna be greater than the the sacrifice of the of the criticism that you're it is funny those voices that come along.

SPEAKER_06 4:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

That that you know, anytime you hear criticism, I think you've gotta ask yourself, like, who's this coming from? And what's it intended to do? Is this you know, I I got some criticism last week about about my preaching. Well, because I asked for it and I was like, hey, could you help me? Um that is intended to make me better. Uh but from time to time on my podcast, when I Andrew, Andrew, we talk about these comments all the time. There's sometimes there's just one comment that'll just be like, You aren't good at this.

SPEAKER_06 4:35

Well, if you're not getting criticism, I feel like you're not doing anything that's that's worth um anything, you know.

SPEAKER_05 4:41

I if it doesn't require courage, it's not your calling, you know.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

I just like I just laugh when it's just like you you aren't good at this. One one star. Thank you, thank you so much. So so but I do appreciate you being uh really bold to tell. And I and I've gone through your I've gone through your book, and it really is a Jesus story. Absolutely. And um stories like this, as you mentioned, you know, trauma, intimate details of your life, when those bring a lot of glory to Jesus, those are the stories I want to be a part of telling.

SPEAKER_05 5:15

So many people are just telling telling the story of pain. And it's important to talk about pain. You know, if you go to the doctor and you have a wound bleeding out under your shirt and you never lift the shirt up and show the doctor the wound, you can't get healed. Um, and you can't heal what you don't feel, right? So it's important to talk about the pain, but if you're never able to talk about the scars and you only talk about the wounds and you're just bleeding out all over everybody, it doesn't bring um redemption, it doesn't bring healing, it's not a story of hope. So trigger warning does talk about the pain. And I do believe that your influence only goes as far as your pain is deep, but then it talks about how God turned my wounds into scars and how not only through um scripture and through um the Holy Spirit and through God moving, but also through clinical um healing techniques and science as well. Yes. Um, you know, I was able to heal from that. And now I speak from scars instead of wounds.

SPEAKER_01 6:12

And those those are the the Lord gave us those things. The Lord, the Lord gave us the ability to learn, educate ourselves, go find people to teach us how to help people in the church, you know, rather than you should go talk to my Aunt Ethel about this. You know, she's great, you know, cigarette hanging out of her mouth, drinking coffee, just she'll fix everything you got. Hey, as we jump into the topic, and I and we I I want to talk about it, I just want to acknowledge like there's some sensitive things that we're gonna talk about today. Yeah, and man, uh my wife is is here, she's over in the studio, Renee. Uh I'm glad you're here. And uh you and Bridget are friends, and um, you brought you bring her a nice gift. And if you what if people watch the podcast, it's not a knife. And she was super upset about that, babe. So I don't know what you did with the with the purse, but Renee's my hype person today. Thank you, Renee. But she's in here just to kind of hang out and and um uh be here as we kind of have like a sensitive conversation, and we just wanted people to know that we're gonna treat this story with the utmost respect and care. And the reason is we want people to to have access to that because we find that you know when we tell these stories full of hope in Jesus, um, that people can find ultimate healing in him.

SPEAKER_07 7:33

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 7:34

So I want you to tell us a little bit, tell us a little bit about your family. Okay, tell us a little bit about tell us a little bit about those guys.

SPEAKER_05 7:41

So my husband, Josh, Pastor Josh, is fantastic. Um, I wrote about him in my book. Um, he grew up um in the church of God and he helped start churches his whole life. He was a missionary to Guatemala, he led missions teams there. And then um he started Take Heart Church about six months before we met. And so um he, of course, as the story goes, um, I met him on a snowy Christmas morning with my two tiny little girls, walked into his church, and it was just the most incredible thing. And so uh we now pastor here in South Carolina, and I have one daughter, Hallie is 13. Uh-huh. Haven is 11, and Hallie is my singer. She loves to sing constantly in the car, in the kitchen, in the shower.

SPEAKER_02 8:25

Everywhere. Everywhere.

SPEAKER_06 8:27

And she's fantastic. She's just like a um a ray of sunshine. And then our daughter Haven, you know her. She's friends with your son Cardiff.

SPEAKER_01 8:34

She likes to kick my son in the side of the head. And that's a true story.

SPEAKER_06 8:37

Yeah, she's our little uh black belt, you know, um, in training. So she is fantastic and fierce, and they couldn't be more opposite. And I absolutely love it.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

So we may or may not be working a side deal on these children growing up and and becoming one, right? We might need a betrothal contract.

SPEAKER_06 8:56

You know, I talk about courtship in my book. I was engaged four times.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

So I mean, why not just perpetuate we'll let it go? We're working on our end to straighten this boy out.

SPEAKER_06 9:06

I'd love for you and relay and Renee to be in-laws, so you know, maybe we can we can do that.

SPEAKER_01 9:10

It'd be perfect. Well, it sounds like a beautiful family, and uh man, it is just just walking through this story. But you where did you grow up? What part of the part of the world did you grow up in?

SPEAKER_05 9:19

So I was born in Baltimore, Maryland. Okay. I don't tell anyone that because now I live in South Carolina and I don't want them to know that I was born in the north.

SPEAKER_01 9:27

Well, you have that really good, like non-regional dialect.

SPEAKER_05 9:30

So I try the best I can to be neutral, right?

SPEAKER_01 9:33

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 9:34

But um, I've been all over the country. I've been to all but two states, um, lived in California, lived in Nashville, um, lived kind of all over because my parents had an evangelistic ministry, so we traveled all over, which was really neat growing up.

SPEAKER_01 9:47

Man, you grew up in there, and that kind of launches you into your story right in the book. Tell us a little bit about like some of those things that really kind of paint the picture of the backdrop of what the story you're telling.

SPEAKER_05 9:59

So um I grew up in a large family. I was the oldest of five kids, and um, my parents came out of that hippie culture in the 70s. You know, my dad tells a story how he was a rock and roll drummer and did some drugs, you know, in his younger years and was gloriously saved, accepted Jesus as his savior at 19 after facing a jail sentence and all that, and God just changed his life, he never touched drugs again. Um, my mom grew up a little high school cheerleader and homecoming queen. So um they met in Bible college in Kansas City and got involved in the um Youth for Christ and all that. So they had this passion for holiness because of what they came out of, and they really had a passion to protect their kids and things. So they um joined the independent fundamental Baptist movement, which so many people did in the 90s.

SPEAKER_01 10:50

Yeah, I mean, listen, I we were we were in it a little bit before that. I'm a little older than you are, but we we I grew up in the in the IFB. Yes. Um right here in the Greenville area. And so we go, we we we got some connections to the Mecca to the All Roads lead to IFB, right?

SPEAKER_05 11:06

So uh we became a singing family. So uh we we recorded several CDs and we would roll into a church and I would play the piano, my sister would play the violin, and we would get up there, the Rossi family, and we would sing and go church to church. So I've been to hundreds of independent Baptist churches across the country. Um, and I would run my dad's tape table and do his little newsletter. And so I grew up in ministry.

SPEAKER_01 11:29

Um If you don't know what a tape table is, just for the record, if you don't know what if you don't know what a tape table. If you don't, but if you don't know what a tape table is, like that's a whole nother world. I know the level at which you know Jesus. If you can describe to me what a tape table is. Do you understand what I'm saying? Yes, oh my so the church we grew up in is independent fundamental, and that was the world like it, like it was a ministry. Yeah, it was tape ministry. And like I would go down to the basement of this church, and it was all these big time independent fundamental preachers, like big time, and they would be like on a production line pumping these tapes out, and we'd be sitting there putting the stickers on these tapes, stickers on the page. And you remember, you know, my favorite thing? This is crazy. You know how this middle part will pull out and then it would leave the outside thing? I would take those and put them down my pants and walk around like that's how cool I was.

SPEAKER_06 12:22

Then we graduated from tapes to CDs, yeah, and you put them in the little sleeve and put the label on the jewels, those were called jewels.

SPEAKER_01 12:29

I don't know why. Who came up with that?

SPEAKER_06 12:33

So I I was a uh professional tape table runner at the right baby at the age of 16, you know, and uh we traveled all over.

SPEAKER_05 12:41

So I ended up going to several different independent Baptist colleges. We went to Golden State Baptist College. I went spent some time at Crown College of the Bible in Powell, Tennessee, eventually landed at Hiles Anderson College, which is one of the most right-wing colleges in the IFE. And so I kind of got to know the whole organization. And it was every girl's, you know, training, every girl's dream, every girl's goal to find a preacher boy, right? That was the goal is to find Mr. Wright, to find a man. And I'll be honest, I did believe I was called to ministry. I still feel called to ministry. I know that God has put a special call on my life. And so I don't think there's anything wrong with that, with hearing the call and wanting to be in ministry. But the colleges that I went to, many of them only had a marriage and ministry degree or an education degree for women, and there really wasn't anything else in between.

SPEAKER_01 13:36

I mean, who doesn't need to go get a college degree on how to be married?

SPEAKER_06 13:39

Yeah. So I was on a cr a quest for a preacher boy in my long skirt, um, you know, playing my piano and reading my King James Bible.

SPEAKER_01 13:49

That's what's tripping these dudes up, is the ankles. You gotta be dry, you gotta be dragging that dead. Did you wear culottes at any point while you were swimming?

SPEAKER_06 13:58

Oh, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:59

It's okay. So this was not scheduled. It's so funny to me, just growing up in the IFB. We would go to like summer camp.

SPEAKER_06 14:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:06

And it would be like, girls, you need dark t-shirts, yep, and culottes. If you don't know what culottes are, people are gonna leave this episode, they're gonna be like, I have a lot to Google. If you don't know what culottes are, describe what culottes are.

SPEAKER_05 14:17

So if you were to jump out of a plane skydiving, you would not need the parachute. You would not they would go like they're they're they're so A-line that they just, you know, they're A-line as possible, they're below the knee or right at the knee, and they're just a big triangle parachute full set of shorts that go all the way below the knee.

SPEAKER_01 14:37

Yeah, yeah. The like mid-calf is where they'll come. That was what the girls that we knew had to swim in. Yes. Like, so then it would be like, what standard do the boys have? And they're like, oh, they're fine. It doesn't matter. They would just be swimming in regular stuff. Yes. And the girls would be literally wearing like coats and culottes while it was insane.

SPEAKER_06 14:58

My my my uh how I grew up was a little more relaxed. We could wear like the long boys shorts at times. Okay, but at Hiles Anderson, you had to wear nylons under the culottes. Of course.

SPEAKER_05 15:08

Even if you're on the volleyball court or anything, it was it was intense. It was modesty, modest is hottest is what Modest is hottest.

SPEAKER_01 15:15

Listen, and if you if you if also the name Hiles, like if I meet someone and they have a child with the middle name Hiles, I'm immediately on guard. I'm like, okay. If your name is Hiles out there, it'll I it's gonna be a trigger. It's a warning.

SPEAKER_06 15:28

It's a trigger warning for sure. I'll know, I'll know that.

SPEAKER_01 15:31

So you're at college there and you were looking for the haircut, the suit, the whole thing, right?

