Not a single person on the planet hasn’t been infracted in some small or large way — and it is very much the latter when we consider the role trauma has played in billions of lives.
For just one instance, it’s often said that for each veteran of war who came (or comes) home traumatised, there are eventually 30 casualties of trauma at home as those impacts of trauma work their way through the generations.
Trauma, it can be said, affects just about every single one of us. Yet, there is the very real plague of PTSD that many suffer and find little recourse to recovery from. It is such a complex dilemma. Healing and growth can seem a fanciful pipedream when you’re wrestling with the emotions that come from being trauma-triggered.
The rest of this article deals with what we CAN do.
Trauma is a great big problem, yet as faith-believers we also have a conundrum to wrestle with. We can’t let go of hope. It is one thing that saved us, and we cannot accept that people, situations or cases don’t have hope.
And yet, we must balance idealism with realism, otherwise misplaced hope can create further trauma.
As faith-believers, we want to gently insist that something CAN be done, without creating anguish in people, and in many cases, this is about holding open enough space that miracles might be done as we simply stand in the gap by faith.
What is faith but trust? And what is trust but to acknowledge we don’t have all the answers, but we do have the moral obligation to do what we can to support positive outcomes.
Trust accepts the things that cannot be changed, because it accepts it doesn’t need to change things. Changing things isn’t the point. It is easier and more sensible to just let things be. When we can do this, we no longer hold ourselves accountable for the madness of procuring miracles.
And into this space those who seek healing can enter. Knowing there is no agenda, just a simple trust for each moment’s direction, those who are especially vulnerable can feel safe. Our anxiety doesn’t become part of their problem when we’ve taken the pressure off ourselves.
Vulnerable people need more
than anything else safe places to BE.
Vulnerable people — and we’re all
vulnerable or have been there — need the
kind of empathy that implicitly
understands where they’re at.
In BE-ing there is space to heal at their own rate and timeframe. And healing in this regard isn’t even something we should call healing.
It may surprise many to contemplate that there may actually be much more therapy and healing in simply the provision of safe spaces where there’s no program or agenda of therapy and healing about them.
It’s sad to realise that this world has few inherently safe places of sanctuary. This is certainly what God is calling the church to be, but alas, the church too has failed at times to be the safe place it needs to be for the vulnerable.
But the church cannot afford to give up in this, its greatest mission in this age.
Helping people heal often has less to do with programs and agendas and more to do with a heart that seeks to listen and to attend to what an individual needs.
In a world that has decided to do things in bulk, helping people heal from trauma must be done in a person-centred way.
When people see in us a real interest in them as genuine capable human souls worth encouraging, they really do begin to believe the narrative that our interest shows them.
It is amazing what a little encouragement over a sustained period will do to raise the confidence in a person. We’re not that much different, you and I. We need each other.
Photo by Jachan DeVol on Unsplash
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