Before God Ever Entered the Room

Maybe you found this post because something in your life is not working and you cannot fully explain why.

Maybe you have tried to fix it. Tried to outrun it. Tried to build something over it that would hold long enough for you to stop thinking about what is underneath.

And it keeps coming back.

I want to tell you something today. Not as someone who has it all figured out. As someone who spent the first thirty one years of her life doing exactly what you might be doing right now. Moving fast enough that the pain could not quite catch up. Surviving so well from the outside that nobody around her knew how broken the inside actually was.

That was me. For a very long time.

And I want to tell you a little bit about those years today. Not because my story is more important than yours. But because I think you need to know that the woman writing this has been exactly where you are. In the dark. Without God. Without the tools. Without anyone who could show her the way through.

And I made it.

Not because I was strong enough.

Because He was. Even before I knew His name.

What I Was Carrying Before I Had Words for It

I grew up Jewish. I grew up knowing survival. I did not grow up knowing God.

I grew up in a home where love was not safe and where the people who were supposed to form me left me instead with a broken spirit and no framework for understanding any of it. No moral compass. No faith. No one to show me what healthy love looked like or what I deserved or what God had actually designed relationships to feel like.

And so, I did what women do when nobody teaches them anything different.

I chose what felt familiar. I reached for what felt like home. Even when home had never been safe. Even when what I was calling love was costing me more than I had to give.

Maybe you know that place.

Maybe you have spent years wondering why you keep ending up in the same situations with different faces. Why the relationships that should feel good leave you emptier than before. Why the version of yourself you show the world feels so different from the one you are when no one is watching.

It is not because you are broken beyond repair. It is because nobody gave you what you needed at the beginning. And without that foundation everything built on top of it shifts.

That is not a character flaw. That is what pain does when it goes unnamed and unaddressed for long enough.

The Years of Surviving Without Feeling

I was a single mother for almost seven years between my first and second marriage. Alone. Raising my daughter. Working jobs I hated with people who took advantage of the fact that I needed the work. Keeping my face composed. Keeping the story I told about myself far enough from the truth that I could keep functioning.

And I functioned well. By most measures I was doing fine.

But underneath the functioning everything I had survived was still there. Unprocessed. Unnamed. Waiting for a moment of stillness I was too afraid to allow.

Because stillness is dangerous when the only safe thing you have ever known is movement.

I had been raped. I had survived things that nobody around me had language for and that the world in that era had no real framework to address. You were expected to move on. To file it away. To keep going and not look down at what was happening underneath. I was alone in that shower afterward. I was alone under that water as a child when no one came. I was alone inside homes where I was not protected. I was alone after being hurt by people who should never have had access to me.

And nobody gave me the words for any of it. Nobody sat me down and said what happened to you was wrong, it was not your fault, you deserved protection you did not receive. Nobody helped me understand that the choices I was making in the aftermath were not character flaws. They were the entirely predictable result of a woman who had never been taught her own worth and had no one standing in the gap for her.

I wonder if you know that particular aloneness. The kind that is not just about being by yourself in a room. The kind that comes from moving through years of your life without anyone who truly sees what you are carrying or knows how to help you put it down.

I did that for a very long time.

What Happens When You Meet Grace Without a Framework for It

When God finally found me, He did not find me in a church. He did not find me with a Bible in my hand or a theological foundation already in place. He found me the way He seems to find so many of us. Quietly. In an ordinary moment. Through something so simple you almost miss it.

And something in me that had been moving fast for thirty one years went completely still.

And in that stillness I felt something I did not have a name for yet. Something true. Something underneath everything I had survived that had been waiting to be found.

But here is what I want to tell you about meeting grace when you have never been taught what grace is.

It is overwhelming in a way that is almost impossible to describe.

Because when you finally understand who God is, when you encounter the full weight of His holiness and His love at the same time, you become acutely aware of the distance between who you have been and who He is. And without a framework for grace, without someone having laid the groundwork of what it means to be forgiven, that awareness can feel like condemnation before it ever feels like freedom.

