The Truth About Inner Healing and Whole Marriages
A marriage can't be whole without whole people.
I know that sounds simple, but it's a truth that many of us miss when we're trying to fix our relationships. We focus on communication techniques, submission and headship roles, date nights, and love languages—all good things—but we often miss the deeper issue: the unhealed wounds and lies that each person brings into the marriage.
If we're not fully healed, if we don't know who we really are, we show up in marriage broken, needy, and often demanding that our spouse fill voids only God can fill. We put pressure on each other to make us feel fulfilled, to validate our worth, to be our source of security.
That's not a recipe for a thriving marriage. That's a setup for disappointment, manipulation, and often, the very breakdown we're trying to prevent.
What Inner Healing Actually Is
Inner healing isn't some mystical process or psychological technique dressed up in Christian language. At its core, it's about identifying and uprooting the lies our hearts have believed—lies that have been driving our behavior, our fears, and our reactions for years.
Let me share a personal example that illustrates what I mean.
As a child, I grew up in a dysfunctional home. When I was three or four years old, my father left. I didn't consciously remember much about that time, but there was one memory that would surface occasionally throughout my childhood—just a glimpse, really, of that little girl whose daddy walked away.
For years, I wondered why that particular memory kept coming back when it wasn't even the most traumatic event of my childhood. My father actually returned, and more significant trauma happened when I was around nine. So why did my mind keep going back to that earlier moment?
I discovered the answer during an inner healing session many years later.
When the Lies Take Root
Holy Spirit showed me that when my father left that little three-year-old girl, the enemy came and whispered a lie: "If you had been a good little girl, he wouldn't have left."
I didn't consciously remember believing that lie, but it had been operating like a computer program running in the background of my life for decades. There was this underlying belief that if I wasn't good enough, bad things would happen and people would leave.
That lie created a low-level anxiety that filtered through everything—my relationships, my work, my sense of self. I would stay up all night working on projects to make sure they were perfect, not understanding what was really driving that compulsive need to perform.
I was always performing to be "good enough," driven by a fear I couldn't even name.
The Power of Truth
In that inner healing session, the Lord revealed the lie I'd been believing. I was able to repent for agreeing with that deception and ask God to show me the truth instead.
He told me it wasn't my fault that my father left. That I wasn't alone. That His love for me wasn't based on my performance.
But here's what made the difference: now I had what I like to call a "truth virus" that could interrupt the old programming. When those familiar thoughts tried to surface again—the anxiety about not being good enough, the compulsive need to perform—I had the power to recognize them and choose a different response.
I could say, "You know what? That's not true," and have another thought.
It didn't happen automatically. I had to actively choose the truth over the lie, sometimes many times a day. But the more I thought differently, the more new neural pathways were formed. The old patterns gradually lost their power over me.
Why This Matters for Marriage
Now imagine what happens when two people come together in marriage, each carrying their own set of unhealed wounds and believed lies.
Maybe the wife believes she has to be perfect to be loved, so she becomes controlling and critical when things don't go according to plan. Maybe the husband believes he's only valuable when he's providing and achieving, so he becomes a workaholic who's never emotionally present.
Maybe one spouse believes they don't deserve love, so they sabotage intimacy whenever things get too good. Maybe the other believes they can't trust anyone, so they monitor and question their spouse's every move.
These aren't character flaws to manage or personality differences to negotiate around. These are lies that need to be exposed and uprooted so that each person can show up in the marriage as their true self—whole, healed, and secure.
The Religious Trap
Here's where it gets particularly challenging for those of us raised in religious environments. Many of us were taught that it's supposed to be "all of Him and none of me"—that somehow dying to ourselves means becoming a doormat or disappearing entirely.
But that's a complete misunderstanding of what it means to die to self. God didn't create you just so you could be extinguished. He created you because He wanted you, and He wants you fully alive and fully present.
