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Lysa TerKeurst said she would forgive and things would fall apart. Forgive and things would fall apart. Forgive and things would fall apart. Most women reading this know exactly what that cycle feels like. But what she did in the middle of it is something most of them have never thought to try. Here's who she is first. For more than two decades, she was a New York Times bestselling author and the president of Proverbs 31 Ministries, one of the largest ministries to women in America. She had built her entire life on telling women that God's Word was enough. And then her marriage of almost 29 years ended in an incredibly devastating way. She has talked about it openly from the stage: "I was heartbroken. I felt so incredibly betrayed. And though I fought and begged God to save my marriage, for years and years and years, I would forgive and things would fall apart. I would forgive and things would fall apart. I would forgive and things would fall apart." Read those last lines again. I would forgive and things would fall apart. How many times have you forgiven and watched things fall apart anyway? How many times have you tried to pray your way through something and felt like you were just talking into the dark? How many times have you sat in church on Sunday with a smile on your face and gone home and cried in your car? Because here's what nobody says about the forgiveness cycle: It's not just exhausting. It's humiliating. You forgave. You meant it. You got back up. You tried again. And then the same wound opened up in the same place and you had to decide — again — whether you had it in you to go back to God and ask for something you've already asked for a hundred times. And at some point — without even meaning to — you stopped praying about it with any real expectation. You still said the words. You still went through the motions. But something in you had quietly accepted that this was just what your life was going to feel like. Hurt that never fully healed. A wound that closed on the surface and stayed open underneath. One woman described it on Reddit like this: "I've worked on my own bitterness for years. I keep forgiving. I keep trying. But the exhaustion of it — the feeling that I'm doing all the right things and nothing is actually changing — is something I don't know how to name." That's what Lysa meant by living hurt. Not dramatic, falling-apart hurt. The quiet kind. The kind you've gotten so good at managing that most days you don't even notice it anymore. The kind that only surfaces at 2AM when the house is quiet and you lie there thinking about things you thought you'd dealt with years ago. You walk into church every Sunday and nobody sees it. Because you've become very good at the walk. You hug people. You ask how they're doing. You say you're blessed. You take your seat. You raise your hands when the music swells. And then you drive home. And the minute you're alone in that car — the smile comes down. And it's just you and the hurt you carried in and the hurt you're carrying back out. And the worst part — the part Lysa named that most women have never admitted out loud — is that you've stopped expecting it to change. Not because you've lost faith. Not because you've stopped loving God. But because you've prayed about this specific thing so many times that somewhere along the way you started protecting yourself from the disappointment of hoping again. Lysa describes one of the lowest moments of her life like this. She was on her way to a counseling appointment. "I remember looking in the rearview mirror and thinking, how long has it actually been since I washed my hair? I thought to myself, I look awful. And then I had a second thought. I can't remember if I put on deodorant today or not. I went to the bathroom and there was no deodorant. But there was peach air freshener. And I thought, that'll do." She walked into her counseling session smelling like a freshly baked peach cobbler. That isn't a woman who was lazy. That's a woman who was living hurt. And there's a difference between being a Christian and being a Christian who is living hurt. You can love Jesus and still not be able to wash your hair. You can know all the right verses and still cry yourself to sleep. You can serve in church every single Sunday and still feel like you're slowly disappearing. And here is what almost no one tells you: Going to church more doesn't fix it. Listening to more sermons doesn't fix it. Telling yourself to just trust God one more time doesn't fix it. Lysa figured out what does. When her life fell apart, she did something most Christian women never think to do. She didn't read another self-help book. She didn't try to white-knuckle her way through it. She went into her Bible. And she stayed there. She's said it openly on every stage she's stood on since: "I did over 1,000 hours with a theologian, studying in the Bible exactly what God's word says about forgiveness. But before you get all impressed, I want you to know, about 750 of those hours, I was looking for the loophole." One thousand