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One of the greatest lessons God has been teaching me is that the truth doesn’t need my defence.

There have been seasons of my life when I wanted nothing more than to tell my side of the story. To explain, correct the lies, and defend my character. When people believe things that simply aren’t true, it’s only natural to want to set the record straight. But over time, I’ve learned that not everyone is looking for the truth. Some people have already decided what they want to believe, even when they know only a tiny fraction of the story.

If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you’ve probably noticed that I tend to keep private matters private. That’s intentional. There are things I could say, but I choose not to. There are details I will never share publicly, not because I’m hiding the truth, but because I believe integrity means protecting what doesn’t belong in the public square. Some stories involve other people. Some conversations are sacred. And some things are simply between me and God.

As someone who works as an advocate for victims of abuse and a trauma healing practitioner, I have the privilege of walking beside people whose lives have been shattered by betrayal, deception, manipulation, violence, and trauma. One of the deepest wounds they carry isn’t just what happened to them—it’s the pain of not being believed. They desperately want people to understand. They replay conversations in their minds. They gather evidence. They try to explain the unexplainable, hoping that if they can just say it the right way, someone will finally see the truth.

I understand that because I’ve lived it.

One of the difficult things about abuse is that much of it happens behind closed doors. The people who witnessed the charm often never witnessed the cruelty. Those who have never lived it can struggle to understand it. That can leave survivors feeling as though they have to defend not only what happened, but who they are.

But somewhere along the way, God began changing my perspective.

I realized that my peace was too valuable to sacrifice trying to convince people who had already made up their minds. I stopped feeling responsible for managing other people’s opinions and started trusting the One who had witnessed every single moment. God heard every conversation no one else heard. He saw every tear, every hidden wound, and every injustice. Nothing escaped His attention.

“The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.” Those words from Exodus 14:14 have carried me through some of the darkest seasons of my life.

Being still doesn’t mean we approve of injustice. It doesn’t mean we stay silent forever or never speak the truth. It means we stop striving to prove ourselves to people who have appointed themselves judge and jury. It means we trust that God is a far better defender than we could ever be.

I’ve also noticed something else. Time has a way of revealing what emotions often conceal. Character is difficult to fake over the long term. Patterns eventually emerge. The truth has a remarkable way of surfacing without us forcing it. I’ve watched it happen in my own life, and I’ve watched it happen in the lives of countless survivors I’ve had the honour of supporting.

So if you’re walking through a season where you’ve been misunderstood, judged, or falsely accused, let me encourage you with this: resist the urge to spend your life defending yourself. Not because the truth doesn’t matter, but because it does. And truth has a way of standing on its own.

Keep your eyes on God. Keep your heart tender. Keep doing what’s right, even when no one is applauding and not everyone understands. Let your life tell the story that your words never could.

I’ve learned that peace isn’t found in winning every argument or changing every opinion. Peace is found in knowing that God knows the whole story. He isn’t confused by half-truths, manipulated by appearances, or influenced by public opinion. He sees what others cannot, and He is faithful.

In the end, I don’t want to be remembered for how well I defended myself. I want to be remembered for how faithfully I lived, how deeply I loved, and how completely I trusted God to handle what I never could.

One of the verses I hear quoted most often is, “God hates divorce.” And He does. But I think we’ve misunderstood what God was saying. Somewhere along the way, we’ve become so focused on the divorce itself that we’ve overlooked the very behaviour that destroyed the marriage in the first place. We quote one sentence while ignoring the surrounding verses that reveal God’s heart.

When you read the entire passage in Malachi 2, you discover that God isn’t simply talking about divorce. He’s rebuking those who “deal treacherously” with the wife of their youth. Some translations use the words faithless or betray. Treachery is the deliberate betrayal of someone’s trust. It’s deception, faithlessness, or choosing your own desires over the covenant you made before God. It’s knowingly violating the promises you made to love, honour, cherish, and protect your spouse. That is what God condemns.

Marriage is far more than standing before God and exchanging vows. It’s choosing every day to live those vows. It’s choosing truth over deception, faithfulness over betrayal, humility over pride, sacrificial love over selfish ambition, and repentance when you’ve caused harm. A marriage covenant isn’t held together by a marriage certificate. It’s held together by two people who are committed to honouring the covenant they made before God.

When a husband or wife chooses abuse, deception, betrayal, manipulation, abandonment, or adultery, they are dealing treacherously with their spouse. They are violating the covenant they promised to uphold. Abuse is one of the clearest forms of treachery because it betrays the very relationship that was meant to provide love, safety, trust, and protection.

Filing the paperwork isn’t what breaks covenant. The covenant has often already been violated through destructive behaviour and, ultimately, a refusal to repent. When there is an opportunity to acknowledge the harm that has been done, take responsibility, and do the difficult work of rebuilding what has been broken, often that opportunity is rejected. For the unrepentant, filing for divorce becomes the easier path than pursuing repentance and restoration.

