Hey Tabi!

A Raw Conversation on Jesus, Women, and Worth

• Tabitha • Season 2 • Episode 7

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What if your story of suffering isn’t disqualifying—but the very space where Jesus meets you? In this powerful and grace-soaked episode of Hey Tabi, I sit down with the one and only Elyse Fitzpatrick - author, counselor, and fierce advocate for the unloved and unseen.

We dive deep into:

  • Why the gospel is more than behavior modification
  • How the church has mishandled women’s stories
  • The truth about Gomer, identity, and self-destruction
  • How legalism sneaks into our hearts, even when we know better
  • Why trauma-informed theology matters
  • Holding both grace and truth in messy, beautiful tension

Elyse also shares the story behind her new book Unloved: The Rejected Saints God Calls Beloved, and we talk about what it means to find hope when life hasn’t turned out the way you were promised it would.

This one’s for every woman who wonders if she’s too broken, too messy, or too far gone. Spoiler alert: you’re not. Jesus sees you—and He calls you beloved.

👇 LINKS & RESOURCES

Find Elyse here - https://elysefitzpatrick.com/
 Order Unloved by Elyse Fitzpatrick here - https://elysefitzpatrick.com/book/unloved-the-rejected-saints-god-calls-beloved/

Wanna say hi? Send a text!

🎧 Subscribe to Hey Tabi for more expert conversations on trauma, faith, and healing.

Order Body & Soul, Healed & Whole: An Invitational Guide to Healthy Sexuality After Trauma, Abuse, and Coercive Control

📩 Connect with Tabitha:
💻 Tabitha's Website - www.tabithawestbrook.com
📲 Tabitha's Instagram - www.instagram.com/tabithathecounselor
🎙️ Podcast Homepage - https://heytabi.buzzsprout.com

💻 The Journey & The Process Website - www.thejourneyandtheprocess.com
📲 The Journey & The Process Instagram - www.instagram.com/_tjatp

Subscribe to my YouTube Channel & watch podcast episodes there

👍 If this episode resonated with you, please like, subscribe, and share to help others who need this information!

🚨 Disclaimer: This podcast is not therapy and is intended for educational purposes only. If you're in crisis or need therapy, please reach out to a licensed mental health professional.

Need to know how to find a great therapist? Read this...

Speaker 1:

Welcome to hey Tabby, the podcast where we talk about the hard things out loud with our actual lips. We'll cover all kinds of topics across the mental health spectrum, including how it intersects with the Christian faith. Nothing is off limits here and we are not. Take two verses and call me in the morning. I'm Tabitha Westbrook and I'm a licensed trauma therapist. But I'm not your trauma therapist. I'm an expert in domestic abuse and coercive control and how complex trauma impacts our health and well-being. Our focus here is knowledge and healing. Trauma doesn't have to eat your lunch forever. There is hope. Now let's get going.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to this week's episode of hey Trabi. I am so, so excited to be here with my very amazing and beautiful friend, elise Fitzpatrick. If you don't know who Elise is, you have been living under a rock and I am so glad you're getting to meet her today. But I'm going to tell you a little bit about her. Elise holds a certificate in biblical counseling from the CCEF of San Diego and she has a master's of arts in biblical counseling from Trinity Theological Seminary. She's authored more than 25 books on daily living and the Christian life. Elise loves to proclaim the good news of the gospel that Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, perfectly obeyed all the law in our place, suffered in isolation and agony as punishment for our sin, died and then rose again for our justification. A frequent speaker at national conferences, she lives in Southern California with her husband of over 50 years and has three adult children and six really adorable grandchildren, which is amazing, and I think the adorable grandchildren are probably the best, as I'm getting closer and closer to grandmother age myself.

Speaker 1:

I got a ways to go, but that's my next step of adulting, I guess. So welcome, elise, thank you for being here.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, tabitha, it's an honor.

Speaker 1:

I got to meet you for the first time, gosh it's been probably four-ish years at this point and I remember that my first exposure to you in person, in the flesh. I knew who you were because I grew up in the Calvary Chapel denomination that says it's not a denomination but it's 100% a denomination, absolutely.

Speaker 1:

and you were honor approved reading list at the time and so probably not anymore but anyway but I had knew you from that and so I was like man, she's like a biblical counselor and I didn't know much about you other than the things I had read.

Speaker 1:

And so to hear you from the stage at the call to Pete's conference that first year, I was like, oh my gosh, I need to be her friend. And I very much walked up to you right afterwards and said hi, I'm Tabitha, we're going to meet Brian. And you were like I said yeah and then gave me a big hug and I was like I knew I liked her and from that, just listening and watching and following along the last several years and hearing what the Lord has laid on your heart has been such a gift and delight. I know it has formed me and my faith in deep ways and I know it's formed the faith of so many others in deep ways. Tell me a bit about your journey, because you were an OG biblical counselor. You've been around a while. 20 Side Books is definitely a minute.

