Tag: trauma

The Daily Broken

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The Daily Broken

As I sit in the ER finding the news about my bulged disc in my neck, looking at a likely surgery, I find Gods timing to be both ironic and pleasant. The pain in the simplest of tasks like breathing makes sleep a dream and the painful reality a nightmare. The shooting pains into my lungs every deep breath I take are like knives being twisted each inhale, and with every exhale the knife inches it’s way further in.

Any motion of my body causes more shooting pains and causes an uncomfortable feeling that makes sitting still the only reasonable option to the excruciating pain I feel during the slightest of movements now.

Just another test, one right after another, and like David for the 15 years of war, and Job before him, rest will come when it’s time. My trials may continue and my pain and tears may too, but one day when the time’s right, God will bless me.

Every sunrise is a chance to wipe away the sins and mistakes of yesterday. To start new and a chance to right the heading when you’re so far off course. God doesn’t care about our yesterday. Take out that compass of salvation and follow it straight to God, do it today. Don’t wait to right your wrongs we never know how much time we have to do that.

The crashing of the waves that drown me fills my lungs with water, the gasping for air as if being crushed by life. One thing I’ve learned in 9 months of therapy. Saying stuff like ‘it could always be worse’ downplays the struggles someone is going through. I realize it’s an attempt to place some things in perspective, but sadly usually that method does more harm then good and always shuts the door on communication.

When looking at the event and actually measuring the level of emotion to the event, saying stuff like it could be worse, actually tells the person that the emotional turmoil a legitimate problem causes is not important. Furthermore, if someone is legitimately taking active steps to help solve the problem validation is actually the best way to help. Validation and brainstorming actual possible solutions to the problem is what’s needed to help when the world seems too much to bear.

We all as people require some kind of validation and when we are going through troubles we wish people would understand us, sympathize and emphasize with that pain. No matter what life throws at us we must have faith Psalm 147:3 “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” If we take our time to grieve and know that in every time there is a time to feel all these things, we must also remember that in John 14:1-4 “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God;[a] believe also in me. 2 In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?[b] 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. 4 And you know the way to where I am going.” As humans we are all bent, some are broken, but it’s a constant struggle sometimes to stay afloat. The loneliness we may sometimes feel, the weight and crushing waves we often undergo is the evolution of our lives.

I think something that has become taboo, a common misconception is that to be Christian means we don’t let things bother us, and we are able to always run with stride. No matter the faith you have there are times when life may do damage and get you down. There’s no faith on the planet that can prevent depression that can prevent hardships or trauma. The faith we have in Christ to be with us in the midst of the storm is the one promise we know that is kept. I believe that even though hearing that voice of God can be hard and sometimes nearly impossible when the storms at it’s worst, God is still with us every second of every day. God only wants for us to love and cherish Him and to be there always for others and ourselves. I’ve heart this sentiment many times and I keep the faith that when my time comes I’ll be able to continue to stand tall in the storms, and let life takes it’s natural progression without hurting myself or others as I find myself terrified and uncertain about God’s path for me. Allow yourself to meditate in the quiet of God’s presence, and allow yourself to quiet your mind, and lay self down and focus on God, the glory of all that we do and how it lifts up the name of Christ in our actions.

While every single day is a new day to try and reinvent yourself, to treat every day like it’s a new opportunity for us to teach and preach, to glorify God. It’s also an opportunity for the Devil to do His work against you too. Every day is a battlefield full of decisions good and bad. Every day is a convergence of millions of choices by millions of people, which affect our every minute. The forces of nature in this cosmic battlefield can work for us, and they can work against us. The choices we make every day cannot only affect our own futures, but those for others. The hope we can make our choices in the midst of bad things, horrible events and have each of those choices bring glory to God and have each of our decisions be pleasing to the Father. We may not always get it right, we may not always do or say the right things, but when we wrong, when we do things that aren’t right, we must try to make up for the bad things we do by fixing them, doing anything possible to right our wrongs. The life we live may not always go how we want, we may have broken bodies, broken spirits, but when we are lost and battered turn to the Father of all things and the giver of life and give thanks and praise. Fight the evil around you, and inside you. Fight for what’s right and have the faith to let God guide you to the truth and just.

