In this episode, author Kimberly Haar opens up about surviving a violent abduction and assault at the hands of her ex-husband. With unflinching honesty, she recounts the night her world shattered—and how faith, forgiveness, and Christian therapy helped her rebuild her life.
Prefer to listen? Listen to the full episode here.
Kimberly (00:00.11)
I woke up at 2.30 in the morning and my bedroom door was coming crashing down off the hinges. And for the next four hours I was assaulted. And the next four to six weeks were really the beginnings of a healing process of walking through one of the worst experiences of my life.
Juli
Hi, friend. Welcome to Java with Juli. I am your host, Juli Slattery, and this podcast is an outreach of Authentic Intimacy, a ministry that’s dedicated to helping you make sense of God and sexuality. I’m really excited to share today’s conversation with you and introduce you to a new friend, Kimberly Haar. That was Kimberly’s voice you heard at the beginning of the show, and you’re going to hear more of the remarkable story of how she survived the harrowing experience of being abducted by her ex-husband. And here’s why Kimberly’s story is so important. A lot of us carry wounds from marriages or relationships that were nothing like what God designed them to be. And unfortunately, those wounds shape our lives and shape who we become. So we need real tools to cope with trauma, to pursue healing, and even to walk toward forgiveness. And that’s what you’re going to hear from Kimberly today.
Kimberly is a licensed professional counselor and a marriage and family therapist. And after what she’s been through, she is really passionate about helping women get unstuck from their pain and find the freedom to move forward. But before we go there, can I ask you a quick favor? Hey, Java with Juli is here because of you. We created for you and we’ve released more than 500 episodes. And I want to be sure that we’re still covering the topics that matter the most in your life.
Juli
It would mean so much if you would just take 10 minutes to fill out a short anonymous survey. Tell us what conversations you want to hear more of, what questions you’d love for me to explore, and how we can make this podcast a better resource for you. Now as my thank you, you’ll receive a free devotional download called Building Intimacy with God, and you will also be entered to win a $200 Visa gift card. There’s a link waiting for you in the show notes, or you can head to javawithjuli.com. And thanks so much for carving out just a little bit of time to do this. I know life is busy, but I really appreciate your feedback. Now let’s head to the coffee shop for my conversation with Kimberly Haar.
Juli
Well, Kimberly, it is a joy to have you on Java with Juli. I’ve given you a little bit of background of this podcast and our ministry. we do a lot of talking about sexuality, about the goodness of God’s design for sexuality, for marriage, for intimacy, all of that. And one piece of that conversation that we need to come back to over and over again is the fact that for a lot of people, their experience of marriage, their experience of intimacy, is not good and they’ve suffered great harm. And that’s certainly your story. You have been through some deep, deep waters and you’ve recently written a book and you have a whole ministry around helping other people not just survive, but thrive in the aftermath of some pretty horrendous things. first of let me just welcome you and thank you for your willingness to share your story and offer hope today.
Kimberly
Thank you so much for having me. It is such an honor to be here.
Juli
Yeah. Well, I’ve had a chance to learn about your story through reading your book, but I would love for our viewers, our listeners to get a sense of your story. I do encourage that they read your book because it goes into a lot more detail than we’re going to be able to get into today. But how do you describe what you’ve experienced in a way that most people can understand within a few minutes?
Kimberly (03:57.838)
You know, I think that just kind of in summarizing my story, what actually happened is that in 2017, I went through a trauma where my ex-husband broke into my home, and we had been divorced for four years. And so really a trauma began even before my actual trauma in that I made a decision to divorce my ex-husband of 23 years.
And there had been ongoing infidelities and, you know, obviously in breaking the trust, when I learned he had been in an affair, I knew I couldn’t stay in my marriage any longer. And so after the 23 years, I made a choice to divorce and that was probably the hardest decision that I’ve ever had to make. And we stayed friends. It was a friendly divorce, but four years later, I made the decision. My youngest children were going to college, and I decided it was time for me to put myself back out there. I had done four years of healing and I met a man and we just, knew almost immediately that we were going to marry. And that was very unlike either one of us because I had dated one person in 27 years and he was an engineer, so he doesn’t do anything fast. He has to think through everything. And we knew within just a few weeks though that we wanted to marry. Things were going wonderful.
And four weeks after I had met him on April Fool’s Day, I had been asked by my ex-husband to go to his home. He wanted to talk about our children and we had done that many times before. And this time was different in that he wanted me to give him another chance of us reconciling. And I knew it was too late. So he said he would have to go talk to this man.