Speaker 2:

Walk us through that, thanks. Thank you, tavia, I'm so glad to be here. Yeah, got saved in 1971, sort of in the whole Calvary Chapel beginning movement right and I came out of a really debauched lifestyle, got saved, went to Bible college. People used to come to me for help. I didn't know what to say. So I eventually got a master's degree in biblical counseling, thinking that was going to be helpful.

Speaker 2:

At some point along in there I want to say maybe the early 2000s or perhaps a little earlier I really made a turn toward seeing the gospel as something that needed to inform my life every day. And that sounds weird because I had already been saved for decades and was already serving the Lord. But I really saw how the gospel, the work of Jesus Christ, of Jesus Christ, how that needed to be central. So that began to inform my life. And then since then, everything I've written has to do with how does the gospel affect our lives in certain realms, like in our parenting or in counseling, or as women. How does the gospel affect our lives? How does it affect our lives in our relationships with others? How does the gospel speak to us as people who live in a very broken world? And how does the gospel speak to the way we think about the women of the Bible, the women around us, roles of women. It was really a transformation that happened in me after I got saved, after I had a degree in biblical counseling, that I began to see the gospel as being paramount. And then I would say really over, let's say the last five or six years since Eric Shoemaker and I wrote Worthy I had always let's say that I had always wanted because I am a woman, I had wanted to highlight women and minister to women. You know what? I'm going to take that back, leave it in, because I want people to hear now how I want to re-say that For a long time I tried to form myself into what the male majority culture of the church wanted me to be and then, but then I've been making a change and I've the change really became very obvious when we wrote Worthy and I began to see as a Christian woman. I began to see how prominent the stories of women were in Scripture, how important women were to the Lord and to the narrative of the gospel. So then I've been on that trajectory for five or six years, really wanting to speak to women about their value, about how beloved they are as women, because they are women. I wanted to speak to that, and of course, that leads you into the way women are being treated. So maybe this is more than you want, but when Worthy came out, that was about the time of Me Too, and Church Too.

Speaker 2:

Worthy came out. That was about the time of Me Too, and Church Too, and I posted how I had been date raped and how I had been sexually assaulted at a, a intellectual exercise about the worth of women and how women are denigrated and how they need to be supported. This is my story too. This is my story too, and I remember my eldest grandson. At the time when I posted that he's in his twenties. He emailed me and he said, mimi, I'm I'm so sorry that happened to you and I thought I'm so sorry.

Speaker 2:

You have to know it, but he does have to know it. He has to know it that this is what women face. So I want to be an advocate for the marginalized, those without power, people who are systemically abused, women and, of course, other marginalized people. That's the trajectory I'm on and I made a little joke about. Well, I may not be on their list anymore of recommended resources because people don't like it, and you already know this. People don't like it when you call them out. People in power don't like it when you call them out and tell them no, what you're doing is wrong. And even in the writing of the book Worthy, all we were trying to do was say women have value and we were canceled all over the place. So that's the state of to women and cares deeply about women who have been in abusive situations. So I'm really happy that I'm there now, but I haven't always been there and it's been painful.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's always interesting to me when people in positions of power get upset about saying Jesus loves women and not all people. Because, I want to be clear, both you and I are not men haters by any means at all. Absolutely not. I think that calling out destructive power structures is actually love. Jesus did that. Those are the things he said to the Pharisee. Those are the things he said to the people in leadership what are you doing? And it was an invitation to repentance and we are called to do that. In scripture, we are called to say this does not align with the word of God, what is happening. And it is an invitation to the brothers and sisters who are walking in a way that does not look like Christ. I was listening recently to Rachel Denhollander on a podcast and Rachel is fierce and feisty and beautiful in so many wonderful ways and she was talking about how she had been all of the things that she was supposed to be.

Speaker 1:

And it still wasn't enough, because she was using her voice. He was talking about things, just calling out problems in the power structures and saying this is not the way that it should be and that was a problem. And it was a problem mainly because she was a woman and that's unfortunate because that isn't what scripture shows in any way. In fact, Jesus is equalizer of women in a lot of ways. Talking to this American woman, this is a lot of what you have in your book Unloved, which is your most recent book, and I love this book called Unloved. It's wonderful and what inspired you to write this book at this time?

