When Trust is Shattered

There is a moment when betrayal lands—and it stings deeper than words can explain. It’s not just what happened; it’s what it awakened inside of you.
In this episode, Lois gently explores the emotional and spiritual impact of betrayal. Why does it hurt so deeply? Why does it linger? And how does it begin to shape the way we see ourselves, others, and even God?
Through relatable insight and biblical truth, you’ll begin to recognize the subtle ways betrayal embeds itself beneath the surface—and why ignoring it only gives it more power.
This is where awareness begins. This is where healing starts.
You can’t heal what you won’t acknowledge—but once you see it, everything can change.

This is just the beginning.
What God is stirring in you right now is an invitation—not just to listen, but to step fully into freedom.

Visit www.loisflewelling.com to go deeper through the Thriving & Wholeness Series, transformational courses, and resources designed to equip you for breakthrough.

You were created to thrive—not just survive. It’s time to walk in wholeness

Transcript

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Hi, I am Lois Welling. We all desire spiritual growth, but do not always know where to begin. On the New Level Awaits You, we provide steps to guide you into your divine assignment and reach new levels of greatness in the Lord. You'll begin to soar above every obstacle and enter into your specific assignment. So get ready to go from glory to glory as new levels await you. Well, hello and welcome back to A New Level Awaits You. Today we're going to continue on with this series that I'm doing on thriving and wholeness, and they're based on my book, Freedom After Betrayal. In this episode, we're going to be talking about a place that many people feel but often struggle to really explain. And in that, we're going to be talking about what happens when trust is shattered. So in our last episode, we talked about the truth that betrayal just doesn't get the final word, and it doesn't. I think there's many of us that have can prove that, that's for sure. But today we're going to go deeper because if we don't understand how deeply betrayal impacts us, we won't fully understand the healing God wants to bring. Trust is one of the most fundamental elements in our lives, but it's often invisible until it breaks. You've ever noticed that? It's invisible. You just have trust. And then when it breaks, something something happens. But trust is what allows us, and many of us, to build meaningful relationships. We can feel emotionally and spiritually safe. We open up our hearts without fear. And when be known, we can wear trust, it helps us to be known and to know others. Trust is a quiet agreement of the soul that says, you know what, I'm pretty safe here. That's a good place. I love watching kids like this. They they have it, just the natural trust. And they feel it. They just they feel that freedom to have that trust. But when it's broken, something else happens. Something gets shattered. So betrayal isn't something that, you know, when somebody just lets you down, it's not something just a disappointment. It actually is a violation of our hearts. Because our hearts thought we were safe. And then that violation comes in. And what happens is it doesn't just hurt, it becomes shattered. It changes us. It feels as though the ground beneath us suddenly began to give way. And people often will say, I didn't see that coming. Have you said that before? I never expected that from that person. I thought I knew who they really were. But what they're really saying is, I believed I was stable, but I wasn't. And that realization shakes something deep inside of us. So let's just talk about that word shattered for a moment because it's important. Because when something is shattered, it just doesn't crack, it breaks into pieces. And betrayal does that to the heart. It fragments. It fragments your sense of safety. It fragments your perception of reality, your ability to trust your own judgment. How about your understanding of yourself? You're not just dealing with what happened, you're dealing with what broke inside of you. And one of the first ways we become shattered is through confusion. Your mind began searching for answers. How did that ever happen? Was there something that I missed? How about what signs that I must have ignored? And many of us will talk about those kind of things after the fact. But what often begins is a search for clarity, and it turns into this cycle or replay, regurgitating. We revisit conversations, we analyze expressions, we reconstruct moments, but instead of bringing peace, it brings and creates distortion. Your perception begins to shift. You start questioning other people, you start questioning the reality of your own thoughts and what you're perceiving or hearing or seeing. And eventually you start questioning yourself. You begin to ask, oh, was I that foolish? Was I that naive? How could I have not seen this? Have I ever said those questions to myself? I didn't see it. I was on, I felt like I was blinded. And I had after the fact I could see the signs of things. Oh boy, oh boy. It makes you feel like you're foolish and you get embarrassed by it. And slowly the betrayal moves from something that happened to you to something that begins to redefine how you see yourself. See, that's one of the most painful parts of betrayal. It just doesn't break trust with others, it breaks trust within yourself. And when the heart is wounded, it does what it was designed to do. It protects. So what happens? Well, you begin to guard yourself a little bit more. You kind of pull back, you become cautious, not with just that particular person or in that particular situation, but with everyone. Now we can be surrounded by people, but internally