When something bad happens to you, the wound does not stay where it happened. It travels. It gets into the way you talk to yourself, the way you read relationships, the way you decide what you deserve. It gets so familiar you stop recognizing it as a lie — it just feels like the truth.
I want to name five of them. Because naming a lie is the first step to refusing it.
Lie #1: You Are What Happened to You
This is the foundational lie. Everything else gets built on top of it.
Trauma says: you are the abuse. You are the assault. You are the abandonment. You are the breakdown of your family.
It is not true.
What happened to you is part of your story. It shaped you. It left marks. But it does not define you — because you are not a collection of events. You are a person made in the image of God, with a name, a calling, a future.
Genesis 1:27 says you were made in the imago Dei — the image of God. That did not change when someone hurt you. The image is still there.
Lie #2: You Are Damaged Goods
This one is especially cruel. It shows up in how you do relationships — "why would anyone want to be with someone like me?" It shows up in how you approach faith — "God probably does not want to deal with all this." It shows up in quiet choices every day: you do not apply for the job, you do not ask for what you need, you do not let people close.
Because damaged goods do not deserve the good things.
Except that is not what Jesus says. Jesus walked toward the most broken people in his time — the ones no one else would touch — and treated them as fully human. As deserving of healing, dignity, and presence.
The woman with the twelve-year hemorrhage (Mark 5) was considered unclean. Ceremonially untouchable. A liability. And yet Jesus stopped, in a crowd, and called her "daughter." Not "patient." Not "problem solved." Daughter.
That is the posture of Jesus toward your damage.
Lie #3: You Are Too Much
You need too much. You feel too much. You take too much space. Your story is too much. Your pain is too complicated, too heavy, too high-maintenance.
If you were easier, more together, less of a mess, people would stay.
This lie usually comes from real experience — people who left when things got hard, who could not hold the weight of what you were carrying. It starts as a pattern of experience and becomes a belief about who you are.
But here is what I know: the Psalms are too much. The raw, ugly, desperate prayers of David and Asaph and the sons of Korah — these are too much by most standards of polished Christianity. And they are in the Bible. They are there because God was not afraid of too much.
Bring your too much — my shame said you were too messy for God, but God said come anyway. He is not leaving.
Lie #4: You Are Unforgivable
Sometimes this is about things done to you — an unfair, internalized belief that the abuse was your fault and you deserve the consequences. Sometimes it is about things you did in response to pain — ways you coped, ways you hurt others, choices you made from a broken place.
Either way, this lie says: you have put yourself outside the reach of grace.
Romans 8:1 says clearly: "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."
No. Condemnation. None.
Not "no condemnation once you have adequately suffered." Not "no condemnation if the sin was small enough." The grace of the cross is not calibrated by the size of what happened. It is given in full.
You are not the exception to grace.
Lie #5: Healing Is for Other People
Other people heal. People with better circumstances, fewer complications, more resources, stronger faith. But not you. Your damage runs too deep, your patterns are too ingrained, your wounds are too old.
This is the lie that keeps people stuck — because if you believe you cannot heal, you stop trying.
Jeremiah 30:17 is for you: "I will restore you to health and heal your wounds, declares the Lord."
Not "I will restore people who have easier cases." Not "I will heal the straightforward wounds." Your wounds. The complicated, layered, generations-deep kind.
Healing is not for other people. It is for you.
What to Do With a Lie You Have Believed for Years
You do not undo a deeply believed lie by arguing with it once. You replace it, slowly, by returning again and again to what God says — and by doing the actual work of healing in community, in counseling, in honest conversation with people who can hold your story.
The 5-Day Identity Crisis Challenge is one place to start. Five days, one lie at a time, with Scripture that actually speaks to the real wounds — not just the pretty ones.
You can start today. ---
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