Speaker 2:

Thank you. Thank you, tabitha. So Unloved, the rejected saints God calls beloved. I always have to say that because, as an author, you get people, the publisher gives you a subtitle and I never can remember what they are. So that's the subtitle.

Speaker 2:

So why I wrote it? I wrote it for two reasons. I wrote it first of all, because I'm sick to death. Sick to death of hearing women's stories in the Bible being told by men who have a certain perspective that I would disagree with. So I wanted to tell their stories, and I wanted to tell them in a way that was faithful to Scripture but also would show that they were in fact beloved by God, even though a lot of their life looked like it was falling apart. So that was the first impetus.

Speaker 2:

The second was this that so many Christian women feel like Christianity is a meritocracy. Women feel like Christianity is a meritocracy, and what I mean by that is they feel like if they could just be good enough, if they could just do all the things perfectly enough, if they could just oh I hate this be submissive enough, that somehow their life would be good. It would look like some Instagram post and see, christianity is not a meritocracy. We don't earn blessing from God. God, in his grace, blesses us because of the work that Jesus Christ has done, so it's actually Jesus' merits become the way we receive God's blessing, not because we're working hard.

Speaker 2:

So I really was trying to push against two things that again that I think are just rife in American evangelicalism. First, the first thing is telling the stories of the women. Men telling the stories of the women in now I want to rephrase that, because some women do it too People in power telling the stories of women in a way that is not faithful to Scripture. And then, secondly, the undergirding sort of feeling that women have been told. If you would just blank enough, your life would be great, and that's not the story that we read in Scripture at all. The story we read in Scripture is that faithful people suffer and, as I'm sure all of the people who listen to this and as I'm sure all of the people who listen to this, there's an area of suffering in your life. And don't think that. Don't automatically think that, okay, this is something I'm done and God's punishing me and if I just work harder I can earn more merit and be better.

Speaker 1:

Jesus Christ earned all the merit we need? Yes, absolutely, and I think even in the Old Testament we see that play out in the book of Job. Job is like what in the actual heck is going on here, exactly, and his dingbat friends are all there going well, perhaps you have sinned and at the end God goes. Job is the one who spoke rightly of me, not his dingbat friends and dingbat friends. You need to take some sacrifices and have joe pray for you, because y'all did not get it, and I think that is such a vital thing. We have a very much. I don't want to put this americanized version of christianity, I think, and we absolutely push against suffering in favor of comfort and things like that, and comfort is not a bad thing. You know, none of these things are bad things. I think tim keller would call them source idols and it hits the counterfeit god.

Speaker 1:

And none of these things are bad they're not wicked but when they are more important than actual life, we cannot get away from life being lifey. At times it is what it is, and I remember you speaking about this meritocracy at a retreat that I was at and I ended up. We were talking beforehand. I was like dude, I had to put this in a note and send it to my therapist because I was like this is going to be a session and it was because I didn't realize, from some of the spiritual abuse I had endured in churches, that I had drunk in this theology that I had to earn, Even though my brain knows I read the book of Galatians. I love the book of Galatians.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, foolish Galatians who it's bewitched. You, having begun in the spirit, are you trying to keep on going in the blood Like? I believe that? But in my own soul I was like, well, I'm struggling, things are hard, it must be me, and the reality is, life is lifey. And one of the quotes I pulled from that was there may be a measure of peace and freedom, but it may not work out as we want, as we serve the Lord. And I thought that was just so profound because I don't know that we always believe that.

Speaker 2:

Right and you know we can say as good Protestants we don't think we earn our salvation, that it's a gift from God. So we can say that and intellectually assent to it if you will. Yeah, I agree. But then the way we live out our lives is this sort of feeling that if I was just better, I could get more blessing from God. And to have it you just, you see it everywhere. I mean non-stop in books and podcasts, not this one. Books and podcasts and conferences, you know, and sermons. If you want to have a happy life, do these six things Well, in a sense like knowing that you're living in a way that is consistent with your real identity as a child of God. That does bring a sense of blessing and happiness, knowing that you're living in a way that reflects who you really are. But on the other hand, the Bible's full of people who were serving God and had really terrible lives. I mean Isaiah, or was it Jeremiah, I don't remember Got thrown into the sewer.

Speaker 1:

That was Jeremiah.

Speaker 2:

Jeremiah. I mean Jesus ended up on a cross. Yeah, jesus ended up on a cross. Yeah, Almost all of the apostles died martyrs' deaths. So let's not think that because we're living in a way that's consistent with our true identity, which is I am loved by God, let's not think that if I'm living consistently, that automatically means that I'm going to have this American comfort thing. Now, tabby, you and I know that's true and we can say it, but then when the sky falls, then we think what did I do?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think that's where really good, solid, trauma-informed, not legalistic biblical community is such a vital gift, because we need people to come around us when it all hits the fan to say you are so loved. I don't have answers here, and we do try to circumvent and spiritually bypass, because other people's pain hit, pain in us and make us uncomfortable and so we're like let me slap a verse on that which is unhelpful.

