The Long Road to Recovery

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










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