The Moment I Knew God Was Real

I want to write this one differently.

Not as a teacher. Not as a coach with something to offer you at the end. Just as a woman sitting across from you at two in the morning who has been exactly where you are and needs you to know that what is happening to you right now is not the end of your story.

Even if it feels like it.

Even if your body is telling you otherwise.

Even if the person who was supposed to love you is looking right through you like you are not there.

This is the most personal thing I have ever put into words. And I am putting it here, on this page, for you. Because you found this and I do not believe that was an accident.

What Nobody Knew

There was a season in my life that my children did not know this truth until they were adults.

I protected them from it the way mothers do. You keep the face composed. You get up when you have no business getting up. You drive the carpool and pack the lunches and show up for the school play and you do not let them see what is happening underneath because they are children and they need you to be okay even when you are not anywhere close to okay.

What was happening underneath being "Okay" was that I was disappearing.

Not all at once. Slowly. The way a woman disappears when she has been living inside abuse long enough that her body finally says I cannot do this anymore and begins to shut itself down.

My immune system had collapsed. I was skin and bones. No color in my skin. I could not eat. Drinking water had become a chore. The brain fog was so thick I could barely think. I was so weak that I crawled up the stairs. Not walked. Crawled. I drove my children to school on mornings when I had no business being behind the wheel because there was no one else to do it. And when I came home to an empty house I made it as far as the floor and I stayed there.

Not figuratively. Literally.

And my husband, the man who stood before God and promised to love and protect me, could not have cared less.

No hand on my back. No glass of water. No are you okay. Nothing but the cold indifference of a man who had been slowly taking everything from me for years and was not finished yet.

I want every woman reading this who has been sick and alone inside a marriage to know that I see exactly what that is. It is not just loneliness. It is a specific and devastating kind of betrayal. The person who was supposed to be your safe place becoming the reason you have no safe place left.

And I want every man reading this to sit with what I just described. Because the woman in your life may be disappearing right now while you are not paying attention. Your absence is not neutral. Your coldness is not harmless. Your refusal to see her is slowly eroding her body, her faith, her dignity, and her sense of self. And by the time you notice how far it has gone it may be further than you know.

The Floor

This particular morning I had dropped my children at school and come home to a house that was completely empty and completely silent.

And I made it to the floor.

Not the couch. Not the bed. The floor.

And I lay there face down with nothing left. No performance. No composure. No version of okay to put on for anyone because there was no one there to put it on for.

And I did something I had not done before in quite this way.

I begged.

Not a composed prayer. Not the kind of prayer that sounds like faith. The kind that comes from so far past dignity that all that is left is the raw and desperate truth of what you need.

And what I said was this.

If you are real, please do not take me. My children cannot lose another mother. Our adopted children have already lost so much. Please.

I want you to understand what it cost me to pray that prayer. I was not yet the woman of faith I am today. I did not have the theological language or the years of Scripture or the community of believers around me. I had a floor and a whisper and the terrifying possibility that there was someone who could hear me.

And I lay there.

Sobbing silently because I did not even have the strength to cry with my whole body.

Just tears. And a whisper. And the floor beneath me.

And nothing else.

What Happened Next

I do not know how long I lay there. Time does something strange when you are that broken.

But at some point I felt it.

A weight on my back. Like a hand. Pressing gently, firmly, with a warmth that moved through my entire body like something I have no clinical word for.

I looked around.

There was no one there.

And then I heard it.

Not in my head. Not as a thought I could talk myself out of. Not as something I could explain away in the light of day.

A voice. In that room. With me.

Jill. Get up. And do as I say with every bite you take and every drink.

And that was all.

And I got up.

What I Need You to Understand About That Moment

I am not telling you this to convince you of anything. I am not telling you this to start a debate or to tell you that your encounter with God has to look like mine.

I am telling you because you might be on your own floor right now. Maybe not literally. But in that place past the end of yourself. Past the prayers that used to feel like enough. Past the faith that used to hold you. Past the point where you can perform okay one more single time.

And you need to know that the floor is not where it ends.

The floor is where He finds you.

Not when you have it together. Not when you have earned it. Not when you are strong enough to stand up straight and receive it. When you are flat on your face with nothing left but a whisper.

That is exactly where He showed up for me.

And I have never been the same since.

What Came After Was Not Easy

I need to tell you this part too because I think we do a real disservice to hurting people when we make the moment of encounter with God sound like the end of the hard part.

It was not the end. It was the beginning of the hardest years of my life.

It took another five years. Five years of the most painful realizations I have ever had to sit with. The full understanding of the depth of what had been done to me. The realization that the marriage I had been trying to save with everything in me was the very thing that was destroying me. And during that season of healing God revealed something to me that my mind had protected me from for decades. Something that happened to me as a child that I was not strong enough to know until He had spent years building something in me that could hold the truth of it.

He showed it to me while my mother was calling me after three years of silence to tell me she was dying of cancer.

And I sobbed and I asked Him why He would show me this now. In the middle of everything else.

And I believe He showed me then because I was finally safe enough to know. Because He had spent years building something in me that was strong enough to hold the truth without being destroyed by it.