Speaker 1:

Unless the verse is, I'm going to sit with you and wail no, which I don't know. That there's an exact verse, I think, probably something closer than the psalms, but that is something that we just don't do. Well, we don't sit with folks who are struggling. Now, obviously, if we can provide a practical you know support, if we can help someone get out of oppression, of course we want to do that of you, want to come alongside practically, but there are things that will not be healed in our lifetime and you say it so well in Unloved. I'm going to actually read it. It's when you are talking about Gomer, and what I love is that you talk about Gomer and she is in the book of Hosea.

Speaker 1:

Hosea was actually a formative book for me when I was getting out of abuse, which is wild because at the time, a jillion years ago now, I was like who reads Hosea? Like? And the Lord kept bringing me back to Hosea and I'm like why? Why are we here, jesus? I do not understand. Until we got to chapter six and in verses one through three he says I am going to destroy your life, but I will rebuild it as sure as the rains come in the spring. That's the summarization of those verses.

Speaker 1:

And I remember sitting on my bed knowing implicitly God said I am taking your marriage because it is unwell and you are in danger, and I promise you I will rebuild your life. And I just remember thinking, thinking I do not want this word, I'm not enjoying, do not love. But it was so strong in me I couldn't step away from it. I knew what was coming and it's God's mercy that I knew it was coming because he already said he'd be with me and I watched him do that as I escaped a very dangerous situation.

Speaker 1:

But I look at how we have talked about in the church Gomer and how we have maybe misunderstood what her life might have been like and the things that you bring up about her are just so tender and kind and to me really speak to the heart of Jesus in that. And one of the things that you talk about in terms of her self-destructive, because she kept going back to prostitution, which also is a lot like our own hearts. You say turning from self-destructive habits for the life that welcomes and rests in the Lord's love may take a lifetime. Sometimes we never know complete release from them, and as a therapist who walks with people through exiting destruction, exiting their own responses to destruction, I see this all the time that it is so hard, when we've had such deep trauma, to walk differently and rest feels unsafe because you don't know it, and so I just love the tenderness that you say hey, god's still with you, but there may still be struggles.

Speaker 2:

Yes, and you know, when you look at the life of somebody like Gomer and basically for whomever might be listening to this that doesn't know the story, hosea is a prophet. God tells him to marry a prostitute. The prostitute is Gomer. He marries her and he is a faithful husband to her, but she leaves him and goes back into her life of prostitution. He buys her back out of that and you know, we never see a time in her life where she's completely free. You know, she certainly always carried her reputation within the village where she was. But also when you think about a person who struggles like she did and you think, why would she do that? Why would she go back to that? I think the way it would have been spun in the past by people who got to tell the history. You know, oh well, she's just a slut. We're just going to slut shame her Instead of saying what is it in the heart of Gomer that makes her feel like this life of being used and abused in this way is where is her identity?

Speaker 2:

I have a problem believing that there's any little girl in the world who, when she's six or seven years old, perhaps she's already been abused, but assuming she is not, who says when I grow up, I hope I get to be a prostitute. Nobody thinks that. You think that because you have been made to believe that that's what you deserve, that that's your true identity and that Tabitha is what's so important. And I think, really, how the church has missed it in not talking about our identity in Christ and instead saying do these things and you'll have the happy identity of an Instagram post.

Speaker 2:

So Gomer is beloved. Beloved. God calls her beloved. See, because he sees beyond this outward, he sees her heart and he knows her story. And that's what we have to start doing is saying I want to see the story, but not only do I want to see the story. I want God to help me and to help every woman I speak to understand what it is to have the identity of Jesus Christ, To be completely forgiven and to be counted completely righteous, completely obedient, yeah, to be adopted and loved and welcomed at the table. That's what I want.

Speaker 1:

And again we can say yes and amen but then we got to fight that because we are all of us by nature legalists. I know that there are people in the survivor community that struggle with folks knowing that people are caught in legalism and stuck in that place, and I get that. But I do want to say we all have that bent and we can be legalistic on multiple sides. I always pray to the Lord. I never want to become that which I wore against, and it's always right there for us if we're not careful. And I also think that for leadership it is so vital to ask the question what makes this make sense? It's a therapy question I ask all the time and it doesn't mean that I want people to stay in destructive places, by no means. But I really have to start with how did we get here? And I've had multiple pastors over years of working with women.