SPEAKER_05 15:36

Yes, and um, you know, I know we'll get into a little bit about the holiness culture and some of the damage that it did to young people and young couples during that time, but there also were good things where I was so rooted in finding God's call and so rooted in um just uh on a quest for truth, on a quest for God's calling. And um, I do believe that God did guide me and lead me during that time. And I had such a relationship with Jesus, even in the midst of all the rules and the performance culture. Um, but but I did marry a boy from the independent fundamental Baptist movement. Um, and he was a flaming hot evangelist. And he was booked out, you know, several months, and I thought this is great, we're gonna travel around the country just like I did with my dad, and we're gonna have this great ministry. And we got married and we actually did have three years of meetings booked up, had 300 save the first year in ministry, and I just, you know, it started off with a bang. It really was my dreams coming true at that point. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:42

That's incredible. And um, I I I want to talk a little bit like as you get into that marriage, like some of that some of the childhood stuff that you had gone through was really challenging for you as well grow growing up in those environments.

SPEAKER_05 16:55

Yes. My mom um um she had developed some really um significant health problems early on. And so I sort of took on this mantle that I was the the third parent or the right hand. And I think, you know, those health problems sort of cause this triangulation where I felt that I was on the same level as my parents carrying this pressure, and it felt like almost my childhood was a non-existent. I went straight from being a kid to being a in my mind an adult around nine or ten and sort of carrying this burden that was sort of unspoken. And I think a lot of kids in that performance culture, um just being on stage and having to perform and having to serve, and you add in the name of God can perpetuate a lot of uh religious trauma or a lot of um uh misunderstanding of what being in ministry really should be and what it should look like. So with my mom's sickness and us traveling all the time on the road, I had a different front yard every week. So the show must go on, you know, you gotta put a smile, gotta run the tape table. So um, but I learned to sort of table my emotions, table my desires. Uh we got into the Bill Gothard movement for a while there. A lot of people did, um, again, from a great motive, trying to protect our kids. But there was a lot of things wrong with these organizations because there wasn't accountability. And there was families homeschooling these kids behind closed doors or in these tight-knit little personality cult churches where these these um these women and these children didn't have a voice, and now we see a lot of podcasts like Let Us Pray, P-R-E-Y, or Shiny Happy People. We see there was a lot going on behind the scenes.

SPEAKER_01 18:40

Yeah, I listen, and you know, we're not here to talk all about my my story today, but I definitely can resonate with with what some of that was like, just the environments that we grew up in. And as we talk about the the IFB church, I I do want to say the church of today is a lot different than the church we grew up in. In fact, I've got I got very, very close friends who are faithful preachers of God's word and doing great ministry right here, um uh right here in this town, and and I know they're all across the country. Um, so I just want to make sure that you know, I don't want any sort of shadow that might be out there to be cast over meaning we're saying, hey, this is how everybody was, but the reality of your situation is absolutely true. And we need to learn from that. And how how is it that we understand, hey, these things did happen. We need to deal with them, we need to talk about how we deal with that even as adults, and as you're continuing to do ministry to this day.

SPEAKER_05 19:40

And I agree. I know a lot of fantastic pastors and wonderful, good-hearted people in the independent fundamental Baptist movement. So I also want to clear off the spot and say there are some great people there with great motives. However, the one little caveat that keeps coming up that we see is just the lack of accountability. Now, we could talk all day about denominations and the problems there, but but at least with a denomination, you have an oversight that can create checks and balances for pastors. And I think the independent Baptist, because it's independent, left the door open for predators, for people with bad motives to come in and prey on the flock. And I think that's what we've seen with some of this systemic um abuse and systemic pedophilia, systemic things which you find in any organization, especially those without accountability.

SPEAKER_01 20:31

Yeah, that's a that's a really, really great point. Is that opportunity was there, and I think people found it and they took advantage of that particular thing. And I think the enemy wants to destroy because there was a day when the IFB movement was holding the line on whether or not we're gonna believe the Bible and Jesus rose from the dead, right? Those are those are these found fundamental things of the faith. They were holding the line on that, on that stuff. When when other denominations are arguing about whether or not the Bible's true, those guys were like, wait a minute, you know, this is true, it's always been true, it will always be true. Um, but it did open the door for some very difficult circumstances for people, as you said, happens in many different organizations. So I picking back up with you you come out of Bible college, you get married, you're on the road, you got you got all these dates, you got people being saved. Man, tell me tell me about this story.

SPEAKER_05 21:24

Yes. So I was so excited to finally be married. So I was 28 years old when I got married. And so for um the the the um environment I grew up on, I was an old maid, right? Like you're supposed to get married at 20, 21. Yeah, having your kids.

SPEAKER_00 21:41

So exactly.

SPEAKER_05 21:43

So at 28, man, I had waited, I had, I had, you know, saved myself, saved my heart for this preacher boy. And I was 28. I had served for six years in church ministry on staff at a church, and so I was so excited. And my first chapter of my book. Opens up where I'm at the altar, my dreams are coming true. 28 years of faithfulness to God and fantasizing about what it would be like to be married. And after we got into the limousine, after this beautiful ceremony, hundreds of people attended, he just started opening checks. And um, all the way to the hotel, I remember my heart just feeling like something's not right. Something's not right. And a little bit of disappointment turned into a tsunami of sorrow.

SPEAKER_02 22:39

Oh no.

SPEAKER_05 22:40

Um my book talks about how my wedding night was 30 seconds, still had my wedding dress on, he was snoring in the corner. Now I know he was probably high on some type of substance. Um, but I remember the disappointment of that and how big I had built it up in my mind and how disappointing that was. And it's interesting that we're having this podcast now because three days ago, my husband Josh found the CD under a bunch of boxes of my wedding ceremony to my first husband. Oh my god. And he didn't tell me, he found it. He took it to his office at the church and he watched the whole thing. Oh, he came back and he was in tears. And he said, I need to talk to you. I did something behind your back. And I thought, oh no, he's gonna tell me about some secret betrayal or you know, like and he said, I did something behind your back, and he had tears in his eyes, and he never cries. And I was like, What is it? And he said, I watched your wedding, and he said, I'm sorry I did that behind your back. But he said, the amount of joy on your face, he said, I don't even think I've seen that much joy on your face since I've known you. And he said, I am so sorry for the disappointment that I knew followed about an hour after that video. And um, just the, and I think too, that's another thing with the holiness culture. And we're not here to bash the holiness culture. Like it's great to have standards and convictions, and I have them for my family and for my children. But I think just this over sexualization of a wedding night and no education for these young couples. Um, I think I was, I was sort of um just had unrealistic expectations. And then you add on a husband that had all kinds of addictions going on. It just made for a very disappointing, bitter wedding night. And that feeling in the pit of my stomach continued for months after that. There would be these highs where my husband would be on stage in front of 3,000 people doing, you know, two-hour-long altar calls. It was fantastic. And I'm playing the piano and it was great. And then he would sleep 15 hours the next day. And, you know, you kind of blame it on the stress of the ministry. I was extremely naive. I had didn't have a TV growing up. Um, I had never been around alcohol or drugs or any kind of we didn't even have drums in our churches, you know.

SPEAKER_01 25:04

So alcohol, drugs, drums. They're the same. They're the same.

SPEAKER_05 25:09

But um, but it was such a confusing time for me. And then I remember the first big event in my marriage where it was just earth shattering. My husband um at the time came running in to our our um kitchen. It's about six months after we got married, and told me that he had a friend from high school that wanted to know about the Lord and had asked him about Jesus. And he was gonna go and have lunch with this friend.

SPEAKER_01 25:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 25:43

But he was so animated and so hyped up, something was not right.

SPEAKER_01 25:48

Yeah, something didn't change.

SPEAKER_05 25:49

Something wasn't right. And he ran out the door, barely pulling up his pants, just running out in a in almost like a panic or a manic type moment. He left the the sink running in the bathroom. And I remember just, I didn't know much. I was very naive, but my intuition and fear just struck in my heart. And I fell down on my knees, and I remember that the chair was was white with red flowers on it, or they were like mauve flowers, and I remember my tears hitting those those flowers and they're turning crimson red and thinking something's not right. For two days, he didn't come home.

SPEAKER_01 26:25

Two days.

SPEAKER_05 26:26

And for two nights, I got jumbled text messages. I was sent a picture of a girl in lingerie from below. I was um I saw cash being taken out of our account in ATM machines. Um, he wasn't answering the phone. And I just was in this state of shock and numbness. And I just prayed. And after two days, he came home, he knocked on the door, I opened the door, and his pants were around his ankles, and he just fell in the front door. And I helped him get to the couch and he passed out in another seemed like forever. I don't know exactly how many hours was it, I think like 12 hours he slept. And I waited for him to wake up and sat there and watched him sleep. And that was right at Christmas time. And he woke up and told me this story about how his friend had given him a pill because he had a headache and it made him black out, and he stole all his money and drove him around and took it out of ATMs.

SPEAKER_01 27:23

And because I was so naive, yeah, and I had no education, and I had no one really to talk to, because I felt if I talked to anybody about that, it would hurt the cause of Christ because of these people that were getting saved and he's doing this, he's living this one life on stage, doing God's work out here sharing the gospel, or so you thought. And then on the other side of that is a deep and dark, hidden life.

SPEAKER_05 27:51

Yes. And I remember just wanting to believe that the story was true. You know, and now that I'm a Christian counselor, I I know that the first stage of grief is denial. And so I think there was so much denial because if I really believed that my husband was an addict, then all of my dreams that I had built up in my mind and this amazing life that I thought that I had would not be true. And then what do you do?

SPEAKER_01 28:22

Well, your whole life is cracked apart. Your whole life is gone.

SPEAKER_05 28:26

So I struggled with denial for a while. Um, I remember another story. My husband was preaching at a at a big camp meeting in China Grove right down the road here. Yeah. And um, and I remember he preached for over two and a half hours. People were getting up and leaving in buses, like buses of youth groups were leaving. The tabernacle was dwindling. I went out in the woods and tried to call a pastor that I thought might be safe to talk about, but he wasn't there to help me. I stood in the back of the tabernacle and hit my pointed to my watch and was like trying to stop him. He kept repeating stories and repeating stories. Um, and then he gave another altar call that was over an hour, kept repeating himself. Um, and so finally, when we got him down off the stage, my heart was racing. I was humiliated, I was freaking out. The moderator of the meeting, an older man in a suit and tie, came up to me in the back. He said, Young lady, were you signaling to your husband to stop preaching in the back of the tabernacle? And I remember thinking, maybe this guy is on to it, maybe he is somebody that I could talk to to get help for you. Somebody safe, yeah. And I said, Yes, sir. And he said, Don't you ever hinder the spirit of God like that. The Holy Spirit was all over your husband and you were a hindrance. And I remember thinking, it's hopeless. Who am I gonna talk to? He's he's he was high on heroin. And I I didn't feel there's anyone I could go to. And these situations were recurring. Um, my husband crashed a car, uh, almost crashed a rental car um right before he preached to thousands of kids, again, looping his testimony, you know, and I had to sit through so many of these meetings just terrified of the unpredictability of the addiction showing up. By the time that we um that it all came to a head, my husband was a full-blown heroin addict. He was buying and selling heroin. He also used cocaine. He was also using um prescription drugs as well that he had from a few different doctors. And so it was a full-blown um thing. By the end, um, we hired a private investigator and found out he was meeting with prostitutes and things like that. So it was a whole entire double lifestyle um that was going on. And I was oblivious to a lot of it. But when I look back, some of it was a lack of education, but some of it was denial.

SPEAKER_01 30:58

Yeah, you didn't you didn't really want to see those difficult things that because it would the the repercussions of that were that you lost everything you cared most about. All those things you were hoping and dreaming for standing at that altar. Kind of the look on your face that you you know, your husband Josh says, Hey, I have yeah, this sense of happiness in you is now really dark because it's that's gone. Yeah. Like all that. Yeah, all that was.