And I didn’t realize that he had been stalking me. And that was like the beginnings of the traumatic event that happened. I went to this man’s house and I said, hey, my ex-husband said he may have to come talk to you. So I wanted to warn him that he just might make a fool of himself. I wasn’t scared he would hurt him, but I asked this new man, I said, would you fight for me? And he looked at me and he said, of course I would, you’re worth it.
Kimberly (06:13.026)
And 24 hours later, he was not just gonna be fighting for me, he was gonna be fighting for his life. And that’s where my ex-husband enters the picture in that I woke up at 2.30 in the morning and my bedroom door was coming crashing down off the hinges. And for the next four hours I was assaulted. He was intoxicated, he had a gun. I was assaulted for four hours and then I was kidnapped and he was going to make me watch him murder this new man. Thankfully, he didn’t murder him, but the new man was shot 10 times. And in being shot, I was taken to an emergency room. My ex-husband was apprehended because I did escape. And the next four to six weeks were really the beginnings of a healing process of walking through one of the worst experiences of my life.
Juli
Yeah, boy, I can tell that you’ve summarized this before. You packed a whole lot into just a few minutes description and the worst parts of your story, which we will talk about a little bit more. You know, they just sound like something you see in a movie. And when I read the account in your book, that’s what I kept thinking. Like I’d have flashbacks of like TV shows that I’d seen or movies I’d seen where you’re like, OK, well you know, this happens in Hollywood and maybe in a very rare situation. But for you to have walk through that, like, what does that even feel like? I mean, is there a sense of this can’t be my life, this can’t be happening?
Kimberly
It absolutely felt that way. know, when my bedroom door first crashed down, I remember I woke up out of a sound sleep. And before I actually had gone to bed that night, something stirred in me and told me to lock my bedroom door. And I lived alone. I always locked my house door, but this was unusual. I was not scared, but I locked my bedroom door. And when my ex-husband crashed the bedroom door down from the very beginning, it felt like it was a bad dream that I was gonna wake up from.
Kimberly (08:16.214)
And the only problem is it wasn’t a dream and I didn’t wake up, but it was very much a sense of a de-realization. was a, you I kept really coaching myself through it because the first thing he told me when he broke down my door is he told me he’d come from killing my mom and dad. And he had not. So I wanna put that he had not, but I didn’t know that. And in those moments, I think my therapeutic background kind of kicked in, because I began coaching myself and I told myself, if that’s true, you can grieve it later. Put it on the shelf. You’ve got to stay very aware of what his words are. Stay one step ahead so you can keep yourself alive. And my prayer was, Lord, keep me alive because my kids are going to need me. So there was absolutely that, this can’t be real.
Juli
Yeah. You mentioned your therapeutic background. You are a therapist. When did you become a therapist? Like, were you already through training, doing counseling when all this transpired?
Kimberly
I was, I became a therapist 18 years ago. And I decided to go back to school when I was in my late 30s. I became a therapist when I was 40 years old. And I became a therapist out of my own pain because my first husband and I had gone to marriage counseling repeatedly. We had tried different therapists and I just didn’t feel like I was getting the hope I was needing. And I felt like there was just a bandaid being put on our marriage.
And so I decided that someday I would go back to school and I would learn to be a hope-giver. So I became a therapist because I was in pain.
Juli (09:52.822)
Yeah, a hope-giver. I love that. Kimberly, as you describe your story in the therapy world, we talk about different kinds of trauma. You talk about like small T trauma and you talk about big T trauma. And we have people that are joining us today who have experienced both. You know, we might look at the difficulties in your marriage. We might look at the decision, the most difficult decision you said you’ve made in your life, which was to get a divorce.
Maybe the shame that comes around that, the processing as a million kind of small “T” traumas. And then the 24-hour period that was the most dramatic was obviously kind of this cataclysmic event that you have to process. And before we talk more about the most dramatic part of your story, I’d love for you to talk a little bit about what it was like for you to walk through coming to terms with the fact that your ex-husband wasn’t going to change, that you needed to get a divorce. I think that’s where a lot of people are living today is in those very difficult decisions, particularly as they desire to honor God with their lives and with their decisions.
