The Cost of Wholeness: Why Healing Requires More Than Escape

“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “Therefore I hope in Him!”

Lamentations 3:24 NKJV

Many people assume that healing begins when suffering ends.

I once thought that too.

What I have learned is that healing is not simply something that happens to you. Healing is something you walk through.

Whether the source of pain is abuse, betrayal, loss, grief, disappointment, rejection, sickness, or the death of a dream, suffering creates a void. It leaves us longing for relief, answers, certainty, or escape.

Most people spend their energy trying to avoid pain.

God often uses pain to bring us into wholeness and completeness.

One of the realities rarely discussed is that suffering itself is not the greatest danger. The greater danger is what pain convinces us to do while we are hurting.

Pain has a way of bending the soul. It can distort our thinking, alter our decisions, and tempt us to seek comfort in places God never intended.

I learned this lesson through one of the most painful seasons of my life.

In my own story, that suffering took the form of an abusive marriage. Whether a person remains in an abusive marriage or chooses to leave one, both paths involve pain. Both create a void.

The difference is the nature of that void.

Within the marriage, the void reopened again and again like a wound that could never fully heal. Every glimpse of hope was followed by disappointment, confusion, or harm. The wound remained exposed.

After leaving, the void felt different.

There was loneliness. There was grief. There was the surrender of what I once believed was safety and stability. There was the painful reality of acknowledging that thirteen years of my life had come to an end and that I did not know what the future might hold.

In those early days, I found myself wrestling with fears that I would be alone forever. There were moments when the pain tempted me to believe that being with my husband, despite the abuse, might somehow be easier than facing an unknown future alone.

But God was teaching me something deeper.

The Temptation to Fill the Void

When loneliness would surface, I often imagined a future relationship. I imagined someone who would ease the ache, comfort my heart, and fill the emptiness.

Instead, the Lord brought several women into my life who shared their own stories.

As I listened, a pattern emerged.

Each woman had entered a new relationship from a place of loneliness and pain rather than wholeness. The consequences looked different in every story, but the root was the same. They had attempted to fill a God-sized void with another person.

I felt the Holy Spirit impress a warning on my heart:

If I attempted to fill the void with another person instead of allowing God to fill it, I would enter the wrong relationship.

That revelation changed how I would interpret pain.

Why Pain Distorts Decisions

Scripture teaches that we are made up of spirit, soul, and body.

“Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

1 Thessalonians 5:23 NKJV

The spirit was created for communion with God.

The soul, which includes our mind, will, and emotions, was created to submit to God's Spirit.

The body carries out what the soul and spirit agree upon.

The world teaches us to live from the outside in, according to what we see, feel, and experience, but Scripture teaches us to live from the inside out, led and directed first by the Spirit of God.

Without understanding this order, it becomes easy to mistake emotional impulses for spiritual guidance.

Many of the decisions we make during seasons of suffering are not Spirit-led at all. They are attempts by the soul to relieve pain.

In chapter seven of my book I outline how pain bends the soul and ultimately the decisions a person makes.

When pain is shaping your decisions, you are being formed by suffering rather than by wholeness.

Soul-Led Decisions Versus Spirit-Led Decisions

The difference between Saul and Samuel illustrates this truth.

Samuel's soul was submitted to God. The Spirit governed his life, and his actions flowed from obedience. He possessed discernment because his life was in alignment with God's will.

Saul lived in reverse order.

He was governed by his own will, emotions, fears, and perceptions. Although he appeared righteous outwardly, he lived under his own authority rather than God's.

That misalignment ultimately destroyed him.

The lesson is sobering.

Deception often lives where outward appearances look holy while the heart remains misaligned.

As Scripture says:

“For the LORD does not see as man sees;

for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”

1 Samuel 16:7 NKJV

This matters because what many people call peace is sometimes only relief.

Women especially can mistake nervous-system relief for love, compatibility, or God's direction. The absence of immediate pain can feel like confirmation when it is simply exhaustion seeking comfort.

Soul-led decisions often feel urgent.

Spirit-led decisions often feel steady, even when they are costly.

The Space Between Brokenness and Wholeness

Looking back, I can see this dynamic in my own life.

Before I knew the Lord, I ran from the pain of one broken relationship directly into the arms of the man who became my husband.

I did not yet understand that running from pain and healing from pain are not the same thing.

The Lord eventually showed me that there is a space between slavery and the Promised Land.

There is a space between brokenness and wholeness.

Healing happens there.

It happens when we stop looking for escape and begin surrendering our pain to God.

It happens when we allow Him to touch the wounds we would rather numb.

It happens when we place the void into His hands and trust that He alone can fill it.