SPEAKER_05 31:26

And there's many lies that we tell ourselves when we're in an abusive situation. Number one, flat out denial, it's not happening because I don't want it to be happening. It's not as bad as you think it is, yeah. Or it's not as bad as you think it is, or women go, well, he only hit me once, or he only, you know, um did this once, um, or maybe it's not what you think. But when we deny these little traumas, we're literally allowing and perpetuating the abuse. We're allowing um things to damage us. And I think the number one thing that's the hardest for victims is to um get through that denial.

SPEAKER_01 32:04

Well, I think it it compounds, it's it makes it more problematic that your spouse, your husband, is literally a high profile individual or a person who's on a stage or a pastor. And that makes it even more difficult because I'm sure there's gotta be questions in your mind like, will anyone actually believe that this is the case?

SPEAKER_05 32:27

It's funny you say that. In my book, um, I talk about the first time I actually told someone.

SPEAKER_01 32:34

Oh my god tell me about that.

SPEAKER_05 32:35

Um, so my husband had been shipped off to rehab. He went to five rehabs.

SPEAKER_01 32:40

Now, during this whole time, he's he's still doing the ministry thing kind of back and forth. Were his family just helping keep that underway? Family was great and all that.

SPEAKER_05 32:51

They were my only support. Okay, you know, um, the immediate family and the few people that we eventually did have to let in. Yeah. And there was times we took sabbaticals. There was a time I personally wrote a letter and signed it, my husband's name, and sent it to all of our supporting churches and told them about the addiction because I didn't feel comfortable taking money from God's people.

SPEAKER_00 33:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 33:13

And him being in rehab. And shockingly, several churches were fantastic and supported us through that and had grace time after time. Um, and so there were some wonderful pastors that really did support through the addiction and things.

SPEAKER_01 33:28

Um so this first moment where you tell someone.

SPEAKER_05 33:31

The first time he had been sent to rehab, and I had um, you know, two babies. One was two weeks old, one was two years old. Um, and it was right after I had left my husband, um, and he went off to rehab. And I was sitting there with a lady in my church who had brought me a casserole and put it on the counter, and my kids are playing on the floor. And I told her everything because he eventually became abusive, you know. Um, and some of that's in my book, some domestic violence situations. Not everything's in the book, but several stories are. And I finally laid it all out and said what I had truly been through, not the Sunday school version of pray for my husband. He's so overwhelmed with preaching and being on the road and the stress of the ministry that he took a little too much of his prescription. I told her the real deal that he had a double lifestyle. And she just looked at me and said, I don't believe you. He's so spiritual.

SPEAKER_01 34:23

I don't believe you was her response to that.

SPEAKER_05 34:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:27

Like you the first time you like bore your heart to another individual.

SPEAKER_05 34:30

And I just remember the walls, it felt like the walls were closing in. It felt like my chest was heavy, it felt like I was suffocating. Um and it felt hopeless. And I think that's what number one, denial keeps victims from speaking out. Number two, the cause of Christ. They don't want to hurt Christ by talking about a pastor that might be doing something wrong.

SPEAKER_02 34:54

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 34:54

And then the third thing is they think no one's gonna believe me.

unknown 34:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 34:58

Because I think so often nobody does.

SPEAKER_01 35:00

I was gonna say, that's not that's that's not based in some alternate reality. Like, I mean, there are a lot of people that just their stories aren't aren't validated, they aren't believed, they aren't taken seriously. And that's unfortunate. That's unfortunate. How long did you have to live like that without having some sort of support in your life, someone you could talk about?

SPEAKER_05 35:21

Well, like I said, my family was supportive, my ex-husband's family, phenomenal. My mother-in-law was fantastic and supported me through all of it. Um, I had great friends, great cousins that that helped me through. So I did have my little inner circle that did encourage me through a lot of those things. But um, I think when I left, chapter one of my book is called just becoming the coach. You just have to decide that if you don't like your life, you're allowed to change it. And I think so many women or victims don't realize that you can change your life unless you're locked up in a prison cell, bound and gagged, you can walk out of an abusive situation. You can walk out of a church, you can walk out of a marriage. I mean, you know, there's obviously reasons you want to try and work on that and not try to have a just a license to divorce at any little thing, but you can um seek help. And if the first person doesn't believe you and the second person doesn't believe you, the third one will.

SPEAKER_01 36:25

I that I would ask you directly, like if you if you were like sitting here talking to someone who's in the middle of that right now, looking desperately trying to find a way to find some kind of help, what would you tell them?

SPEAKER_05 36:38

I would tell them to tell their story. Find a safe person to tell your story to. And if at first you don't succeed, try, try again, right? Because there is an entire world out there that is going to believe you and is going to validate you and is going to help you. And if the people in your warm market, the people in your immediate environment are perpetuating the abuse, or maybe they're in denial, maybe they can't handle the truth about their son or their pastor or their sister or whoever the abuser may be. If they can't handle the truth about it, go to a safe place that will. There's so many support groups, there's so many churches that will open their arms and welcome you in and help you find the resources you need. So if the first person doesn't believe you, then they're not the right person to help you. And they may just be in denial about the weight of your truth and they can't handle the truth of what you're bringing to them because it's heavy sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 37:38

Yeah. Oh my goodness. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 37:40

Or it might it might conflict with their own trauma as well that they're not willing to face.

SPEAKER_01 37:44

Well, and and also I I always always try to say this really clearly. Like if you feel like you're in some sort of danger, like you may need to immediately take yourself out of that situation. Find find some kind of law enforcement, some some at your kids' school, there are counselors, there's people, there are people in so many different places at your at your church. There may be people, find someone to get you into a safe place. Like waiting another day in a situation that could cost you more than you really know that you're gonna pay is not worth it.

SPEAKER_05 38:25

Like, don't there's domestic violence or if a minor is unsafe, or is there if there's sexual um, you know, abuses or molestation of a minor, the authorities have to be called immediately.

SPEAKER_02 38:36

Immediately.

SPEAKER_05 38:37

You know, and I think so often um people think, oh, I'll go to my pastor or go to the church. Call the authorities if you feel unsafe, if your children are unsafe, or if you know of a child that's unsafe, or a person who is being victimized, and even emotional abuse. I talk in my book, why don't victims immediately seek help? You know, you often hear about a woman who's been beaten for three, four years by a man and she doesn't come forward. The brain, when it is in trauma, it takes all of the brain power and basically puts it into your body. So if you're running across to pasture from a 600-pound steer, your body, your adrenaline is hyped up, your cortisol is hyped up, your limbic system, your fight or flight is on full alert. And the prefrontal cortex, the decision-making, the problem-solving factor of your brain almost shuts down and paralyzes to preserve all the energy for the rest of your body to be able to jump that fence and get away from that threat. So so often, people that are in trauma aren't able to use reasoning and problem solving in that moment until the trauma dies down. They either freeze, flight, or fawn, which is try to please the abuser to get out of the situation, something like a Stockholm syndrome type thing. So it takes victims a while to sort of stabilize and kind of get that reasoning back into their brains, you know, a lot of times.

SPEAKER_01 40:10

A lot of times people don't realize that in that kind of a trauma, they a lot of times people don't know that they aren't going to respond like they think they will. They they are not going to have it all together and know, okay, I know the right next move. In fact, those those are some those are some things for for people when you're in a moment to where you have clarity.

SPEAKER_04 40:30

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 40:31

Like those are the moments where you you reach out before you find yourself in in that point.

SPEAKER_05 40:36

That's right. There's a story in my book um about my husband and I riding down the road and him jerking the car off to the side on 85 and pushing me against the window and and strangling me and telling me that he's gonna kill me and drown me in the lake. And going through that moment, the predominant emotion was shock and hurt. It was shock, it was an out-of-body experience. I could see myself down below, and I was watching the experience happen out of body. Because when your brain has something that's so painful that it cannot process, it will dissociate to protect you. So your brain doesn't proverbially explode, right? Right. So seeing myself above, and when I went back and did EMDR therapy, I was the same way. I was hovering above. And so many trauma victims, if you're beaten as a child or or you had this horrific um physical abuse, a lot of times your body will dissociate, um, your mind will dissociate from your body. Same thing with emotional abuse, they're invisible scars. Um, when you're being belittled or criticized or um or made to feel you're worthless, a lot of times will dissociate, and that's the the brain doing a really good job protecting you.

SPEAKER_02 41:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 41:54

You know, but but for me, it was so much shock and so much sorrow that it was a dissociation because I couldn't imagine that the person I love the most in the world did not love me back. And I think it was that moment that I realized he doesn't love me back. He loves his addiction, or maybe the shell of who he was used to love me, but now the addiction zombie does not. And I think that hit me so hard in that moment. It wasn't even the physical abuse at all. It was the emotional moment of knowing the person I had waited my whole life for, the father of my children, this pastor that I just adored, was threatening to kill me.

SPEAKER_01 42:40

How how much of that did you internalize in the sense of like, okay, I feel like if I were just this, or was there any of that that you walk through? Like if I could be a better this kind of spouse or that kind of spouse, and he wouldn't be living this way. I was that one of the was that a response that you're gonna do. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 42:58

Absolutely. Um, and I write a whole section in there about addiction and how I felt I could save him, or it's up to me to save him, you know? And um, I write about addiction and it's so powerful to understand addiction because at first, obviously, it's a choice, right? Pick up the bottle, you take the pill, you snort, whatever it is. Yeah, addiction can be a choice at the beginning. But once that substance takes over and the brain becomes dependent on it, it becomes less and less of a choice and more of a whisper. So for my husband, it was heroin. So imagine in the brain, you know, dopamine, um, you have these reward units of dopamine. So I like to talk about it like a chocolate chip cookie is 50 units of of reward in the brain of dopamine hit, right? Um, a sex is 500 dopamine hit, okay? Heroin is 2000. So you can't compete with that.

SPEAKER_01 43:58

No.

SPEAKER_05 43:58

And the The um humiliation and the shame and the feelings of worthlessness that set in for me as a young bride, as a young girl, trying to please my husband in every way. And this substance was so much more powerful than me. It was more powerful than our children. He ended up just signing our kids away when they came for child support, um, just so he didn't have to pay the bill. Um, the children that he once adored and was obsessed with and loved, it was like they didn't exist. And so watching him turn from a loving, warm human that loved Jesus into this addiction zombie that was willing to do anything for a hit was it was just like watching The Walking Dead. You see your spouse, you see the person you love, but it's a shell of them and they're not there anymore. But coming to the realization that um I was not enough, my love was not enough, my faithfulness was not enough, my waiting five months through rehab faithfully for him at home and paying the bills and working a job to pay for his rehab and taking care of our daughters, it was not enough. That was one of the most difficult things. And again, going back to that denial, it took me years to figure out that I just couldn't save him.

SPEAKER_01 45:27

How did you finally get out of that situation, Bridget?

SPEAKER_05 45:32

Um after several times, and I will say this I went to two years of marriage counseling. We tried five rehabs because I wanted to make sure that when I laid my head on my pillow after I left my husband, that I would have no regrets. And then I truly knew I had done everything I could before God. And as I watched him slowly break marriage vows little by little, I finally knew that it truly was something that I could not save. Um, and you can you can give 90%, but if the other person won't give 10%, you know. So I think it it finally came to the realization that it could not be fixed and that it was dangerous for my children and for me.

