When God Feels Silent — Finding Faith After an Abusive Relationship | Dr. Rebel Heasley Interview

Elisha's Space: Rebel Heasley a nurse leader, a grandmother, a wife, and for years she someone who couldn't tell the difference between love and fear. And today I have the absolute pleasure of being able to speak with her today and listen to her as she tells her story. Welcome to Elisha Space, a sanctuary for healing growth, and for the kind of honest conversations that actually change things. I'm Elisha, your host, counselor, and author, and someone who has sat in the same stuck places you have. If you've been listening for a while, I see you. And I'm glad that you're back. And if you're new here, welcome home. Today's episode is practical clinical butt pastoral. And I'm sitting with Rebel Heasley, a nurse leader, a survivor, a thriver, and someone who knows what it means to lose everything, including the feeling of God's presence. she found her way back. Her message is simple and it's powerful. Your past may inform you, but it does not define your potential. Rebel, I am so glad you're here.

Dr. Rebel Heasley: Thank you so much for having me, Elisha. It's great to be here.

Elisha's Space: Well, let's start where it actually started, not at the end of the story, at the beginning of the isolation. Because I think people hearing this need to understand something. isn't just heat didn't let me see my friends. It's So Rebel, us into what that actually looked like for you. when did you first notice the isolation wasn't accidental, that it was strategic?

Dr. Rebel Heasley: It you don't just notice it all of a sudden, happens over time, and then you just realize that people in your life have disappeared, and wake up one day and your family, your friends, your colleagues, church family ⁓ are no around. You essentially are isolated from everybody that you used to be tapped into and very close with. You're not shopping with your girlfriends on Saturday afternoon. You're not going to church on Sunday mornings. You're not going for a drink on Friday evenings anymore. You're just you're not doing the family events that you've always done. And all of a sudden you're literally Just with your partner. you don't really realize how that happened. Because you were always the person who was involved with everybody ⁓ out and about and very social and very much involved everybody ⁓ and to be involved with everybody.

Elisha's Space: share? how the relationship started and what that slow erosion of connections looked like.

Dr. Rebel Heasley: the relationship was your fairy tale relationship. We met at our or remet at our 15 year high school reunion ⁓ we had sort of known each other in high school, but not really. We didn't run with the same crowd and we were both single at our 15 year high school reunion and we just hung out that evening and decided that we swapped numbers and we started going out and it was ⁓ ⁓ kind of a crush at first sight and he was charming and handsome and and it was really ⁓ kind exciting. it was different. I been married before we had been married for twelve and a half years and I didn't have a lot of that courting and fun and it was exciting. And then all of a sudden it was like the switch flipped and Things just started happening, and was a lot of ⁓ towards family friends who competed for his time. And that was frustrating to me ⁓ because ⁓ I to him in everything that I had going. I wanted to share him and ⁓ our relationship with and he Wasn't interested in that. He just wanted it to be us and nothing else. And that wasn't good enough for him.

Elisha's Space: You are a nurse leader, you know, you spent your career reading people in situations. ⁓ did your clinical instinct conflict with your personal reality?

Dr. Rebel Heasley: What was the question?

Elisha's Space: You're j in your job, you're training people, you read the room, you read situations, right? We both do that because we are in caregiving roles, right? Caretaker types of roles. Caregiving too. When did your clinical instinct conflict with your personal reality? I

Dr. Rebel Heasley: you know, ⁓ I I didn't ⁓ have insight. it's almost like as a nurse we blow off whenever get sick. like, ⁓ it's big, and then all of a sudden you're in the hospital because you didn't pay attention to what your body was telling you. ⁓

Elisha's Space: Right.

Dr. Rebel Heasley: In a relationship, I didn't pay attention to what was happening to me. I just kept making excuses for all of the things that were happening and all of the behaviors that were happening. I didn't realize, I guess, bad it was. I mean, I knew he wasn't a nice guy. and had one failed marriage, and so I didn't want to have a second one. ⁓ I raised in a family that was absolutely amazing. you know, every we had four generations sitting in a church and it was There wasn't divorce really in the family and my parents were very young, fifteen and seventeen and two months pregnant when they got married. So I had phenomenal role models who made work forever. and my yesterday was my ⁓ parents' sixty wedding anniversary. ⁓ And so you know, was you just don't give up in a bad relationship. You figure out a way to do it. And my grandparents were amazing and

Elisha's Space: I get it, right.