You Do Not Need Another Savior

One of the lies I had to confront was the belief that I needed someone to rescue me from my pain.

The Lord's answer was simple:

You already have a Savior.

His name is Jesus.

He is the Comforter.

He is the Validator.

He is the Giver of peace.

He is the Breath of Life.

The season I feared was actually the season He used to reshape my identity.

In prayer, as grief surfaced and old lies unraveled, I sensed the Lord speaking tenderly to my heart:

Daughter, I will hold your face in My hands.

I will speak life to you and in you. I will make you whole.

Be still and know that I am God.

I can do abundantly more than you could ever ask or imagine.

Ask.

Hand Me your sorrows, your dreams, and the desires of your heart.

I have good plans for your life.

Speak life. Speak.

I am here. I will protect you.

My eyes are on you, and My ears are open to your prayers.

Beloved daughter, I never stop in the middle of the sea.

I bring you through the midst to the other side, and I demolish the enemy in the process.

The Promised Land may have giants, but I have already won the battle.

Your job is to believe what I have given you.

Healing Is Not Escape

There were many nights when grief overwhelmed me.

There were moments I found myself on the bathroom floor crying, praying, unraveling before the Lord.

Every wave brought a choice.

Run from the pain.

Or ride it with God.

What I discovered was that every time I surrendered the pain instead of resisting it, He always brought me to the other side, because Faithful is His name.

“For He bruises, but He binds up; He wounds, but His hands make whole.”

Job 5:18 NKJV

Healing with God is a process.

The difference is that you are walking with the One who formed you, the One who knows every hidden wound, and the One who can transform mourning into joy.

But this requires surrender.

And surrender costs something.

Freedom Must Be Walked Out

Deliverance is real.

But freedom is something you walk out with the Lord.

Deliverance is often immediate, but freedom is often a journey.

The Israelites were delivered from Egypt in a moment, but they still had to walk through the parted sea.

They still had to cross the wilderness.

They still had to trust God before they could see the Promised Land.

When hunger came, God provided manna.

When thirst came, God brought water from the rock.

The provision was not always what they wanted, but it was exactly what they needed.

The same is true in healing.

God's provision may not look like immediate relief.

It may look like daily dependence.

It may look like surrender.

It may look like trusting Him before you understand where He is leading.

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” says the LORD."

Isaiah 55:8 NKJV

But He remains faithful.

When the Lord Is Your Portion

Much of modern Christianity struggles with suffering because faith is often presented as a transaction.

Obey God.

Receive comfort.

Follow God.

Avoid pain.

But Scripture presents something different.

Throughout the Bible, faithful people endured immense suffering. What sustained them was not guaranteed relief but unwavering trust in God's goodness.

The Lord Himself became their portion.

“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “Therefore I hope in Him!”

Lamentations 3:24 NKJV

And when the Lord is your portion, hope is no longer dependent on circumstances.

Hope is anchored in Him.

That is the hope that carries a soul through grief.

That is the hope that survives uncertainty.

That is the hope that produces healing, wholeness.

Substitutes for God always cost something.

Compromise never yields the fruit of life.

Running to a man, or to any other form of escape to numb the pain, will always produce an idol.

There is pain on both sides of abuse, but there is no life apart from God.

Healing is not the absence of suffering.

It is the presence of the Lord as your portion.

Faith is not proven by relief.

It is proven by alignment.

We do not find hope in outcomes, but in surrender to a faithful God who carries His people all the way through. God never stops in the middle of the sea. He always brings His people to the other side.

Prayer

For You, Lord, will light my lamp; the Lord my God will enlighten my darkness.

Your ways, Lord, are perfect.

The Word of the Lord is proven, and He is a shield to all who trust in Him.

It is God who arms me with strength.

It is God who sets me on high places.

He teaches my hands to make war.

You, Lord, give me the shield of Your salvation.

Your right hand upholds me in all circumstances.

Your gentle love makes me great.

When I call out to You,

You enlarge the path beneath my feet,

so that I will not slip.

Praise You, Lord.

For arming me with strength in every battle.

You are the hand that subdues every enemy who rises up against me.

The Lord lives!

Blessed be my Rock!

Let the God of my salvation be exalted through my life.

It is God who avenges me.

It is the Lord of Angel armies who delivers me.

Amen.

Adapted from Chapter Eight, "The Cost of Wholeness," in my forthcoming book, Love Does Not Delight in Evil...But Rejoices in the Truth. In the chapter, I explore more deeply the difference between soul-led and Spirit-led decisions, the wilderness between bondage and freedom, and why healing requires surrender rather than escape.