You Are Not Too Broken: God's Grace Can 'Restory' Your Life
- Jonathan Daugherty
- 4 days ago
- 8 min read
Your story is not too messy for redemption, and your pain is not an obstacle to God’s purposes—it is often the very place where his restoring work begins.
When Your Story Feels “Too Much”
Listening to Mary share about her childhood, I found myself grieving with her for “younger Mary.” Sexual abuse at five, a father who took his own life, chaotic homes, being left alone to care for a farm in sixth and seventh grade, and suicidal thoughts as a little girl—none of that is “normal difficulty.” It’s complex trauma, stacked layer upon layer.
Maybe you hear her story and think, “That’s me. My story is too dark, too tangled, too shameful. Surely this is beyond repair.” Mary said she often felt like she had a “come get me” sign on her forehead, drawing predators and abandonment. If you’ve ever felt used up, discarded, or invisible, you know that ache.
What I want you to hear, as a fellow broken person and as a brother in Christ, is this: God is not put off by the mess of your story. He is not waiting for a cleaner version of you. He steps into the story you actually have, not the one you wish you had.
Meeting Jesus in the Middle of the Wreckage
Mary encountered Jesus at 15 through Young Life, coming as a fatherless girl with a simple, desperate prayer: “Would you be the daddy who never leaves me?” She didn’t come with polished theology; she came with a shattered heart. And what she experienced first was not anger at God, but gratitude that there was finally a Father who would not walk away.
She describes sensing God wooing her even before she knew him—Christian songs on the radio drawing her heart, a sense of reverence she couldn’t explain. When she met Christ, it felt like finally meeting her best friend and the father she never had.
Yet that encounter did not erase her trauma overnight. It began a “decades-long healing journey” that she describes as beautiful, horrible, amazing, awesome, and hard—all at the same time.
If you’re frustrated that following Jesus hasn’t instantly fixed everything, you’re not alone. You’re actually right on time.
Mary put words to a question many of us are afraid to ask: “If God is a loving Father, why didn’t he stop the abuse?” That question grew louder when she became a mom and realized she would have done anything in her power to protect her own kids. She still hasn’t received a neat answer, and she’s honest about that. She trusts there is an answer in God, even if she will only fully understand it in the new heavens and new earth.
If you wrestle with that same tension—“God, where were you?”—I want you to know that asking those questions doesn’t disqualify you from faith. It may actually be part of what deepens your faith.
Restory-ing: Before Jesus, Meeting Jesus, After Jesus
Mary uses the word “re-story” to describe what the gospel does in a life like hers. At its core, restory-ing is simply living out the gospel pattern:
There is a “before” story: life apart from Jesus, full of sin done to you and sin done by you.
There is the encounter with Jesus: that decisive turning, where you trust him as Savior and King.
There is the “after” story: a lifelong journey of being remade, healed, and matured—what Scripture calls sanctification.
She connects this to passages like 2 Corinthians 5:17—that in Christ, “the old has gone, the new has come.” Restory-ing is not pretending the old didn’t happen; it’s learning to live as someone no longer defined by it. Mary says she is not fundamentally “a sexual abuse victim,” even though that is part of her history. She is fundamentally a beloved daughter, adopted into God’s family.
That’s critical for those of us walking out of sexual brokenness. Your story might include betrayal, abuse, or addiction, but it does not have to be your core identity. Identity in Christ doesn’t erase your past; it reinterprets it under a new name: loved, adopted, redeemed.
Healing Comes in Waves, Not Once
In college, God did significant healing in Mary’s life as she began sharing her story with safe people who dared to believe God could heal her. As a communicator, storytelling became the very avenue through which God met her and began mending deep places.
So she did what many of us do: she assumed the big work was done. Story told. Healing finished. Move on.
Years later, when her oldest daughter turned five—the same age Mary was during her year of first abuse—everything flared back up. She couldn’t sleep. The grief and memories resurfaced. She was angry with God: “I thought you healed me.”
God’s answer, in essence, was, “Yes—and there are more layers.” With complex trauma, healing often comes in waves. There can be seasons of relative peace followed by seasons where old wounds are revisited at a deeper level. That doesn’t mean the earlier healing was fake; it means God is kind enough to work at a pace that won’t crush you.
If you’ve ever thought, “I thought I was past this—why is it back?” take heart. That doesn’t mean you’ve failed. It might mean God is inviting you into the next layer of growth.
Why We Need Other Stories to Heal Our Own
One of Mary’s regrets is that in her 30s, when things got very dark, she didn’t have a mentor ahead of her saying, “This is normal. You’re not crazy. You will not feel this way forever.” She felt forsaken by God, partly because she had no lived example in front of her.
That’s why she now emphasizes the power of hearing from someone who is “a few mile markers down the road” with similar complex trauma. When you hear someone say, “I’ve been to that pit—and I didn’t stay there,” it gives you vision for your own journey.
