Pondering His Holy Word

The word trauma is thrown around quite a lot. What exactly is trauma? Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders defines trauma as when an individual person is exposed “to actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence” Yet, trauma may not involve all of these these elements. The American Psychological Association (APA) defines trauma as a response to an event that a person may find highly stressful. 

Trauma is often viewed as a one-time event that becomes lesson painful and more manageable as the person move further away from that point in their timeline. So when someone who has experienced trauma does not “heal” at the rate which is comfortable to those around them, their closest relatives may wonder when they are going to “get over it.” Unfortunately, it is not as simple as getting over that one event.

How people respond to trauma depends on a host of factors: age, gender, family, the type of trauma, the support around them, their biological make-up, and other things. My reaction to losing my father at 26 years old would be a lot different from a 10-year-old’s reaction to losing their father. Of course, I’m being simplistic. Suppose I account for relationships with our respected parents or living parents or other things happening in a person’s life. In that case, we can see how trauma can become complicated. 

But we need to understand that trauma doesn’t happen at one point in time, and the further a person moves away from the trauma, the less the trauma is in that person’s mind. When you deal with trauma, or when trauma enters your timeline, the rest of your life doesn’t pause. You still live your life and develop with the experience of that trauma. You may heal from that event, but the response goes with you. It becomes a part of your thinking. Even years later, there is still maybe a small yet visible scar reminding you of that trauma. Trauma effectively alters your life. 

You may ponder the relationship between trauma and following Christ. Even Christians wonder how can a loving God can allow such suffering. I know there were points where I questioned His sovereignty and His goodness. I often questioned. “If God is so good, why does He allow evil.” Job pondered this throughout his sufferings and even accused God, albeit not to his face. Yet, it was the LORD who questioned Job about the most intricacies of the universe and the creations. Job couldn’t answer. After reading Job several times, I still can’t answer any of those questions. But I learned as Job learned, that God is in control. God is God, and we are not. We all struggle with this truth. 

Although God is sovereign, our fallenness is the result of a lot of the evil in this world. More people reject God and accept the adversary. We know that Satan comes to “steal and kill and destroy.” We see it every day in this broken world. 

But let’s get back to the topic of trauma. We know that Satan’s goal is to destroy what God has created. His intent is to destroy, but he is not always successful because God is sovereign. Those who survive his attacks must deal with the pain he caused. Moreover, it is difficult to cope with the pain. Often, we deal with pain by lashing out at others close to us because we desire to release some of this pain. So when Jesus gives us the command to turn the other cheek, it goes against our very nature because our nature is fallen. We want our eye for an eye. God says vengeance is mine. We want to attack and avenge our hurts. Yet we are commanded not to repay evil for evil or insult for insult. Though we want to retaliate, God says be still and know that I am God. 

It is hard to carry all of that pain on our own. The good news is that we don’t have to bear it all on our own. Someone entered our timeline. That someone is Jesus Christ, our Lord, and Savior, who is the Word, the Logos, the Divine Reason for everything. Satan may come to destroy; Jesus comes so that we have “love, life and have it abundantly.”  He has come to save us and bring those who are His own into His flock. He took the yoke of our sins and bore them himself even unto death and arose on the third day. 

Those who believe in His finished work also have the Holy Spirit, who was sent by Jesus Christ as a counselor and comforter, so the power of God lives with his Children now. We can take heart in knowing that he has entered our timeline to save us from the world and sin. We can take comfort in knowing that He has overcome the world, and we can rest in Him. Trauma is painful, and it will affect how we live, but we can have hope and lean into Him, who is full of grace.