I wrote about the story of a crisis we went through on the That Cold Spring Day page. I wrote about the immediate season after the crisis, about trying to recover.
I could leave it there. It wraps up neatly, and it is already way too long. But one of my complaints in recovering from trauma was that no one writes about it. We read biographies and stories and they tell us of a crisis, how God stepped in and saved the day, and that everyone was ok. They end with telling the faith of those who went through it. They leave us wowed.
What they don't do is give us an accurate picture of recovery from a traumatic event. So that when it is our turn to go through trauma, we have no clue - absolutely none - of what is it going to take to recover from that and how long it will take to recover from. I am still recovering. So that when we hit that difficult recovery time and it is not "done" in a few days or weeks, we then begin to believe a pack load of lies about ourselves. Others wonder about us, too. "There's something wrong with me why I can't just go on." "She's just unstable, and this was it." "If you'd just trust God, He's meet you there." or "What sin is in your life that prevents you from .........?"
We - we missionaries, even, - we missionaries, especially! - need to know what to expect after trauma. We need to know so we can stop shooting our wounded. We need to know so we can help each other. We need to know.
So I will put up links to other blog posts I wrote in the two years after our trauma. It isn't because I am such a perfect example of how to deal with trauma or that our mission did things so well. To be honest, our mission flopped. And I probably didn't do all that much better myself. But I put it up to be honest. And in the hope that a few will read it and when someone on their team goes through something difficult, they realize that this make take awhile... and they remember to listen, to hear, and to above all else, to be gentle.
Another thing. If someone close to you has been through a trauma, and you make a promise to them... KEEP IT. Don't say, "I need to have you over to talk over a cup of coffee." and then forget. Don't promise to look into information or people to help them and then get too busy. We don't have enough energy to go looking for our own help or to even cope with one more thing going wrong - even if that one more thing was a friend forgetting that she was going to have you for coffee to talk. Maybe we were hanging on just waiting for that time. Keep promises or don't promise. We're fragile right now. And don't expect us to know what we need to recover. We don't. We're still figuring that out ourselves, too.
Check back here - I'm still adding to this page.
So here in chronological order they are:
The Box on the Table
The Cold North Wind
Airline Life Jackets
Dancing in the Storm
Learning to Trust
To Trust or Not to Trust - That is the Question
What We Miss in Acts 12
More on Trust
Be Still
Behind That Door
It Comes Back to What We Believe
Chewing Cud
Stress in Kids
Incompatibilities.... Is there any answer?
Incompatibilities ..... and some late night reading....
Incompatibilities ... What is my responsibility?
Incompatibilities..... an apology?
Sunday School and Why I Dread what It Teaches
Telling My Story
Sitting Alone in the Rain
Cleaning out Cupboards
Coloring Inside the Lines
Gratitude for the Simplest Things
Treasures to be Kept
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Sorting It All Out
Quietly Busy
The Still Small Voice
Who's Best?
Facing Tomorrows
Support
How Much Longer?
You Must Feel So ________!
The Rest of the Story
Preparation
Empty Smiles
Validating Listening
Getting to My Feet
Small Steps
A Very Long Drive
That Wasn't Right
The Ministry of Eating Chocolate
Laughter, Being Heard, and Being Held
Step by Step
Rats Come Where There is Garbage
Walking Through the Lie
This Odd New Companion
Of Wounds, Dressings, and Scars
The Flip Side of Grace
Holding the Pieces
I Hate Fall
Re-Telling Our Stories
No comments:
Post a Comment