Living with memories that hurt us, living with the constant reminders of events, of failures, of hurt and pain, knowing that those pains, and those instances of suffering are just training to allow us to help others in need. Those who can endure and press on have a responsibility to show those who struggle how to push forward.

To the brink and back a survivors story

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To the brink and back a survivors story

A while back a guy I knew was going through a pretty rough time. He was depressed, and he was lonely with the whole world around him. His beautiful wife seemed to be going through a lot on her side of the fence also. See they’d been together for a while and there seemed to be some distance growing between them. He wanted to rush in and fix it, he wanted to be there and close the gap. She wanted space, and distance, and she started to grow attached to someone else. Eventually the affair would occur and he’d be left with trying to pick up the pieces of a broken home. When he realized there may be something deeper going on he decided to stay and fight. He devoted himself to doing things differently, hoping that she’d see the change and stay, but that’s not what happened. She left and with it taking the last bit of dignity he had. The day the gunshot rang out the world as he knew it changed. No hope, no belief that tomorrow would ever be better, he was overwhelmed and something snapped. His fight or flight response shut down and all he could see was his own pain. He wasn’t considering anyone else, or how his actions might affect them, and sadly, his actions would drastically hurt others. He chose the least vital place he could think of to cause pain but not death. He put a 9mm hallow through his shoulder. He knew it wouldn’t hit much because there’s not much there to hit. He was wrong though and the mistake nearly killed him. The bullet chipped his left clavicle when the gun jumped as he pulled the trigger. The bullet changed direction going down through his lung fracturing 3 ribs before going out his back. Ribs 2,3, and 7 each fractured and as the lung collapsed he lost consciousness. The pain he caused the loved ones around him was extensive. His blood loss should have killed him, but in the later weeks as he recovered he would tell the story how he apologized to God and God sent him back. Many people have been skeptical if what he heard and felt was just in his head, but it was strong enough to change who he is to this day.

While he still suffers from the injuries both physical and emotional the ones he’s most concerned with now are the people he hurt. His wife was traumatized by the incident. He told me once that he didn’t think she’d care one way or another. The problem is when we are consumed by our own pain it’s difficult, nay impossible to see or feel the pain from others. We can’t allow pain, and grief, and anger to fill us up to the point of absolute blindness to the people around us who love us and care for us. Even when there are arguments, or disagreements, that doesn’t mean the person hates you, it doesn’t mean they don’t care about you. No matter the pain we feel we can’t let that push us to do crazy dangerous things. Tomorrow will always come, and it’s better to win the war than the battle. There’s so much anger towards him by his friends for what he did. For a long time he didn’t understand that anger, he felt like he was the victim. The truth is they are both right. In each perspective pain was dealt. Traumas were experienced by those who were there and took care of him lying on the ground bleeding, and friends felt as if he was leaving them all behind to fend for themselves. Suicide is often looked at as a coward’s way out, and to some that perspective may be their truth. We must understand the nature of a vantage point, and learn to see beyond our own ideals, our own feelings, and try to understand the feelings of others. Not to say truth isn’t truth because it is. There are things we must know are true and there’s no debate in that truth. But when there’s a feeling behind a thought we must not allow ourselves to degrade someone because feelings are powerful. We don’t want to inadvertently pass judgment and do more harm because we don’t know why they feel a particular way, what got them to that point.

