Author, The Color of Grace, (2015)
Executive Director, Exile International, since 2006
Masters Degree: Univ. of Tennessee College of Social Work
Ph.D: California Southern University, Counseling Psychology
Husband: Matthew
Guest Bio
Bethany Haley Williams: Setting Captives Free from Pain
CBN.com
–DEEPEST SHAME
Bethany was raised in a Christian home in Kentucky. Her father was a minister, and when missionaries came to speak at their church, Bethany sat on the front row. She dreamed of serving overseas and went on her first mission trip to the Congo as a freshman in college. She knew international work would somehow be in her future. In 1994, after two years of tumultuous dating, arguing, breaking up and getting back together, Bethany married a young man whom she met in college. Bethany, then 21, said they loved God and each other but did not know how to love each other well. They shared good times, but those were overshadowed by power struggles and the inability to cope with each other’s internal battles. “We’d both spent our days pretending to have it together,” says Bethany. She was trying to build a counseling practice and he was getting promotions in his field of education. “We were much better at helping others than ourselves,” says Bethany. “We were masters of pretending.”
The fighting escalated and Bethany reveals they both made choices from broken places. After seven years of marriage, they lived two separate lives; both living in the same house but in different rooms. Then one day Bethany met a new friend who slowly became her confidant and support. Though she tried to cut off all communication with him and failed, their relationship developed into an affair. She ended the relationship, but the shame haunted her. Bethany admitted her affair and immersed herself in guilt. She moved out of the house and ended her 10-year marriage. “We were leaders in our church. We fell off a lot of pedestals we were on; I battled with the shame of it all,” says Bethany.
She moved to Colorado seeking solitude. After a year, Bethany moved back to Nashville and plummeted into depression. Thoughts of suicide plagued her regularly. “The emotional pain was so dense, I felt I couldn’t go on living.” One day while lying in bed, Bethany knew she needed help. She got up and started looking for a treatment facility. “Having worked in a psychiatric facility for years as a clinician, being on the other end felt more than humbling,” says Bethany. She found a six-week day treatment program in Dallas and enrolled. Bethany was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and clinical depression. With the help of her counselor, she found the pathway to healing. After she left treatment, Bethany was not entirely fixed. “My journey toward healing was much more a two-steps-forward-one-step-back process,” she says.
GRACE COMES FULL CIRCLE
While she was in Dallas, Bethany sold her car to pay for her treatment. On the last Sunday of the program, she walked to a nearby church to attend worship. The speaker was a survivor of the Rwandan genocide. He shared his story and Bethany’s heart began to race. She had been praying that God would weave together her counseling skills, her love for international mission and the lessons she was learning in her own recovery. She met the speaker for coffee, knowing that it would take time before she would be well enough to provide trauma care to others. At the age of 34, Bethany, back in Nashville, continued counseling, found healthier ways to live despite her struggle with depression and decided to take an entire year off from dating so the Lord could fully heal her heart.
In 2008, two years after she completed treatment, Bethany flew to the Congo with a team of ladies and visited an orphanage. Later as she walked through a displacement camp, she thought Children this young should not know war like this. After visiting her fifth camp that day, one young boy asked her for a Bible. “I began to see my surroundings differently,” says Bethany. The food, clothing and water would leave them still wanting more. “But the Bread of Life on which we all sustain our lives is eternal,” she says. Bethany was overwhelmed with the basic physical needs of the people. Since the war began in 1996, 1.5 million Congolese have been displaced and 2.5 million have been made homeless. Another 1 million were forced to flee to neighboring countries and an estimated 5 million died from the violence, hunger and disease; some reports indicate that half of those were children.
In the summer of 2008, Bethany formally established Exile International, an organization that empowers war-affected children and former child soldiers to become leaders for peace through art therapy and rehabilitative care. (Former child soldiers were children who forced to machete their own parents or siblings or be killed or maimed themselves.) During her time with the children, Bethany and her staff invite the children to share stories of pain through art therapy. They give them two white handkerchiefs: one on which to draw their sad memories and the other to draw their happy stories. They are also encouraged to draw God in the middle of each one as a reminder that they were not abandoned. Then each child is handed a red paper heart and invited to hold it on their heart and picture Jesus beside them in their memories. At the end, they hold hands, pray for the release of their heartache and then dance and sing songs of praise to God who saved them. Bethany says, “The beauty of getting involved in something bigger than yourself, you find yourself.”
Today Exile International is seeing the young men who are graduating from their programs leading Bible studies with rebel groups. Many of the former child soldiers are returning to their villages and sharing the gospel, using drama, dance and songs they wrote to share about forgiveness, reconciliation and peace building.
Bethany met Matt, who has his Masters in counseling, and they were married in 2014. Together they lead the work of Exile International. Bethany maintains a small counseling and coaching practice. For more information, please visit www.BethanyHaleyWilliams.com or www.ExileInternational.org
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