Friday, December 20, 2013

Exiled in Hope

I haven't written because I have dabbled over this post for awhile.

I have Post Traumatic Stress; some less serious variety of it.  PTSD is a problem of how memories are stored in the brain.  When a person perceives a life-threatening situation, the mind decides to face it or not.  A long time ago my mind decided I would not face it, so it did not store memory properly.  I have reconciled memories and events in terms of my soul and my walk with God.  But the way I processed trauma has not fully been resolved.  Because the mind does not allow time to critically think about the trauma, the distress always seems nearby, and unfinished.

The mind takes memories and stuffs them away.  Post traumatic stress doesn't regularly disrupt me because I have put a large buffer of ignore around it - but the consequence is that I also ignore the stories of where God ministers to me.

This problem is glamorized by Hollywood and is found in the plot of countless movies.  Here is a good example.



WHAT CAN BE DONE?

A lot.

In some ways PTSD has blessed me, like a thorn always does in the most unpleasant of ways.

This close company of distress keeps me out of trouble.  It is like a whisper of wisdom saying, "temperance." There are days when my pride could shoot through the roof, but because the sense of suffering still seems near, I sober up fairly fast.  There are days I am tempted, but because trauma seems like a recent companion, I don't obey it.  Trauma is more persuasive and pervasive than fleeting temptation and pride.

It brings focus and mission.  Vibrant is how precious life is.  Every day has the emotional aura of a wonderful and precious gift.  I am not the only Christian who has found direction from distress.



If the silver lining sounds self-righteous, let me say that one day you must wake up out of the nightmare of bad circumstances and ask the Father, "What is all of this for?  Can you make something beautiful out of ashes?"  He does, and He will.

A wound is to remember what we were made for.  Wounds insist at all times through God's Word that offenders become family.  This takes considerable boldness, but God's rules of Kingdom life make the impossible, hope.  It is joy to take my friends and introduce them as the most important people in my life.

NEVER FULLY HEALED

I rarely deal directly with trauma, even though it seems nearly tangible.  Someone else can look at my story and say, "Why is it such a big deal?  I don't understand why you can't just get over it."   This is what God's Word says.  Lam. 3:13,

How shall I console you? To what shall I liken you O daughter of Jerusalem? What shall I compare with you, That I may comfort you, O virgin daughter of Zion? For your ruin is spread wide as the sea; Who can heal you?

The author J. R. R. Tolkien was deeply impacted as a soldier by the wasteful death of trench warfare in WWI.  When he penned the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, the character Frodo laments at the end,
How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand there is no going back? There are some things time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep that have taken hold.
Jesus is the model for wounds never fully healed.  When He was raised from death, He might have been fully rehabilitated of the wounds He received.  But the marks were left.  Why should He forget His joy - the children He died for?  His wounded hands are the hands that embrace in evident love.

wounds insist at all times that offenders become family
Both His resurrection and His suffering are part of His identity.

If you have found the suffering of Christ I hope you also have been tenacious to obtain the resurrection of Christ.  Do not believe the lie that there is no hope, or that all is lost.  God keeps it as your favor in His eyes. God is writing it out beautifully through the pages of your ministry.  As Francis Chan illustrates, you can have either a routine of fear or a routine of glory for God, but you cannot have both.

PTSD IN THE BIBLE

In the book Lamentations by Robin A. Perry, the connection between exile and life as refugees and PTSD have been pointed out.  (You can read along here.)
...the poems of Lamentations display a wide range of responses to trauma.  We see shock (1:4), denial (3:39), isolation (1:2, 9, 16, 21), anger (2:20), bargaining (2:18-19, 3:40-42), depression (5:15), memories of happier times (1:7), shame (1:8), search for the guilty (4:12-13), laying blame (5:7), weeping (3:48-51), and controlled grief (in the act of writing the poems).
Lamentations describes God's daughter Zion sitting in the dust, while all her children are hungry and lost to her.  She has been forced to leave her land.  She is crying in the punishment, worse than that done to Sodom.  The suffering runs so deep that the mind and soul cannot handle it or even face it very well.  It is the kind of devastation that enters into the place where she lives.  Unimagined trauma is just the variety that causes PTSD.  Lam. 4:12,

The kings of the earth,
And all its inhabitants of the world,
Would not have believed
That the adversary and the enemy
Could enter the gates of Jerusalem.

Jesus was prophesied as a "Man of sorrows and acquainted with our grief" (Is. 53:3).

BAND OF THE EXILES

Have you been displaced from a life of normalacy?  It is estimated that 18% of abuse victims and 10% of Veterans develop post traumatic stress.  But distress comes to more than just these.

Have you known someone who cries unexpectedly after losing a spouse?  Grief over losing a loved one is a form of trauma.  Divorce is a similar variety of traumatic loss.  Do you know someone who suffers from chronic illness?  We must choose how to face deeply unpleasant memories.  Long after the event has ended, trauma shows up in our days without any warning and makes a mess of our hearts.  If you know someone who has been through grief, or extreme change in life, or witnessed something traumatic or served in the armed forces, the best thing you can do is encourage them to let the emotions flow when they come.  Encourage them to let the memory come back.  Face the recollection of events and do not avoid the memory.  In this way, you can prevent the mind from shutting down the memory and leaving it unprocessed, frozen in its traumatic power.

Psychology can lessen but prayer mends.  When we lose a loved one, it is not ok.  It will never be ok.  The same goes for all other varieties of trauma.  In the movies, hope is expressed through guns, violence and revenge.  But prayer is the only way to restore what was originally ruined.  Prayer is, at its basic function, rebellion against the status quo.  When we rebel in prayer, He makes us agents not of wrath, but of redemption; real, true redemption, not just for later but for right now.

Steve Saint's father was a missionary who was murdered by Mincaye. Mincaye later became a Christian. Steve forgave Mincaye and he became a part of Steve's family. They go everywhere together, sharing the story of what God has done.

TRAUMA INSTRUCTS HOPE

God lovingly uses bad experiences to remind us in the deepest way that this world is not all we need.  Bold faith is the cure for fear.  Ps. 137:4,

How shall we sing the Lord’s song 
In a foreign land?

As my mentor once said, "How - indeed."