We were created for Eden—a paradise without pain, suffering, struggles, or sin. A place where we could know God and others deeply, unafraid of rejection or ridicule. We were created to experience the fulfillment of all of our needs.
In our book, Free To Thrive, Josh McDowell and I explore Seven Longings (seven relational needs) that God places within every person. One of those longings is for the assurance of safety–to be protected and provided for physically, emotionally, and financially. In one word, security. We were created to have security in the Garden of Eden by having everything we needed–our spiritual, emotional, relational, and physical needs all perfectly met through God and others.
But, of course, we don’t live in the Eden for which our souls were created. We live in a fallen world. A broken world. We experience loss, grief, pain, and betrayal. People who are supposed to be there for us let us down. Those who are supposed to love us the most often hurt us the most. After all, we are imperfect people interacting with other imperfect people.
Causes of Trauma
Through high-intensity painful experiences (death of loved ones, physical or sexual abuse, a car accident, etc) and through frequent lower intensity painful experiences (illness, being ridiculed or bullied, unmet needs etc) we experience trauma, which can be defined as any lasting psychological and biological response to an emotionally distressing event.
Trauma can happen in many different ways, but some of the most consistent and significant ways we experience trauma are in relationships. Trauma can come from things people have said or done to us—or not said or done when we needed them to. All of us experience trauma in our broken world. That’s because we live in a world where things are not the way they were originally intended to be. “I don’t have any trauma” you may be thinking, but as uniquely created individuals, trauma can affect each of us differently. Something that is extremely painful for one person may only be moderately painful for another. We can’t compare what we have been through to what others have been through as our barometer for trauma.
Further, far too often, our pain is silenced by ourselves and others through over-spiritualizing what we have weathered. Through spiritual bypassing, spiritual ideas and language are used to downplay and dismiss our pain. We tell ourselves to “forgive and forget” or that “God works all things together for good” as a way to avoid or downplay the harm we endured because we fear the truth is too unbearable. Yet God created us to be honest about our pain. As 1 Corinthians 13:6 says, love “does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.” May we be honest with the truth of our pain. When we don’t process trauma in healthy ways, it stops us from experiencing the thriving life God has for us. It stops us from grieving and healing, and limits our growth spiritually, emotionally, and relationally. It breeds ways of coping in unhealthy ways.
Related Video: Overcoming Trauma – Finding Healing and Life Changing Love
The Bible tells us in Ephesians 6 that we do not battle against human flesh but against Satan and the fiery arrows that He uses to attack us. These arrows often come in the form of lies that have been deeply rooted in our souls through trauma.
Many of us have trauma because of painful messages we’ve received from other people. But these messages are not true. Satan has used lies like this as a tactic since the Garden of Eden. He uses our pain to twist the truth, deceive us, and convince us to believe lies about ourselves, God, and others. He attacks our God-given need for security with trauma leading us to deal with a lack of security–low self-worth, isolation, anxiety, fearing the future, struggling to trust God and doubting His love and goodness and so on. What we need the most, dependency and connection with God and others in healthy ways, we often fear the most.
How We Heal from Trauma
So how do we heal from trauma and the pain from unmet needs for security? Well, we begin to experience security through God and safe people. See, we experience trauma experientially, and we experience healing experientially. We need new experiences with people who accept, love, affirm, and show up for us. We need new experiences where we feel safe, protected, and provided for by God and others. This is a process over time of challenging the deep rooted lies we believe with the truth, and experiencing the fulfillment of our needs that have gone unmet.
Day by day, as we do life with Jesus and safe people, we learn to process and talk about our pain and struggles. We take the lies captive and redirect them to the truth. We sit with Jesus and mourn and grieve the trauma and suffering we have endured. We sit with others and talk about what we have been through and witness their compassion and empathy, and the naming of the pain in our story that we don’t see.
Ultimately, we can find security in the depths of our souls as we encounter Jesus who is with us, for us, provides for us, protects us, mourns with us, and walked among us as he faced greater trauma and suffering than any human who ever walked this earth–fully God and fully man, betrayed by his closest friends and publicly executed unjustly for crimes he did not commit and the sins of the world.
To go deeper, check out our free 5 day devotional for overcoming trauma and hurt.