This is particularly important in a marriage. We may disagree on particular areas but the biggest question is, is the fight worth it? As the old saying goes, learn to pick your battles. If my friend could do one thing it would be take away the pain he caused. He often comes to me for prayers and for forgiveness. Forgiveness is a tricky thing when it comes to forgiving yourself. When we walk through life every day and are reminded of the pain we caused, it’s difficult to forgive ourselves when we know others haven’t forgiven us. The best things we can do is pray, and hope for forgiveness someday. We can never take back our actions, our words, but we can try to be mindful of what we say and do because those things can have lasting repercussions. Self-forgiveness starts with repentance. We can apologize but something big like that, it’s important to show those within your orbit that you truly are sorry for it, and know that you are trying everything you can do to make it better. My friend’s told me time and again how badly he wishes he could go and take back what happened that day. As he starts going down that rabbit hole I remind him often of the song by Casting Crowns, “What if you could go back and relive one day of your life all over again, and unmake the mistake that left you a million miles away from the you, you once knew, now yesterday’s shame keeps saying that you’ll never get back on track.” The truth in that is you’ll never get back to the you, you once knew. You’re never too far gone, but even as you turn around you’ll never be the same. It’s not about being the same, you don’t want to be the same. You want to be stronger, you want to be confident, and embrace your mistakes so you’ll never have to relive them again. God’s always with us no matter how far off track we get, and if you believe that after one step in the right direction the rest of the steps will get easier over time. When you’re walking on that path walking through the fire you burn your old self away. Hard Love by NeedToBreath “It’s not enough to just feel the flame You’ve gotta burn your old self away.” Embrace the fire and allow yourself to undergo the transformation to follow Christ. It’s a hard love but it’s worth it in the end. Give up and fall under God’s grace.

If my friend can come back from such a near death experience and be showered in God’s love, God’s grace and God’s blessings you can to. He turned his life around and everything he’s suffered through he takes none of the credit for his continued survival. Everything he has now he knows came from God, and he knows he wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for Gods grace. He’s got some great opportunities coming up and he’s excited to see how he can use his life, his gifts for Christ. I hope many of you can see the power of Gods grace and love. Let his life and success story be an inspiration to all of you. God Bless.

Embrace the Suck

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Embrace the Suck

Embrace the Suck is a crude but effective motto many in the military use to try and make the life of a soldier a bit more bearable. The life of anyone in the military can be challenging for mind, body and soul. The day in and day out routine and tasks can take you to the very edge of what you believe, what you perceive to be the farthest you can go without snapping. I’m here to tell you, everyone has a breaking point, but that point can be less traumatic if we know the God, the Lord of all things. The truth is, the military is not a bad career. Sure there are aspects of it that are horrible and we all can’t stand, but once you learn how to embrace the parts that are toughest we can finally embrace the joys and the beauty.

Does knowing we are going to suffer make the pain any less important? If you were going to be tortured, but you were told first would that make the torture any less difficult? No of course not. John 16:33 “These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” If Jesus suffered as brutally as he had, what makes us think we are special? If Jesus had to be tortured to save the sins of every man, woman, child from past, present, and future, our little bit of discomfort is nothing compared to what Christ endured for us. Remember He could have stopped that beating and the ridicule, and the painful suffocation anytime. Romans 8:18 “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time [are] not worthy [to be compared] with the glory which shall be revealed in us.”

 No one said we have to like the pain and suffering, but it does do one thing, it’ll either draw us closer to God, or push us away. If each one of our trials is a test, or temptation by Satin how do we want to be graded? If you look back at every situation you’ve ever been put in and had to give yourself a legitimate grade, an honest non biased grade, what do you think your overall GPA would be now if al those points were to be added up? We need to consider the next time someone gets under our skin what it looks like when we curse them out, or throw a frying pan at their head. How we act, how we respond, every word is being counted. Remember once uttered no word can be taken back and forgotten. The words we use can drastically hurt those around us. It’s time to be an adult and leave petty squabbles behind.

We as Christians should be leading the way in healthy problem solving. We as Christians should be setting the gold standard as to how to maintain order and peace. Living in Christ we don’t disserve Gods love, but we get it anyway. We are all sinners, but the water washes away that sin and we are left a new version of our old selves. Be one in the light and let God use you. We will never be perfect and we will often make mistakes, but it’s how we handle those mistakes, how we make decisions, and how we treat those around us is how we are to be judged by God.