SPEAKER_01 46:18

Because let us not forget, you had two babies that you're trying to take care of at the same time, managing him at the same time, working at the same time, trying to keep up with sponsors, churches, a ministry, and your own family. Like that, it must have been absolutely overwhelming for you.

SPEAKER_05 46:35

It was, and he was a wonderful person. He was the father of my children. I fell in love with him, right? Um, wonderful preacher, just larger than life, just he would light up a room. He was wonderful. So it was so hard to separate um the person that I loved from the dangerous addiction that was setting in. And when I finally realized that it wasn't safe and that it wasn't okay, I started to save money. I started to make plans. Um, and one night at 4 a.m. in the morning, I packed my two-year-old in her little car seat, took my two-week old baby and put her in a car seat, and I left at four in the morning and drove to my sister's. And my husband woke up when I started the car engine. Um, and he came running out of the house and he said, Please don't leave, please don't leave, please come back, please screaming. And I drove away and tears were going down my face. But um, but I knew that it had to be his decision to get better, and I told him for at least a year after that, there is a road home. There is a road home. I just need to see that you're clean for a year and we can reconcile. And I had pastors knock on my door physically and tell me that I was in sin, that I needed to submit, that I needed to have restitution with my husband. Some pastors were fantastic, so um, and supported us. But um, it was a very difficult time of loneliness and um confusion after that. And I tell people every day in my counseling office, if you leave this abusive situation, it's like it's like in the Holocaust uh the Jews were in Germany and there was many sympathetic um Germans and Swiss people that would help them get across the border. But there is gonna be a no man's land between the abuse and peace that is gonna be filled with loneliness and struggle and sacrifice and self-doubt, and you were gonna go across that snowy, snowy um landscape, you're gonna have to cross the Alps into Switzerland and you're gonna you're gonna face starvation, you're gonna face the temptation to turn back to the familiar. Um, but if you can set a course and you can stick with your decision and you can follow through on the other side of that time of loneliness, is so much peace and so much abundance. And God sent me a man who loves me, brings me coffee every day. He adopted my children. Um, and now our ministry is authentic because it comes from a place of pain. Whereas my ministry before was I tell people that I used to be a travel agent. I would say, here's the brochure.

SPEAKER_06 49:26

You're gonna go to this beautiful location. Here's a couple Bible verses. God bless you. You know, here's how to walk with God. And now my ministry is hey, I'm the tour guide, I know where the lions are, I got a couple scars and a rifle, follow me.

SPEAKER_01 49:40

Done that and got the t-shirt, and that's the difference. Bridget, how tell me how what how was the Lord? I mean, you had this trauma that came from people that directly represent him. So, in the middle of you trying to navigate like your own connection with him and his love for you, how are you able to see that through that? I just I love how you describe that no man's land. Yes, and I and I think people find themselves in that place in all sorts of arenas of life. And I can I can feel, I can deeply feel what you're describing to me there, the temptation to go back, the the you questioning yourself, was it as bad as I thought it was? You know, were those kids really in danger? Did I have did I have to take, you know, did I have to take such a serious, drastic move here? How how was the Lord like clear and present with you in those moments?

SPEAKER_05 50:44

I call that no man's land between Germany and Switzerland, the snowy Alps. Yeah, I call that the fellowship of his sufferings. Jesus was never sweeter than in that time. I didn't understand. I was confused as someone who pursued God's will, read my King James Bible, wore my culottes, right? Yeah, and and saved myself for the perfect husband, even had a couple of engagements that that didn't feel it was right. My, you know, and I couldn't understand why I did all the right things and I was supposed to have blessing, right? There was a big question mark why is God doing this to me? I was supposed to have checked all the boxes, and then the blessings are supposed to occur. I was supposed to marry a great pastor, have a wonderful family, have a wonderful ministry, because God promised that obedience brings blessing.

SPEAKER_01 51:37

Especially reading the King James Bible. Yeah, of course, holiness culture.

SPEAKER_05 51:40

And again, I'm teaching those things to my kids, you know? Um, walk with God and He will bless you. But um I think that every trauma eventually leads back to religious trauma because we ask, why is God doing this to us? Right. Jesus was the first person to show the clinical stages of grief in the garden biblically. Before he went to the cross, he said, God, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He showed anger toward God and confusion. He showed bargaining. He said, Hey, let this cup pass for me. Jesus knew that the cup was not going to pass for him. Jesus knew from the beginning of the world that the redemption plan had to take place. I believe Jesus showed his anxiety. He showed us hematourosis. He sweated blood from his anxiety. His blood vessels were popping and he begged his friends to stay. He knew he shouldn't be alone. He said, Why are you guys falling asleep? I need people around me in my inner circle. Jesus modeled the five clinical stages of grief for us in the garden when he went to the cross. But then at the end of it, he said, Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done. But you notice he said, Your will be done, and then said, Why have you forsaken me?

SPEAKER_01 53:01

Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_05 53:03

So if Jesus could have that struggle within himself, I believe he showed us the humanity of what it looks like to go through grief and how we question God. And God is big enough to handle our questions. God is big enough to handle our anger, he's big enough to handle our depression. And when I was in that little two-bedroom apartment in Malden with my two kids over at Millennial Apartments, I started with $97 in my checking account. I wrote $5,000 to my lawyer to get my kids and to keep them safe and to get custody. I would go into my little closet after the girls were asleep and I would beat my Bible with my fist and I would scream out, why, why, why? I just don't understand, but I trust you, but I don't understand. And the pain and the grief and the bargaining and the anger and the denial and the depression, it came like a wave, but Jesus was there. In Psalm 85, he says, God is near to the brokenhearted. I have never felt closer to God than in that time of my life. And in that moment, Jesus came to me and he said, In your weakness, I am made strong. That verse. If we don't get weak, God cannot be strong in us. And that's where he meets us. And that's why we're I see people so afraid to talk about their weaknesses or their blind spots or their pain or their mistakes. But that is where God is strong, is in our weakness. And when we're brokenhearted, we're never closer to him. We don't have to be perfect. I didn't have to. I was a I was going through a divorce. I was a single mom married to an addict, becoming a statistic, and God was with me. I've never felt closer to him. It was in that time of loneliness that he met me there and he strengthened me, and I had joy in the midst of my grief.

SPEAKER_01 55:02

You know, you mentioned that you mentioned that moment in the garden. I my heart is flooded with the weight of that when I think about just how the Lord, how Jesus stepped into stepped into that divide, like between heaven and hell for us, right? And I and I mean that in this way, that if he didn't do something about sin, that we were destined to be separated from him forever. Like it it was that moment where his humanity cried out in every way. And that the what like the weight of your story, the weight of that pain, like that weight resonates with that pain that Jesus died for.

SPEAKER_05 55:56

Yes, and without the humiliation of the cross, there could have been no resurrection from the grave. And humiliation is something that we experience when we go through these horrific events. It's a part of humanity. But it says that Jesus endured the cross, which was designed for humiliation. They pulled out his beard, they shoved the crown of thorns, they said, ha ha, king of the Jews, they mocked him. The humiliation of it all, but it says he despised the shame. Shame and humiliation are not the same. Humiliation is what's done to you. Shame says this is who you are. And so often when we go through these traumas, these victims go through these deep wounds. The enemy comes in and says, This is who you are. And it's okay to be humiliated and flattened and squished and annihilated. That's what happens to a butterfly and a cocoon. It's liquefied.

SPEAKER_02 56:48

Right.

SPEAKER_05 56:48

But you know, a butterfly's wings don't start growing until they're completely liquefied. They're called imaginal cells. And it's the same thing with us. We cannot be transformed, we cannot be empowered, experience the power of his sufferings until we are humiliated. But if we let shame in, that's where the enemy comes. And so often I talk to victims that are giving way to shame. And it's like a mouse infestation behind the wall. There's never just one thought of shame. They, they, they breed, they infest. But when you bring that mouse out into the light and trap it with God's truth, that's when you really begin to see God working in these wounds and turning them into scars.

SPEAKER_01 57:28

You know, people people ask me all the time, like, hey, hey, tell me, you do this thing where you coach leaders and you you coach churches, you help guide churches through like mission, vision, values. Tell me, why are you doing this podcast? You know, and I'm like, well, I I want to talk to leaders who have been able to understand who they are in light of what Jesus has done for them. And it is that thing, like if if if a leader can find, if a leader can find that moment of identity, right, and they can see like through it all, through that abuse, through the suffering, through the disappointment, through the fear and anxiety, through no man's land, if they can understand, like I do have blessing. I am, I mean, that's that's that's Genesis 12. Yes. When God says to Abraham, I will make you a blessing. Yes. Why? So we will bless others. Like this story is his story. Like this, this is about the fulfillment of the promise that God is doing a work through Jesus. And it's in that it's in that moment of identity where I believe I believe this with all my heart. No matter what you're doing in your life, like God has given you a blessing to leverage there.

SPEAKER_02 58:52

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 58:53

And what is that benefit? What is that blessing tied to?

SPEAKER_02 58:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 58:56

That blessing is tied to your identity. So, so Genesis 12. I'll I'll take a I'll take a couple minutes to tell this. Genesis 12, God, I swear exactly what I'm about to do. I'm gonna go, where's my Bible? Bring me my Bible. Genesis 12, God makes this promise, right? To Abraham. He says, I will make you a blessing so you can bless others. And when we think about blessing, I think so many people are looking for what are the things that God's going to give me? And then they find themselves in the moment like where you were, and those things have disappeared. And you wonder, well, did the blessing go or did I never have it? Or what about God's promise? And then you're asking that question, how did he do this to me? Well, look at the lives of the desert fathers.

SPEAKER_04 59:39

Right.

SPEAKER_01 59:40

Look at look at how look at how have I ask people all the time, have you read the Bible? It's a hot mess of individuals. Like people like, I just want to, I just want to live my life like these people. There's there's songs on the radio about I just want to be like, I want to live like I'm like that. Is psychotic. Like you'll be arrested by nightfall. Like, like, don't, don't live like these people. Like the Bible is about how you can find redemption through Jesus. So if you follow all their lies, they're a hot mess. And then Jacob finds himself in the in the desert, like chapters later. He's stolen this blessing. He listens to his father say everything to him he always wanted him to say, but he meant it about his older brother. And now he spends a lifetime trying to answer the question, like, Am I good enough? And then he finally finds himself in the desert one night, about to face Esau, sending gifts, worried he's gonna be killed by his brother. He's trying to figure out how to continue to scramble and survive, which is really a microcosm of that dude's whole life. And he wrestles with God in the desert that night. And I mean, the thought of him wrestling with God is wild to me that God himself wrestled with the man all night long. And the only reason that they stopped was God said, I have to go, the sun's coming up. I mean, where did God have to go? Why did the sun tell him it was time? I have lots of questions, and in that moment is when Jacob said, uh, God says to Jacob, let me go. And Jacob says, I will not let you go until you bless me. And then he says, What is your name? Your name is Israel. And it's in those verses where I feel like we learn your blessing is your identity. The very thing that God planted in you is that little girl dreaming about that day, yeah, like that was coming to fruition one way or another.

SPEAKER_07 1:01:45

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:46

Like what was in you was to be a wife and a mom.

SPEAKER_07 1:01:49

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:50

Well, that was in you, and it was coming out.

