Let’s talk about trauma.
I know, you’re probably thinking...
“Wow, that is exactly what I wanted to talk about today Ashley, How did you know?”
Well friend, I just know these things.
The word “trauma” is a really serious word. It is often used to define very meaningful negative and difficult situations that people experience in this life. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (wow, that’s a mouthful) has stated that trauma “is often the result of an overwhelming amount of stress that exceeds one's ability to cope, or integrate the emotions involved with that experience”. They also say, “[trauma] has lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning and mental, physical, social, emotional, and/or spiritual well-being”.
To be perfectly honest with you, I don’t think anyone really escapes this life (or even their childhood) without experiencing some sort of trauma. Maybe that's a little pessimistic, or maybe the trauma isn't as agonizing as stories we hear about on the news or what a soldier experiences at war but pain is pain, and certain things affect people in different profound ways.
But I’ve been thinking…
Actually, I was enjoying a movie, not really thinking about much at all when the Holy Spirit started whispering something to my heart. I have to give credit where credit is due because we both know, I was totally lost in my movie marathon. I was not on my couch, I was in the middle of the ocean somewhere on an adventure and definitely NOT trying to contemplate life’s complexities. However, it is worth mentioning that there is something so important about being available and always being aware of God and open-minded enough to see Him in everything. I have learned that those moments when I’m lost in other worlds fighting dragons and running from dinosaurs, for some reason, are the moments when God starts talking to me the most.
ANYWAYS, while I was watching this movie God started showing me some things about why trauma is such a difficult thing to overcome.
He explained to me that part of the reason trauma is so hard to cope with is because it tells you a different story about who you are then you’re used to hearing.
Just let that sink in for a second because when the Holy Spirit dropped that truth bomb in my lap, it felt pretty profound.
Trauma tells you a different story about who you are.
A story that isn’t entirely true because while you do have scars, you are not your scars. You are so much more than any brokenness that would try to define you, so much more than the negative circumstances and situations you’ve been brought through. But trauma constructs a new narrative that explains away your behaviors and your mentality, through the filter of your pain; attributing your personality and your character to the things that have happened to you.
Trauma says you are the sum of your broken parts. That you are the emptiness of what was taken from you. That you are your mistakes and your sins; that you are the result of someone else's sins. That you are the pain that haunts you, whether you have realized it up to this point or not. But that, my friend, is not true.
Now, let me just say that I am not trying to belittle anybody’s trauma by using the example I’m about to use. By no means am I trying to make something so complex and severe seem small and easy to fix because it’s not. So don’t get all judgy when I say that it was actually a Disney movie that inspired this writing session today. (1) I love Disney so fight me and (2) Disney has such an incredible ability to craft and tell multidimensional stories that speak on so many levels to so many generations, so don’t even pretend like you’re too grown for Disney. My Dad is 65 and he watches Mulan like he’s watching The Last Samurai; often and with feeling.
But it was actually one of their more recent stories, one of my favorites, about a young woman named Moana who journeys across the sea with a Demi-god named Maui to restore the heart of an island, that gave me pause.
Let me set the stage for you: Towards the end of the movie (well, actually, the end of the movie) Moana and Maui are fighting this gigantic destructive lava demon named Te’ka, while they are simultaneously trying to return the heart of the mother island back to where it belongs (which by the way, the “heart” is basically a green rock. It’s a beautiful green rock, possibly made of jade but still a rock. In case you haven’t seen the movie). But *spoiler alert* when Moana climbs to the top of a jagged outcropping of boulders in an attempt to return the heart to the island , she sees that the mother island is actually gone. The whole island is missing. (I know, I was shocked too)
Confused, she turns around to see Maui fighting Te’ka (the destructive lava demon) and all of a sudden she realizes that the demon they’ve been fighting all this time is actually the mother island, Te feti, that they’ve been looking for.
And Moana begins to sing to Te ka/Te feti/ The mother island…
”I have crossed the horizon to find you,
I know your name.
They have stolen the heart from inside you,
but this does not define you.
This is not who you are,
you know who you are.”
And man, if that didn’t hit me right in the feels.
