Healing in Hidden Places

The Quiet, Sacred Work of God Behind the Scenes

I lost most of my closest friendships when Joe passed.  Not out of anger or fallout, just life doing what life does when grief enters the room.

My best friends, the ones who once knew every detail of my days, suddenly didn’t know how to hold space for the new version of me - and if I’m really honest, to the core of my soul, I didn’t know how to hold space for her either. 

This is something I continue to learn.

I made new friends.

Beautiful ones.

Women who walked with me through healing, who reminded me it was okay to laugh again.  But somewhere along the way, I’ve started to lose some of them too.

This season - this long, strange stretch of grief and healing - has been one that’s knocked the feet out from under me and the air right out of my lungs.

I want friendship.

I desire deep connection.

And still, I push it away.

Not because I don’t want it, but because I’m still trying to understand who I am now that everything’s changed.

Grief has a way of rearranging the furniture in your soul. You look around and realize you don’t fit where you used to, but you don’t quite fit where you’re going yet either.

So you sit in the tension. You learn, day by day, how to breathe again, how to trust again .. how to be again - and just when you think you’ve found your footing, something new happens.

A memory, a milestone, a quiet moment that brings it all rushing back. You find yourself right there in the loss all over again, not because you’ve gone backwards, but because grief doesn’t travel in straight lines.

Healing, it turns out, isn’t a single breakthrough. It’s a thousand little resurrections - and each one teaches you how to live again.

When Healing Feels Like Loss

No one warns you that healing can feel a lot like losing.

When you start to change, when grief, God, or growth begins to untangle what’s knotted inside you, it doesn’t just take away what hurt you, it strips away what hid you.

I thought healing would feel like a comeback, like getting “me” back again ... but it didn’t.

It felt like standing in the ashes of a life that used to fit perfectly, realizing I no longer belonged there.

It felt like saying goodbye to the version of me who could hold everyone else together, even when she was falling apart.

She was strong.

She was steady.

But she was also running on adrenaline, living off survival mode and calling it faith.

...and then I found myself in this strange place of discomfort that I didn't understand, because when your nervous system finally starts to settle, it doesn’t always feel peaceful.

It feels foreign.

Peace isn’t familiar to a body that’s lived on alert.

I never realized how much I would flinch at calm, and confuse stillness with danger.  My body didn’t know what to do when there wasn’t something to fix, someone to save, or a crisis to manage. From work to kids, my life revolved around chaos, and I proudly wore the title of 'chaos coordinator' like it was a badge of honor - but deep down, I was crumbling inside, and I didn't even know it.

So when healing began, it didn’t feel like rest. It felt like withdrawal.  To my friends, the ones who loved me the most, it felt like withdrawal to them too, and that hurt them, and me.  It hurt in ways that I have not found a way to articulate, but continues to sting.  Healing, as it turns out, was a spiral off the high of hyper-vigilance, and letting the silence be loud enough for the ache to rise to the surface.

And when it rose high enough to bubble over, that's where I met God again. 

Not in my striving, or the throws of coordinating all the chaos, but in my stillness. 

Not in the noise, but in the nervous quiver of learning how to breathe without bracing for impact.

I'm learning, through all this time, that’s what healing really is. It's re-introducing safety to a body that forgot what safe feels like.

Healing has cost me a lot of things.

It costs people.

It costs patterns.

It costs the old stories that told you survival was the same as strength.

What I've found on the other side of loss is something softer, slower, and sacred, the kind of strength that isn’t loud, but rooted, and full of life. 

The Middle: Between Who You Were and Who You’re Becoming

We struggle to talk about the in-between.  That strange middle space where you’re not who you used to be… but you’re not your healed version yet either.

It's the messy middle.

The holy, but hard, place where you can feel the old you slipping away, and everything new still feels like a mystery.  A mystery that you want to uncover, but are very timid to look under for fear of what you might find - because the fear of the unknown is louder and scarier than any known - even when it's the worst parts of your life.

Some days, I can feel peace settling in my chest, that deep, steady kind.

Other days, my body still braces for impact that’s not coming.

It’s like I’m waiting for the next shoe to drop.

That’s what trauma does.

It trains you to prepare for loss, even in seasons of safety..and when God starts calming the chaos, it almost feels, wrong.  Your body doesn’t recognize peace yet.

I still catch myself doing it all the time - scanning the room, scanning the moment, scanning my heart - trying to make sure nothing’s about to fall apart, and when nothing does, I don’t always know what to do with that.

I have mistaken peace for numbness.

I’ve stood strong in the middle of storms that should’ve wrecked me, wondering, why don’t I feel anxious right now? Why am I not falling apart?

For a long time, I thought something was wrong with me.

That maybe I’d hardened.

Disconnected.

Gone cold.

But I realize now, that’s what peace really feels like.

Not loud.

Not flashy.

Not the kind you post about - because how do you even explain all of that?

It’s quiet.

Steady.

Deep in your soul.