That’s why I believe we’ve been asking the wrong question. Instead of asking, “Who filed for divorce?” maybe we should be asking, “Who broke the covenant?” Those are not always the same person, though sometimes they are.

One of the saddest things I’ve witnessed is watching people celebrate or affirm someone who has broken covenant and instead of repenting (not apologizing, but turning away from their destructive behaviour) moved on to a new relationship. There is nothing biblical about applauding someone who abandons the covenant they made before God, refuses to repent for the behaviour that destroyed it, and pursues someone else as though the past no longer matters. As brothers and sisters in Christ, our calling isn’t to celebrate appearances or affirm unrepentant sin. Our calling is to lovingly encourage truth, repentance, accountability, and restoration whenever possible.

Calling yourself a Christian doesn’t automatically make you Christlike. Jesus said we would recognize people by their fruit, not by their words. A profession of faith means very little if a person’s life consistently contradicts the teachings of Christ. Our actions reveal what we truly believe.

Yes, God hates divorce because He loves marriage. But He also condemns treachery. He condemns deception. He condemns betrayal. He condemns abuse. He condemns abandonment. He condemns hard-heartedness. He condemns the refusal to repent. In other words, He condemns the very behaviours that destroy a marriage long before a divorce decree is ever signed.

Maybe it’s time we stopped using the phrase “God hates divorce” to shame people whose marriages have already been devastated by covenant-breaking behaviour and started paying equal attention to what God says about those who deal treacherously with their spouses.

The divorce decree isn’t what breaks the covenant.

Treachery does.

One of the greatest ironies of human nature is how passionately we cry out for justice when we are the ones who have been wronged—yet how quickly we become silent when someone else suffers at the hands of a person we know, admire, or respect.

Justice is easy to champion when we’re the victim.

It’s much harder when the accused is our friend, our pastor, our family member, our colleague, or someone whose public image we’ve come to admire.

Suddenly, the standards change.

Instead of asking, “What happened?” We say, “There’s no way they would do that.”

Instead of seeking truth, we defend reputations.

Instead of comforting the wounded, we protect the comfortable.

It’s an uncomfortable reality, but our commitment to justice is truly tested when it costs us something—when believing the possibility of wrongdoing means confronting someone we never imagined could be responsible.

Character is revealed by consistency.

If we believe people deserve to be heard when we’ve been harmed, then we must extend that same willingness to others. If we expect compassion, fairness, and due process when we’re the ones suffering, we should offer those same principles to those whose stories make us uncomfortable.

Justice isn’t justice if it only applies when it’s convenient.

Throughout history, many wrongs continued because bystanders chose loyalty over truth. Not everyone who remains silent does so out of malice. Sometimes it’s fear. Sometimes it’s denial. Sometimes it’s the painful realization that accepting the truth means rethinking everything they believed about someone they trusted.

But truth doesn’t become false because it challenges our assumptions.

Likewise, someone’s good deeds in one area of life do not automatically erase the possibility that they caused harm in another. Human beings are complex. A person can be generous to one individual and deeply hurtful to another. A positive personal experience with someone does not invalidate another person’s negative experience.

Justice requires humility.

It requires us to acknowledge that we don’t know everything. It requires us to listen before we judge, to examine facts before we defend, and to care more about truth than appearances.

As Christians, this matters even more. Scripture repeatedly reminds us that God is impartial. He does not show favoritism, and He calls His people to “seek justice, correct oppression” (Isaiah 1:17). We cannot claim to love justice while selectively applying it based on who is involved.

If we only seek justice when we are the injured party, we don’t love justice—we love self-preservation.

Real justice is impartial.

It asks difficult questions.

It refuses to excuse wrongdoing because the person is well-liked.

It refuses to dismiss someone simply because their story is uncomfortable.

May we become people who pursue truth with humility, extend compassion to those who are hurting, and seek justice consistently—not only when it benefits us, but whenever it is needed.

There are some lessons that no amount of wisdom, good parenting, books, sermons, or advice can truly teach us. Some things can only be understood once we have lived them. When I was growing up, I believed wholeheartedly in the phrase “it takes two to tango,” and honestly, it made perfect sense to me. I believed conflict was always shared responsibility. I believed if someone stayed calm enough, loving enough, patient enough, and kind enough, then peace could always be maintained. I carried that belief into adulthood, and I taught my children the same thing.

But life has a way of humbling us through experience.

Over time, I began to realize that not every conflict is mutual. Not every disagreement involves two equally willing participants. Sometimes there truly is an aggressor, and sometimes there is someone else desperately trying to keep the peace at all costs. Sometimes one person is trying to communicate while the other is trying to control. Sometimes one person wants a resolution while the other wants power. Sometimes one person raises their voice, manipulates, provokes, intimidates, twists words, or creates chaos, while the other walks on eggshells trying to prevent another explosion.