Speaker 1:

If a woman is caught in infidelity or admits to infidelity, then they refer to her as an adulteress. And when I sit with them and I hear their story of childhood trauma, their story of domestic abuse and coercive control, and I hear how desperate they are to be loved. And then some man comes in while they are separated from their husband or what have you, and they give them care and kindness. So they might be a freaking predator, but they give them what feels like goodness and love and they go to it like a moth to a flame. And when you say, what is she trying to get from this? What is happening for her? Is she trying to get from this what is happening for her?

Speaker 1:

Then you can dive deeper and say, oh, there's a very real need here that did not get met because she has been so unloved. And let's talk about how, first, god can fill that need and how she can learn to have healthy community. That fills that need. That isn't necessarily an adulterous relationship, right, because we can have non-sexual intimacy with lots of people in beautiful ways that are very life-giving and biblically oriented and not sloppy agape, if you will. And that is something I just long for leaders to have. They give that goodness often to men because they will have men's groups for men who have struggled with sex addiction or compulsive sexual behaviors. They do not have in-kind women's groups. Almost anywhere there's a few, but nobody ever says why is this a struggle? Why, what happens to you?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yes, what happened to you? I was talking with a good friend of mine the other day and she was talking about a relative of hers that every so often she just goes off the rails, and I mean she goes off the rails in big ways. And my friend asked me. She said why would she do this? She'd put her life back together again. And now here she is reliving this same destruction. It's because she thinks that's her identity, that's who she is, that's what she deserves and that's something that has been ingrained in her so that she doesn't think of herself as, let's say, Elise the righteous, beloved one of God. She thinks of herself as Elise the slut.

Speaker 1:

I think what pastors and leaders at times don't understand is that to change you must experience yourself differently first, and so I can have an intellectual theology that knows all of the systematic theology I can walk you right through it.

Speaker 1:

My functional theology when I actually live out might look a lot different. Right, and if you are willing to take the time and disentangle, then you can start ferreting that out. One of the things that I hear often is connection precedes correction. I say it, I have heard it from other therapists, and if you connect with someone and say, let me understand you, as Diane Langberg says, what makes you you, yes, then in that place, in a place of deep love and care, I can help you disentangle and help you find places to experience yourself differently. But it is far longer and far more messy than most people want to do.

Speaker 2:

Yes, and I'm so glad you're talking about it being done in the context of intimate not sexual intimate community. That's where it has to be done. But the hard thing, of course, is that when you experience that and you feel that way about yourself, then what you want to do is isolate, because you feel shame and anger and fear, and the very thing that can be helpful to you is caring, faithful, intimate community with believers who will help you, and people like you, tammy, people like you.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely. I mean, we know from the recovery community healing happens in community and we can say it in recovery places. Recovery groups celebrate recovery, but when it comes down to truly living life together and I want to be careful with that because man holy cow, abusive churches use that- in wrong ways. And that is one of my biggest frustration with wicked theology. It's weaponizing God's good and righteous word and using pieces and parts of it to serve your own ends, which I am fairly certain he says is a real bad idea in scripture.

Speaker 2:

Real bad idea.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, shepherds are not supposed to eat the sheep. That is not how this works, and I see that like oh, we want to be in a covenant community. Well, okay, tell me where that comes from in the Bible. I have questions. Secondly, how does that live out and what does it truly look like?

Speaker 1:

Because I was in an abusive church where I was told you are shammily and everything that they found out about me and found out about my struggles, about the harm they've been done to me, it was used as a weapon to control, and so when I say you know being and doing life together, I know that that can feel very tricky for people who have been spiritually abused, and so I just want to acknowledge that, because we may have had a whole group of people that just sort of had a mini stroke while I was saying it. Yeah, I just want to note that I'm not talking about that kind of community, but the true community with people who say I really do love you. I'm not going to do this perfectly, but we're going to be in this mess together and try to figure it out. We're going to be boundary in appropriate ways, because that's part of health. We are going to definitely talk about the real things.

Speaker 1:

I have no capacity, at least none whatsoever, for a shallow end conversation. I am the worst. I'm like let's just go, yeah, let's just go to the real stuff, man Cause it's all. We're all there, we all have it, and we have to be willing to get in the dirt together, because that is where the healing is going to happen. Jesus meets us in the dirt.