Kimberly
Right? You know, during the 23 years of marriage, like I said, there had been a pattern of infidelity and the affairs would actually, that was like the tipping point for me. But I believed through all that, that God can restore marriages, He can heal things, but there has to be two people that are willing to do that and there has to be changed behavior. So walking through that, it was… you know, during that time, I actually had watched a CNN news article. It was on TV during that time. And it was about this orca whale that had given birth to a calf. And this calf was deceased at birth, or it died right after birth. And they talked about this whale would, the mama whale would go underneath in the water and pull the baby calf that was dead on its back. And she wouldn’t let it go.
Kimberly (11:57.134)
And CNN followed this story for 17 days and they labeled it an unprecedented tour of grief. And when I watched that, I realized that I had been carrying my dead marriage for a very long time. I had been wanting healing. I had been wanting restoration. And I had a lot of well-meaning people that gave me some really bad counsel and they were friends and they didn’t, you know when somebody is not living your story, it’s easy for other people to tell you what to do. So I would be told, God wants to restore, believe, believe, believe, hold on. But nobody was really talking about boundaries and health and how God doesn’t want us to be in situations where there isn’t that change. And so making the decision to divorce, the day I divorced, I actually, asked my father to go with me to the lawyer and I cried that day.
And I said, tell me I’m not making a mistake. It’s like this was just a very, very monumental thing because I, like most people took my vows very seriously and I felt like I was disappointing God. Although I know I was not.
Juli
Yeah, how did you work through that? Not just the decision, but in the aftermath of the questioning, the feeling that you were disappointing God, maybe the feeling that you’d failed.
Kimberly
Yeah, I had to do a lot of forgiving of myself. In those four years when I was single, before I met this new man, I had to do a lot of my own grief work of realizing I had been grieving my marriage a long time before I actually made that decision to divorce. And I had to do the grief work that was, I was forgiving the past of the things that had happened. I was forgiving the present of what wasn’t happening.
Kimberly (13:48.29)
And I had to grieve the future because I wasn’t going to get the future of this isn’t the way it was supposed to happen. So I went to counseling myself. I spent a lot of time in prayer, got really good counsel, but I really had to grieve that and let myself grieve those losses and then had to work through forgiving myself because I felt like I was a failure. I felt like I failed myself. I felt like I failed God.
I felt like I failed as a marriage and family therapist of all things, because here I work with families and the enemy wants to come in and put shame on you and tell you all these lies about yourself. And so I really had to learn to forgive myself and say that in those moments I was doing the very best I could. And I had to learn to have compassion on myself. I also had to forgive my husband.
Juli
Yeah, I’ll bet you did. And I’m sure you had to do a whole other level of forgiving four years later. What would you say is the difference between forgiving yourself and really reconciling yourself to God’s forgiveness?
Kimberly (14:57.592)
I think sometimes it’s easier to tell ourselves we can accept God’s forgiveness because God is holy, God is sovereign, but I think that there is a misbelief that if we forgive ourselves, we’re condoning. I think the whole idea of forgiveness is so misunderstood by people in that it means everything is okay, or it means it didn’t matter, or it means restoration of relationships.
So the walking through forgiving myself was probably the very hardest of all those people to forgive, including my ex-husband. And that was, it was a long process. It took where I would have to remind myself when that negative self-talk would come, I would have to remind myself and I would take what I knew God’s word said. And I would say, okay, first of all, you I’m thinking that I totally, I’m a failure.
I learned to ask myself, this what my Heavenly Father would say? And if it wasn’t what my Heavenly Father would say, then I would not allow myself to ruminate on those. And I would partner with, okay, this is what God says, whether I feel it or not, this is what God says about me. So it was a very much a very slow, like an onion, layer by layer by layer. And it was a walking out process.
Juli
Yeah, it sounds like when you use the phrase, had to forgive myself, it sounds like you did something wrong. And of course, none of us are perfect, but the way you describe what happened in your marriage and why divorce was the option that you chose was not because you did something wrong, but because your husband was breaking his vows. And a lot of times people that have been victimized or betrayed, take the responsibility on themselves.
So I guess one question I would have is how do you reconcile that even with the language of I had to forgive myself?
Kimberly (16:53.454)
Sure, I think that where I had not done anything wrong, I had to reconcile that I told myself I did. And I think anytime you go through trauma, anytime you go through great loss, it is a normal reaction to ask yourself, what did I do to cause this? How could I have prevented this? And I think our self-worth is so hit when we go through something that is that big, that challenging.