we're withdrawn. We're not in with them. We're it feels different. We're present, but we're not open. We're not open at all. We're very closed on the inside. We may be connected, but boy, I'm not going to be vulnerable anymore. This is how shattered places can quietly lead to isolation. And another way we become shattered is through what I call lingering fragments. Betrayal doesn't always stay in the past. It resurfaces. Yeah, a comment somebody makes triggers a memory. Something, a situation, it triggers anxiety. How about other emotions? Anger. I mean, I just mentioned anxiety or fear, withdrawal. We have to get out of there very quickly. And a new relationship feels harder to trust. We're always second-guessing, watching, listening, observing things just to make sure we're safe again. And suddenly you realize, hey, the moment may be over, that moment of betrayal may be over, but the impact is still alive. Because emotional wounds don't just heal because time passes, they heal when they are acknowledged, processed, and brought into the light of God's truth. I want to share something with you. I'm just going to pause for a moment and I want to say something very important because this affected me. If you've experienced these things, confusion, doubt, withdrawal, emotional triggers, it does not mean you are weak. Can I say that again? I felt so weak. I felt like I had all my strength was zapped right out of me. I felt so almost helpless in some situations. But it doesn't mean, it didn't mean that I was really weak. It just means that we're human. These are the emotional things that will happen to us because we've gone through this betrayal. Even in scripture, David experienced, you know, deep betrayal. I talked about this last time by friends, by leaders, and even his own son. But what did he do? You know, he didn't suppress it, he didn't deny it, he brought it before God. And in passages like Psalms 55 and Psalm 69, we see David pouring out his heart honestly, vulnerably, and without filter. In Psalms 55, it says, Listen to my prayer, O God, do not ignore my plea. Hear me and answer me. My thoughts trouble me and I am distraught. At the voice of the enemy, at the stares of the wicked, for they bring down suffering upon me and revile me in their anger. Now I think one of the hardest things that I've had to deal with is all the talk, all of the things that the voice of the enemy that was crashing in on sa inside of me, but also that outside voice as well, the stares, the you just didn't know what they were thinking, what they had heard, what was the conversation that they were having. And I I couldn't figure it out, but I'll tell you, I would get angry at times. But David goes on here, he says, My heart is in anguish within me. The tears of death assail me. Fear and trembling have beset me. Horror has overwhelmed me. And that's the way I felt. I just I felt all of those things. I just couldn't figure it out. And yet, what happens with David, the same thing that happened here, I think with me, he was like, oh, that I had the wings of a dove. I would fly away and be at rest. I would flee far away and stay in the desert. Boy, do we ever want to do that, right? We want to go someplace. We want it, like he said, I would hurry to my place of shelter far from the tempest and the storm. Yeah, we want to close ourselves in. We want to stay where we feel safe, where nobody can get at us, where we don't see the faces, we don't hear the voices, we don't see the stairs. And so David is being raw here. He's being, he's in a place of honesty. And out of here, he said this, which I think is very powerful. If an enemy were insulting me, I could endure it. If a foe were raising himself against me, I could hide from him. But it was you, a man like myself, my companion, my close friend, with whom I once enjoyed sweet fellowship. As we walked with the throng at the house of the Lord. Listen, those people, remember, betrayal happens by those not enemies, they're not people, because he said, I could handle it if it was an enemy. I could handle it if it was a foe, but it was a close friend, it was a companion, somebody I had spent time with and enjoyed. And yet, and even he said, in the house of the Lord. Yeah. Which is sad, isn't it? But oftentimes that's when it begins, that's where it happens. But David says something at the end of this psalm that I want to remind you, because I I was reminded of this. And he said, Here, he said, Cast your cares on the Lord, and he will sustain you. He will never let the righteous fall. But you, O God, will bring down the wicked into the pit of corruption. Bloodthirsty and deceitful, deceitful men will not live but have their sorry, I'll say that again. Bloodthirsty and deceitful men will not live out half their days. But as for me, I will trust in you. See, this is where David went. He went into this place of honesty. He said it as it was, he just expressed himself to the Lord, and that's when restoration began. So healing begins when we're honest. We're honest about our lives. And that's what we have to do because one of the most powerful steps toward healing is this we must acknowledge the impact. Healing doesn't it doesn't happen by minimizing the pain. It begins by telling the truth and being honest about it, being raw about it. Yeah, this was a person that really hurt me. This is what affected me. This is what happened to me on the inside. This matters, it's important. And many times we will say, Oh, just brush it off, just move on, just forget it. Don't worry. And we say those things to ourselves, but it doesn't help. Healing won't happen. Because then when we're honest and we acknowledge the impact, we can then say, God, I need you here. I need you. Because this is what happens when we invite God into those shattered places, something