That realization changed the way I viewed human relationships forever. It also taught me something important about people who have never lived through certain experiences. We often speak in absolutes about situations we do not fully understand. We repeat phrases we were taught because they sound wise, fair, or balanced. But experience has a way of exposing the gaps in our understanding.

It took my personal lived experience to realize that there is a difference between healthy conflict and abuse. Healthy conflict involves two people who may disagree but still respect one another’s humanity. Abuse is entirely different. Abuse is about dominance, fear, control, manipulation, and power imbalance. One person may spend years trying harder, staying quieter, forgiving more, accommodating more, and sacrificing more, only to realize the problem was never mutual to begin with.

That can be a painful truth to confront, especially for people who pride themselves on accountability and self-reflection. When you are compassionate, empathetic, and peace-loving, your first instinct is often to look inward. You ask yourself what you could have done differently. You assume that if there is conflict, you must somehow share equal responsibility. But experience teaches discernment, that peace cannot exist when one person is committed to creating chaos, that some people do not want resolution because conflict benefits them. Experience teaches that not everyone argues fairly, loves sincerely, or fights clean.

And perhaps most importantly, experience teaches us to stop placing impossible burdens on people who are already carrying too much. I think many of us unknowingly shame victims by clinging to oversimplified sayings that fail to account for the complexity of human behaviour. We say things like “it takes two to tango,” not realizing that one person may be trying desperately not to dance at all. One person may be shutting down, staying silent, apologizing excessively, or sacrificing their own needs to survive emotionally.

Life experience has softened some of my previous black-and-white thinking. It has made me slower to judge and quicker to listen. It has reminded me that wisdom is not simply repeating familiar phrases. True wisdom requires discernment, compassion, and humility. Sometimes the hardest lessons are the ones we once felt most certain about. But there is growth in allowing experience to refine us rather than harden us. There is maturity in admitting, “I understand this differently now.” And there is grace in recognizing that many people are carrying battles we once could not comprehend until life brought us face-to-face with them ourselves.

There’s a kind of confusion that only comes from being hurt by someone who says they love you. It’s not the obvious kind of pain—the kind that comes with clear betrayal or open hostility. That, in some ways, is easier to process. What’s far more disorienting is when the harm is wrapped in kind words, soft tones, and familiar phrases like “I care about you,” or “I would never hurt you,” and yet they do. This is where so many people get stuck—not because they’re naive or weak, but because they’re trying to reconcile two things that don’t match: someone’s words and someone’s actions. We want to believe the words. We hope the words are true. We cling to the version of the person they present in their best moments. But your body keeps score. Your peace is disrupted. Your spirit feels unsettled. And deep down, there’s a quiet knowing that something isn’t right, because love does not consistently harm.

One of the hardest truths to accept is that someone can say they love you and still treat you in ways that are not loving. When that happens, you have to make a decision—not based on what they say, but based on what they do. Words are easy, and are often used as a covering, a way to smooth things over without true accountability or change. But actions require alignment. They reveal intention. They show consistency, or the lack of it. A person who truly cares about you will demonstrate it, not just declare it. They will take responsibility when they’ve hurt you, make an effort to change harmful behaviours, and consider how their actions impact you, not just how they can maintain access to you. Because love is not just something we say—it’s something we live.

It’s important to understand that inconsistency is not love. Cycles of hurt followed by apologies, promises, or temporary change are not love. That’s confusion and emotional instability. Over time, it erodes your sense of safety and trust—not just in others, but in yourself. Many people stay in these dynamics far longer than they should, not because they don’t see the harm, but because they’ve been conditioned to give the benefit of the doubt, to extend grace without boundaries, or to believe that enduring pain is somehow virtuous. But love does not require you to tolerate ongoing harm. There’s a difference between extending grace and ignoring patterns, and between someone who says they love you and someone who actually shows up in a way that reflects it.

If someone’s words and actions don’t align, trust the actions—not the potential, not the promises, and not the apologies that aren’t followed by change. The actions. Because patterns don’t lie. This doesn’t mean people never make mistakes—we all do—but there is a clear difference between someone who takes ownership, seeks to grow, and demonstrates change over time, and someone who repeats the same behaviours while using words to keep you attached. Discernment is not judgment; it’s wisdom. Learning to trust what you see—not just what you hear—is one of the most important parts of protecting your peace.

You are not asking for too much by expecting consistency. You are not wrong for wanting to feel safe, respected, and valued. And you are not obligated to stay in a situation where someone’s actions continually contradict their words. At some point, we have to stop listening to what people say and start believing what they show us. Because love—real, healthy, God-honouring love—is not confusing. It is honest, safe, steady, and it does not leave you questioning whether you are truly cared for. So if you find yourself in a place where someone’s words sound right, but their actions feel wrong, pay attention to that. That tension you feel is not something to ignore—it’s something to listen to. Because in the end, the truth of how someone feels about you will never be found in what they say; it will always be revealed in what they do.