Some Emerging Thoughts on Trauma….
So, I am not a psychologist, or a psychiatrist, or a counsellor, or a trauma therapist.
But I am very human, and I've been very hurt, and that hurt sometimes gets stuck and resounds in my soul with a sound called trauma.
Perhaps you can relate.
That unhealed wound, that trigger point, that place of despair, hopelessness, anxiety and fear.
Sometimes the most tender wounds cannot be healed by human hands.
They are wounds reserved for a specialist surgeon from a faraway but strangely present land. Wounds reserved only for the one who knitted our soul together and, through blood, grace, and grit, is determined to knit it back to life.
I am not a psychotherapist, a doctor, or a hypnotist.
But, I am a pastor, a shepherd, one who walks the beaten path and seeks to help others along the way.
And this shepherd has one manual, a guide, a compass for the clouded dawn.
And that compass speaks of trauma and love and hope and points our way home.
And the poets of old grappled with the same, and some gave up the game, and some found redemption and trauma was finally tamed.
I think of the Ancient Mariner – with water everywhere, but not a drop to drink in an ocean full of care.
He cried:
Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.
(From "Rime of the Ancient
Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
And our world cries:
Trauma, trauma everywhere,
And all our hopes did shrink;
Trauma, trauma everywhere,
Lord, give us a drink.
And the prophet Jeremiah laments with grief and pain. His mind stuck in a cycle of ancient Trauma Games.
I remember my affliction and my wandering,
the bitterness and the gall.
I well remember them,
and my soul is downcast within me.
Lamentations 3:20
And my mind ruminates – examining the ragged edges of the wound, lost for hope, drowning in gall, up against the wall.
But then I see a signpost from the ancient lands,
Yet this I call to mind
and therefore I have hope:
Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning,
great is your faithfulness.
Lamentations 3:21-23
And amid the ruminations, my mind climbs its way out,
Calling to mind a greater love than all the trauma about.
The greater love becomes the ladder from where I begin to climb,
Knowing my future is in my maker's hands, hands divine, not mine.
Love begins to infuse my soul and sings through trauma's cry,
A song to quiet trauma's torment with love instead of why.
And because of this love, we're not consumed, no - not eaten up,
Not finished, not over, not done with; perhaps we've just got up.
Now love awakens dawn, grasping the pen of the new day.
Love washes what's worn and begins to write our play.
Love becomes the sound that spins our world around.
And all of trauma's out-of-tune sounds are drowned as love resounds.
And what if this is the answer, this immense love divine,
That calls our hearts, woos our wounds and becomes our brand-new wine?
So, if we must be drunk to tame trauma's woes,
Let's be drunk on unfailing love, immersion, head to toes.
So, find me in the river of love that never fails,
And let this be my song now drowning trauma's wails.
Leaning into His love with you,
Kirrily xx