And so, because I told myself I had done something, I must have done something wrong. So maybe I didn’t say I did something wrong, I was just grappling with, what did I do that caused this? And I had to realize I didn’t do anything. It’s like, may not have been, none of us are the perfect spouse.
You know, there was many things I was less than perfect in, but nothing excused the behavior. Nothing gave my ex-husband the excuse for his behavior and I can’t cause somebody else’s actions. But I had to release myself from my expectations of myself. And so when I talk about forgiving myself, it’s really about, I had to release the expectations of I was supposed to be the perfect person, do the perfect things, be able to fix everything and reconcile that.
Juli
Yeah, so it’s really more aligning your thinking with what’s true more than else. Yeah. And I would imagine that you had to go through that process all over again after the traumatic event, because not only did you suffer horribly, but also this man that you were dating, from what I understand, he almost lost his life. Like, what was that like to carry?
Kimberly (18:33.806)
That was, I felt horrible for that because there was some truth and I would tell myself, if it wasn’t for me, he would not have been shot. And there was some truth, if he wasn’t dating me, he would not have been, my ex-husband wouldn’t have known him. And so I was a commonality, but even with that, I had to really come to terms with, I didn’t pull the trigger, I didn’t drive the car there to do this, it was not me.
And I had to remind myself of that because I hurt so bad that somebody that I loved was hurt by somebody I used to love.
Juli
Yeah, I can imagine. And just all the second-guessing of, is there a sign I should have seen? What did I miss? Yes. Yeah, did I say something that spurred this on? Maybe I was wrong to start dating, like all of that.
Kimberly
Yep, I asked myself, did I lead my ex-husband on? Because I had told him, you know what, hey, in four years, I’m not dating anybody, get your life right, figure out what’s going on, change your life. And in four years, if I’m still available, come talk to me. Maybe someday we could reconcile because I did love him. It wasn’t healthy, it wasn’t. And so I would tell myself, did I do something that gave him false hopes? And again, that’s our trauma brain that is telling us, I must have done something.
And having to realize we can’t dictate somebody else’s actions. No matter if I did everything, everything, you know, in an unhealthy way, it still didn’t make it okay what happened.
Juli (20:06.83)
Right. Yeah. And from what I understand, he didn’t have a history of violence. Like this was sort of out of the blue.
Kimberly
There was not a history of violence. I was surprised by it. I could not have predicted it.
Juli
Kimberly, do you remember the events of that day? Do you have just have in your mind like sort of snapshots or were you like fully present when this whole thing was transpiring?
Kimberly
I was very fully present when this was happening. And part of that was because of the instincts of I have to keep myself alive. And so I was hanging on every word because I was trying to almost like think, okay, if this is what he’s gonna do, how can I keep myself safe? Even to the point of when he kidnapped me to take me to this man’s house.
I was thinking, okay, when I’m picking a shirt to leave the house with, I’m going to pick the biggest shirt I can because I can wiggle out of something if my arms are taped up. I mean, I was thinking totally about survival.
Juli (21:09.358)
You know, I love the Psalms. I think a lot of God’s people love the Psalms, and I was even just reading the Psalms this morning about how God is our stronghold, He’s our refuge in the time of trouble. And we hope that that would be the case. Like when we even put ourselves in the situation of experiencing something traumatic like that, that there’d be a sense of God’s presence. Did you experience that?
Kimberly
I did. It was kind of towards the end of everything that was happening in those four hours. And I was laying on my bed and I was scared because I didn’t know if I was gonna die. I didn’t know if I was gonna be killed. And all of a sudden I realized that I did. There was a presence in the room and all I can describe it as is it was a sad presence, but it was a familiar presence and it was a calm and a reassuring presence. And in that moment, it was like Psalm 23 became alive to me where it says, yeah, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I won’t fear because you’re with me. It doesn’t say you’re not going to let me go through a valley. It says your presence is there. And where I don’t understand why God doesn’t just remove the suffering and the pain and God never removes his presence from us. And I knew in that moment there was a calm that washed over me. The fear was gone.
And I knew if I died,I would not have died alone. And it was just a reassuring presence that I knew. I knew that the Lord was there with me.
