It's Not Supposed to Be This Way
Lysa TerKeurst
35 min
8 Key Points
4.6 RateWhat's inside?
Explore ways to find strength and hope in life's disappointments and challenges, turning them into opportunities for personal growth and deeper faith.
You'll learn
1. Dealing with life's letdowns and hurdles2. Finding power in unexpected spots3. Trusting God's plan when times are tough4. Turning pain into personal growth5. Keeping faith and hope alive during hard times6. Understanding why we face trials and how they change us.Key points
01The Day the World Stopped Spinning
We all have that one defining moment where we can draw a thick, dark, permanent line between the "before" and the "after" of our lives. For Lysa TerKeurst, that devastating line was drawn on what felt like a perfectly ordinary day that suddenly spiraled into an unimaginable, waking nightmare. Lysa was a widely respected Christian author, a beloved speaker, and the head of a thriving ministry. To the outside world, and even to herself in many ways, she was living a life that represented the pinnacle of stability. She had been married to her husband, Art, for twenty-five years. They had built a beautiful family, raised incredible children, and spent decades constructing a life that felt solid, predictable, and safe. But the illusion of safety is often the first casualty of trauma. On a day that began like any other, Lysa uncovered a truth that would completely shatter the foundation of her reality: her husband was entangled in a web of infidelity and substance abuse. The shock of such a discovery is not merely emotional; it is intensely, violently physical. When the person who holds your greatest vulnerabilities, the person who has been the primary witness to your life, suddenly becomes the source of your deepest agony, the brain simply cannot process the contradiction. Lysa describes the visceral, breath-stealing impact of this betrayal. It was not just a disappointment; it was a total demolition of her identity as a wife and a partner. The future she had mapped out was instantaneously erased, replaced by a terrifying void of uncertainty. When we face this kind of catastrophic disappointment, our initial reaction is often a profound sense of disbelief. We look around at the shattered pieces of our lives and think, "It is absolutely not supposed to be this way." We feel cheated by the universe, betrayed by our loved ones, and often, abandoned by God. Lysa does not shy away from the horrific ugliness of this phase. She invites the reader into the darkest corners of her grief, acknowledging the sleepless nights, the paralyzing panic attacks, and the agonizing loop of questions that haunt a betrayed mind. What did I do wrong? Was any of it real? How could he do this to us? The brilliance of Lysa’s storytelling in this initial plunge into darkness is her desperate refusal to sanitize her pain for the sake of her public image. As a spiritual leader, there is an immense, crushing pressure to immediately find the silver lining, to quote a comforting scripture, and to present a perfectly packaged testimony of triumph. But Lysa completely rejects this toxic positivity. She admits that she wanted to scream, to lash out, and to completely fall apart. She validates the sheer devastation of watching your life burn to the ground. In these moments, the world keeps spinning for everyone else, which only magnifies the profound isolation of the sufferer. You watch people going to the grocery store, laughing at coffee shops, and complaining about trivial inconveniences, while you are standing in the smoking crater of your existence. Lysa’s journey begins in this crater. It is a testament to the fact that before we can even begin to talk about healing, restoration, or hope, we must first have the courage to sit in the ashes and acknowledge the full, terrifying weight of what has been lost. The road to survival starts with the brutal honesty of admitting that life is broken, and right now, it hurts more than words can possibly express.
02Caught Between Two Beautiful Gardens
Trying to make sense of senseless pain often feels like grasping at smoke, leaving us desperately searching for a framework to understand our profound suffering. Lysa found her anchor to sanity not by looking at her immediate circumstances, but by zooming out to examine the grand, overarching narrative of human existence, realizing we are all stranded in a deeply uncomfortable, messy middle. To understand why disappointment hurts so incredibly much, Lysa introduces a profound philosophical and theological concept that completely shifts how we view our pain. She takes us to the very beginning and the very end of the biblical narrative. In the beginning, there was the Garden of Eden—a place of absolute perfection, flawless connection with the Creator, unbroken relationships, and complete absence of pain, disease, and betrayal. This is how humans were originally designed to live. At the end of the narrative, there is the New Jerusalem, the promised paradise where every tear is wiped away, and perfect harmony is permanently restored. However, we do not live in Eden, and we have not yet arrived at the New Jerusalem. We live in the jagged, broken, unpredictable space between these two beautiful gardens. This realization is a massive paradigm shift. Why are we so shocked by death, divorce, disease, and betrayal? If we look at the daily news, tragedy is the absolute norm of the human experience. Yet, every single time tragedy strikes us personally, we feel a deep, internal protest. We cry out that it is unfair, that it is unnatural. Lysa argues that this internal protest is actually holy. We feel that heartbreak is unnatural because, according to our original design in Eden, it is unnatural. We were literally hardwired for perfection, for eternal love, and for unshakeable security. Our souls have a lingering, eternal muscle memory of Eden. We are essentially homesick for a place we have never physically been, but that our souls know we were created for. Because we carry this acute homesickness, we spend our lives desperately trying to recreate miniature, fragile Edens here on earth. We try to build an Eden in our marriages, expecting our spouses to provide perfect, unconditional love and absolute security. We try to build an Eden in our careers, seeking perfect fulfillment, respect, and financial invulnerability. We try to build an Eden in our homes, curating beautiful spaces where we hope sadness and chaos can never enter. The crushing reality of living between the two gardens is that every single one of our earthly Edens will eventually fail us. Spouses are human and flawed; they will break our hearts. Careers will face downturns. Bodies will betray us with illness. When our miniature Edens collapse, the resulting disappointment is not just sadness; it is a profound existential crisis. We feel as though the very fabric of the universe has failed us. Lysa’s exploration of this concept provides a massive sigh of relief for the brokenhearted. It removes the pressure we put on ourselves to magically fix our lives. It gives us permission to grieve deeply. When Lysa’s marriage imploded, she wasn't just losing a relationship; her earthly Eden was being violently dismantled. She had to learn how to exist in the devastatingly harsh environment of the "middle." Living between the gardens requires a radical adjustment of our expectations. It means accepting that disappointment is an unavoidable roommate in this earthly life. However, this acceptance is not a surrender to despair. Instead, it is a call to redirect our expectations. If we know that the world is broken, we can stop demanding that it provide the perfect peace that only the final garden can offer. We can begin to look for the subtle, resilient beauty that can only grow in the rugged, untamed soil of the messy middle, learning to hold joy and sorrow in the exact same hand.
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03When Physical Pain Compounds Emotional Agony
04The Secret Power of Unwanted Dust
05Fighting the Urge to Run Away
06Navigating the Tides of Deep Disappointment
07Rebuilding Trust in a Broken World
08Conclusion
About Lysa TerKeurst
Lysa TerKeurst is a New York Times bestselling author and speaker who helps everyday women live an adventure of faith. She is the president of Proverbs 31 Ministries, bringing the life-changing message of God's truth to millions of women around the world.