That is who He is. He does not show us more than we can carry. And He does not leave us to carry it alone.

What the Floor Built

Here is what I know now that I could not see then.

He was not absent in the hard years. He was not waiting for me 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 me that I could not yet see, something that would one day be strong enough to hold my own story without being destroyed by it.

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

And the forgiveness I carry today for the man who looked away while I was dying on that floor is complete in a way I cannot take credit for. So complete that when I hear his name my body feels nothing. Not anger. Not grief. Not bitterness. Just sometimes a quiet sadness for him. For what he has never been able to become.

That did not come from deciding. It came from doing the work. Real work over real years with real support and the faith that was deposited in me on that floor holding me through every single step of it.

Faith without the work kept me surviving. Faith with the work brought me to living. And there is a profound difference between the two.

But God

My two favorite words.

But God.

I will say them until the day He calls me home. Because no matter what I have faced, no matter how many times I have wanted to shake my fist at the sky and demand answers He did not immediately give me, He has been faithful. Every single time. Not always in the way I wanted. Not always on my timeline. Not always in a way I could see clearly while I was in the middle of it.

But faithful.

Despite my circumstances He is still for me. Despite my level of faith in any given moment He is still for me. Despite my ability to pray or forgive or open my Bible during the hardest seasons He is still for me.

Romans 8 is the anchor I cling to when the enemy does not stop. And he does not stop. Not for those who have had floor moments. Not for those who are building something that matters. But Romans 8:28 says that God works all things together for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. All things. Not just the beautiful things.

Every single thing. Including the floor. Including the crawling up the stairs. Including the years of silence from the person who should have been holding you. He was working it together then. He is working it together now.

Romans 8:38 and 39 says that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Nothing. Not what was done to you. Not what you did not know. Not what the enemy tried to take. Not the floor. Not the years. Nothing.

Romans 8:28 was true on my floor before I knew it was true. He was working it together. All of it. For something I could not yet imagine. For this. For you. For the woman who finds this page at two in the morning before she knows my name and needs to know that someone else was on that floor and made it through.

That is, you. And I am here.

Watch This Week's Video

This post is the written companion to this week's video. Read these words and let them settle in you. Then watch. Let both of them reach the places in you that are ready to be reached.

https://youtu.be/7dmyI0XZEWo

You Are Not at the End

Wherever you are right now, on a floor or close to one or watching someone you love disappear while you do not know how to reach her, you are not at the end.

You are at the place where something can begin that could not have begun any other way. The place where pretending finally runs out of room. The place where the whisper is the most honest thing you have ever said.

And if He is real, He shows up there.

In my experience He is. And He does.

I am not special. I want you to hear that clearly. I am not someone God chose because my faith was stronger or my story was harder or my willingness was greater. I am a woman He loved enough to meet on a floor when she had nothing left to offer Him but a whisper. And He loves you exactly the same way.

You only have to be willing to have your own floor moment. And I promise you with everything in me that He will meet you there. He will not forsake you. Day by day He will do His part while you do yours. He is a promise keeper. And He will straighten out the crooked paths you are walking on right now.

I built everything you see here from that floor. And I promised my mother and I promised God that the pain would not be wasted. That every tear, every loss, every layer of a lifetime of abuse would become something He could breathe His love and peace and hope and joy through.

This is that something. And you are why.

A Prayer For You

Before you go I want to pray over you. You did not find this page by accident. And you should not leave it without someone covering you with the truth of who God says you are.

Father God,

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

The one who is on her floor. The one who is barely holding on. The one whose faith is worn thin and whose body is tired and whose heart has been broken more times than she can count.

Meet her here.

Not after she has it together. Not after she has prayed the right prayer or said the right words 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 settle into the places in her body that have never felt safe.

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

Pour out Your mercy and Your grace over every year she has carried what was never hers to carry alone. Restore what was stolen. Redeem what was broken. Rebuild what was destroyed.

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

Today is the day.

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

And 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 prayer for the first time,

Welcome home.

He calls you the apple of His eye. He calls you chosen. He calls you loved. Not because of what you have done or survived or endured. Because of who He is.

And He has been with you every single step of the way.

Even before you knew His name.

God bless your healing. God bless your becoming. And God bless the floor that brought you here.

In Jesus name, Amen.

I built everything you see here from that floor. And I built three specific things for the woman who is ready to stop surviving and start living.

The first is the Inner Healing Journey Method. This is where the deep work happens. 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 and not just on the surface. This is the foundation everything else gets built on.

The second is Raising Her Worth, the most important work I have ever done. 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 determines everything. If you are a man reading this, I am asking you directly. Read it. Share it. Let it change what you build around the women in your life. Future generations are waiting for someone to finally do better.

The third is Redeeming Your Love, Safe and Sacred Dating. Because once you understand your worth and begin to 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 let it in without your wounded places sabotaging it. How to build something sacred. Redeeming Your Love was written for that moment.

All three are at innerhealingcoaching.com. Come find me. The door is open. And if you know a woman who is on her floor right now, will you send this to her? Not with advice. Not with answers. Just with this.

She is not alone. Someone else was there. And she made it through.

And so will she.

God bless your healing. God bless every floor that led you here.

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.

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