I have heard of Lysa TerKeurst here and there throughout my recovery. But when I first read about her life, I knew I had to review at least one of her books. She has written many, many books, but I Want to Trust You, But I Don’t really caught my eye because of the title. I can totally relate to this. I remember so badly wanting to trust my husband and I so badly wanted this to not be a problem in our marriage, but I couldn’t trust him. Fortunately, I feel like I can trust him now, especially because so much about our marriage has improved since our last D-Day. But I still remember so vividly what it’s like to desperately want to trust my husband again, but couldn’t.
Lysa TerKeurst is the president of Proverbs 31 Ministries. She has dealt with a ton of betrayal, and I can’t help but respect her for how she dealt with it. At one point in her first marriage, she was planning to divorce her first husband for his infidelities and addiction. But after a lot of therapy, forgiveness, and work in the marriage, they reconciled and renewed their vows, giving their marriage another shot. Unfortunately, she later divorced him for good, this time for more infidelity and more alcoholism. And I think she was right to do so.
You cannot look at the life of Lysa TerKeurst and say she did not fight for that marriage. She spent nearly three decades fighting for it with professional counseling, prayer, forgiveness, and reconciliation before she finally realized it was a lost cause. She is well acquainted with betrayal, and it shows throughout the book.
Summary
I Want to Trust You, But I Don’t is about how to heal from betrayal and how to rebuild trust not in the person that betrayed us, but also groups of people and organizational betrayal. It also shows us how to trust God. Lysa TerKeurst shows us how to take charge of our trust issues, how to spot red flags in our relationships, and even how to experience love and trust again in a new relationship. Most importantly, she points us to a God who will never let us down. In this book, we learn that He won’t always show up for us in the ways we expect Him to, but we can always trust that He will.
The Good Things
1. It’s very encouraging and validating.
While I was reading the first few chapters, I felt so validated! It was like I could have written these chapters! I wish I could say I wrote them! In the beginning, Lysa so perfectly describes the shock of broken trust in the moment it’s broken:
“The shock of broken trust makes life feel painfully slow and uncomfortably fast at the same time. The disbelief that this is your reality makes everything grind to a halt. But the reality of jobs and bills and kids who need a ride to school feels unrealistically normal, and normal feels too fast for a brain that can’t process what’s happening.” (page xvi)
I remember feeling like this. I remember the days and weeks following my last D-Day and feeling overwhelmed with normal life. Well, we just moved to a new state when it happened, so nothing really felt “normal” yet. But I remember feeling like my world just stopped, yet everything and everyone else around me was still moving, and I couldn’t move at all. But time was still passing. I was about to start a new job the very next week. We had church on Sunday. We need to get groceries. We still need to find a new car, and a new place, and do all the things to settle into this new state. But all of that was ten times more difficult to do because I was also dealing with betrayal. Thankfully, Lysa understands all this and gives the reader permission to slow down and give space for all our raw emotions, and offers hope that there is life after betrayal:
“The trauma of having your trust broken by people you thought would never betray you is life altering. But it doesn’t need to be life ruining.” (page xvi)
Her validating and encouraging words are what I most appreciate about this book.
2. It changed the way I look at trusting God.
The book offered a very interesting take on trusting God. It really changed the way I see it. Normally we think of trusting God as hoping He will make all things the way we want them to, not really the way He wants. It’s hoping that God will answer all our prayers in the way we envision Him to. But this book shows us that God doesn’t work that way. Our wants aren’t always God’s wants. Most of the time, God does answer prayer, just not in the ways we expect. One part in chapter 6 describes this well:
“. . . God’s version of making my path straight most likely will not line up with what I expect. He may have a completely different definition of straight.” (pg 97)
She also tells us a really interesting story about a tree that had to get cut down because its root system got so used to the regular supply of water from a reliable sprinkler system, that the roots never dug deep enough into the ground for water. So unfortunately for this tree, it didn’t so well when the storms came. The life lesson that I gleaned from this story was that when life is overall going well for us, there isn’t as much incentive to get our roots really deep into God’s Word and His truths, which is what we can trust God with when the difficult times come. Trusting God isn’t actually hoping that things will turn out the way we want them to. It’s relying on God’s truths in His Word that make our faith strong enough to weather the storms. Wow. What a different way to trust God!
In chapter 7, we learn that we can trust God to bring justice to those who have wronged us, even if we never see that justice in our lifetime. Sometimes it might feel like God will never bring justice to our offenders, and it looks like they’re just getting off scot-free. Here’s the most difficult yet powerful truth she said in this chapter:
“If you get nothing else out of this chapter, I want you to get this: we may never see the justice we long for on this side of eternity. Some will. But many will not. I can’t explain this, but I’m working hard to accept this.” (pg 118)
I can totally accept this. If God doesn’t bring justice to our unfaithful spouses in this life, He most certainly will in the next. That is the one thing I’ll trust God to do.
3. It explains really well that controlling your spouse doesn’t do you any favors.
Chapter 8 is about trying to control situations and people we don’t trust. This is a really good chapter. I felt the need to mention a few things about that, because it reminds me so much of our urge to “spy” on our spouses and check their phones and browsing history to make sure they don’t betray us again. She didn’t specifically mention “spying” on an unfaithful spouse, as she writes in more general terms here. But this chapter does a really good job of showing that controlling what (or who) you can’t trust is not a great idea. The biggest reason she pointed out was that controlling what you can’t trust is a way of avoiding the hard work of taking responsibility for our own trust issues. This quote in particular really stands out to me:
“Remember: controlling others isn’t going to bring about the life we want. The illusion of control makes big promises but will never deliver. It won’t make us safer. It won’t prevent heartbreak from happening again. It won’t bring about what we’re desperate for. And it won’t make relationships stable enough for real trust to grow.” (pg 136)
My dear betrayed friends, this is why playing porn police doesn’t work. I understand the need to do that, especially if it’s an attempt to control the crisis and to keep your spouse from hurting you again. I get it. But it won’t fix your marriage. It won’t bring back the marriage you had before. It won’t bring about the safety and security you want. You know what it’s really going to do? It will set you up for a long-term dynamic of being a babysitter, rather than a partner. It will put you in a position of a parent over your partner. And that’s not a great position to be in. It will just make you exhausted, anxious, and paranoid.