SPEAKER_07 1:01:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:53

And and and that was your that was part of your identity that you were given. And so when leaders experience trauma, when they experience the ups and downs of life, I want to encourage them. Hey, if you can get settled on the who and the whos, right, you can understand like you have a blessing to leverage.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:18

I I believe my calling from a young girl was to show people who God is, to bring them to the true God, to lift up the name of Jesus. Like he said, if my name is lifted up, I will draw all men unto me. And when I was in that no man's land, I thought, how am I lifting up God? I've lost my platform. I've lost my evangelistic ministry. Where we're on stages constantly lifting up God. We've lost the suit and the Robert Talbot tie that was lifting up God. I'm not playing the piano anywhere. Yeah. I'm not lifting up God. And little did I know that the crushing and the pressing and the annihilation of everything I knew was going to give way and was going to birth a vision where I was going to look, be able to lift up the name of God and say, God didn't do that to you. It might have been done in the name of God, but that wasn't God.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:19

Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:20

And to be able to sit across from victim after victim after victim, I've booked over the next three months. I'm going to be at four trauma conferences in four different churches, two different book signings at trauma conferences. I'm doing a healing retreat for trauma victims in October. And I am able to say to every single one of them, I know you're asking, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? But the resurrection's about to happen in your life, and God has something big in store. And I could have never dreamed, Pastor Josh, that that would be what God would do with the total liquid liquefication and annihilation of my hopes and dreams.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:01

Pastors, if you've been watching this podcast for any time and you're thinking about how you can better reach your community, how you can live out your mission that God's called you to in a better way for your church, I would love for you to take a moment and check out the heart check tool on our website. Take some time, answer some questions about where you are, answer some questions about what's happening in your church and evaluate if walking through a process of clarity might help you in your mission that God's given you for your community. Listen, a lot of people are out here working very hard to reach people for the sake of the gospel. One of the things that we do at Heart the Mission is to try to put pastors in an environment to help them see the things that they aren't seeing, to help them see the things that might be standing in their way, standing in the way of them accomplishing their mission. Fill out this assessment. This is a short tool where you can evaluate yourself and your church, and it might give you some insight to whether or not something like this might help you. So go to heartthemission.com and click the link for the heart check assessment. Paul says this real clearly for us. He says it's off with the old and on with the new. That's right. And like the the taking off and putting on, like we we will continually in our pain and brokenness put on things that aren't true about us.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:40

Yeah, like shame. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:42

Shame is a great shame is a great point. You know, failure, pain, trauma are moments and time. They're not identity. They're not your identity.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:52

That's exactly right.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:53

And so you we get to choose our what identity am I going to share?

SPEAKER_05 1:05:56

Yeah. This is happening to me. It's not who I am.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:59

That's exactly right. Right. So tell tell me you you leave. You leave in the middle of the night under dress. The the marriage obviously didn't work. You you had to protect your children. And tragically, your husband's story ended.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:19

Yes. After um a several year-long battle, he lost the battle and um he went home to I believe be with God. Because like I said, I believe the addiction overtook who he was. And by the time he passed away, he was not who he was anymore. The addiction zombie had eaten away so many of the of the things that made him such a beautiful person. And again, making sure that people know that addiction is such a powerful thing. It is not to be taken lightly. If you are in addiction, you need to seek help. If you are in a relationship with an addict, you need to seek help. It's a powerful thing. Oh, yeah. And he eventually lost the battle. Um but I believe that his testimony, even in death, even that the pain that was caused through his actions and behaviors and his um failures and addictions, I still believe that God is using his story as much as he's using mine to help people seek help and to help people find healing.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:30

So you had to take steps forward for you, for your girls. Yeah. What were those next steps in life? What did they look like for you?

SPEAKER_05 1:07:37

So, you know, it's funny when you grow up in a performance culture. I see this a lot.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:41

You were looking for a tape table, what you were looking for.

SPEAKER_06 1:07:45

You tend to immediately go out and find a new platform to ventilate your trauma.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:50

Well, if that if that was how you felt like you could only experience God, then you're gonna be drawn back to some of those same environments.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:59

Yes. Well, for me, it wasn't how I experienced God. For me, it was how I experienced love.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:03

How you experienced love.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:04

Performance meant love for me. So I went out and thought, well, if I want to feel loved, I feel unloved right now, I feel lonely, I feel abandoned. I'm gonna go start a company. But I wanted to start a company that was a company that was a business disguised as a ministry. Because in the genre of ministry I was in, women weren't really accepted as anything other than a wife. So I knew I couldn't go back to ministry as I knew it. And so I went into the weight loss industry. But what's so funny, Josh, is that I started a weight loss company when I weighed 220 pounds right off of a divorce.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:08:44

Depressed, anxious, uh penniless.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:46

You can see the future. I love it so much.

SPEAKER_06 1:08:49

I thought, you know, I I'm just gonna get healthy. And I had worked in the health and wellness industry. That's the only other industry I had worked in besides ministry.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:57

And so um I the first thing I did was I just went and got a job at a gym right up here for $14 an hour, just checking people into the gym.

SPEAKER_06 1:09:06

And I was, you know, overweight.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:08

Free membership too.

SPEAKER_06 1:09:09

Yeah, I got the free membership, free child care. My daughter's crying in the kids' club, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:14

Something to think about.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:15

But uh, you know, and I was breastfeeding on my all of my breaks and things, and it was just it was very difficult. But I had to put food on the table and I had to become the breadwinner and I had to do all those things. And I was sitting across from uh a friend at lunch one day, and they said, What why don't you just start your own weight loss company? And I literally almost spit out my, you know, drink. I was like, okay, I'm fat. You can't start a weight loss company. But um I enrolled in the Institute of Integrative Nutrition. I studied over 400 diets and I pulled out what was helpful and I lost 80 pounds in 90 days. And then I just started helping other people do the same thing. And uh people love to talk to me. The same reason uh people love to talk to me now because I've been through trauma. You ever tried to have a weight loss loss coach that's 18 and weighs 100 pounds?

SPEAKER_01 1:10:04

You're like, you don't know anything about hormones and there's two people you don't take weight loss advice from fat people and skinny people. It's just a good, it's a good rule, it's a good rule of thumb. Right. Well, I was neither.

SPEAKER_05 1:10:18

But um, I remember my first client was this sweet older woman, and um she signed up to to be one of my first clients. I would drive to her house and we would cook together and we would walk around the block together, and she reduced her diabetes and high blood pressure, high cholesterol, all those things. And I remember with a shaky hand signing a $10,000 radio contract with Word down here in Greenville, South Carolina. And that month I made $10,500 to the plus in the black. Yes, that's whole month. And so it it blew up into a huge company. Well, were you talking?

SPEAKER_01 1:10:57

Were you just you were just doing a show on there? What was it about? How were you talking about?

SPEAKER_05 1:11:01

So I was not only uh um an advertiser on there, I also had a radio show called The Health Dare. Yeah. I said a podcast called The Health Dare, and I had one called Coaching Me, you know. Um, and so we saw over 8,000 clients come through our doors, nine offices throughout the Carolinas. And so I had built up this huge um business, and I remember making millions of dollars, made 12 million dollars in our first three years in sales, and I took my entire team to Disney World because where else do you go?

SPEAKER_01 1:11:32

You know, that's what Jesus would do.

SPEAKER_05 1:11:35

That's right, that's right. I know it's in the Bible somewhere. I'll find it. But um, I remember being on Main Street and watching the parade and just tears pouring down my face and going, I'm gonna be okay. I'm gonna be okay. My kids are gonna be okay. They were there in a stroller, double stroller, you know. And um, I remember just the money and the freedom and the control. It felt like healing. But in some ways, I was still living in my triggers, living in my own strength, living in pride. Um, and I was not fully healed.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:14

Tell me, tell me about that. Like that's I mean, that's really self-aware. You know, to be like, I wasn't at the time. No, but I mean, e for now for you to look back and I mean, because anybody would to see from a from from okay, this nice lady go from this traumatic situation escaping in the middle of the night to now you're you're I can just see it. I've been there, you know, Disney on Main Street, you're pushing your kids. That's the American dream. Yes. You grabbed it, you got it, you took control of your life, you took control of your destiny, right? And and then you find yourself going, uh Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:46

Well, um, you can have success and be very unhealthy, you know. Um, and I think the pride of I'll show you, I think that was a little bit of it, you know, being able to be a woman CEO, a woman business owner, having freedom and having a voice for the first time felt like healing. But in some ways, it was just something I had something to prove to all the people who said I couldn't, or all the people that didn't didn't believe me, or all the people that um didn't support me when I came out. So it almost was a a hear me roar time in my life. I think that God allowed me to have success and favor, and I think it was amazing, and it saved my children, and it saved my um my family. But I also feel like pride was present in that, and I had to learn how to handle success and how to handle it with humility and handle it um with the Holy Spirit because it's a double-sided ditch. Because I came out of the holiness culture as we call it, but a lot of what I came out of was not the holiness culture, it was the superiority culture. Okay. We're better than you because we were culottes, we're better than you because we use this version of the Bible, we're better than you because you know we we don't have sex till marriage or we don't drink alcohol. And I think some of that carried over into that feeling of superiority, and I had to really be humbled.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:22

You know, it it is interesting to to think about like when you when you talk about this idea of holiness, like it's it's not that I mean holiness within itself is like, man, absolutely, that's what we want.

SPEAKER_06 1:14:34

Yeah, but be like Jesus too.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:36

To understand how you arrive there is only through his redemption. Like I Tim Keller famously said, the only thing we bring to God and our salvation is our sin. And I think, man, if we can find ourselves in this place to where we understand like this redemption, this holiness is only available through what he has done and not us. That's right. So you're on top of the world.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:04

Yeah. It's like a phoenix rising from the ashes, you know. And and I do think that that I did feel empowered. I did feel euphoric. I was doing amazing things, I was working hard and seeing the fruits of labor. But I think it's so important when you're in success to remember who put you there and to remember when you used to be in the cocoon and remember who gave you your wings. And so I think it was a little bit for me of a double-sided ditch between I'm not good enough to be in this place, or look at me and hear me roar. And I think the Holy Spirit is the only one who can keep you right in the middle where you're really truly leading through God. And and I had to learn that.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:54

Man, and and so your company is blowing and going. You're at Disney.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:00

So then I met my husband Joshua.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:02

Met Joshua.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:03

Met him.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:04

Sounds like a great guy. Great name, strong.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:06

Pastor Josh, another Pastor Josh. Um, met him. Um, and we got married, um, and it was magical and incredible.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:17

And um, but I how did you how did you walk us back to how you met him?

SPEAKER_05 1:16:22

Well, the top secret information about how we met is we actually met on Coffee Meets Bagel.

unknown 1:16:29

Believe it or not.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:30

Coffee meets. All right. You'll I'm an old man. I'm an old man, so you'll have to tell me what I don't even know if it's still around.

SPEAKER_06 1:16:38

But what it's kind of like it's a Christian, it's not even Christian, it's just an online dating site.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:42

It's an online dating site.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:43

It's an online dating site. But what's so funny is I was helping start a church in Anderson, South Carolina, and he was planning a church in Malden, and we were Facebook friends. Okay. Because we had a mutual friend through the pastor there. And so when I saw him pop up on Coffee Meets Bagel, I screenshotted it, sent him a message on Facebook and said, Is this you?

