The Healing That Wasn’t Healing
When the fallout of my broken marriage hit me full force, I was cast out into space. If you’ve ever seen the movie Gravity, you’ll visualize what I mean. When tragedy hits, the enormity of it can feel like drifting into the vast nothingness of grief, clinging to a fragile lifeline we know is not enough to keep us alive.
As a modern and capable woman, my first reaction to marital betrayal was to gain agency, to get my power back. But that pursuit led to its own host of problems. My poison of choice was drowning myself in work, which soon became a form of escapism rather than true healing.
After infidelity, my deepest wound was the belief that if my husband did not love me, who could? There must be something deeply unlovable in me. What a terrible burden to carry. Instinctively, I tried to gain value in the eyes of others, to compensate for the deep scars I now carried. This became a life dedicated to work and tireless service within my church community.
The reality of this service-obsessed work ethic was not the agency I sought, but a new kind of enslavement. It was neither freeing nor did it ultimately give me self-worth. Instead, it trapped me in a cycle of endless striving to prove my value rather than resting in my identity as a child of God. There were moments I genuinely enjoyed the work, but I was on a treadmill. If I stop running, they’ll stop loving me.
“Be still, and know that I am God,” the psalmist writes in Psalm 46:10. I am terrible at being still. I was never taught how. My whole life, I have worked to show my value, to prove my worth. I can trace the origins of this behavior back to elementary school, when I believed it was necessary for my survival to prove that I was special in some way, worthy of being loved.
I became a class clown, desperate for attention, a third child convinced I had to earn my place. I grew up believing love and affection were scarce resources, something we had to compete for if we hoped to receive even a small piece of it.
But God’s love is not like this.
“Your love, Lord, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies. Your righteousness is like the highest mountains, your justice like the great deep.” Psalm 36:5–6
God’s love is vast as the sky, deep as the ocean. It does not run out. There is enough for me, and there is enough for you.
The belief that we must work for love is a worldly message, not a godly one. It grows out of a transactional culture where love is earned through performance. In transactional relationships, if I want something, I must do something. If I am not thin enough, my husband will not love me. If I do not lead the committee at church, I will lose favor. If I am no longer useful, I will be excluded from the love and acceptance I need to feel like a whole person.
These fears are real, and in many cases, they are true. There are people and institutions that will cast you aside when you fail to perform or no longer meet expectations. They may use kind words and say you are valued, but our bodies register the truth when the phone stops ringing and no one checks in.
All of us live under subtle pressures to perform, knowing that failure can cost us love, status, or belonging. This reality is brutal, but it is precisely why I run toward God rather than the world.
As much as God desires upright behavior, what he wants more are upright hearts. Our actions flow from the heart. Instead of striving for accomplishments that prove our worth, we are invited into closeness with God. Work done from gratitude is different from work fueled by striving.
If you are unsure of your own motivation, I would pose this question to yourself. If I stop giving, if I stop serving, do I fear rejection, loss of status, or disappointing others more than following God’s will for my life? Am I serving for God or serving to feel good about myself?
After great loss, rest does not come naturally. I was desperate to prove my worth, but becoming a workaholic to drown out pain only pulled me into a vicious cycle. What happens when I stop performing? Nothing good. The future spread out before me like a prison sentence and it frightened me to the core. I realized I was exhausted. That’s when I knew I had to stop performing and start listening.
If you have experienced great tragedy, betrayal, or deep loss, consider where your help truly comes from. As tempting as it may be to drown yourself in work and service, be hesitant and prayerful before stepping onto the treadmill of proving your worth. You are already worthy, valued, and loved just as you are. Take a moment, a month, even a year to draw close to the One who loves you for who you are, not merely for what you can do for Him.