Dr. Rebel Heasley: It just I didn't see it was something than just a bad relationship, or that he was just a bad guy, or that he was just, you know, ⁓ not such nice guy. I didn't have any clinical insight that it was an unsafe relationship or that it was something that could be detrimental to my health, or that it could ⁓ hazardous to my health. it was ⁓ something that I came across by accident, purely by accident. And for that I am forever grateful.

Elisha's Space: Well, audience, I would like for you to stay with me here and with Rebel because what Rebel is describing not weakness. This what we call in clinical work coercive control. And your responds exactly the way a nervous system is designed to respond when it's under sustained threat. And we'll come back to that in a moment. I think that people draw a conclusion that that know if you have all these expertise that you know better. And the fact of the matter is you're human. you know, you're human. And I think we have to allow grace for that because just because it's in the textbook doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to perfectly live out what's in the textbook. Because if you think about it, when we are in school, we get bombarded with information. We really do. So it's really in the practical living it out piece that you really start to know your role and and how to do your job. You know what I'm saying? So You know, I I think I think that it's unrealistic to say, well, you should have known better. No, not really. Not really. Because you're human. And you know what? If you're already at a state of if you already got into were in a bad relationship, nine times out of ten, you were already dysregulated.

Dr. Rebel Heasley: Right.

Elisha's Space: So it's it's it's it's it's you know it it's it's easy to say, well you should have known better But the fact of the matter is is there's so many variables that come with that. No. There's so many variables that come with that. So you said something that stopped me when we first talked, like when we first first talked. And you said that finding faith after being isolated from everyone, including God. And so I want to go there because I think a lot of people in the audience been told that when God feels distant. It's because they did something wrong, but the silence is their fault. Can you tell me about a moment you realized the silence wasn't just grief it was a faith crisis for you?

Dr. Rebel Heasley: This whole relationship taught me a lot about my faith grace ⁓ forgiveness actually When I went get when went to get out of the relationship, I w when I felt when I was isolated, ⁓ I was very angry at God. had had one failed marriage. I told you about my family being phenomenal. ⁓ I up in the Lutheran church. We were all fighting to squeeze into one pew every Sunday morning and it was to see how many we could get in there. I understand ⁓ how could allow this to happen to me or how God could do this to me. and being isolated from the church, I felt that was God disappointed in me or God was ⁓ frustrated that I had done something wrong in the relationship or didn't do enough to make it a good relationship. And of course we as women ⁓ we're nurturers. We want to fix everything. ⁓ We're And as a nurse, ⁓ we it that much further because we're caregivers. But in a relationship it takes two people to make it work. ⁓ And if partner isn't working with you and they're working against you, ⁓ It's never gonna be a great thing. So that took me years to figure out. but I was angry, I was frustrated, ⁓ and when was ⁓ Away from the church, was angry. ⁓ was alone. I felt alone. I like I had been let down by God. And that was very ⁓ I don't know what the right word is. ⁓ it didn't sit right with me because I thought I had done all the right things, I had put the work in for years. I had grown up in the church, I had done Sunday school and Bible school and youth group and I went to church camp and then I was on summer staff and did all those things. ⁓ thought that I had put in the time and so then the church would give back to me. ⁓ ⁓ or that my faith would stand strong in the in the moments when I needed it and I felt like he wasn't there. But I ended up having go ahead.

Elisha's Space: Well did go ahead. I was just gonna ask did anyone in the church circle notice something was happening and

Dr. Rebel Heasley: ⁓ I was about to say, you know, I struggled by myself for a long time because I ⁓ didn't feel like I would be welcome at church. So ⁓ I ended exiting the relationship and I ended up getting divorced, I didn't welcome back at church because I had been isolated. So I had, you know, all my friends and family I had been estranged from. And, you know, you ⁓ You pull away, you step away from the friendships, they're off doing their thing. I just felt kind of like that lone person out there. So I didn't feel like I was welcome. and of course that was the wrong answer, but took me a while to figure that out. ⁓ And of the things that I did at the church camp that I had grown up going to and then being on summer staff, ⁓ I as a nurse in the summers ⁓ and went up to help check some campers on a Sunday. ⁓ And I was in the evening talking to the camp pastor who I had known for years. he kind of off the cuff asked me how I was doing. And I said, you know, I've had better times. ⁓ And was just a moment where I felt like I could talk to him. And I said, I'm really struggling. I'm angry with God. ⁓ I don't understand how God can let bad things happen to good people. And he just very casually said, God doesn't let bad things happen to good people. is there ⁓ help you pull back together ⁓ and you up and help through the bad times when they do happen. You know, ⁓ life is to intervene and life is going to happen, but he's there to help you through those bad times. But he doesn't them happen or ⁓ Let them happen. He's there for you they happen. And that some significant food for thought for me. and he had told me to go home and read Kushner's book on ⁓ when things happen to good people. And ⁓ it was life-changing. I ⁓ read it ⁓ it kind of philosophy of why this happen to me? ⁓ taking that why me, why now, in woe is me syndrome to ⁓ now this has happened, ⁓ what I gonna do about it? And how am I gonna move forward? And so I started able to heal a little and move forward.