SPEAKER_02 1:17:06

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_05 1:17:06

And he didn't respond for a solid 30 minutes because to hear him tell it, he was panicking and horrified. Who was this? What year is this? 2016.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:14

Oh, that's a that's that's that's yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:17:16

And it was like an e-harmony or something. Yeah, yeah. And so he was horrified because he said it he felt making him look like a stalker or something. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:23

Andrew, do you know Coffee Meets Bagel? Have you heard of it? No, I've I've never heard of this. I've never heard of this.

SPEAKER_06 1:17:29

Obscure dating site. So we say we met through a pastor friend, but we didn't. We literally met on Coffee Meets Bagel. And so we started messaging back and forth. I said, Oh, I heard you're a pastor. And he said, Oh, yeah. And he said, I'd love to hear your story sometime. So eventually we met at Olive Garden on in on Lawrence Road in Mullen. And I told him my whole story the good, the bad, and the ugly. And uh he didn't he didn't um stop talking to me. And so here we are.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:56

So he was starting a church as a single guy.

SPEAKER_06 1:17:58

As a single guy, yes, which he took a lot of flack for that too.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:02

So I'm I'm a church planter, as you know. And uh man, we did we did that married in like 2010. Yes, and um, I can't imagine doing that by myself. If in fact, if that if I would have been assessed without my wife Renee, there's zero chances. In fact, our assessors literally looked at me and they were like, you know, the only reason you passed was because of your wife. I was like, there's no doubt that that is the case. Like, she is the one, like, like people will meet me and they'll be like, Oh, that's a nice guy. Then they'll meet my wife and they'll be like, Oh, we understand how you're making it through life. That's how that's what we understand.

SPEAKER_06 1:18:38

So well, after all of the drama I had been through with pastors, I'm shocked that I was willing to date another pastor.

SPEAKER_05 1:18:45

It's hilarious. But God put us together and I was very triggered the entire time we dated. I I broke up with Josh six times when we were dating. I wouldn't let him meet my kids because I was terrified of all the stepfather stories and I didn't want to bring a man into his life. Um, Hallie, our youngest, my oldest was four at the time. And she um she was just asking everybody to be her daddy. And it's humorous, but it's also heartbreaking. We would be at Chick-fil-A and she would just stop a passing man and go, Will you be my daddy? Or we'd see a police officer, an authority figure. She'd walk up, will you be my daddy? She'd ask a waiter at a restaurant, and it was, I would always laugh it off, but it was so heartbreaking. And she was just on this pathway. And I remember um her biological dad was sort of in and out of her life. Um, one day he'd FaceTime her with a beard or without a beard, or with, you know, sometimes he'd be slurring his words, sometimes he'd be clear-minded, and finally it just got to be too painful for him to have any contact with her. And she just felt this deficit because we had traveled on the road ever since she was born. We had been together, um, you know, in ministries, in hotel rooms, in the car constantly. And so for her dad to just completely step out of her life was a huge uh blow to her little identity. And I remember seeing her fall down on the ground in her little pull-up at four years old and just crying out to God saying, Where is my daddy? Where is my daddy? And it wasn't like one of those things where they're throwing a fit or where they're getting attention. It was a true heart cry prayer. And so that was going on at the time. And I was afraid to introduce her to Josh because I didn't want it to be yet another heartbreak. But when we finally had been dating for a long time, I introduced her to Hallie and him to Hallie and Haven. And I remember um coming into the threshold of our little dwelling that we lived in, and Haven was just giggling, she had her little passion, and he kept, you know, saying funny things and they would laugh. And I remember his face turned beet red and their little faces turned beet red. And I watched them fall in love real time.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:54

Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_05 1:20:55

In that first 10 minutes. And when he finally left and thrown them up in the air and played with them, he, you know, of course, they won their his he won their hearts immediately. But he was pulling out of our driveway in his big truck, and I heard Hallie whisper, Bye, Daddy.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:09

Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_06 1:21:10

Yeah, and that Christmas, she took a giant Sharpie, she turned five, one of those big, thick sharpies, and wrote daddy on every single present under the Christmas tree.

SPEAKER_05 1:21:19

It was a beautiful start.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:21

So our our kids' school is right next to your church, and our kids go to school together. It's kind of how we met. And one of the first times I ever saw your husband. I don't know if you even know this. No, one of the first times I ever saw your husband was at a daddy-daughter dance at the school.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:39

That's awesome. And oh my god, he's a champion.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:41

Oh, well, in fact, as you tell me this story now, like it makes because I would have thought, like, like they have like this deep connection. You can really, really see it. And I would have thought, oh man, that's been there forever. But now to look back and to know like like he stepped into that gap for her where there's all this brokenness for her. Absolutely. And God gave gave her heart in their hearts. Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_05 1:22:03

It was just incredible to see them just, you know, knit together. But I had a lot of triggers. You know, I'd like to tell you that it was this fairy tale and that I healed after a couple of therapy sessions and a couple of prayers and got some money in the bank, but it was an ongoing trigger warning of learning to navigate my triggers from the severe trauma I had been through. And of course, Josh brought his trauma as well with him into the marriage. And so our first night of our wedding, so my husband was also a virgin, saved himself his whole life, had also been had some relationships that didn't work out, but had been praying for God's best. So here we are, you know, bringing two gigantic lives in our 30s, plus a couple of kids into the picture.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:22:51

Um, and all these presuppositions about what marriage is supposed to be, what it's not supposed to be, our value systems were vastly different. And so on our wedding day, when we set our vows, I triggered so badly. I went to a into a full-blown panic attack. We were driving toward Grove Park Inn for our first night together, and it felt like the car was filling with water. I felt like I was trapped. And my husband had the had the marriage certificate.

SPEAKER_06 1:23:23

He goes, Do you want me to just not send this in? Do you want out of it?

SPEAKER_01 1:23:26

Just put it in the glove box and we'll see if it's still there in a couple of days.

SPEAKER_06 1:23:29

For our whole first couple of days, I was like, no, we're doing this. I I know this is God's will, but but my emotions just have to catch up. And poor Josh was going, okay. You know, I'm sure that's not what he envisioned for his first marriage, you know.

SPEAKER_05 1:23:43

But um, you know, we learned to realize our triggers as they were happening.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:23:51

You know, and I learned that I was punishing Josh for something that someone else did to me, or that I was assuming things, or I was reacting in fear to something that really wasn't as traumatic as it I thought that it was. Because your nervous system holds all that trauma, and until you process it, it's gonna come for you.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:14

You're you're at listen, I could think back in some of my own life, and I'll and I'll say this to people if you're responding in moments in ways um that are real strong for the occasion, right? So if you're in traffic and you find yourself yelling at a stranger because they cut you off, you might want to ask yourself, like, where's that coming from?

SPEAKER_03 1:24:36

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:36

You might want to, if your five-year-old child makes a decision to do something and it kicks you into a rage, yes, you might want to ask yourself, hey, why would I respond? Right, why would I respond this way?

SPEAKER_05 1:24:50

There's so many trauma responses, and those are listed in the book, but um hypervigilance, um, you know, uh even putting up a wall and completely shutting people out, things like that. But the body, the body can't uh d distinguish between joy and grief. So when we suppress our grief, we're also suppressing our joy. So a lot of times numbness shows up as a trauma response. And I talk about in the book, I would hold my children too tight or not at all. There were times I couldn't engage in the joyful moments of my new family because I was responding with numbness because there was still grief I hadn't processed yet. There were still things I hadn't processed yet. Um I ended up um going into full-time ministry with my husband. And I said, Oh man, I'm so excited. Now I have a pastor as a husband. So I'm gonna shut down my big company and go into full-time ministry. This is what God wants me to do. Here I am in my calling, God. So you want to talk about the identity crisis of going from $350,000 a year salary to a $10,000 a year salary and having a man in control and be my boss again. You want to talk about every trigger in the book that came out. So we went back to therapy, we went back to counseling, we went back to EMDR, and we had to learn our triggers in a whole new light, where it's sometimes it's just you and God, and then sometimes there's other people involved that are in your inner circle and you're affecting them with your traumas, tri triggers and things. And but triggers are just like alligators, you know, okay, down in the low country, you go down there, right? An alligator will sit on the bottom of a marsh for hours, right? They don't need a whole lot of air. And every once in a while, they'll blow out of their nostrils. That only happens every couple hours, but you'll see a little bit of bubble on the surface, right? And trauma responses are like those little bubbles on the surface. It's lashing out at your husband or getting defensive for no reason, or walling him out for no reason, or or trying to control a situation for no reason. And it all indicates that something is lurking at the bottom that needs to move on.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:10

Okay, let's let's take a minute here and settle in. I because I I really I feel like this is something that maybe people have never had access to. Yes, this kind of or this kind of conversation or information. So help someone who's watching this now who's going, how how would I know if I'm being triggered? Because that's become like a cultural buzzword now. I'm triggered, but it's an actual thing. Yes. Help people know how I would recognize a trigger and then what should I do about it?

SPEAKER_05 1:27:41

Let me get real nerdy on you for a second, Josh.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:43

I can't wait. Because that's my vibe. Brainiac.

SPEAKER_05 1:27:47

That's right. That's brainy. We're going into the brain. All right. So the limbic system, which is the fight or flight, is made up of three main things. Now, there's a lot of intricate things that go into it, but the hypothalamus, the Hippocampus and the amygdala.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:02

This is seventh grade science because I'm tracking. Tracking.

SPEAKER_05 1:28:05

These are three of the main things that make up the limbic system. So your hippocampus is located right at the base of the neck. It's what shrinks when we have Alzheimer's. Okay. It um is like a filing cabinet that stores every single memory you've ever had from the moment you were in the womb all the way to now. Most of it is subconscious. So anytime you are going through life, at any point, the hippocampus is constantly analyzing what's going on and drawing file memories from what they've known about it in the past. If the hippocampus pulls out a file and says, this doesn't feel safe, it notifies the amygdala, which is the fight or flight, that little almond shape in the middle of your brain.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:50

Yeah, the one Bobby Boucher tells us about the water boy.

SPEAKER_05 1:28:53

Which by the way, the amygdala is attached to the thalamus, which is attached to the retina of the eye.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:58

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 1:28:58

So if you ever looked in somebody's eyes and gone, I don't really trust this person. Oh. After 30 seconds, interesting. You're like, or you meet somebody like, I really like them. That's your amygdala telling you if they're safe or not. It's something we call intuition.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:29:12

But it's not imaginary. It's actually scientific. Or if you've ever seen something out of the side of your eye and jumped, you know, that's your amygdala connected to your eyeballs.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:22

Then it's a warning to protect you.

SPEAKER_05 1:29:23

Right. So if the amygdala is notified either through the retina or through the hippocampus that something doesn't feel safe, it immediately sounds the alarm to the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus controls all the chemicals and all the responses in your body. So that's when you start getting the sweaty palms and the pounding chest. That's what we call like anxiety or panic attacks. So anytime in your life, if you see something, smell something, hear something, feel something that feels like a past trauma or informs the hippocampus that it's potentially dangerous, you will have a trauma response. And a trauma response is sweaty palms, defensiveness, fear, reacting and becoming reactionary to something that feels a little bit dramatic for the situation. So for example, in my book, I use the the story of a woman who's grocery shopping. She's in the produce section, and all of a sudden her heart starts to pound. She starts to feel scared. She starts to feel sad. She doesn't know why. Um, her palms are sweating, her breathing becomes shallow. Well, after dissecting that with her therapist later, she realizes that when she was a teenager, um, she was cutting lemons for her mom in the kitchen, and there was a knock on the back door, and the police officer informs them that her dad was killed in a wreck, and they're just sorrow and screaming and gnashing of teeth. And so every time she smells a lemon rind, it takes her brain back to that place of fear and grief and sorrow and loss and uncertainty. So that's how it works. And when we have these seemingly unfounded trauma responses, um, I tell my clients, well, I use the method RTTR.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 1:31:13

Okay. So what you do when you're seemingly feeling overwhelmed for no reason, quote unquote.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:21

Yeah, I'm tracking.