begins to shift on the inside of us. Because a hope comes in. Because God does not ignore broken places, God restores them. God says things like this: He brings clarity where confusion lived. All of a sudden, this confusion is going to the side, and God is bringing in clarity around some things. Yeah, I'm not going crazy. That really did happen. That's what I heard. That's what I saw. This is taking place. Clarity starts to come in where all that confusion was. Then we start rebuilding the trust. We might start with God, yes, or one person, but trust will start. Maybe we begin to trust ourselves when clarity starts coming in. You know, what I saw was right, what I heard was right, what happened to me is real. But he also restores identity where it was shaken. And those places where identity gets all muddled and it gets all confusing and it gets all the self-doubt that comes off, it just shifts us up. But identity, God will put it back again on this firm foundation if we say, God, I'm going to choose to trust you. It replaces fear with courage. We start to be able to go out again, go to places, and do things that we didn't think we were able to, where we would have intense anxiety about before. God is like that. And then over time, something beautiful happens. The experience that we once felt like it would define us forever, all of a sudden it loses its power over us. It becomes something God uses, not something that controls us. So before we close today on this particular episode, I want to invite you to a moment of reflection. I know you're listening. This is about betrayal. So I'm assuming that you've experienced a time when trust was really broken in your life, where you just got shattered deeply on the inside. I want to ask you: have you acknowledged what it did to your heart? Have you acknowledged what it did to your identity? Have you acknowledged the pain and the hurt and get right down real about this? Not just what happened, but like I said, what it shattered, what it robbed from you, what it took away from you. Because healing begins when we stop pretending we're fine. And we start inviting God into what's real. Now I know that part of mine that happened to me, I had to go to work, I had to act like I was fine, but in the whole thing, I still did what I needed to do. But inside I knew I had to face some stuff. I had to acknowledge it. And I acknowledged where it hit me so that I could really get into some powerful healing time. And I could, because I I had this sense, I'm just going to move beyond this. I'm going to move beyond. I am not going to stay stuck here. I am not going to have this define me. And when we get those mindsets inside of us, and I pray that you get this mindset that that does not need to define who you are or your worth or what's going to happen to you in the future. You can get beyond this. David became king. I talked about that. I mean, my goodness, we can still enter into the very assignments and the great things that God has for us. So, Lord, I thank you for every single person that's listening today. And I know that you see these places where they're just shattered on the inside. In fact, I see it too, Lord. I see a lot of cracks. I see a lot of things that have gone, we've just been shattered, big cracks, Lord God. And I thank you, Lord, that you are the one that you understand how fragile we can become, and that you understand, Lord God, that even though we have pieces of healing, Lord God, you see all of the broken places. You understand the confusion, you understand the pain, you understand our questions, you understand it all. And I thank you for that. So I ask you right now, will you just enter in and bring healing right now in those shattered hearts? That you'll just come, Lord God, and start to mend those shadow, those shattered hearts, those cracks and those places back together again. Restore what was broken, bring peace where there was turmoil and chaos. And Lord, I pray that you will remind every single person that is listening today that your story is not over. God can take this, turn it around, He can make it all good. And I'll tell you, I am one person that has done that. I feel stronger on the inside because my future is not defined by the betrayal that has happened to me. But it is defined, and yours is too, by God's faithfulness and your faithfulness to God. So I pray that you'll be receiving healing today. I pray that you'll receive more understanding, more clarity. And I thank you, Lord, for what you're doing in the lives of those who are listening. So I want to thank you for joining me again for a new level awaits you. And remember, no matter what season you're walking through, God is always leading you forward because why? A new level awaits you. Next time we're going to be talking about the arrows that pierce the heart and how betrayal can have wounds that impact our identity and our purpose. So I look forward to seeing you again. I want to thank you for watching. Joining me on this journey as we go higher. Expect to grow, expand your territory, and enter into new levels of intimacy with the Lord. Check out my website at loisforwelling.com for books, online courses, podcasts, and other resources to help you soar in the Lord. Are you interested in increasing your confidence, being able to speak assertively, subdue your fears, manage life situations effectively, and overcome rejection or betrayal so that you can tenaciously stand back up again? Then you must sign up for a free strategy session so we can design a plan specifically for you. I now offer one on one coaching sessions with group sessions coming soon. My heart is to equip and make disciples and advance them into living a life more abundantly. Yes, my website is loisforwelling.com. Check it out, and I hope to be talking to you soon.