Speaker 2:

Yes, yes, yes, he does, yes, yes, yes, he does, yes, he does. And that was the very thing that the religious elite hated about him was he hung out with sinners. He purposefully got down and dirty with all of the people who were the outcasts of his culture. He's making a point and we need to follow in his footsteps, and what that means is that a lot of the places that are talked about these days as being really the great place where all this power is and you know, we can accomplish all this great stuff. Whatever all of that, we have to rethink who are Jesus' friends?

Speaker 1:

Yes, yeah, and man, it's so tempting because we want a utopia. Look, first of all, if you read the actual Bible, it says the world is not getting better. Jesus is coming back, death's going down, it's ugly at times, and I heard recently a pastor say we want to get back to the America that we're supposed to have. We don't want to lose this America, and I remember thinking I do. I do because what's here and I'm not saying all things, please. No, I don't want to leave this country.

Speaker 1:

I like it here, I'm good, but what I'm hearing is what I want is power, and what I want is people to look like Jesus and to humble themselves. I talked with a buddy recently about what contending for the faith actually looks like. Then it isn't going into places and raving heck about things. Now there are things to confront, you know. Of course, there are places we want to press in. However, I don't want to walk into a place where I don't have a relationship to somebody and say you need to do it different. They're not going to hear me. I'm going to look like a crazy person.

Speaker 1:

What I want to do is, again, first understand people and hear them, and I want to invite them to meet this Savior in the way that I live my own life and in the way that I talk about Jesus. I want to talk about him like the friend that he is. And you're talking about those people that Jesus, you know, ate with. The Pharisees are like, oh, you're eating with a bunch of sinners. Here's the thing. There are a few times Jesus would do things and go, and then go and sin no more. How many of those people do you think stayed in those dark places after a true encounter with the kind Jesus that he is? You know, romans says it's God's kindness that leads us to repentance. Yes, yes, you know. Romans says it's God's kindness that leads us to repentance.

Speaker 2:

Yes, yes, and that love that he would show to, let's say, the woman who is caught in adultery, that kind of love that he would show to her, was transformative. Yes, yes, say okay. Well, I saw that you said a crossword His love and he did confront sin, but his love transformed people, and when they understood that he had this love for them, then it was out of that then that they began to change.

Speaker 1:

Yes, yeah, and he didn't put a timeline on change Right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you got to do it in 12 weeks.

Speaker 1:

Right, and I've heard that from some biblical counselors. I have no hate for biblical counselors. I have hate for some, but not for a lot of them. There are some that are literally excellent. They are trauma-informed and they are wonderful.

Speaker 1:

And I want to be clear about that because I know that there are places and people that will say always find a licensed counselor. And I'm like dude, find one that loves Jesus and knows what they're doing. Right, like pick. And some licensed counselors are legitimately terrible. And some biblical counselors are legitimately terrible, legitimately terrible. And some biblical counselors are legitimately terrible. So don't pick them right, pick the good one.

Speaker 1:

But I hear some biblical counselors saying but they didn't do their homework, but they didn't do what I told them to do. And if you don't understand what the barriers are, what their struggles might be, was your homework even a good thought or did you just get it out of a book, Like there's a lot of things right that, or maybe they just need to go slower. A lot of things I say to counselors as I'm training them is slow down, slow down. You are not going to get checkbox stuff, and we say that when we're working with destructive men who are abusing people we talk about. There is no timeline. You have to see heart change. Why isn't that applicable everywhere?

Speaker 2:

Do you want the actual answer to that question or do we assume we know it? Oh, I want you to say it. Well, okay, because the people who make the rules and the people who tell the history are the people who are in power. The rules and the people who tell the history are the people who are in power. So the people who make the rules and the people who tell the history, generally speaking, have been men who, generally speaking, very generally speaking, are not trauma-informed. Now, you and I know a bunch of guys who are trauma-informed and really wonderful, but generally speaking they're not. And so then they get to tell the stories of the history, they get to tell you what your history is, and then they get to make the rules and tell you you need to be better right away, and if you're not better right away, it's because you're being rebellious.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that might come from a very wicked place. This is power and control. It's what they want, and they are wicked men. I will just say wicked men and women, without question. And then there are some that do not realize the water in which they swim and what they are drinking, right, and they just haven't really thought it through and done that deep dive. They've accepted whatever tradition that they have come up in. They have just accepted what they were taught, maybe in seminary, and even though they're studying the word of God, they're not letting it bear weight on them in such a way that it will challenge these ideologies.

Speaker 1:

And man, we talked about legalism. Dogma feels good because dogma is black and white and it makes us feel safe. And if I grew up yeah, being told, if you do this and America looks like this, then you will be safe, and we go back to idols of safety and comfort and peace and all of those things that are and again, in and of themselves not bad, but they are not God. God is God. That's it Right. And I think that I know I've gone through it and you've gone through it because you described it of having the word of God actually bear weight on us and go wait. What are we believing?