SPEAKER_05 1:31:22

Number one is the R, let it roll in.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:24

Okay. Let it roll in.

SPEAKER_05 1:31:27

You know, we're told so many times to suppress our emotions, rub some dirt on it, you know, just get over it or give it to God, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:31:33

Just like a grown man. I gotcha. Let it roll in. Let it roll in.

SPEAKER_05 1:31:37

Why am I feeling scared? Why am I feeling sad? Why am I fearing feeling um this this feeling that shouldn't be appropriate for the situation? Number two, attach it to a trauma. When in my life have I felt this before? And what was going on during that time? So for this woman, she felt it when her dad, when they delivered the news of her dad's death, right? Lemons connect the dots to the trauma, the seemingly dramatic response or the over-response or overreaction or extreme defensiveness. Um, what is that actually tied to that that happened in the past for you? It's not an overreaction, it's your brain thinking you're still there. The third thing, and here's where it's important to do is attach it to truth about what is really happening right now. What does God say about what happened? Bring in the Holy Spirit, bring in a safe person to help you ground in that truth. And number four, let it roll out. And that is how you emotionally regulate your triggers and begin to recognize them. So when my husband and I began to see that I was reacting out of fear and control and defensiveness, but it was just this fear of loss or fear of being controlled by a man that might hurt me or my children. And I had to remind my brain in truth, I'm safe. This isn't happening now. Yeah. I'm safe.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:33:08

So um, and then my husband had to, his trigger was fear of loss, you know. He had been single for 35 years, and um, his dad was very wealthy and lost everything right in my husband's adolescence. He watched his jet skis and his car and his house be repossessed in his driveway. And so he had this extreme fear of loss, and our losses were colliding and reacting, and and it was just um a journey. But now we're able to slow down and go, hey, let's talk about what trauma this response is tied to right now. Let's talk about truth and let's let it roll out.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:44

I love that art. What a, what a what a great tool to give someone to help them evaluate what's actually happening. Listen, I can't I can't stress this enough. Like the fact that you're encouraging people to slow down in those moments and evaluate, hey, my response is is really not okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:05

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:06

Right. I I'll I find myself like now if my kids are overwhelming me, right? I I will I will want to overwhelm them with like, hey, you know, I want to come in and bring all this high end, they call it screaming, that's where I'm from. I will but I'm a pastor, I can't say that. But I want to overwhelm them. What am I trying to do? I'm trying to control that environment. And really, I'm just plugging into them what was plugged into me. Right. And I have to evaluate, hey, why am I really doing this? Why, what am I really trying to control? Yes. And most of the time it's it's the thought that, hey, what kind of father would would have kids screaming at each other like this? And the truth, and the truth is most every father are gonna think.

SPEAKER_05 1:34:57

If you go back to a time where you go, where was a time in your life where you felt such a loss of control that it was trauma? And so maybe a loss of control just of the kids being loud, remind your hippocampus of that.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:12

I actually have a list. Me too.

SPEAKER_05 1:35:14

Me too.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:15

A list. All right. So if people are there, yeah, and you know, the RTTR, great, great tool, help us know what would be a next step that they could take to help find some kind of help for themselves.

SPEAKER_05 1:35:31

Well, at the very basic level, there is something called neuroplasticity in the brain. Okay. Because our brains, if you've been through trauma, and look, trauma is just an inability of your body and mind to cope with whatever is happening. It's the feeling of overwhelm. Little T traumas are grandma dying, pet getting run over, uh, failing at school at a test, or the kids making fun of you. Little T traumas are still traumas. And we've all had trauma. The big T traumas we talk about are abuse or, you know, these horrific situations that we hear about, right? And everything in between. So whenever you're feeling um a trauma response, um, all trauma is the same in the nervous system. So you don't have to have some big drastic story. A lot of people tell me, well, I haven't had the trauma you've had, and but your trauma is your trauma and your nervous system is still responding. So the way to um to create neuroplasticity in the brain, which is a rewiring of the brain, the number one way to do that is to tell your story to a safe person. Because going back to the limbic system and the retina of the eye, you look into somebody's eyes that is an empathetic, active listener that is witnessing your trauma, that is saying, I believe you. I'm so sorry that happened to you. I'm here to support you. It literally rewires the brain and causes neuroplasticity. It changes the way you interpret trauma. It changes, it takes you out of the defense, the fight, flight, freezer, fawn, and puts you into relationship. And it tells your brain, your limbic system, I'm talking about something that happened. It's not happening. So the more people you can tell your story to, the more healed you will be right off the bat. So that's the first step I would tell somebody that is like, where do I begin with my trauma? Tell it to a safe friend, tell it to a safe um counselor or therapist, tell it to a spouse.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:37

You're wearing the hoodie today. Go to therapy. Go to therapy. Who am I talking about? I'm talking about you, right?

SPEAKER_05 1:37:42

Right. Um, so that's what I would I would start with.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:46

It's it really is amazing just verbalizing some of that pain out loud. Your brain quite literally is recategorizing those memories in a safe place. Reordering, refining. Refiling. Exactly. And so I I work with sheriff for years. I worked with sheriff's office as a chaplain. And I would end up on, I mean, I mean, just really terrible, terrible scenes. And I would do that as a chaplain. And our job there was to help officers and write. And a lot of people don't think about officers and the stuff that they see every day. You know what they're a lot like? They're a lot like pastors who's you're expected to walk into a hospital room. Clean up the mess. You're expected to clean up a mess, you're expected to go counsel a family who's going through whatever, whatever chaos. And then you got to walk out of that environment and you got to step over here and go have dinner with your family. Right. I mean, I I remember one particular story. I was had I was having lunch with two friends of mine, uh JC and Aaron. We were meeting at an Applebee's across town, and one of those guys was late for lunch. Yes. We were all pastors in kind of large churches where there were a lot of needs. And one of the guys was late and he and he ends up not coming in for a while. And he sits down at the table and he goes, I'm sorry I'm late. Uh, I just had to leave a hospital where a where a three-year-old baby passed. And it didn't even register with us because we were, we were, we were, we have been involved in so much trauma. We were like, Oh, yeah, yeah. Did you want to diet Coke or a Coke for? And and after after it was done, I remember sitting back in my chair and thinking, we need to take a moment and check on this guy. What happened? Are you okay? And just the fact, just allowing yourself to tell that story to a safe person as a pastor in law enforcement. If you're in a nurse, if it doesn't matter what you do in your life, you experience that trauma, just verbalizing it, you can find so much help in handling.

SPEAKER_05 1:39:44

Yeah. And when we counselors, pastors, um, authority police, police um officers have to be in the position where we have to hold people's pain. That is a very powerful and trusted position. That is a very sacred position. Um, and I think it's very difficult sometimes to observe and not absorb all of those things. And so you're right, regular maintenance counseling, telling that story reminds the brain, I didn't experience it. I held the hand of someone who did. And as a trauma counselor, I have to go to counseling very regularly to be able to make sure that I am not absorbing that pain into my body because I feel it very deeply.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:28

Well, a lot of people, you said it before, like there's a stigma around finding help, going to a counselor. Oh, yeah, yeah, you're broken. I'm like, no, no, no, no, we're all broken.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:36

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:36

Go to a counselor. And if you think I don't need this, then just go one time and say, Hey, would you just check me over to see if I'm okay? And they're gonna be like, none of us are okay. Yes. We need to, we need to talk through this.

SPEAKER_05 1:40:49

Well, so many people say, you know, well, I'm not going to counselor. The church world is so bad about this too. We're like, just trust Jesus, you know. Or or a lot of people in the church world think that, you know, we're over here sniffing crystals and breathing deeply.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:01

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:41:04

But um, but you know, it's so funny. Some of the people that say to me, I don't need counseling are are some of the most trauma response forward people. Correct. You're trauma responding all over the place. Your trauma is showing. It's showing. Just because you're in denial of it doesn't mean it's not there.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:22

Oh my, it's like if you had high blood pressure, it wouldn't be like, well, I got Jesus. You do. Right. But you also have your blood pressure pill. Exactly. Like, take it. Exactly. And and that's the wild thing. Our thoughts, our those emotions, all those things, those exist in real, those exist in your brain. Right. So there's like this fine line between the spiritual world and this emotional world. And when we think we're just going to categorize all this as spiritual, we need to trust Jesus for it. Well, that's absolutely true. We do trust Jesus, but we trust him enough to go find help from people who know how to help us.

SPEAKER_05 1:41:55

How do you get, you know, you're only as sane as you know the truth about yourself and others. Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:01

I'm gonna say that back. You're only as sane as you know your truth about yourself and others.

SPEAKER_05 1:42:07

Right. So sanity is self-awareness. So you're only as sane as you are self-aware. You can listen to podcasts. This is a fantastic one. Um, you can read your Bible, all these things. But if no one is giving you active feedback, you are not engaging in active self-awareness and self-discovery. And if you don't know what your triggers are, I can tell you right now the enemy does.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:42:32

And he's gonna take you out with them. So you need to explore your triggers. It's the higher level the leader you are, the more you should be in counseling. It's discovering self-awareness and what wounds could potentially take you out.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:45

If you if you're unaware whether or not you have trigger, ask your family.

SPEAKER_05 1:42:48

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:49

Ask your ask your wife, ask your husband, ask your children, ask the people you work with. Hey, have you ever seen me respond in a way that where it seems like I'm triggered? You know what? If you're really open, you might just find out some things that can help you.

SPEAKER_05 1:43:02

There's six core relational needs that every child has to have. You know, we all have what provided for physically, obviously, unless you're neglecting your children and DSS has to be brought in. But um, but a lot of times people neglect their children emotionally, not because they're not trying to be good parents, but maybe because they were neglected emotionally as well, or maybe dad is working hard to pay the bills and just isn't there often. So it doesn't always mean you're bad parents. But children have to receive attunement, responsiveness, um, the regulation of effect. Like when they fall down, hey, it's gonna be okay, buddy. Let me borrow mom's calm here, breathe with me. Um, the ability to handle negative emotions. If your child can never break down crying or even smart off to you once in a while and assert their independence, you know, um, it's it's it's not okay. Kids should be able to express emotionally. But the sixth one is willingness to repair. And I love what you just said about family meeting because you can literally um break all five. But if you're willing to repair with your kids, it's so powerful. And Josh and I, every 90 days at least, we sit our kids down and dad starts because he should be able to be the strongest to handle negative emotions. We go around and we say, What has been frustrating or annoying or hurtful about mom and dad in the last 90 days? And they get the platform to tell us, you know, when Haven was young, she goes, you know, you're not buying me enough donuts. You're like, we will work on that, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:44:34

But it gives our kids a pressure release and a voice to be able to tell mom and dad and hold us accountable. And then we act accordingly in their feet.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:44

That's such good advice. That is such good advice. It gives me anxiety thinking about what my kids might say. I right. I'm looking at my wife off camera. She's over here going, we're doing that tonight. I was like, I don't know if I'm emotionally ready. I need a session with Dr. Dr. Trammell, and we'll see if we can we can move forward. Man, I I I love I love this part of the conversation, but man, God has done so much in your family. I mean, the beauty that you guys have seen, uh, the pain that you continue to walk through, and now you've got you've got this relationship with Josh. You've got you guys are, and I love the fact you don't present yourself as like, man, we have we have it all together, we're all perfect, and you know. Um, but but man, you're you're growing in the Lord, and your marriage is just representing what marriage is intended to represent, which is the gospel. That's a beautiful picture of what you guys are doing. So, so tell me a little bit about this side of the coin, a little bit more about how God has done some things that are beautiful in your life and family.

