Healing from Trauma
There are some key elements in recovery that enable us to successfully deal with the trauma perpetrated on us during our lifetime. As we seek the Lord for complete healing from the effects of these experiences, He brings about a total change in our body, soul, and spirit.
The first step God takes to rebuild us to enjoy balance in our equilibrium is to give our soul – our thoughts, emotions, and choices – the confidence that we are safe under the shadow of His wings (Psalm 17:8, 36:7, 57:1, 61:4, 63:7). The debilitating outcome of trauma on our brain is restored to God’s perfect plan for us.
God proves His faithfulness and trustworthiness to us throughout our recovery process. This restores our confidence and gives us the assurance that everything, even the most horrid of circumstances will result in our ultimate good (Romans 8:28). God knows what happened to us, even when people are skeptical or disbelieve our “story.”
God even heals the deep-seeded results of our abusers’ transference of their guilt onto us. I actually felt guilty most of the time, even when I did nothing wrong, because of the words planted in my soul during abuse. I believed the lies as truth, which crippled my relationships with everyone in my life.
I repressed the memories of the trauma in my subconscious mind and developed anger to protect myself, as well as a controlling attitude to prevent further abuse in my current and future life. This prevented my healing until God in His infinite wisdom and love for me, and once I totally surrendered my healing to Him, slowly brought the memories into my conscious mind.
We continue in the freedom God gives to us by living in the moment and not worrying about what may happen next, by eating healthy whole foods rather than processed food, by experiencing restorative sleep, by surrounding our self with positive Bible-believing friends, by God giving us a strategy to be free from the physical presence of our abusers, and by forgiving our self and the perpetrators of our abuse, and by developing the attitude of gratitude.
Prayer:
Father God, we can never thank You enough for Your healing in our spirit, soul, and body. This transformation may take Your Spirit years to accomplish in our soul if we are reluctant to relive our original pain, but as we surrender our recovery to You, each day we are freer than we were the day before. This freedom transforms us from the inside out and is complete as You make us a new creation in You (2 Corinthians 5:17).
Thank You for teaching us that even when we suffer from emotional pain, we tend to hurt our self or others to remove the sting from our suffering. If we no longer repress our memories, we attempt to punish our self for the shame piled on us by our abusers’ lies. Thank You for taking the fragmented parts of our self and integrating them by Your Spirit into a whole, complete individual. This allows us to love You with our whole heart and trust You with every fiber of our being.
Thoughts for the Day:
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder does not occur only to people experiencing wartime trauma, but also to those of us who grow up in the “warzone” of a dysfunctional life. God’s healing process includes His abundance of love, joy, and peace that have nothing to do with our experiences, and everything to do with His presence within us and all around us (Colossians 1:27).