Speaker 2:

What are we walking in?

Speaker 1:

Right. Some people us and go wait, what are we believing, what are we walking in? And some people will call that deconstruction. I call it sanctification and scripture talks about it.

Speaker 2:

Yes, yes, yes. And you know what I want to be really clear here. I was them Same, so I wrote books about that. I've publicly asked for forgiveness for the ways in which I'm sure I harmed people in my counsel in my writing in part and I don't want this to be an excuse. But, tabitha, I want to say it in part because I was trying to fit into the mold that the male-dominated vocal counseling movement said I needed to be. So I was trying to find identity in that and as soon as I started talking about instead finding identity in Jesus, then they began to look at me sideways and I was canceled by those people and then I started talking about women and then you know can't do that. And then you know can't do that. But I want to say listen, I know that temptation to want to find your identity and approval in the people with the microphone, in the people with the power. I wanted that.

Speaker 1:

But I hope now. I hope that I really do see it and have turned from it as I should. I was definitely in that boat. I hadn't written books at that point, but I had talked with people about the Lord in ways that were incredibly unhelpful, and I actually did go back to those people and say I'm really sorry, the way that I language Jesus was absolutely wrong and so much different than who he says he is, and I owe you an apology. And I think that that is a place that we all want to stay. I believe, maybe even more right, maybe even we'll say on the internet that we will in 10 years, five years, whatever go. Ooh, we did not have that quite right, and I pray that we are always humble enough to say I messed that up, I'm so sorry and I hope that there will be grace for that. You know, and and I want to also set this apart from the kind of apology we see from a wicked pastor who's maybe slept with his congregants or been molesting people or things like that, because if you listen to apology, they're not actual apologies.

Speaker 1:

I think of the Coldplay kiss cam which, as we're recording, this is one of the things that has been hot in the news where a CEO was caught being unfaithful on a concert kiss cam in a group of 68,000 people or so, and his response was well, coldplay shouldn't have shown me I had an expectation of privacy. They're playing a concert with thousands of people. I think not, sir, and so it wasn't. I'm so grieved by the heartbreak I have caused my spouse, the heartbreak I'm causing my children, the heartbreak I am causing my company, and I'm going to really evaluate it and do something different. It was I'm sorry I got caught.

Speaker 1:

And those are two different things, so I just want to set that aside, because I know, especially for survivors, apologies can be tricky, because they don't always. Then you're like is this genuine, Is it not genuine?

Speaker 2:

I'm not always sure always that you're like is this genuine, is it not genuine? I'm not always sure, right, right, and you know, I would say I'm really glad. You know, tabitha, wouldn't it be terrible if the worst things we'd ever done were shown on a kiss cam? Oh, goodness gracious, it'd be awful, wouldn't that be terrible? My only hope is that at the end of the age, when I'm standing before Jesus Christ and he looks at my life and he says Jesus Christ, and he looks at my life and he says well done, good and faithful servant, not because of something I've done, but because of what he's done and he's given me grace to believe. So when he sees my record, which gets plastered I don't know how and if it actually does, but is shown for what it is, when he looks at that, what he sees is the perfections of his obedience that have been given to me. That's my only hope. Because that dude on the kiss cam, you know, know, I saw it and I thought may I not be remembered by the worst thing I've ever done?

Speaker 1:

yes agreed.

Speaker 2:

It's so sad I mean the destruction but know what I've done, really destructive things. And may I not? Recently also, I'll say this a very well-known pastor died and I had people texting me or emailing me because this pastor and those around him had done things that were, I would say, pretty unkind to myself and my daughter. And again I said this man is more than the worst thing he ever did and may I somehow have grace for him, because God has given me grace. Now that doesn't mean that I don't call out sin Right. I definitely want to call it out, but I want to do so with the heart that says that's me, you give me the right circumstance, that's me. May God help me not to be that guy or that kiss cam guy or that woman. May we not be remembered by the worst things we've ever done, and the only way we can do that is by resting in Christ Absolutely.

Speaker 1:

And you speak of a tension that we all hold of. I have to say what's wrong is wrong. I can't not, especially as I get older. Heavens to Betsy man Boy. Do we lose our filter, you know? But also to the gift, the gift from God. We lose the ability to like do the high jump it all for our filter? It's fine.

Speaker 1:

But I look at that and I always want to have compassion. Yeah, I always want to say, at least if this person you know, lord, that their theology is now accurate because they see him face to face. And the grace that we want as survivors must go both ways right and that's real important. And it's hard when you've been hurt. That doesn't mean in that gray space now I would not have gone to this pastor's church. That would not have been my vibe.