SPEAKER_05 1:45:49

Well, um when you ask me something beautiful, I'm gonna tell you another thing that's tragic.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:54

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:45:55

Because it was life-changing for me. You know, as we're talking about, I went through this traumatic marriage, ran with my two children, built a business, kind of learned how to handle success, met my new husband who was my knight in shining armor, and then I was triggering, he was triggering. We had to learn to blend two families and really submit ourselves to Christ and feedback and self-awareness. And so we decided, um, you know, I came into ministry with him and it was a little bit of a train wreck, but we both learned and we grew. And in the middle of this, we decided to have another baby because we both wanted to have a baby. And so um we tried to have our first baby and we got the nursery all fixed up in one of our rooms and things like that. And so found out I was pregnant and I went to the doctor, and I had had a chemical pregnancy. It was very early on, like five, six weeks. So I came home from the doctor's office, and the neighbor's house was on fire. And my husband was grabbing the neighbor's three little girls and hoisting them over the fence.

SPEAKER_01 1:47:01

Like their house was literally on fire.

SPEAKER_05 1:47:03

Literally, billows of smoke.

SPEAKER_01 1:47:05

Josh is out there rescuing kids.

SPEAKER_05 1:47:07

He's rescuing kids. He's meeting this couple and getting their kids, and we're taking and I looked at him mid-child over the six-foot privacy fence, and I said, I'm not pregnant anymore. And he teared up and I teared up and we kept going. This happened three more times. And each time it was just, hey, stop it down, trust God, rub some dirt on it, and go on, right? The fifth time I made it all the way to the gender, right? And we had announced it to our families. We were so excited. We went in to the doctor and brought it up on the screen. And we were so excited. Josh is beaming this his first biological child. He's so excited. And I said to the nurse, when do we get to hear the heartbeat? And she said, There isn't one and just snapped her glove right off into the trash and left the room.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:03

Oh no.

SPEAKER_05 1:48:04

They moved us into another room. The doctor came in, confirmed no heartbeat. We're crying. They move us to surgery to schedule our surgery, to do you know, pre-op um instructions, and we're just numb. We're sitting there. Um, and so I go home with this dead baby inside me waiting for the surgery. I tried to put on a happy face, I tried to joke about it, which is also another trauma response, by the way. Um and then uh we went in for the surgery, and I broke down right before, and I said, Can we please do another ultrasound? And just confirm. So they brought in a wheel, the the nurse was so kind, she a Patewood, she brought in a um a monitor, showed me that the baby was not moving, that it was gone. And so they took the baby out and we went home. And I remember trying to sort of, okay, so tomorrow, da da da, trying to sort of just move forward. Put the wall up and put on the happy face and put on the plastic face. And this is where my husband changed my life. He grabbed my hands and he said, Bridget, we are not going to dismiss this. We are gonna grieve our baby. And he said, We're gonna get in the bed in our pajamas, we're gonna watch TV, we're gonna talk about our baby, we're gonna look at our sonogram picture, we're gonna cry, we're gonna eat snacks, and we are going to grieve. And so for two and a half, three days, that is what we did. We had a my mother-in-law came and watched the kids downstairs, and we were in that bedroom and we just cried and cried, and when we were too numb and sad to cry, we'd turn on TV. And Josh helped me so much realize that um if you don't process your trauma, you're gonna trap it in your Your nervous system.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:01

For sure.

SPEAKER_05 1:50:01

And it's going to come for you like those bubbles. It's going to be an alligator lurking at the bottom of the lake. And that was the first time I had real-time process to trauma. And now I've got that sonogram picture up on my shelf in my counseling office, and I turn around and smile at it. It's not grief that I carry. That fifth angel baby was the baby that taught me how to process trauma, which is what I do. And I help others do the same. And so that was really a turning point in my life where I started becoming softer and more real and more um pliable in my vulnerability toward God and toward others when I learned how to just feel my feelings.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:44

I'm just fascinated with the fact that the Lord just puts people together to carry that kind of pain. That's right. Right. And I think, man, I was uh just this past Sunday, I was I was preaching through what love and respect is in end of Ephesians chapter five. And you see those two words, right? And it's it's that the the husband should love the wife and the wife should respect her husband. And we're talking through like what does that what does that really mean? Right? What does that really mean to love someone? And when I think about like him being Josh being present for you, and at the same time, he's dealing with his own pain and his own difficulty, but he knew like, oh, I need to put I need to put Bridget first right now. And what she needs from me is she needs me to step into this moment for her and be present with her and suffer with her. Man, that is a beautiful picture of what Jesus does.

SPEAKER_05 1:51:46

Man, I triggered so much in our early days. One time I I took off my wedding ring and threw it at him in a dark room. And I was like, you know, so angry and scared. And I was seeing him as I saw my ex-husband. You know, I came to realize that through my ring and hit him right in the forehead.

SPEAKER_06 1:52:03

And the next day he went to preach at the church and he had a little, it looked like a thunderbolt. We called him Harry Potter for a month. He he took a lot of flack from things that other people had done to me, and he took it like a man.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:15

I do appreciate that. Is there any remnant of that left on his forehead? I'm gonna look, I'm gonna just be staring at his forehead when I see him next week.

SPEAKER_06 1:52:22

We go out to lunch with him.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:23

You can check it out. Come closer.

SPEAKER_05 1:52:26

But yeah, he loved me through that, and um he just was so patient and so long-suffering, like Corinthians 13. Love is patient, love is kind, love is long suffering. My husband really loved me like Christ loved the church and allowed me a safe place to heal as my reactions were taking place, and he sort of saw it for what it was, and he really helped me through that time.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:53

As we kind of come full circle on this thing, um what what is what is really the difference now between, you know, Dr. Bridget Trammell sitting here and that young girl dreaming about that wedding day. Like what what has what has happened in her heart?

SPEAKER_05 1:53:14

When I talk to trauma clients that I have, I often say, understand what you're going through because I am a trauma, and they think I'm gonna say counselor, but I say I'm a trauma victim as well. And I think being able to be a beacon of someone who has crossed the woods into Switzerland and is sitting at a warm feast with a crackling fireplace in a place of peace because you know that you're healed when you can be reminded of your trauma by your hippocampus, but your nervous system doesn't respond because you know you're in a safe place and you know you're healed when you can witness other people's trauma and have compassion for their trauma responses, even sometimes the villains, you know? And so I think the difference between trauma victim Bridget and trauma counselor Bridget is simply that I've crossed the woods and now I can say, hey, here is where the hope and healing is. Doesn't mean I don't still struggle with my trauma responses or my scars, but I'm speaking from scars and not wounds. So I would encourage others to begin the healing journey, whatever that looks like for you, if it looks like asking for help, if it looks like telling your story, if it looks like ordering the book, trigger warning, if it looks like calling a trusted therapist, um, whatever that looks like, I would encourage others to take that step toward healing because it's sure is good on the other side.

SPEAKER_01 1:54:50

Man, um that's that's really beautiful. That that is um, man, that's really, really beautiful. Well, one of the one of the things that we want to do, um, just just through the through the podcast, is we're gonna give we're gonna give like 10 of these away. That's awesome. And so, yeah, yeah. And we're not gonna steal them from you. Like we're actually gonna actually gonna we're gonna purchase them from you. Hey, healing is free. We are um we're grateful to partner with you to and it's just a small, small thing that we want to do. But if people would just share this video and they would comment on this, um, they'll be entered to draw. We're gonna give 10 of these away and we'll ship them to you wherever you wherever you're at. We'll send it, we'll send them to you. Um, but I I do wanna I do want to say something to you. Um that uh I I fully believe in the power of speaking blessing over people. And not that I have some unique role in your life in particular, but from a from a place of a of a person and a pastor who can obviously see God's working in you. I just I just want to say thank you for staying in the fight. Like we're living in a culture right now to where when things are hard with the church, people will pull the ripcord and blame it on the church and blame it on God Himself. And and they they they put it under a banner of, you know, hey, I've well I've gotta I've gotta find safety and healing, and and and maybe they needed that, and I I get it. Yeah, but you staying in there connected to God, connected to Christ, and finding ultimate healing through him, like that's a really beautiful picture. You know, Isaiah talks about like by his wounds, yes, we are healed.

SPEAKER_07 1:56:53

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:56:54

I believe that through your book and through the messages God's using in you, that there are people, there are women, there are men out there right now that will experience healing in their own life because of what you've suffered, and because of how you tell your story, and because of how you've put Jesus on display in that story. It is absolutely fascinating.

SPEAKER_05 1:57:21

I I my goal is to build a bridge between therapy and theology and allow God to meet people there the way he met me there, and to realize like there have been so many people that have been hurt by the church, but the church is good, holiness is good, Jesus is good, and when people come in and distort the name of God, that is what we call spiritual wickedness in high places. You know, that's the enemy distorting what God meant for good. And if church has hurt you, you may need to take a little time to recover, and you might need to put a magnifying glass over the churches and make sure you go to a healthy one. But God is going to meet you in the healing, whatever that step looks like for you. And when you meet him there, you'll know it wasn't him that hurt you.

SPEAKER_01 1:58:10

Man, thank you. Thank you for coming and telling your story. Um for telling me, let it up on me too. How do people find the book? And uh what do you got coming up that you want to talk about here? Is there a website? Is there is there a coffee and bagel thing we need to connect with you on? Like, I don't know, I don't know. Coffee and bagel now.

SPEAKER_05 1:58:30

Um, but but if you are looking to find a counselor, if you'd love to tell me your story, I'd love to hear it. My first session is always free just to hear your story. Um, you can go to drbridgettrammel.com. Um, you can also purchase my book, Trigger Warning, on Amazon. Um, I'm also um beginning a ministry. I'm going on the road. I'm gonna be doing trauma conferences. I have four booked in the next 90 days where I can come into a church or even a living room or a group of people and do um emotional healing clinics, um, trauma conferences, and I'd love to be a part of what God is doing or um spark a curiosity in people all across the country that might wonder what would happen if they gave God one more chance. But what if they they gave healing a chance?

SPEAKER_01 1:59:21

I love that so much. Thank you so much for being here, Dr.

SPEAKER_05 1:59:24

Awesome. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_01 1:59:26

It's very good.

SPEAKER_05 1:59:26

You helped my neuroplasticity uh take place by telling my story.

SPEAKER_01 1:59:30

Yeah, that's what I do. I'm a neuroplasticity guy, apparently. Hey, thanks so much for watching this episode. If you're a pastor or leader, we want to continue to stay connected to you as you work to accomplish the mission that God's called you to in your community. If you would go to heartthemission.com, click the link to subscribe. We would love to send you information on new podcasts. We'd love to send you information on how you might could be a better leader and how you might be able to see some things in and around your world to help you accomplish the mission in your community. Check it out at heartthemission.com.