John the Baptist said "He must increase, I must decrease" (John 3:30, NKJV), but John was the last of the old covenant. Jesus said that even the least in God's Kingdom is greater than John (Matthew 11:11, NKJV). We're not called to become less so Jesus can become more—we're called to become fully who He created us to be so that His nature can be expressed through us.
When we misunderstand this, we end up in marriages where one person (often the woman) believes she's supposed to have no voice, no needs, no preferences—that somehow it's spiritual to let a dominant personality take up all the oxygen in the room.
That's not God's Kingdom. That's just another form of brokenness.
Becoming Whole for the Sake of Love
The goal of inner healing isn't just personal wholeness—though that's important. The goal is becoming the kind of person who can love well, who can show up in relationships from a place of security rather than need.
When you know who you are, when you're rooted in God's love for you, when you've dealt with the lies that have been driving your fears and reactions—then you can love your spouse freely rather than desperately.
You're not needing them to make you feel fulfilled. You're not demanding that they fill God's place in your life. You're not putting pressure on them to validate your worth or provide your security.
Instead, you can show up like Jesus did—knowing who you are, secure in your identity, and therefore free to serve from a place of strength rather than weakness.
Jesus had no problem washing the disciples' feet because He knew who He was. His act of service came from a place of power and choice, not from a slave mentality or a need to earn love.
The Process Is Ongoing
I want to be clear about something: inner healing isn't a one-time event where all your issues get magically fixed. If that were the case, I'd have a line out my door and I'd start charging a lot more money!
It's a process. It's about relationship with God, not just about being "fixed." God's not primarily concerned with you being perfect; He's concerned with you being with Him.
Every single one of us has a unique story, unique wiring, unique gifting. We heal in layers because that's all we can handle. God knows that deep wounds need time and patience to be fully restored.
But here's what's beautiful: as we become more whole, our marriages become more whole. As we learn to recognize and reject the lies that have been driving us, we create space for authentic intimacy. As we stop demanding that our spouse meet needs only God can meet, we free them to love us genuinely rather than out of obligation or fear.
Creating Space for Each Other's Voice
One of the most powerful things that happens in a marriage between two healing people is that both the masculine and feminine voices get to be heard. Both perspectives become valuable. Both people are elevated and esteemed.
My husband is more nurturing than I am in some ways. I'm more analytical in others. That doesn't make one of us wrong and the other right—it means both voices are necessary to understand the whole picture.
Instead of thinking "I know what I know and I know I'm right," we can approach each other with curiosity: "I know what I know. Let me hear what you know. Now I can learn from you and add another color to the painting."
This is what it looks like when the sum becomes greater than the parts—when two whole people come together and create something more beautiful than either could create alone.
The Kingdom Connection
All of this connects to God's Kingdom being released on earth. I truly believe that God's Kingdom comes into the world through the unity of men and women who know who they are, who have dealt with their wounds, and who can love each other from a place of wholeness rather than brokenness.
It's not just having a male and a female—that doesn't automatically fix anything. It's having two healthy, happy people connecting and blessing one another, creating a union that releases love and transformation into the world around them.
That's what the enemy is so afraid of. That's why there's been such an attack on marriages and families. Because when we get this right—when we become whole and learn to love well—we become a force for God's Kingdom that nothing can stop.
An Invitation to Healing
If you're walking through difficulty in your marriage, if you're dealing with someone who seems impossible to live with, if you're feeling stuck in patterns you can't seem to break—consider that the issue might not be your marriage techniques or your submission strategies.
The issue might be the unhealed wounds and believed lies that are driving the dysfunction.
What lies might you be believing about yourself? About love? About what you deserve? About God's heart toward you?
What wounds from your past might be influencing how you show up in your relationships today?
The beautiful news is that God wants to heal those places. He wants to show you the truth about who you are and how much you're loved. He wants to give you the inner strength and capacity to love well, to set healthy boundaries, and to create the kind of relationship that reflects His heart.
It's not always easy work, but it's the most important work you'll ever do. Because when you become whole, you don't just change your own life—you change the lives of everyone around you. You become part of God's plan to transform the world through love.
Blessings,
Susan 😊