Speaker 2:

I would not have gone.

Speaker 1:

But I can also give grace that if this individual knew the Lord for sure and for real and I'm not, I'm not Jesus I wouldn't know that then now the theology is good and yeah, you know, looking at that and saying I want to have a heart of compassion, a boundary to heart of good, and you know, looking at that and saying I want to have a heart of compassion, a boundary to heart of compassion, again, I'm not going to hang out with people who are you know harmful, but I can have a boundary heart of compassion for people that I very much disagree with and it is my hope and prayer that I can always hold to something I've heard an attorney say before reasonable minds can disagree and I can disagree vehemently with destructive theology.

Speaker 1:

I can speak against it, I can speak against the people who are spouting it and I can name names if I need to, and I can hold that golly. I hope there's a change and if I see one, I'm going to celebrate it.

Speaker 1:

I'm not going to be like well once upon a time, because I want that grace given to me and that makes it hard, right. Just like a lot of biblical counselors and pastors are like we want a timeline. I need to know that there's not one going the other way as well, and that doesn't mean again, I am not soft on destruction at all. I am not soft on sin, neither is Jesus, but I can hold out or this is messy and there are things I do not know.

Speaker 2:

Right, right, right, and we probably won't understand till the end. And then you know what? At the end it's going to be so glorious and the Lord will have covered it all and all of the ways in which I've sinned against a person or others have sinned against me. I will be able to love and they will be able to love able to love and they will be able to love. Not that we don't call it out here and now, but then it's going to be made right and I'm going to know how loved I am, and that will put me at ease.

Speaker 1:

Yes, the concept that we're talking about from a clinical perspective is called a dialectic, and dialectics are where we hold two things that are opposite. Yet they can be synthesized and so we can hold grace and kindness and prayer for those we disagree with vehemently for lots of great reasons, and we can speak out against it, and they are not necessarily diametrically opposed, and I think that is, for survivors in particular, an area of black and white thinking that Jesus would love to have different for most of us, yes, and something that can be sanctified and redeemed, and we can hold that tension and we don't like holding tension.

Speaker 1:

It also means we hold grief yes, boy, do we not like grief Holy cow? Yes, yes, yes, boy, do we not like grief holy cow?

Speaker 2:

Yes, yes, yes. So everything doesn't need to be tidy, which, of course, is the whole point of the Unloved book. It's not going to be tidy, it won't be neat, it won't be Instagram worthy. It's life, and life is a mess, but in the midst of it we can find light and love and healing, and then courage to speak and humility also to know when not to speak.

Speaker 1:

Yes, absolutely. I always tell my staff always look for the light, and sometimes it's going to be the light from the dumpster fire. They will always be light. It's gonna keep your eyes on light and that is so gracious and good that there are people in this world that we can know who are good and they look man, but you're not gonna get hurt. You hurt your feelings, I'm not gonna hurt somebody else. You know what I'm saying. Like, right, that happens, but also that are going to be humble and ask for forgiveness and be good friends and even in the messy there is such goodness and joy possible. And I think that unloved really speaks to that in how it's written, because Jesus is here and he is good and he is light. The light has come into the world and the darkness cannot overcome it. Right, and unloved points us to him who is the light? I mean what I'm getting? Yes, the wreck, only the sun in heaven, because, like he's gonna be it, which is trippy, I'm like physics man. I cannot wait to see how that goes.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, exactly well, elise, you are a delight. You are full of wisdom and grace, and I know that that all comes at a price and I am so grateful for you spending time with us here on hey Tabby and for hanging out and for sharing some of that wisdom, sharing it through your books, and we will have all the wonderful places that people can find you. In the show notes we will have a link to Unloved. If you have not read it, I definitely heard it, I loved it, it was really meaningful to me and we just hope that you'll come back and hang out with us sometime.

Speaker 2:

I'd love that. Tabitha, Thank you so much. Thank you for your love, your humility, your faithfulness, for the way you continue to pursue the Lord, even in the midst of suffering. Thank you for being a voice.

Speaker 1:

My pleasure and thank you. Thanks for joining me for today's episode of hey Tabby. If you're looking for a resource that I mentioned in the show and you want to check out the show notes, head on over to tabithawestbrookcom. Forward slash heytabi. That's H-E-Y-T-A-B-I and you can grab it there. I look forward to seeing you next time.

People on this episode

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Tabitha Westbrook, LMFT-S, LCMCH-QS, LPC-S, CSAT, CCTP, CCTCP

Host
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Elyse Fitzpatrick

Guest