Elisha's Space: Is amazing. That is amazing. Well, I really want you to hear, Rebel, and everyone else who's listening, you know, I'm gonna, and I say this often, and it's true. His peace is not dependent on your circumstances being resolved. It's a regulated nervous system in the presence of a safe God. when your nervous system has been under coercive control. for months or years. You literally cannot feel safety, even when God's right there. So when your friend made that statement, there was a lot of truth to it, and he was there, it was part of it was, I mean there's different factors, but part of it was nervous system was dysregulated. And that's not a faith failure, that's physiology, you know? ⁓ ⁓ I want to build a little bit of a bridge here between what Rebel experienced and what your body does. Because I think the most damaging lie in the church around abuse is that your faith should have been stronger. So let me give you the clinical picture. That's actually a pet peeve of mine. coercive control ⁓ the nervous system it Within that realm, it's how isolation triggers sustained sympathetic activation. when it's the fawn response, specifically how abusers often fawn, is they're going to appease their abuser to maintain safety. And how this response extends to God is performing faith to earn ⁓ It's very performance-oriented. The dorsovagal shutdown occurs the nervous system can't sustain the fight or flight. It drops into shutdown. And that feels like numbness, it feels like apathy. looks like you're experiencing an absence of God's presence. And then run into spiritual bypassing. versus what the physical physiological reality is. this is why when make statements ⁓ like just pray more, it really doesn't work when your vagus nerve is frozen. So knowledge isn't just power for trauma survivors. Knowledge is safety. And when you understand the silence you felt Wasn't God abandoning you. It was your nervous system protecting you by shutting down. Everything shifts. let your nervous system hear that. You were not abandoned. Your body was doing exactly what it was designed to do. And then with the other piece of that rebel, is that you had someone after you came out of that. after you physically came out of that. A lot of people think when you're in these relationships, you're if you're physically out, you're good. That's not true. Because that's the beginning of you surviving actually and getting to a place of thriving. That's really the beginning of the story. Because after that is where the real heal healing occurs. When you met this gentleman, he you you were able, he was a safe place. you were able to, he was like a co-regulatory person for you. So you were able to kind of start to realize and hear all the more that God God was with you and you were able to receive that, you know. So when you hear dorsal vagal shutdown, does that match what you experienced?

Dr. Rebel Heasley: My gosh, I had never thought of it in those terms before, even being a nurse. but I sleep well, didn't eat right, I was a of nerves all the time. my ⁓ father referred to me more high strung than normal. ⁓ I was just

Elisha's Space: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rebel Heasley: just literally on the edge. And had I like I I I guess I would describe it as heartburn all the time. I just had that upset stomach where you felt your heart was in your throat all the time and you felt like if you could throw up, you probably would feel so much better. I just was ⁓ on the edge of being sick all the time because I was a bundle of nerves. I felt like I walked on eggshells every day. And when got home from work, if I was home first, I never knew who was gonna walk in the door or when came home. Or if he home I was driving home ⁓ I had that sense of doom, like, who is gonna be there? Is it gonna be Dr. Jekyll or is it gonna be Mr. Hyde? Just that tension where you're constantly so tense that you have your neck is a bunch of steel rods and you can't relax. It's just overwhelming. But I never used all the big fancy words that you use today. I just I'm overwhelmed. Yeah. But yes, I can totally identify with it. And but I to me I thought

Elisha's Space: Yeah. You you have this keynote.

Dr. Rebel Heasley: It's all in my head. it's something I've made up. But you're saying that it all of these physical symptoms ⁓ are real valid. And I that's important for everybody out there to hear that what what felt, what they're feeling is real. And those ⁓

Elisha's Space: No.

Dr. Rebel Heasley: physical signs that you're in the wrong relationship that it's time to think about maybe getting to safety ⁓ to ⁓ a healthier relationship.

Elisha's Space: You know, your person should be someone that you feel safe with, not somebody you want to run from.

Dr. Rebel Heasley: Absolutely. Right. Right.

