E27 | When Your Heart Hasn't Caught Up Yet | I Never Got My Why - Part 5

What happens when your mind knows the truth, but your heart is still grieving?

In this episode of The Living Story Podcast, Tennille shares the lesson she learned in the aftermath of heartbreak: understanding something intellectually is not the same as accepting it emotionally.

If you've ever known what God was saying but still felt stuck in sadness, disappointment, or unanswered questions, you're not alone. 

Healing is not measured by how quickly your emotions obey your theology.

In this episode, you'll discover:

• Why the heart and mind often move at different speeds
• The shame many faithful women carry during grief
• What Proverbs 3:5-6 teaches about trust and surrender
• How the question of "Why?" begins to become "What is God doing here?"

About the Series

I Never Got My Why is a 10-part podcast series for the woman carrying unanswered questions, heartbreak, disappointment, or seasons that never made sense. Together, we're exploring what happens when God doesn't give us the explanation we wanted—and how He gently leads us toward healing anyway.

Download the free I Never Got My Why Reflection Guide below to walk through the series with us.

Transcript

Speaker 0:00

I knew the relationship was over before my heart was willing to live like it was. That was the confusing part. My mind understood it. The conversations had happened. The reality was clear. The truth was sitting right in front of me, and still my heart kept reaching for a version of the story that no longer existed. My Bible study teacher told me the truth. My mentor told me the truth, and my pastor told me the truth. And every Sunday, I would nod, underline scripture, take notes, and go home and cry for the same reason I cried the week before So in the I Never Got My Why series, we've moved into movement two. In the first four episodes, we sat inside the question. We named the room. We met the women who asked questions before us, the very same questions we asked, the why. We read the promise inside the exile, And all of that was necessary because you can't rush through the why. You have to be fully seen inside it before you can begin to move. But today, we're starting to turn, not because the question is answered, not because the pain is gone. The turning is not a resolution. It is a shift in direction, and it doesn't always feel like progress while it's happening. Today, we're gonna talk about the thing nobody talks about, the gap. I mentioned it briefly in part two of this series. But today, I want to give it the space that it deserves, because I think the gap is responsible for more shame remorse and regret in women than almost anything else I know. Here's the gap. Your mind can hold the right answer while your heart is still asking the old question. You've been in Bible study, you've been in the Word, you've sat under good teaching and wise counsel An honest community And you understood it. Not just nodded politely. You actually understood it. You could explain it to someone else. You could teach it You could quote the scripture, and then you went home, and the ache was still there, and the question was still there, and the tears were still there. The heart moves slower than the mind every single time. For me, this gap became impossible to ignore after the breakup. It wasn't the only loss I had ever experienced. It wasn't the only disappointment I had ever carried, But it was the one that exposed how different the mind and the heart can be, especially as I got more into the Word. My mind knew the relationship was over. My heart kept reaching for a version of the story that no longer existed. I remember sitting in my car after Bible study some nights, not even turning the engine on, just sitting there, knowing everything I had heard was true and still feeling completely emotionally stuck, which created this strange second layer of suffering And I think this is the best way I can explain it because now I was grieving the situation and judging myself for still grieving it. And then because you are a faithful woman who takes her walk with God seriously, you add shame to the grief Because you think, if I really trusted God, it would not still hurt like this. If I really believed what scripture says, I would not still want what I want. If I really understood this, then my heart would have caught up by now. And faithful women are especially to this kind of shame because we genuinely care about our walk with God. We're not pretending. We're not playing church. We truly want to trust Him fully and completely, which means when the grief lingers longer than we think it should, we start assuming the problem must be us And how many times did I think it was? And that shame is a lie. And I need to say that plainly before we go any further. Healing is not measured by how quickly your emotions obey your theology or what you believe. Sometimes healing looks like telling yourself the truth a hundred times before your heart finally believes it once. That doesn't mean you're failing. It means you're human. In Proverbs chapter three, verses five and six, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding." I want you to notice something. The heart and the understanding are named separately. Not trust Him with your understanding. Trust Him with your heart. Because the writer knew something important. The heart and the understanding don't move at the same speed. A woman can understand the truth completely and still be learning how to trust it emotionally. That's not a weakness. That's not immaturity. That's not spiritual failure. That's just the distance between the sermon and the surrender. And I wanna tell you something about the flesh. We sometimes talk about the flesh as if it's the enemy, as if maturity means no longer wanting human things. But the flesh wants to be loved. It wants what it wants. It wants to be chosen. It wants companionship, tenderness, belonging. It wants the future it imagined And that's not a sin. That's being alive. Some women have spent years feeling ashamed for still wanting love, still wanting marriage, still wanting reconciliation, still wanting children, companionship, as if becoming spiritually mature means becoming emotionally numb. But God didn't create you to stop being human. The flesh is not evil for wanting those things. The struggle begins when the wanting becomes louder than the trusting I remember there were moments after the breakup when I was more worried about him than I was about myself. He was the one who ended the relationship, and somehow I was still trying to understand him, still trying to support him, still trying to make space for what he was feeling while barely making space for what was happening inside me. Looking back, I think part of me believed that if I stayed loving enough, patient, and safe, maybe the story would still turn out differently. But pain does that sometimes. Pain teaches you to abandon yourself while trying to hold on to someone else. And when we go back to people, places, or patterns we already know are not good for us because the ache says go back and the flesh agrees, That's not weakness, that's humanity. So let me tell you what the turning actually looked like. It wasn't dramatic. It didn't happen in a powerful worship service. It didn't happen because someone finally said the perfect thing. It didn't happen because I suddenly understood. It happened in an ordinary moment. I was mid-question. The loop was running, and something just stopped. Not dramatically. Quietly. Like a door closing gently in an empty room. Not the door to grief. The door to fighting reality. And I realized I was tired. Not grief tired. Reality fighting tired. The tired that comes from arguing with the chapter you're living in, trying to negotiate your way out of it, trying to force a different ending, trying to spiritually perform your way into relief. I had spent so much energy fighting reality that I had no energy left for healing. And at some point, the argument stopped producing anything useful. The turning wasn't dramatic. It was exhausted and honest and real And I wanna be careful here because the turning is not giving up. It's not deciding your desire didn't matter. It is not pretending your grief wasn't real. It's not calling the season good. The turning is when you stop fighting the chapter and start asking a different question. Not why is this happening? But God, what are you doing in this? Not why did this happen to me? But what is being built inside me while I am still here? That is a very different posture, a different stance, and it takes time. It takes honesty. It takes community. It takes people who are willing to sit beside you while your heart catches up. I sat in Bible study week after week hearing truth after truth and still going home to the same question. I used to think that was evidence something was wrong with me. Now I think it was evidence I was still in the gap, still in the distance between the sermon and the surrender. And if that is where you are right now, I want you to know something. You're not broken. You're not behind. And you're not failing. Your heart is just moving at the speed hearts move. And God is patient with that process. Maybe more patient than we are with ourselves and with the things happening around us. So as we continue in this series, We're gonna continue to unpack this process. And if this episode resonated with you, come back Thursday. We're going to talk about a woman who walked into the temple weeping so hard the priest thought she was drunk, and how that was not a sign of weak faith. It was one of the most honest acts of faith in scripture. And as always, I want you to know that you are seen even here, even now, even in the why. Sending you grace and peace