Lysa TerKeurst: Why I Chose to Keep My Husband’s Affair Private

“So I’ve been through a lot, a lot of physical trauma, emotional trauma, and, and, and honestly spiritual trauma as well,” Lysa TerKeurst says.

In June 2017, TerKeurst shocked followers of her blog and ministry with the news her husband had an affair. A few months later, she revealed further devastating news: She had cancer.

“These things were really some of my worst fears. And I had to look them straight in the face and not just look at them, but walk to them and walk through them. And it was very painful.”

She chronicled her journey in It’s Not Supposed to Be This Way, a raw, honest look at what happens when life brutally beats you down.

But it also captures the goodness of God and demonstrates how He works together all things for the good of those who love Him. TerKeurst knows this because of how the Lord used her 2016 release, Uninvited, to minister to her in the depths of her pain.

“At first, it almost seemed like a cruel joke that I would write a book on rejection thinking I had healed and was now going to help other people learn how to use the book’s principles, principles to heal from past rejections,” TerKeurst shares with Charisma.

“And then all the sudden, I got the news in the middle of final edits for that book that I was actually going to be walking through the worst rejection of my life. And so at first, it just felt like the timing of this was very cruel, and I really wrestled, and I remember sitting on my bed one day with the pages of the rough draft version of Uninvited before me, spread out all over my bed. And I was just weeping. And I was saying, ‘Why God, why would you let me write this book?’

“It was really as if I had written the book the year before that I would desperately need in that moment. And I thought, ‘This is not an act of cruelty by God. This is an act of absolute divine mercy,’ because He’s had me studying about his compassion, His mercy and His healing power. When it comes to rejection, He had me studying for two years before I would walk through the deepest rejection of my life,” TerKeurst says. “I was keeping what we were going through private, but God did some miraculous things to allow me to talk about rejection without having to reveal the present hurt that I was in.”

Listen to the podcast for the full interview.