It’s what happens when you’ve been through enough chaos that calm starts to feel foreign, and then one day, you realize you’re not waiting for the next shoe to drop anymore. 

You’re just breathing.

You’re just standing.

You’re just…okay.

And maybe that’s what healing really is, not needing to panic to prove you care, not needing to crumble to show you’ve been hurt.

It’s the stillness that comes after the storm, when you finally trust that God’s got what you don’t.

It’s not numbness.

It’s not disconnection.

It’s peace that’s been hard-won.

The kind you can only find when you’ve survived the worst and realized you were never standing alone.

It’s funny, isn’t it? You spend so many years praying for peace, and when it finally comes, you have to teach yourself how to stop flinching at it.

That’s where I am right now, in the middle.  Not fully healed, but no longer hiding.  Not who I was, but not quite who I’m becoming.

So I’m learning to trust that.

To unclench my jaw when the quiet feels too loud.

To breathe instead of brace.

To believe that peace isn’t a setup, it’s a sign that healing is working.

Because really, trauma doesn’t just change what you feel, it rewrites how you live.

It teaches your body to brace before it breathes.

It teaches your mind to expect loss before it happens.

It teaches your heart that safety is a trick, and that calm is just the pause before something breaks again.

Healing, as it turns out, is where all of that gets exposed.

You start realizing that peace doesn’t just feel unfamiliar, it feels unsafe.

You find yourself missing chaos, not because you loved it, but because it’s what your body knew how to survive in.

That’s what grief does. That’s what trauma does. It doesn’t ask for permission, it just walks in and violently rewires your soul.

The rhythms, the reactions, the ways you show up in the world - all of it shifts.

But when God starts unlearning that in you, it's not gentle.  It's disorienting, as it's stripping away the version of you that lived off adrenaline and calling her to trust what she's never really known: rest.

That then becomes the wrestle. 

Learning how to stop waiting for the next loss.

Learning to stop flinching at the good, and wincing at the quiet. 

Learning to believe that peace isn't the calm before the storm, it's the place where God sits besides you and says, You don't have to run anymore. You don't have to fix this.  I've got this.

It’s not pretty. It’s not poetic. It’s raw, shaky, and sometimes it feels like your insides are learning how to live again.

And maybe this is the real deliverance, not the neat, polished version where everything makes sense, but the mess where your soul finally exhales and softens into His loving embrace and you finally trust that He's got this.

The Invitation of Isolation

Healing comes with an invitation, but it's one most people don't want to RSVP to.

The invitation of isolation doesn't arrive wrapped in peace.

It shows up disguised as distant.

As quiet.

As the sudden realization that the people who used to understand you now, don't.

As this happens, people start to misunderstand it.  To them, it looks like you're pulling away, like you're withdrawing.  Like you're becoming reclusive, or shutting down.

What they can't see is that you're not running from them, you're finally staying with you.

They think you're disappearing, while you're actually being rebuilt.

This invitation is brutal, but it's also holy. It's God saying, Come away with Me for a while, all while your nervous system is screaming, I don't want to be alone. 

Because when you've lived in survival mode long enough, silence starts to feel like abandonment.

Stillness feels like punishment.

You crave connection, but you don't know how to receive it anymore.

That is one of the hardest parts.

Wanting friendship, craving closeness, and still find yourself pulling back because you can't figure out where you fit now.

You love people, but their noise makes you anxious.

You want closeness, but your body still doesn’t trust it.

You’re relearning how to belong, but this time you’re not trying to belong to people, you’re trying to belong to yourself again.

I lost so many friendships after my husband died.  Not because anyone did something wrong, but because grief changed me. They didn’t know how to meet me in that version of myself, and honestly, I didn’t either.

I made new friends.  Some of the best ones I've ever had in my life - but healing has a way of shaking even that up too, because when you start growing, you stop relating in the same ways, and sometimes, you lose people you love. It's not because they're bad, but because they don't understand where God's taking you next.

It’s lonely.

It’s confusing.

It feels unfair.

It feels like, ok God, I just experienced the biggest loss of my life, and now I'm losing all of this too? 

I can't take anymore. 

But somewhere in all of that ache, there’s also an invitation - to stop chasing rooms that no longer hold your peace, and to start making space for God to sit with you in the quiet.

I've learned, isolation isn't always rejection, sometimes it's refinement.  Sometimes it's the holy undoing of who you were, that has to happen, to put you back together again.

People will call it pulling away.

They’ll call it “you changing.”

They’ll wonder what happened to the version of you they used to know.

The truth is, she’s still here, but she will never look the same again. 

Isolation doesn’t always mean something’s wrong with you.  Sometimes, it means God’s finally getting your full attention.

But I’ll be honest, this space can be tricky.  Because isolation can go two ways.

When God isolates you, it will feel refining, quiet, but purposeful.  It won’t always be comfortable, but it will be clarifying. You’ll sense peace even in the ache, conviction without condemnation, pruning that leads to growth.