The next time you’re in the middle of a horrible experience remember you’re being watched. Remember God sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake, he knows when you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake. Yes I realize that’s a Christmas song for Santa, but it still applies.

THE DEVIL WHISPERED IN MY EAR

‘YOU’RE NOT STRONG ENOUGH

TO WHITHSTAND THE STORM’

TODAY I WHISPERED IN THE DEIL’S EAR

“I AM THE STORM.”

*U.S. VETERAN*

A Multitude of Sins

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A Multitude of Sins

Here I sit alone in almost complete silence. The teal glow on the wall from the lava lamp, and the glow from the computer screen are the only lights on in the house. There’s no music on, no television, just a fan in the dining room I can hear. The sounds of the keys being clicked own is loud in the silence of the house. Occasionally I can hear one of the dogs yawning, or licking their paw, but it’s quiet.

What do we do when we are alone in the dark, no sounds, just the sound of our own thoughts? Where does your mind take you? Mine takes me to a place darker then that of my home right now, a multitude of sins and mistakes. How did I get here my mind asks. How has my life turned out this way, and where the heck do I go form here? The truth is I don’t know. People ask me every day what’s the plan, where are you going to go, what are you going to do? You see, people that know me best know me as the planner. In an earlier post I talked about your emergency preparedness kit and some of what’s in my hiking bag. For the first time in my life I don’t have a plan. I haven’t had a plan since September 18th 2016. That day all of my sins came to the surface, they came with a reckoning, a force strong enough to knock me off my balance and shake the very foundation in which I built my life. Up till that point in my life I had found myself to be relatively successful. I was happily married, doing well at work, doing great in school, working towards a baby, everything I wanted in life. I had the greatest in-laws anyone could ever hope for, a great sister in law, but fate it seems follows it’s own course, not what we want. In just a matter of a short bit of time everything I loved, the life I spent years building would crumble around me and I would loose everything. The foundation cracked and a cavern opened up under me and swallowed me whole. At the time I felt as if I’d never get out. At the time I felt that my pain, my suffering was the end of me and sadly, wrongly, I felt as if I deserved it. I felt as if my sins were coming back and I had to pay for them. I felt as if I deserved to suffer, to undergo pain and suffering.

A life of trauma built up and tucked away in a nice tidy little closet, away from the world so no one would see. The pain inside buried so deep that the mask I wore every day was good enough to fool even those closest to me. So many times I felt the sorrow the shame bubbling up from the deepest pits within myself, and as skillfully as a superhero beats down a lowly thug, I put that stop in the rising pain, and forced it to return back to the darkest places of my very soul. Compartmentalization is such a wonderful tool when dealing with pain. It can be very helpful as a short term coping mechanism but when used for trauma, the idea is to revisit the trauma soon after the crisis is over, and face the memory head on to come to grips with it. The trouble with that is when the day never comes to revisit, it’s locked away, never forgotten, but never addressed either.

What do we do when the foundation we built our very existence crumbles and falls apart? When our foundation is not as solid as we thought it was, and our deepest fears come true? When everything we’ve ever wanted is taken away, when our deepest fear is realized, and every trauma we’ve ever buried breaks out of prison with an angry vengeance the perfect storm is realized and bad terrible things happen to our minds.

When the hurricane hit me I wasn’t able to maintain my footing. I didn’t know what to do, where to go, how to handle, the one and only thing I knew was the word STOP. I knew it had to stop. I felt I deserved what happened to me. I felt I had a right to the pain because I had sinned. I had never lived up to be what I should have, and I earned my place. The memory slipped away after actions were taken. What happened to me? What was going to happen to me? So quickly control was fleeting, a wild chaos was quickly snapped back to a hazy reality but not without consequence. No one ever warned us this might happen. No one ever taught us the repercussions of a lifetime of running. You can’t run forever, sooner or later the past will catch up to you and when it does, it wants its payment with interest.

