This post is inspired by
Phil Moore's blog post 'What does Resilience looks like in the face of traumatic Experiences'
In his video he covers some great material. Having watched it, and having experience trauma myself, here's some thoughts:
1) Its so important to have a caring community around you when you suffer trauma.
Sadly in my childhood I didn't have this when I was being traumatised. Then later, when I faced the trauma as an adult, I again lacked this support. This made things much more worse than they would have been with adequate love and support.
If Diane Langberg is right that Trauma is the new mission field of the church (and I think she is) - then as a church we need to grow in how we lovingly support people through trauma.
2) We need to define 'healing' after trauma.
Phil does a great job of introducing this subject in his video. For me, I've struggled with this for many years. A long time ago I was in a Christian group that said that you wouldn't feel any pain of the past because God has healed you - but it didn't prove true. Later I moved to another Christian group who just seemed clueless about the emotional pain, and brain damage of trauma. Eventually I met a good counsellor and had to ask lots of of questions, and do a lot of my own searching of Scripture and processing to understand what healing should look like in my life.
3) We need to rewrite our stories.
Re-viewing our story from a Biblical framework that includes the fall and God's Sovereignty and compassion, and his redemption, can be immensely helpful. I've recently written a book about how I re-wrote my story with gospel truth, and achieved a type of healing I'd not been able to receive before.