When the enemy isolates you, it will feel suffocating. Confusing. Hopeless.You’ll hear accusation instead of conviction, shame instead of stillness. It’ll make you believe you’re alone, forgotten, and unworthy of connection.

The sting, is that both kinds of isolation can look the same from the outside.

Both can look like distance.

Like quiet.

Like pulling back.

That’s why people who love you might get nervous when you start going still.

We have a responsibility within the isolation, to stay connected to His presence, even when we’ve stepped back from the noise.

To keep checking the fruit: Is this drawing me closer to God or deeper into despair?

Is this leading me to rest or making me want to run?

God’s isolation heals. The enemy’s isolation hides.

One leads you to peace, the other to panic.

And the difference always comes down to presence.

So if you’re in that space right now, where everything’s gone quiet, don’t rush to label it bad.

Ask instead, “Who am I listening to in the silence?”

Because sometimes, the quiet is where God starts speaking the loudest.

And yet, even knowing all that - even understanding what isolation has taught me - there’s still a question that plagues me.  Why did it take this for God to get my attention?

I’ve asked it a hundred times.  On the floor, in the car, in the dark when the world goes still.

Why did it take losing everything I loved for God to pull me close?

Why did it have to be that day, the day my world turned upside down?  The day my children’s lives split into “before” and “after”?

Was I not listening well enough before?

Did I miss His whispers?

Did He try to reach me and I just didn’t hear?

Or… was this always supposed to happen?

It’s a hard thought to hold, that maybe pain was part of the plan. Because while I don’t believe God caused the pain, I do believe He’s refused to waste it.

And deep down, somewhere between the heartbreak and the rebuilding, I started realizing something I wish I’d known sooner:  It’s not that God needed tragedy to reach me, it’s that He refused to let tragedy be the end of me.

He met me in the wreckage because that’s where I finally stopped running.

He spoke in the silence because that’s when I was finally still enough to hear.

He didn’t break my life to get my attention, He stepped into the brokenness to heal what was already falling apart.

I wish I could say I understood it all now, I still don’t.

There are still nights where I wrestle with it, where I wish He’d chosen another way.

But if I’m honest…I’m also thankful.

I'm thankful for how it's brought me closer to him.  Not the version of Him I thought I knew when life was predictable, but the version of Him that sits in the ashes with me, and shows me that even there is holy ground.

I'm thankful for (as the song says) the peace that makes no sense. The kind of peace that found me long after the chaos ended, when the world finally went quiet, and I realized I could take deep breaths again.

I'm thank for the joy that doesn't have to shout anymore, but the kind that shows up in the everyday moments of my life - my morning cup of coffee, the sound of my children laughing, the way the sun rises and sets each day with a beauty that takes my breath away every time.

I'm thankful I know that joy doesn't just come in the big moments of milestones, achievements and answered prayers, but that it's been hiding in the simple ones all along. 

I'm thankful that the grief stripped everything loud, and left me with what's real.

Perhaps that is what this season has taught me most, that peace isn't found in getting everything back the way it was.  It's found in trusting that what remains is not only enough, but that it's more.  It's more of God, and his goodness.  It's proof that the story didn't end the day everything broke, it just began again.  Quieter, but so much stronger.

Reflection

You know…I used to think healing would feel like crossing a finish line, like one day I’d finally stop aching and just arrive. But healing is full of circles, and waves, not straight lines.  It's messy, and full of knots that have to be unraveled, one at a time.

Healing feels like standing in the middle of your own story and realizing you don’t fit in it the same way anymore. It feels like watching God rebuild you in real time.

Some days, I still wonder why it had to be this way.  Why it took losing so much to finally find peace.  Why it took grief to get my attention.  Why the trauma of life had to knot me up so much, to get me to finally wake up.

The truth? I don’t think God caused any of it to get my attention.  I don’t believe He had to break my heart to make me hear Him.

But I do believe He loved me enough to meet me in the breaking, to sit with me in what this world shattered and whisper, “I’m still here.”

Because before all of this, I was too busy being strong.

Too busy holding everyone else together to realize how undone I really was, and when everything fell apart, He didn’t need to cause the storm, He just stepped into the wreckage with me, and that’s where He finally got my full attention.

Not through tragedy, but through presence.

And when everything collapsed, I finally stopped fighting Him.

There are nights I still wrestle with it, but I’m thankful now.

Thankful that I see life differently. That I notice small things, the way light hits the trees, the sound of laughter in the kitchen, the stillness of a quiet house that doesn’t cause me to flinch the way it used to. Thankful that peace isn’t some distant goal anymore, it’s a posture.

The woman I am now?

She doesn't run from the quiet, she enjoys it.

She's not afraid of her own company, because she has learned that she's never alone - God is with her.

I don't know that we ever fully heal from a loss like this, the trauma of what I've been through, this side of Heaven.  But for the first time, that doesn't scare me.  It keeps me grounded knowing that I need Jesus each and every day.  It keeps me tethered to the rock that is unshakeable in every storm. 

This feels holy.

Like maybe the breaking was never meant to end me, but meant to bring me home.