I grew up the son of a traveling evangelist. My mother is truly one of the nicest people you will ever meet. Unfortunately, beneath her elegant facade was a deep, fear-driven need to appear as if everything was fine. Our lives were far from it. The man I grew up with behind a pulpit was not the same man at home behind closed doors, where I had a front row seat to the physical abuse he inflicted on my mother.
Keeping Dad’s abuse a secret was our number one rule as a family. No one could ever know. I remember once at a camp meeting someone asked my mother about her black eye. I was young, barely tall enough to reach her elbow, and I was overcome with fear. Would our family secret be exposed? Before my mother could respond, my father jumped in, “She fell in the shower.” When I heard these words, my whole body shook with disbelief and anger. It was unbearable to watch my father tell a cowardly lie to protect his image – and my mother sheepishly pretending to be a stupid woman who fell in the shower. At such a young age, I didn’t know how to process it all.
As I entered my teenage years, I became a wrecking ball of bad decisions. In my mind, both my earthly and heavenly fathers were the villains in my story. By the time I was 11 and 12 years old, I was smoking cigarettes, stealing, and drinking alcohol.
As a teenager, I stayed up almost every night, snorting cocaine, drinking, smoking pot, and finally taking painkillers to get to sleep. When I was 17, someone introduced me to a drug called crystal meth. This was a new low. Looking back, it feels like an out-of-body experience. How could I have made such monumentally destructive choices? I had built an entire life around my trauma, my pain, my anger, and my addiction.
CHRIS PRATT ON FINDING GOD DURING SON’S LIFE-THREATENING CRISIS AND HOW IT CHANGED HIS SPIRITUAL LIFE
One evening at three o’clock in the morning I was in a dark place when Jesus revealed Himself to the wounded preacher’s child. Right there, that night, I put my faith in Jesus. I share more about my transformation – and how Jesus changed my life overnight – in my new book,“Radically Restored: How Knowing Jesus Heals Our Brokenness.”
This is why I believe that God heals, and that He still works miracles. I believe because I follow the same Jesus who “cast out demons with a simple command and healed all the sick” (Matt. 8:16 NLT). But what about deep wounds left by trauma? What if those wounds are caused by a parent or a spouse – someone we should have been able to trust, someone who should have been a safe place? We all know that those wounds go much deeper.
ANCIENT CHRISTIANS LIVED TOGETHER WITH FOLLOWERS OF THE MYSTERIOUS FAITH 1,500 YEARS AGO, BLESS ARCHAEOLOGISTS
When asked whether God can heal emotional trauma, Christians can give a knee-jerk ecclesiastical answer: “Yes – and he won’t!” We want to assure others—and perhaps ourselves—that we are saved and believe without doubt. We tend to avoid asking difficult questions because as Christians we are not sure if it is allowed.
As I entered my teenage years, I became a wrecking ball of bad decisions. In my mind, both my earthly and heavenly fathers were the villains in my story. By the time I was 11 and 12 years old, I was smoking cigarettes, stealing, and drinking alcohol.
My perspective is that honest faith asks questions, but does not ask who God says He is. That may sound contradictory, but it is not. God wants authenticity, yet we must trust Him, even in painful experiences. When we are authentic and trust, God reveals the chains that bind us so we can lay them at the foot of the cross and walk away in freedom.
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That’s easier said than done – especially when those chains were put there by people we once considered safe, or by a parent or spouse we should have been able to trust. Unresolved traumas became my prison. I didn’t know how to be set free. The hardest part is that even after the physical abuse stopped, my father never talked about what happened. In my youth, his presence was enormous and terrifying. But during my teens and early twenties, he was there – but not really there. In the movie of our lives, he became less of a monster and more of an extra who blended into the background. His absence during those years was a new and different kind of wound.
Stephen McWhirter attends the 11th Annual K-LOVE Fan Awards at The Grand Ole Opry on May 26, 2024 in Nashville, Tennessee. (Jason Kempin/Getty Images)
I wonder if my father’s detachment was because he believed that after all he had done, he no longer had the right to be my father. Maybe he didn’t talk about the past abuse and make amends because that would have left him to blame for what happened. He would have had to drag it out of the shadows and into the light. I don’t know the answer for my father; All I know is he pretended it never happened.
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But it did happen. And at some point – for my father and for the rest of us – everything we try to hide will be exposed. Jesus said, “For everything hidden will eventually be brought to light, and every secret will be brought to light” (Mark 4:22 NLT). Everything – even the things we want to keep hidden in the dark – will be brought into the light. That may sound scary, but it doesn’t have to be that way. When we willingly bring these hidden things to light to confess, repent, and make amends, they begin to lose their power.
Unfortunately, my father could never bring himself to face what he had done. I believe this kept him trapped by guilt and shame. If you recognize this, know that Jesus loves you and is fighting to set you free and heal every broken part of you. This promise does not only apply to sons and daughters who have been injured. It is also for the father, mother, husband or anyone else who has harmed others. Jesus not only heals and restores the bad things that have happened to us. He also repairs the unthinkable things we have done to others. When we feel chained to guilt and shame, true healing and freedom await on the other side of something called repentance.
Adapted from “Radically Restored” by Stephen McWhirter. Copyright Stephen McWhirter© (May 2026) by Zondervan. Used with permission from Zondervan, www.zondervan.com.