It was interesting because a few days after the assault, a woman that I worked with, but she had never been to my home. We weren’t real close friends, but it was about 1130 at night. And she sent me a text message and she said, I’ve been praying for you. I’m so sorry this happened, but I keep feeling like I’m supposed to give you this scripture. And it was in Exodus. And it said, the Lord will fight for you, you only need to be still. And what she didn’t realize is on my wall in my bedroom, there was a big sign on the wall that was exactly that scripture where bullets had hit above that sign, bullets had hit below that sign when my ex-husband had a gun and he shot the wall. But it was a reminder that, you know what, even in those dark valleys, God is there fighting with us.
Juli (23:29.742)
Wow, what a beautiful reminder. I mean, in the middle of just a horrible situation. Did you ever go through a period in the aftermath of this where you really struggled with your faith, like just the goodness of God, why would you let this happen?
Kimberly
I did. Now, let me say, I have walked with the Lord since I was a little girl. There was never times when I walked away from the Lord, but when it happened, probably the first week or two, I would find myself just laying on, I went and lived at my uncle and aunt’s house and they had a beautiful pergola and I laid on the cement floor and I would just weep and weep and weep because I didn’t even have words.
I was angry and I would say, God, I don’t understand this, because our brain says, what did I do to cause this? Why didn’t you intervene? There’s all these but why questions. And I felt abandoned. I was like, God, did you abandon me? Why didn’t you stop this? And I have come to, there’s a word picture that I like to use and it reminds me of when, I have four children and when my middle daughter was five years old and I was taking her to kindergarten, we had to get her immunizations. And when we took her to get her immunizations, she had these big crocodile tears. She’s looking at me like, mom, why are you letting them do this to me? And I looked at her and I held her hand tight and I said, look in my eyes, mommy’s here, I am not going anywhere. I am right here. I walked beside her and there was no way I was leaving her to face that alone.
And I felt like, when we say, God, where are you? Sometimes we say it more as an accusation, like, God, you weren’t there. And it was more like God is saying, look into my eyes. I am right here. I am not leaving your side. I am your Abba Father. And looking back, it was like God was everywhere I turned around. The Lord’s presence was there in the room with me when I felt his presence.
Kimberly (25:33.74)
He was there in the favor when my aunt and uncle gifted me their home for the summer so I had a safe place to stay. He gifted, the Lord was there in my friend’s text messages that would come in encouragement. It was meals that were brought. And so sometimes I think that we have this idea of how God should act, how he should show up. And it’s recognizing, Lord, you’ve been showing up all along.
Juli
Yeah. Did you, were you aware of that? Like even in that season or is this just kind of you looking back, putting together some of those pieces?
Kimberly
I was aware, it was like this both and. I was frustrated and angry with God. And where I said, I’m gonna trust you, there was no way I was gonna trust him. Because I didn’t, it was like, how can I trust you with this? I’m scared. I told the Lord, I’m scared to trust you. So I had all of these emotions that are more of those uncomfortable emotions, the fear, the anger, the doubt, and the beautiful thing is that God welcomed me in it. You mentioned Psalms earlier.
And I love Psalms and David because David laments and he is saying, God, where are you? Why have you abandoned me? And then at the end in those same scriptures, he’s saying, but my soul cling to the Lord. You are worthy, you are holy. And so we can hold both of those. I was angry at God and I loved God. I didn’t trust him and I wanted to trust him.
Juli
Mm-hmm.
Kimberly (27:01.192)
I didn’t want to forgive yet, I wanted to forgive and move forward. So we can hold those different feelings and we don’t have to choose which one we’re going to pick.
Juli
Yeah. Okay, so I’m looking at you. You look and sound so put together, Kimberly. I you look like this is all behind you, you’ve healed, and that very well may be the case. I mean, we’re never completely healed on this side of heaven. But I think one of the dangers of sometimes these kinds of testimonies is we hear just the horrendous details of what somebody goes through.
And then we see them on the other side of it where they’re strong enough to be able to declare the goodness of the Lord and they’re in a healthy place. And sometimes we miss the middle. And I know a lot of the work that you do in therapy with people is that middle. Can you talk about what the middle was like for you? Like, how did you go from the place of having experienced something so traumatic to be able to talk about it like this on a podcast with just calm and confidence?