She also names something crucial: sexual abuse is a relational wound, even though it is a twisted, sinful relationship. Because of that, healing requires a relational cure. You can’t heal entirely in your head, and you can’t heal in isolation.
Mary shares a picture her husband gave her when she kept emotionally disconnecting in their marriage. He said it was like she was on a high dive, pacing back and forth, sometimes dipping her toes in the pool where he and their kids were, but never actually jumping in. That is what dissociation can look like in intimacy—especially after trauma.
For all of us, especially those with sexual brokenness, healing means moving toward safe relationships instead of always hovering on the edge.
Getting Unstuck: First Steps Out of Your Head
Why do so many of us feel stuck in our story? Mary points to a simple but profound reality: we live in our heads. We cycle unspoken thoughts—often never written down or spoken aloud—and rehearse a narrative: “I’m a victim. I’m too broken. I’ll never change.”
If you have no safe person yet, she suggests at least getting the story out of your head:
Write it in a journal.
Record it into your phone.
Put it on paper, even if no one reads it yet.
If you do have a potentially safe person but are terrified to talk, you might:
Write the story or a portion of it and slide the paper to them.
Record it beforehand and simply hit play when they’re with you.
That way you don’t have to improvise in the moment. It becomes a stepping stone toward relational connection.
She also wisely warns that not everyone is safe. As a new believer, she shared her story with a family member who flat-out refused to believe her, which deeply wounded her and set her back. She kept returning to that person, trying to convince them, but their denial only reinforced her pain.
So, test safety slowly. Start with less vulnerable parts of your story and watch how the person responds. Are they compassionate, present, and trustworthy? Or dismissive, minimizing, or controlling?
Choosing Healing: “Do You Want to Get Well?”
Mary is clear: growth and healing are not passive. Yes, God is the healer, and the Holy Spirit lives in you. But Jesus still asks that piercing question he asked the man in John 5: “Do you want to get well?”
That man never clearly answered, and yet Jesus healed him anyway—but then told him, “Get up, pick up your mat, and walk.” Legs made alive had to be used; healing invited participation.
If you’re honest, maybe you’re not sure you want to heal. Maybe the familiar pain feels safer than the risk of change. Mary suggests even praying, “Lord, give me the want to want to.” God can work with that kind of honesty.
For her, a big motivator was not wanting to repeat the story of her childhood with her own kids. She hated her upbringing and was desperate to be a different kind of mom. That desperation pushed her to pursue healing, counseling, and community—not just for her sake but for the next generation.
Where is God stirring that kind of holy desperation in you? Maybe it’s marriage, parenting, your future relationships, or simply not wanting to live numb anymore. Pay attention to that. It could be the invitation to take your next step.
Creating Safe Spaces in the Church
Mary has also thought deeply about how the broader church can become a safer place for survivors of sexual abuse. In her book on how churches can respond to the sexual abuse crisis, she argues that we must stop pretending this isn’t in the room.
She calls for:
Preaching the many sexual abuse stories that are actually in the Bible, instead of skipping over them.
Platforming survivors who are ready, so that people in the pews know they’re not the only ones.
Naming the “elephant in the room” instead of bumping into it in silence.
Mary began publicly sharing her abuse story in the 90s and often “freaked out” women’s ministry leaders who wanted to keep things tidy. But she refused to stay silent because she knew the room was full of women quietly carrying similar stories.
She is unapologetic about this:
The shame belongs to the abuser, not to the one who was abused.
The more churches embody that, the more our communities can become places of restoration instead of places where survivors feel invisible or unsafe.
A Word of Hope for the Long Road
As we bring this together, I want to echo something Mary said to listeners who feel like their story is just too painful or too shameful to ever be redeemed.
She says:
You are normal if you’re hurting.
You are normal if you’re asking, “Why is this taking so long?”
You are normal if you wonder whether you’ll ever have a “normal” life, even a “normal” sex life.
Those questions do not make you defective; they make you human. And they don’t intimidate Jesus.
Mary encourages soaking in Scriptures that reveal God’s kindness and delight—passages about God rejoicing over you with singing, being for you and not against you. You’re retraining a brain that has been catechized by lies: “You’ll never get over this. It will always be dark. You will always struggle.” Those are not God’s words. They are the voice of the enemy, who comes to steal, kill, and destroy.
Your story is not over. In Christ, new chapters can be written. That doesn’t mean erasing the old ones; it means God can weave them into a bigger narrative of restoration and purpose—where your story intersects with Christ’s story, and through you, someone else’s story can intersect with his as well.
If you feel stuck today, here are three simple, courageous steps you can take:
Tell God honestly where it hurts and ask him for the “want to want to” heal.
Get part of your story out of your head—on paper, in a recording, or with a safe person.
Take one relational risk: move an inch closer to trusted community, rather than one inch further into isolation.
You are not beyond God’s reach. You are not too messy for redemption. In Christ, even the darkest parts of your story can be re-storied into hope, healing, and purpose—for you and for others God will touch through you.
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