I spent months on the floor of my bedroom sobbing. Not because someone told me to. Not because I was performing repentance. Because I genuinely did not yet understand that what He was offering me was not condemnation.

It was grace.

Freely given. Already paid for. Not contingent on how sorry I was or how many times I asked or whether I had done enough to deserve it. Already there. Already mine. Already covering everything I had carried and everything that had been done to me and everything I had done not knowing Him.

It was already there. It had been there the whole time.

Even when I was left under the water. Even when my legs gave out in that shower all alone after being raped. Even in the years I did not know His name. He had been there. Working in ways I could not see. Keeping what the enemy meant to destroy. Waiting for the moment I would finally be still enough to feel Him.

What I Know Now That I Did Not Know Then

Here is what I want you to hear more than anything else in this post.

God was not absent in your hard years either.

He was not waiting for you to get it right or get it together or finally become someone worthy of His attention. He was in the middle of every hard moment, building something in you that you cannot yet see, something that will one day be strong enough to hold your own story without being destroyed by it.

The pain you have been carrying was not the point. But it was not wasted either.

Every wound that gets properly tended becomes wisdom. Every layer of survival that finally gets replaced with something real becomes the foundation of a life that actually holds. Every moment you choose to stop running and turn toward the truth of what happened to you is a moment He can finally meet you in.

That is not a formula. That is what I have lived. And what I have watched happen in women who came to this work convinced their stories were too heavy, too complicated, too far from anything that could ever be redeemed.

There is no story too heavy for Him. There is no lifetime too painful for Him to use. There is no amount of years spent in the dark that He cannot bring light into.

But God are my two favorite words in any language. And I will say them until the day He calls me home.

Why the Abuse Did Not Stop When I Found Faith

This is the part I need to say carefully and honestly because I know it is the part some of you are living right now.

Finding God did not immediately end the harm. Finding God did not instantly give me the clarity, the boundaries, the voice, the strength to walk away from what was still destroying me. Because faith without healing is incomplete. And healing takes time. And there were layers in me that even God, in His patience, was working through one at a time.

The abuse in my marriage did not stop because I became a Christian. In some ways the faith made it more complicated, because now there was scripture being used against me. Now there were people in the church telling me that my endurance was faithfulness and my leaving would be failure. Now there was a whole new layer of harm being done in the name of the God I was just beginning to understand.

And I stayed longer than I should have. Not because I was weak. Because I was still learning what His voice actually sounded like. Still learning the difference between what men said about God and what God actually said. Still building the internal foundation that would eventually be strong enough to hold the truth about what was happening and what I deserved and what He actually wanted for my life.

That foundation took years to build. And it was built in layers, through the Word, through real encounter with Him, through healing work, through the slow and sometimes agonizing process of letting God replace the lies that had been spoken into me since childhood with the truth of who He said I was.

And the clearer His voice became, the clearer everything else became too.

The clearer I could see what was happening around me. The clearer I could feel what was right and what was wrong. The stronger my no became. The more I understood that He had not called me to survival. He had called me to life.

Full. Whole. Free. Every layer of what I survived became a layer of what I understand. Every wound that was finally tended became wisdom I could offer to another woman still in hers. Every moment of choosing to go back to Him instead of away from Him became a brick in a foundation that is now solid in a way it never was before.

Jeremiah 29:11 says He knows the plans He has for us. Plans for a future and a hope. He knew that when I was on the floor. He knew it when I did not. He was already writing the redemption while I was still living inside the wound.

And Romans 8:28 was always true. Even before I knew it was true. Even before I had the language for it. Even in the years the enemy was trying to take everything. God was working it together. All of it. For something I could not yet imagine.

That does not minimize what happened. It does not make the harm acceptable or the injustice right. It means that nothing the enemy did was the final word. God always gets the final word.