Kimberly
Okay, so let me first say it’s been eight years. So there has been eight years since this happened. And in the walking out, and I think sometimes I’m glad you bring this up because I think sometimes people think that healing is this linear, we go from here to here to here to here. And it is so messy in that one day I’m on my face weeping and crying and I can’t get out of bed. And the next day,
It was like, okay, you know what? I feel like this is gonna be okay. And then the next day I’m down on my face again and I’m weeping. there were times, I think in the very beginning, especially, you for the first month, two months, I didn’t wanna be around a lot of people, which is part of when you go through trauma and pain, you wanna isolate. But yet when I was alone, I was antsy and I just wanted to be with people. But when I was with people, I was antsy and I just couldn’t wait to be alone.
Kimberly (29:00.622)
And I had to take some time off of work because I still was a single mom. I still had to work. And I took off for about a month and a half. And I remember my boss is asking me, what do you need to come back? What is it? How can we help you? And I made, I journaled, what is it that I need? And one of it is I wrote things like, I need to be around friends and I need to be alone. I need a cup of coffee. I need to cry.
I need to sit in a blanket and do nothing. There was in those, especially those beginning stages, the numb is so real and that walking out is a shock because it still felt like a dream. It still felt like any day I would wake up and this didn’t happen to me. And I didn’t know how I was going to heal. I just knew I wanted to. And so one of the first things I did, obviously, because I’m a therapist, I believe in therapy,
Kimberly
So on day one, was assaulted on one day. The next day or two days later, I was on the phone finding a therapist and I was getting myself into good Christian counseling. And not that it was going to fix me, but I needed somebody to walk beside me as I walked through this journey of healing. And in that, it was really not being afraid of all my emotions, but learning how to unpack that, how to grieve what had happened, because I had to grieve in innocence.
There was an innocence I had to grieve of the world as a safe place. I had to grieve a loss, you know? And so all of that, and I will say it’s eight years, it’s been eight years, but there are still opportunities when I will remember something or a memory comes to my mind and I can feel a sadness or I can feel a frustration or an anger. And in those moments, I allow myself to feel that I just don’t get stuck there. I just honor my emotions.
And in honoring our emotions, I believe God gave us our emotions for healing and all emotions are good. Anger is good when we’re using it in the right way. Grief is good because it helps us cycle. It’s a healing in our body. that really, think healing is ongoing. And I would like to say that, hey, I never ever have a hard day, but you know what? Sometimes there’s a reminder.
Kimberly (31:23.038)
And I give myself that space. And if I do, may call a therapist and say, hey, can I just come process this? Because I just need a holding space for this.
Juli
Has your healing journey felt linear? Like, you know, every month you’re getting stronger and feeling more secure or did it not feel that way?
Kimberly
Well, now it feels linear because it’s eight years out and because there’s been so much healing that’s happened. In the beginning, it was the biggest mess you’ve ever seen. There was nothing linear about it. It felt like the rug was pulled out for me and I’d barely get on my feet again and the rug would be pulled out for me again. And so that was the part of, you I think that sometimes in our culture, people don’t know what to do with grief.
And so they try to cheer you up. They try to say things like, well, at least you’ve got this going on for you, or at least this. And so people don’t talk about it and they stuff it, they ignore it. And so nothing is ever processed. So being able to heal at your own pace, because people will also say, aren’t you over this by now? Which is the worst thing people can say. So it’s taking it at your pace. What is it that I need today? And today it may be, I need to just take care of my self care. I need to make sure that I’m getting sleep and I’m getting good healthy food in my body and I’m sitting in the sunlight and that may be all I can do today. But as healing comes is okay, you know what, maybe I’m gonna invite a trusted friend into this. Maybe I’m going to begin to put myself, you know, go back out with friends, even if it’s for a limited time and then I go back home. It’s all about balance and there is no cookie cutter for this.
Juli (33:06.446)
What did the people that were most helpful for you, whether it be family, friends, people in your church, what did they do and how were they helpful?
Kimberly
The very most important thing that was helpful for me was when people gave me the gift of presence and silence. When I was going through this, I didn’t need somebody to come and try and cheer me up or fix it, but I didn’t wanna be alone. There was obviously some safety concerns, I didn’t feel safe. The friends that helped me the most were friends that would come by, bring me a cup of coffee and just sit with me. And if I cried, they wouldn’t say a word. They would just sit with me and they would let me cry.
It was a friend that would bring me a meal and leave it on my porch and not ask to stay. People that really gave me the space to heal, but they didn’t try to fix me. They let me heal and they were there with me. They didn’t let me go through the scary thing by myself.
Juli
Yeah, boy, that’s a good word. And I’m guessing you had good friends that tried to fix you. Because people love you and they don’t want you to be suffering.