Elisha's Space: You you have this keynote that you spoke to me about. ⁓ your past is not your potential. And want you to take us into the turn, not the moment everything got fixed. I kind of feel like it's still fixing, you know, because we know healing isn't linear. But the moment you started to come back to yourself, to God, what did that look like?

Dr. Rebel Heasley: The moment I came back,

Elisha's Space: Well you had mentioned the front your the the gentleman who who you that God was with Yes. Yes. Mhm. ⁓

Dr. Rebel Heasley: Pastor Randy. Pastor Randy. ⁓ he he lit a fire under me that well guess I should say he lit a spark of because was ⁓ ⁓ shell of who I am today. It took it still took a little bit of work. ⁓ coming back was ⁓ Freeing, I guess, is a good word. I enjoyed going back to church ⁓ settling back into a pew on Sunday morning and getting involved in a couple of different committees. I Getting involved back in church camp again. I think what I enjoyed more was to with. ⁓ sharing my story about where I had been my in my relationship ⁓ how ⁓ It impacted me and my faith my ⁓ I guess even the physical side of it, but ⁓ how important it was to people about unhealthy ⁓ and unsafe it can be, ⁓ and you have stay there, and that there is out there, and that It's not all in your head and more out there for you ⁓ that the sky truly is the limit ⁓ that God isn't testing you ⁓ He's not ⁓ you by isolating you. ⁓ the actor that you're with that has you away everything you know and love ⁓ and there's a out. And that was for my recovery ⁓ it got me going. ⁓ And have verses ⁓ all over office that have lifted me up over the years and I take them ⁓ anywhere I

Elisha's Space: Well, I think this is a beautiful story and I'm really hoping that the audience feels more hope and inspiration from it. would you mind doing something with me tonight? Because I don't want ⁓ listening to leave this conversation without some sort of a tool. So we're gonna do something together. And are you open to that? Okay.

Dr. Rebel Heasley: Absolutely.

Elisha's Space: Well, I want to walk everyone through a practice I call safe testimony. for anyone who has ever silenced their story to stay safe. And course, Rebo, I would love for you to participate with us. If ⁓ comes for you, you can name it or not, that's there's no wrong way with this. Close your eyes or soften your ⁓

Dr. Rebel Heasley: So I

Elisha's Space: Bring one hand to your chest, not your heart, just a little lower, your sternum, and right where your vagus nerve passes through. Feel the weight of your hand. Is there any tension there? Tightness in your forehead, your jaw? Now, without forcing anything, I want you to let your body hear one true sentence about your story. Just one. You don't have to say it out loud. It might me that happened to me. It might be I survived that. Or it might be I am still here. Now breathe with me. through your nose therefore. ⁓ Hold for two. Out through your mouth for six. Again, info four. Out for six. This isn't visualization, is physiology. You're your nervous system that the story doesn't have to stay locked anymore. You're safe enough to hold it and to let it hold you. Let your nervous system hear that you are not running from it. can open your eyes when you're ready. Rebel, I just want to thank you for your courage, for your story, for sitting in the hard places with us. want to close the way we always do with prayer. And if you're listening, I you to do what Rebel just did. One hand on your chest. Not because you have to, because you can. Because your body is allowed to be part of this. Father, I am grateful that you made these bodies, you knit together the very nervous system that we are learning to regulate. I am so grateful for Rebel, for the years she walked alone, for the courage it took to come back, not just to faith, but to herself and And I am praying for the woman who is still in the silence, is sitting in an empty room wondering if you left, who has been told that her faith wasn't strong enough. Father, let her nervous system hear the truth. You were there in the silence. were there in the shutdown. You were there in the numbness. That abandonment. That was her body protecting her the way you designed it to. And now, breath prayer, Psalms forty six, ten. Be and know that I am God. Breathe in, be still, Breathe out and no. Breathe in that I am God. And then breathe out. His peace is not dependent on your circumstances being resolved. It is a regulated nervous system in the presence of a safeguard. Rebel, where can people find you? Where can they hear more of your story?

Dr. Rebel Heasley: They can find me on LinkedIn Rebel Heastley DNP.

Elisha's Space: Fantastic. if ⁓ episode helped you, text it to one person you know is struggling. One who needs to hear. The silence wasn't God leaving. It was her body protecting her. And Rebel's message, say it me one more time, audience, hear it again. You're past me and for me. But it does not define your potential.

Dr. Rebel Heasley: inform you, but it does not find your potential.

Elisha's Space: Until next time, you are not too much, are not too far, and you are not alone.