The (Only) Not-So-Good Thing: The Bonus Chapter
The biggest problem I had was in one of the last chapters of the book. In this bonus chapter, Lysa tells us about an encounter she had with a women from a well-known Christian organization over the phone. This woman was about to lead a marriage retreat, and was going to use Lysa’s broken marriage as an example. She asked Lysa few questions about her marriage:
“I mean, surely you know a relationship doesn’t just fall apart. Are there times you instigated any of this because you were being disrespectful? What if you make it a point to go home and love him better, build him up with your words, and have more sex? I just think there are some things you could do better.” (pg 186)
Ok, I know the book tells me not to speculate about what this organization is, but I am so incensed at the way this organization treated her, that I just cannot resist: I suspect she might be talking about Focus on the Family. The unmistakeable Love & Respect vibes in these questions are a dead giveaway! For those that aren’t familiar with Love & Respect, it’s a book that is Focus on the Family’s flagship marriage book and one of their biggest bestsellers. Love & Respect teaches the very same things this woman was asking Lysa about. (I have a review of that book here if you want to know more.) Anyway, like most speculation, it’s probably wrong. But that’s what this is reminding me of.
Ok, I’m done speculating now, I promise. But the name of this organization, whatever it is, is not nearly as important as the way Lysa talks about how she felt and thought after this conversation:
“They made a mistake with this situation, but in all fairness, they probably made thousands of other good choices through the years.” (pg 188)
Yeah, maybe, but that doesn’t erase what they said to you here, Lysa! This was not ok! It was out of line, presumptuous, and really judgy! These questions are assuming that Lysa’s marriage broke apart because she didn’t have enough sex or she was too disrespectful. And those assumptions are not true. No amount of respect or sex will fix a marriage! Whatever this organization is, they’re wrong to ask these things!
She then goes on to tell us more about how she felt:
“What the organization did to me in this instance paled in comparison to the hurt I heaped on myself. I played back the converation dozens and dozens of times in my head. I felt incredibly justified in telling myself over and over what terrible people they were. I imagined calling them back, having an epic moment of satisfaction when I found just the right words to open their eyes to their wrongdoing, and finally hearing them say how wrong they were.” (pg 190)
You totally should have done this, Lysa. The organization might not change its ways, but that woman from the organization at least should know that her words hurt you. No, you don’t need to be nasty about it, but they need to know how those actions affected you!
But what’s most heartbreaking, and yes, I’m finally getting to the biggest problem I have with this book, was how she seemed to chastise herself for thinking this way:
“I started feeling justified in thinking things I don’t normally think. To do things I don’t normally do. To say things I don’t normally say. To wish things I wouldn’t normally wish on anyone . . . And honestly, I had become just as hard-hearted and cruel to them as they ever were to me. What they had done was wrong. No doubt about it. But slinging back hate, even if it was only in my thoughts, was also wrong.” (pg 190-191)
I disagree with this. I found her saying this really heartbreaking because I think she was being too hard on herself here. I think her anger was very valid. She’s not a cruel, hard-hearted person for merely thinking those things. She’s just human. And she was hurt by this woman’s careless, insensitive words and actions. But I think there’s healthier ways to deal with such hurt than what she described in this chapter. Her advice seems to be to just move on (even she admits that on page 193) and don’t let it get you down.
“The very best way to refute the hurtful things others have said and done is for us to go on and live a great life.” (pg 194)
And I disagree with that too. Don’t get me wrong; I’m all for living a great life! But deciding to just do this instead of pushing back on things people have done to you isn’t really doing anyone any favors. If you don’t say anything and just try to move on, you run the risk of allowing unresolved resentment and unforgiveness to boil inside of you until you can’t contain it anymore. And it isn’t doing the offender any favors either, because they won’t know their words or actions caused you pain, and if they don’t know, they can’t apologize and fix the problems.
And as someone who has also done the hard work of betrayal recovery, I learned that it’s really important to show the offender how their actions have affected you. Even if the offender, or in this case a whole organization, doesn’t care and doesn’t change, at least they can be aware of how they hurt you. And again, you don’t have to be nasty about it, nor should you. It’s completely possible to say “Hey, your actions hurt me” in loving and healthy ways. In all fairness, Lysa does clarify that we should address issues and make them known to the offender on page 192. But still, I felt like in this chapter, she went too much into “just move on” and not enough “How to address this in a healthy way.”
The fact that she had this encounter and most of her advice for us was just kind of “move on” was kind of a sad way to end the book.
Conclusion
So in spite of that somewhat sad ending, the good things and the powerful lessons in the book far outweigh that one small flaw. Lysa TerKeurst shares much of her story in the most vulnerable way, and she invites us into that intimate space so we can hear it and glean from the lessons she’s learned. She seems to understand exactly what I’m thinking in the moment. Her entire book exudes love and compassion for the reader. She intimately understands betrayal and she knows exactly what betrayed spouses need to hear. I would absolutely recommend this book for anyone who needs encouragement and needs to know how God shows up for us in such difficult circumstances.
What book should I review next? Tell me in the comments!