Kimberly
I did.
Kimberly (34:14.018)
Mostly my mother, my mother tried to fix it. My father gave me the gift of silence and the gift of presence. And sometimes I would call my dad and I would just say, dad, and he’d be on the phone. He’d say, hello. And then I would cry for 20 minutes and he wouldn’t say a word. And when I was done, I would just say, thank you, dad. And I would hang up. And it was, that’s what I needed. I needed a safe place not to feel by myself.
Juli
Yeah, and your parents must have been going through their own grief with all this.
Kimberly
Oh, it was, I think anytime you see your kid, no matter how old they are, think they’re always, you know, my kids are always going to be babies. I’m their baby. It’s like, I think there’s nothing worse than watching your child hurt.
Juli
Yeah, and it’s like you have a hope for them, and when you see them walk through pain and you can’t do anything to solve that pain or protect them from it, it’s a horrible feeling. So now we are eight years past all of this. You have written a book, you’re speaking on this. Let me start by even asking you, like, what is your primary hope is people hear your story or they read your book. What do you want them to take?
Kimberly (35:27.608)
Yeah, I want people to take that they’re not alone because when we go through things, hard things, it’s so normal to feel like I’m the only one. And what for me, when I went through this, I wanted somebody that could like throw me a lifeline that said, you’re gonna be okay. Somebody that said, hey, I’ve gone through something hard too and let me just come and be with you. There is no pain Olympics. It’s pain is pain is pain is pain.
You know, what to me is hurt is your hurt is no less or bigger than my hurt. And so when we don’t get into that comparison, my goal was that by dropping and opening up my life, especially as a therapist, because that’s not something that most therapists typically do. And I wanted to normalize that we all walk through pain. We all have hard things. And so, the other reason I wrote my book is the day it happened, I had no control over what people knew about my story. It was all over the news. They didn’t use my name, but it was all over the news. And my story was that here was a woman that was hurt. And I didn’t want that to be the end of my story. I wanted to give hope to others that said, yes, here was a woman that was hurt, but healing is possible. This woman ran to Jesus.
Kimberly
This woman ran to Jesus and did good healing work and good days are ahead. So I wanted to be a lifeline that could say, I get it, me too, come on, grab my hand. Cause sometimes when we can read a story about somebody else, it’s less threatening. And we can use it as an example and say, man, if they can walk through that, that gives me hope I can walk through what I’m going through. So that’s my hope is that nobody will feel so broken that their stories over that there’s no future. I want to say there’s no story that is too broken.
Juli (37:26.572)
Yeah, and when people hear what you’ve been through, like they know you’ve been there. They know you’ve experienced for some people their worst fear and you survived. You not just survived, but you’re doing well. You mentioned therapy a lot. I am a therapist. I know the importance of that. But what are people missing if they just go to therapy and they don’t have that relationship with God and they’re missing the element of Jesus’s presence through this.
Kimberly
Yeah, yeah. You know, to just go to therapy and there’s no Jesus, you can get a portion of a healing and you can have a good life, but you’re missing out on the element of the one who actually brings the total healing that having that presence of someone walking beside you, knowing, Lord, I can surrender this to you. I can surrender this to you. I don’t have to explain this to you because you see this, you know this.
And faith for me became my anchor. And it was when people reach out to the Lord, because a lot of times when hard things happen, people run away from the Lord. They can blame God, they can run away from God and say, is, know, God’s not a good God, or you can run to Him. And when you run to Him and you can ask whatever those questions are, you can have whatever those emotions are, but it’s finding
You know, somebody asked me once, they said, how can you still believe in God? How can you still hold onto your faith? And I thought about it for a moment and I thought, if I don’t have faith, what do I have? If I’m gonna rely on me, it’s like, I can’t fix this. And so I think that faith, and it is, it is a faith that says, God, I don’t understand. And it’s like when our kids are little and they ask us a question and we give them an answer and they say, but why?
Kimberly (39:25.922)
And we give them an answer and they say, but why? It’s, I may never have the answers, but there’s an acceptance of, okay, if I can put my trust that I don’t have to know, I don’t have to know because I can trust that God’s a good God. I can trust that I don’t see what’s going on behind the scenes. I think that faith is just such a foundational anchor where the deepest healing really comes from.
Juli
Yeah, and you mentioned the need to forgive your ex-husband. How did your faith in God enable you to do that? I understand that he’s in prison.