And His word over your life is not destruction.

It is redemption.

Watch This Week's Video

In this week's video I share more of my story in my own voice. The blog and the video are meant to work together but they are not the same. Read this. Then watch. Let both of them reach you in the way they were each made to.

https://youtu.be/Mik4-iSXtug

What I Want You to Know Before You Go

If you are reading this and you are in the part of the story that comes before the redemption is visible, I want to say something to you directly.

He is already there.

You do not have to have it figured out. You do not have to have the right theology or the right language or the right level of faith. You do not have to be further along than you are. You do not have to have already forgiven or already healed or already become the woman you are going to be on the other side of this.

You just have to be willing to let Him into the room.

And He will do what He has always done.

Meet you exactly where you are. With grace you did not earn and do not have to earn. With a love that was there before you knew His name. With a plan that the enemy has been trying to destroy since before you were born because he already knew what God was making you for.

You were not an accident. Your story was not a mistake. The pain was not the point.

He is the point. And He is not finished. A Prayer For You

Before you go anywhere, I want to pray over you. Because you did not find this post by accident. And you should not leave it without someone speaking the truth of who God says you are over your life.

Father God,

I bring every woman reading these words before You right now.

The one who has been surviving for so long she has forgotten what it feels like to actually live. The one who has been carrying pain that was never hers to carry alone. The one whose faith is worn thin or who does not yet have faith at all and is not sure what she believes but felt something reading these words and could not look away.

Meet her here. Not after she has it together. Not after she has said the right prayer or become someone worthy of Your presence. Right here. Right now. Exactly as she is.

Cover her in Your peace that surpasses every human understanding. Let it reach the places in her that have never felt safe.

Cover her in Your hope that does not disappoint. Let it find the part of her that stopped believing things could be different.

Restore what was stolen. Redeem what was broken. Rebuild what was destroyed.

And for the woman who has never known You, who has been reading and feeling something she cannot name,

Today can be the day. You do not need the right words. You do not need to have it figured out. You just need to be willing.

If you are willing, pray this with me.

Lord I am tired of carrying this alone. I need You. I believe You are real. I receive Your love and Your grace and Your forgiveness today. Come into my life and begin the work only You can do.

And to every woman who just prayed that for the first time,

Welcome home.

He calls you chosen. He calls you loved. He calls you the apple of His eye. Not because of what you have survived or what you have done or how long it took you to get here. Because of who He is.

And He has been with you every step of the way. Even before you knew His name.

God bless your healing. God bless your becoming.

In Jesus name, Amen.

If something in you is ready to stop surviving and start living, I built three things for exactly this moment.

The Inner Healing Journey Method is where the deep work begins. Going back to the places where the wounds were formed, letting God meet you there with truth and safety, healing at the level where it actually lives. This is the foundation everything else gets built on.

Raising Her Worth is my most important work. A leadership guide and companion workbook for every woman who needs to understand her true value and for every parent, pastor, husband, mentor, and leader who shapes the women around them. Because healing flows from the top down and the culture we create around women changes everything.

The third is Redeeming Your Love, Safe and Sacred Dating. Because once the inner healing begins, once you start to understand your worth and feel it in your body and not just your mind, you need wisdom for how to move forward in love differently. How to recognize what is real. How to build something sacred. How to finally let the right kind of love in without your nervous system sabotaging it or repeating what was familiar. Redeeming Your Love was written for that moment. For you

If this reached you today, please send it to a woman who needs it. She does not need more advice. She needs to know that someone else carried this weight too. And made it through. And found Him on the other side of it. Because He was there the whole time.

God bless your healing. God bless every layer of it.

I will see you next week.

With love,

Jill Inner Healing Coach Founder,

Inner Healing Journey Method™ and Raising Her Worth

Helping women reclaim their worth, restore their voice, and walk in healing.

Raising Her Worth: Leadership Rises & Falls With Her

$47.95

Buy Now