It would take months to realize the new reality, which was my life. It would take only days to realize how bad of a decision that had been made without conscious control. We all have to answer for our sins, and we all have to pay for them. The hard part about dealing with what we’ve done is forgiving ourselves. For me it’s always been easier to forgive others for the bad things they’ve done, but to forgive myself, you’d have better luck pulling a tooth from a T-Rex. I can never take back what happened that day, but to understand more then just the surface problem, to see beyond the facts of that day, it takes a deeper look into the human soul.

As we walk in our lives we see those around us who get caught in addiction, self-harm, physical disorders such as eating disorders, but do we ever try to address the problem? The problem on the surface is the immediate issue, but the problem I’m talking about is that below, the root of the problem. When people suffer for a long time even when we cannot see it, it can often manifest itself in ways to run and hide from the source. Eventually running is all we know. Eventually that life becomes a new reality a safe comfortable reality in our own minds. Even if from the outside it looks destructive and harmful, no doubt it is destructive and harmful, but life itself is often through the eyes of the beholder.

Survivors of alcoholism, or self-harm, suicide attempts, addictions to sleeping bills or other drugs, they know the route, but it’s everyone around that becomes the new problem. How many spectators become judgmental of the victim? Let’s use suicide as an example. If someone tries to end their life, what is the normal reaction from those around? Some are in shock and disbelief, others flock to the person showering with love and sympathy, but there are others who feel anger and distain. Suicide is often looked to as the coward’s way out, the easy way out. The anger comes from the idea that it hurts the ones who are left behind. So suicide is often known as selfish. The problem with today’s society is a lack of education on various mental health problems. There are a lot of assumptions and negative connotations that exist that doesn’t make them true. As a society we need to learn to answer pain with Love, answer hurt with Love. We’ve become so quick to push people away who cause pain, but never ask if the pain was intentional. Let me tell you, if someone’s facing addiction, or suicide, you are the last person on his or her minds. Some may leave a note behind, but the idea is never to inflict harm on others, albeit the end result is pain and suffering. Ironic that the idea to end ones own pain and suffering it will inflict that upon others, and yet that thought never crosses the victims mind. Colossians 3:12 “12 Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.” We know that when there is pain doctors are compassionate towards the victims, EMS have a bedside manner of caring and love, but when someone in our family or friends harms themselves anger, and venomous reactions take the stage. Isaiah 49:13 “13 Shout for joy, you heavens; rejoice, you earth; burst into song, you mountains! For the LORD comforts his people and will have compassion on his afflicted ones.” God knows when to be compassionate and when to be hard on his children. Psalm 51:1 “1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions.” Is it so hard to forgive others? Is it so hard to realize we all make mistakes and we all harm one another at some point in our lives? Forgiveness isn’t something that is supposed to take time, (realizing this is the reality) it’s something that is supposed to come from the heart. Luke 23:34 “34 Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. And they parted his raiment, and cast lots.”

We must learn to dig deeper to see the why and not just assume. We must learn to Love first and have compassion to those in pain. We must learn to forgive and understand the sinful nature of mankind. These things are not easy, but are necessary. No matter what the world says about some stigmas the facts remain in scripture. Education is the key to being a compassionate person, understanding the driving forces behind a particular mindset can not only give you incite, but help when you come face to face with it yourself. We all know someone who’s tried to commit suicide, became addicted to something, had some sort of mental health crisis, but do we really ever know the why, or the how? How did we treat them when the initial crisis had passed? Our jobs as a Church body is to love, have compassion, not to tare down someone after they already hit rock bottom. Love not hate, it really isn’t that hard with practice.

If you are the surviver of such an addiction, or suicide attempt, know that tomorrow the day can be brighter. As the Book of Job teaches us no matter how bad a situation may look at the time, tomorrow, God can bless us and change our future in an instant. We must maintain love and faith in God, in both or blessings, and our hardships.