Kimberly
Yes.
Juli
I mean, that’s just a complicated situation.
Kimberly
It is, it is. And it’s an honor. You know, the forgiveness with my ex-husband is ongoing because forgiveness isn’t a once and done. Forgiveness is a choice. It’s not a feeling. And that’s where we get stuck is I’ll forgive when I feel like it, but we wait for something to make things right. And this will never be made right. And forgiving my ex-husband, the day I was assaulted, he looked down at me as the four hours were over, the intoxication was wearing off, and I think he realized the gravity of what had happened. And he said the words, he said, tell me the truth, you could never forgive me. And I thought for a moment, and it really wasn’t about him because I was so angry. I wanted him, just awful things to happen to him. But in that moment, I knew that forgiveness is really about me and I don’t want to be tied to an offense. I like to say anger and unforgiveness is like an umbilical cord that connects us to the other person. And where an umbilical cord is supposed to be a life support and life giving, when it comes to anger and unforgiveness, it steals our life. It steals because our brain has to remember what happened. And so on that day, the very last words I ever spoke to my ex-husband, I looked at him and I said, you’re right, you’ve gone too far. There’s no going back.
Kimberly (41:29.55)
I said, on this day, I’m going to tell you, I will forgive you. And I knew that I would do whatever work, however long it took. I knew that I didn’t want anger to attach me to him. And so it began with a choice. And you know what? Today, eight years later, if I’m reminded of something that irritates me, I remind myself I’ve made a choice to forgive. And it doesn’t mean it’s a feeling, it’s I’ve made a choice to forgive, and so I get to forgive again. And sometimes you have to forgive again and again and again for the same thing. But it’s reminding yourself, I’m not gonna pick that back up. I’m not gonna ruminate. I don’t want to hold all those things and let it take up space in me. And so forgiveness was the only way I could let that go.
Juli
Powerful. Again, it’s been eight years. You couldn’t have said that seven and a half years ago. My understanding is that you ended up marrying that other man that was assaulted as well and shot.
Kimberly
I did.
Juli
And that’s a whole other piece of your story. How long have you been married?
Kimberly
We eight years. We got married, everything happened in the early spring of 2017 and he and I married in the fall of 2017.
Juli
My goodness. Wow. So you had a lot of this.
Kimberly
We have a lot packed into that six months, yeah.
Juli (42:54.626)
Yeah, Kimberly, no one would want to write this story for you, I’m sure. You know, when you were 20 years old, when you were thinking of marriage, when you’re thinking of your life, this certainly wasn’t part of it. Now on the other side of it, how are you different because of what you’ve walked through?
Kimberly
I look at what I have walked through and I look back at that woman the first few days after everything happened and I feel such compassion for her, but I also feel such gratitude for her because she got me to where I am today. It’s like I am apart, me and her, we are the same person, but I look back and I would, if I could go back and put my arms around her and lay beside her as she wept and say, know what? You’re going to smile again. I promise you, you’re going to laugh again. Life will be good again, but you’re stronger than you think. In my faith, my faith is more deeply rooted than it’s ever been. I don’t understand many things, but that’s the part of saying I choose to trust. I choose to trust, Lord, your word says you’ve got good plans and I’m going to rest in that I don’t have to control it.
My love for life is that much more because when you realize how quickly it can be gone. But I’m also, have much more confidence in myself that when I think about hard things happening now, because we all go through hard things. And if when I think about, whatever hard thing I may happen, I’ve got a confidence that you know what? I can get through it. I know I can get through it. I know it’s hard. I know it’s, but I also know it’s possible. And so I think for me, it’s made me an even, it’s made me more confident. It’s made me stronger. It’s made me more grateful. And it’s made me more hopeful.
Juli (44:46.318)
Wow, what an incredible story. I am so grateful for how God is using Kimberly’s journey to encourage and help other people. Now friend, if your story is one that has been marked by pain or trauma, this conversation is an invitation to bring your story to the Lord. I hope we’ve given you some practical tools, but I also want to encourage you to seek help from a trusted friend or counselor because like Kimberly’s, your story can be one of hope, healing, and redemption. We’ll link to Kimberly’s book, Healing from Life’s Deepest Hurts, and don’t forget to fill out the survey I mentioned earlier. I would just be so grateful. Just link for that link in our show notes or head to javawithJuli.com. Thanks for listening and I look forward to having coffee with you next time for more Java with Juli.