So many of us who are dealing with trauma question who we are under the weight of the pain and the darkness that we’re fighting through. I, myself, have asked questions like, “Am I just broken?” “Have I always been broken?” “Now I understand why I think or act in this particular way, because of this pain, but does that mean my whole identity is constructed by trauma and pain?” “How can I ever just be me?” “Will I always have to work to not be overrun by feelings or anxieties or issues from my past?” “Will I ever have peace?” “What does this make me now?” And as we question, sometimes we allow our scars to define us, we allow what we’ve done or what has been done to us to narrate our story and tell us who we are:
“You are broken and you’ve always been broken” “This happened and it changed you and made you an anxious mess” “You are not like everyone else because you are dysfunctional” “This scar right here, this made you incapable of love” “That tear in your soul right there, that made you unworthy”
Sometimes we look a lot like that lava demon on the inside, lashing out in anger and sorrow and grief because of what was taken from us. We cry out, enraged and consumed with fear because our joy was stolen, our peace was taken, our confidence decimated, our hope in our future distorted and twisted by the pain of the past and the agony we are experiencing in the present. .
Our hearts have been ravaged by trauma and we can't quite figure out how our lives could possibly look normal or beautiful again. We don’t understand how what’s been torn from us can be fixed or replaced or bettered.
Looking at Te Ka, you’d never be able to imagine what she once was or what she could be in the presence and presentness of all that agony and ash and destruction that had consumed her.
What happened to Te Feti (the mother island) when her heart was stolen, when she became Te ka, is a sobering example of the havoc trauma can wreak in a human life. It is a reminder of how easy it can be for us to fall into the trap of allowing our scars and the pain of the past to define us and define our future. But what I love about this story ( and all Disney stories) is the resolution.
“This is not who you are, You know who you are” Moana sings to the broken traumatized mother island. And today, I want to say the same thing to you and to myself and to anyone else going through trauma and trying to cope with the perspective-shifting identity crisis that comes with it.
This is not who you are, you know who you are.
This anger. This sin. This pain. This past. This tragedy. This grief. This sorrow. This loss. This injustice. This brokenness. This violence. This violation. This hurt. This misery. These scars, These are not who you are. You know who you are and trauma doesn’t change who you are.
It’s just really loud and really hard to see past.
But you are still you, still important, still beautiful, still intentionally created, still passionate and purposeful, still creative, still loving and kind, you are still good and still loved. You are all of the things you have always been, funny, smart, interesting, etc.
Trauma doesn’t remake you or redefine you.
It will change you a little for sure because it has to, it requires a response, it evokes a reaction but trauma is temporary and impermanent. It won’t always be this overwhelming and catastrophic shadow over your life. It won’t always feel like the weight of the world is sitting on your chest.
And once you’ve walked through it, you will be different, there’s no way around that but here’s the (seemingly impossible) good news, you can actually be better than who you were before.
I know, I know, you’re probably as sick as I am of hearing pep talks like that. “You can be better” “You’re a warrior” “You’re stronger because of this”. Ughhh, trust me I get it. I know it sounds like an empty platitude or something people want to believe about you, that they don’t understand is beyond your reach but IT IS TRUE. I have to believe that it is true, that I am more than what trauma and scars would make of me, that I can be more than this, that my future can be better than this. I believe that and I cling to that when I start to doubt who I am and the way that I was created, when I question whether there is light left in my soul. I cling to that truth because I have learned that there’s no going back. There’s no “going back to normal” for me anymore. I can only go forward and while that can be terrifying because everything is new and different and nothing will ever be the same, it can also be an amazing and hope-filled thing.
Just because your life is different now and you’ve changed, doesn’t mean that your future is a lost cause or that it can’t be everything you want it to be. And maybe, just maybe, this change can actually be something that propels you forward in ways you never would’ve been able to move forward in before.