hours. Not one thousand hours of reading. One thousand hours of actually understanding. And what she found in those pages didn't just give her information. It gave her her life back. But here's what most Christian women never figure out, and what nobody in church seems willing to say out loud: You don't have to wait until your life falls apart to do what Lysa did. Most of us only open our Bible the way she did when we have no other choice. When the marriage ends. When the diagnosis comes. When the child walks away. When the friend betrays us. We get desperate enough to actually study it. The rest of the time, we read three chapters in the morning, close the book, and can't remember any of it by lunch. I know because I was that woman. I went to church every Sunday for my entire adult life. I owned more Bibles than I could count. I started reading plans in January more times than I can remember. I made it through Leviticus barely holding on, wondering what animal sacrifices have to do with my life. I read Romans and closed the book not being able to explain a single thing I had just read. I read the Psalms when I was at my lowest. They comforted me in the moment, but two days later I couldn't tell you a single thing I had learned. Year after year, the same cycle. Start in January. Slow down by March. Quietly stop by April. And carry that shame — that quiet guilt of being a Christian woman who still didn't really know her own Bible — all the way back to December, when I'd tell myself again that next year would be different. And underneath all of it, the whole time, I was living hurt. Hurt I never named. Hurt I never gave to God. Hurt I just learned to walk around with, like a stone in my shoe I'd gotten used to. Lysa says something at every conference she stands on now: "We've either just been through some hurt, we're in the middle of some hurt, or we're about to go through some hurt." That's all of us. And the problem isn't that we don't pray about it. The problem isn't that we don't believe God can heal it. The problem is that we don't actually know him well enough to let him. It's like reading letters from someone you've never met and wondering why you don't feel close to them. Lysa needed 1,000 hours in the Bible with a theologian to finally hear God speak to her pain. Most Christian women don't have a theologian. We don't have 1,000 hours. We have maybe 30 minutes in the morning before everyone wakes up, with a cup of coffee and a book we don't really understand. That's when I found something that changed everything: a 52-week guided study that walks you through the entire Bible, one theme at a time, from Genesis to Revelation. Before you read anything each week, it gives you a short explanation of exactly what you're about to get into. Who wrote it. When. Why. What was happening at the time. And how every page connects to who God actually is, and how deeply he loves the woman reading it. HERE'S WHAT I LEARNED: Psalms: Written by people who were also living hurt. People who cried out from the same dark places you do—and the reality of what God actually said back to them. Genesis: Not just the story of how it all started, but the historical blueprint of how God showed up for hurting, betrayed, and isolated women, over and over, from the very beginning. The Gospels: Why Jesus put forgiveness at the center of the most important prayer he ever taught us, what it actually means, and how it is designed for your freedom, not your partner's cover-up. For the first time in my life, I read my Bible and I knew who I was reading about. For the first time, I read about a God who was actually big enough to hold what I was carrying. I'd open it in the morning and not want to close it. I'd read something and think about it all day. Verses I had read dozens of times suddenly meant something completely new, because I finally had the context to understand what they were saying. And slowly, week by week, something shifted. I stopped living hurt. Not because the hurt disappeared. It didn't. But because I finally knew the God who could carry it with me. Lysa says it like this: "When cruel things have been done to you, it is life altering, but it does not have to be life ruining." She's right. But you can't get there by reading three chapters and closing the book. You have to actually go in. This study is the closest most of us are ever going to get to Lysa's 1,000 hours—the same depth, broken into pieces small enough to actually do. HERE'S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: ⭐ Over 25,000 women have used this study to step out of the loop and finally understand the Bible they carry. ⭐ Over 6,000 five-star reviews from women who say the Word finally made sense and brought them real peace. Right now it is up to 62% off — and every order comes with a free pen pack and a 60-day money-back guarantee. Don't spend another year living hurt. Don't spend another year being a Christian woman who knows about God but has never actually met him on the page. 👇 Tap below and grab yours before they sell out. P.S. The 62% off won't last. Don't sit on it.