And I wonder, what if this idea of normal I’ve been clinging to, that I so desperately want back, that was stolen, wasn’t even normal or good or healthy in the first place. What if I’ve yet to see great and I’ve yet to experience true health and life-giving thoughts and behaviors. What if the normal I had wasn’t normal at all and the new normal God is bringing me to on the other side of this is a whole lot bigger and brighter than I ever thought my life could possibly be. What if my understanding of “happy” and “content” was always just surface level and God is about to drown me in the truth of what those words really mean. What if I can trust the process and embrace the change and truly become a stronger person than I was before. What if my trauma doesn’t have to determine my future. What if...
Again, I’m not speaking to everybody here because I couldn’t possibly understand the depths of everyone’s trauma and pain. This is something God spoke to my soul specifically, relevant to my experience and something I felt was important to share if it could help even one other person.
As difficult as it is, I’m learning that I am a lot more broken than I ever imagined and it’s not something I can change or undo or live my life as a prisoner too.
We have to let the trauma be what it was, something we can’t change. We have to let it hurt and feel out of control and uncomfortable for a minute so we can truly heal, however long that takes. We have to allow these scars the space and time to teach us what they must and give ourselves the space and time to grieve and then learn and grow from it.
But eventually, and this is the message I needed to hear, trauma should get left behind.
It is not a weight you want to continue to carry for the rest of your life (easier said than done, of course). But that is the truth of healing, you can’t really heal from something and still live in bondage to it. You can’t be free of something and still be enslaved by it. You cannot expect to feel lighter while carrying so much weight on your back. You will have to lay it down one day or maybe more accurately, piece by piece, a little bit everyday. And the best part about this whole process is that you don’t have to do it alone. In fact, you are not supposed to do it alone. You will need support and help from people you love and you will need God to be your strength and your anchor. You will need God to remind you about who you are when trauma starts to narrate your story again. You need love to overcome trauma, you need truth that is unwavering and unshakeable to be your foundation. You need what Jesus did for you, as a reminder of your value, your worth and your identity in Christ. You need God's grace to tell you that you are no longer bound to anything in this life apart from Him. That healing and hope are a part of the fabric of your being now, not something you have to achieve but something you already have inside of you.
You know who you are because God has given you your definition. He has told you time and time again in His word exactly who you are and trauma, scars, the things you’ve been through, the things that have been done to you, are nowhere to be found in those descriptions. God never said you are worthy "if you haven't done this" or "if you do that", He said you are worthy because of what He did. He never said you are healed or restored or redeemed because of your efforts. He never put a limit on what was capable of being healed and what wasn't. In fact, I think He did just the opposite. He broke the limits and expectations the word placed on what was possible and He did the impossible, He raised the dead and cast out demons and healed the chronically ill. So who are we to think we can put a limit on what God can heal? Just because the world can't fix it and just because the world's version of healing isn't complete doesn't mean that God's isn't. God doesn't exist within the confines of our boxes or our natural understanding, He colors outside of the lines with abandon.
We absolutely CANNOT give trauma the permission to dictate our present or our future. We CANNOT allow ourselves to get so lost in our pain that we forget that that’s not all that we are. And we certainly CANNOT allow our suffering to box in our hope and tell us who God is.
Please hear me when I say this: Trauma is not the end of you because trauma is not/has never been/and will never be the author of your story. Your origin story started with God and His good and perfect plans for you; plans that cannot be thwarted by any amount of trauma or brokenness that the enemy chucks into your path. You are what God created you to be above all else. There are many things in this world that will try to rob you of your identity and your purpose; so many things that will try to attach themselves to you but at your center there is only one story and only one author. You get to choose whether those good and perfect plans are apart of your story or not, you have that option but even if you choose your pain and you choose what the world says you are over what God says, the facts remain the same. As a human being created by God your true identity will always belong to Him and you can always come back to that center, you can always come back to Him and give Him the space to restore your heart. Like Moana did for Te'fiti, seeing past all the darkness and reaching for her, restoring her heart and renewing her purpose, God will do that and more for you. It's not about how far you've gone into your pain, or how far you've run from it. God doesn't care, for Him it's not about the setbacks, it's all about the comeback.
"Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death, and burst their bonds apart. Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of man! For he shatters the doors of bronze and cuts in two the bars of iron."
Psalm 107:13-16
"I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears."
Psalm 34:4
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ."
1 Peter 1:3-9
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