Jesus is all we need
Jesus is not enough
Pain
Why People Run from us When we are in Trauma
Rebuilding from law to grace.
Are you trying to handle this alone?
Don’t.
You need to know you are not alone.
God loves you.
He knows who you are and
He knows who He designed you to be
He knows what you did or didn’t do,
He knows what you went through;
He knows what you are going through and
He knows what you will go through.
He loves you and cares for you.
You may want to die.
I did.
Sometimes I still do.
You may think you deserve to die.
For the wages of sin is death,
but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
(Rom 6:23 NIV)
What is a sin?
Anything that interferes with our relationship with God.
You may think, “I would be better off dead.”
“I wish so much that He would put me out of this misery and take me home to heaven.”
I wish I were dead, but I know He has a task for me to complete, first.
Remember, He made us and He knows our value.
He wants you alive – Just as you are. Just as we are.
He loves us even though we deserve death.
He loves us so much that He died to take away our sins.
Actually, He paid the price of our sins.
The wages of sin is death and
He died in our place.
In my place. In your place.
He died for you. Because He cares deeply for you.
He loves us.
He is Creator God and never did anything wrong
so even though He became a human being,
Even though He was murdered,
Death had no power over Him.
He rose from the grave and is still alive today.
He wants to become one with us.
He wants to live in us and with us.
He wants us to live for Him.
Because we died with Him (in our spirit)
and He came back to life,
we came back to life also
(spiritually for now, and physically later),
He gives us a new life.
What He wants now, is for us to live in His place.
You see, He rose from the grave.
He is alive, but then He went on to live in heaven.
He went to heaven so He could send His Spirit to live inside us.
This is how we become His hands and His feet and His lips.
We are his body and He lives inside us.
This is just part of what happens when we ask Him to forgive us and take over our lives.
He forgives us and gives us a new life.
He loves us so much that now,
He calls us His children.
You and me.
He loves us just as we are.
When we give our lives to Him,
He makes us His children.
He changes us.
It is His power, His Holy Spirit living within us that changes us.
We do not change ourselves,
We can’t.
We are not good enough, we do not know what He wants.
We can’t do it.
But He makes us His children and as we study His word and talk with Him in Prayer, He changes us.
We are His children.
He cares for us so much
He took all our sorrows to Himself.
There were three people who impacted my life through this trauma.
The first was the man who drugged and raped me. I know now that he was a pedophile. I did not know it at the time. He first appeared at our small church, spoke great platitudes of love and forgiveness. Then was ill one day. That was the day I took it upon myself to visit him.
What I now know is that he had stalked a college girl to the church, infiltrated into the graces of the community and eventually molested the girl and who knows how many others. Then stopped attending. I know he molested the girl because he later confided to me that she was pregnant and he never before thought he would recommend an abortion. That was after I made the ignorant mistake of visiting the sick and before I made it back to safe ground.
The second was the girl I was dating and had asked to marry. We were writing each other every day. This was a time when the US mail was very efficient and a first class letter dropped off at the mailbox in the morning would arrive at the destination the next day. This was also long before I was able to admit to myself that I had been drugged, not to mention raped.
She saw my personality change from a stable young man to a very confused person the likes of which I only catch glimpses of. Even now, I do not know how confused I became. She sent me to her pastor. He was able to challenge me. My filtering system had been turned off. The only way I had to sort my brain out was to repeat the poisonous words placed into my brain while under the influence of whatever drugs he used. Somehow, even though the words made sense when he said them, when I tried to repeat them they did not make sense. The process of sorting my brain took these forty years.
She had the unpleasant horror of watching me go through this destructive process. She left the day I returned home. It was too much for her. She still will not speak with me although I am pleased to report she is mentally, emotionally, and physically well. (I read her blog.) I must have really hurt her for her to treat me the way she did. I know it is not her nature to be so cruel.
The third was a vulture who saw that I was injured and alone. I told her from the beginning I was in love with someone else.
She saw the love I had for that other person and wanted it for herself. I do not know what she told my love about me, I do know what she told me about my love. I also know she made certain that I talked with no other female. I could not get rid of her. I now know this is stalking.
We were married eighteen years. After she had me arrested the second time, I said ‘enough is enough’ and I divorced her. During the custody trial, I listened to her answer her lawyer making me out to be an aggressive perpetrator. I wanted to ask her four questions. 1) Did I or did I not tell her from the beginning that I was in love with someone else. 2) What was the news she brought me that sent me into a depression that first time? (Answer: that the one I loved was dating someone else). 3) Where did it first happen? 4) How hard did I try to get her out of my room? Unfortunately, I was so upset at that trial that my hand writing was illegible and I could not pass these questions to my lawyer.
Shortly after the vulture and I were married, (I felt trapped becoming disassociated from myself) I found a note written to someone with the same name as the one I loved. “Dear ____ Guess what, I’m pregnant! You will never guess who! Charles _____!” When I confronted the vulture with this note, she informed me that it was written to her friend who had moved to Ohio, I was sick enough to believe this. Kind of.
Even though I had given my life to Jesus, I was active in church and I loved to pray and study His word, during this time, I needed Jesus with skin on – people who love the Lord and could talk with me: people who I could touch and feel. People who could reflect who Jesus is through the way they live. Healing does not take place without safe people with whom we can communicate. Not only do perpetrators know that the innocent sheep gather at the churches, so do the vultures.
I needed “Jesus with skin on”. I needed desperately someone safe who could guide me through this trouble. I had no one. This sent me crashing further. Every few years I would surface, asking for help. When I found no one, I would sink further. It took forty years to find someone capable of helping me recover.
Here. I offer my invitation again. Join our forum. We will do what we can to help you recover. Vultures and predators not welcomed, but I have no screening process.
Have you ever dug in a garden or dirt pile and cut a worm in half?
You watch it wrap around itself wreathing in pain.
That’s what I felt for months and years afterward.
In many ways, I stopped growing.
I fell backwards emotionally and mentally.
All the memories leading up to that day are still with me.
Then they stop. They skip like a scratched DVD.
What happened between that day and today, forty years later?
I call on old friends whom I haven’t seen for a while:
• One died in a railroad accident. I still put him down as my best friend on security questions.
•Another is divorced. ‘The onset of dementia,’ his wife said. ‘Kept bringing up the past: Wouldn’t let it go. I got tired of it.”
•Another talked for a while, but then she misunderstood something I said and she disappeared.
•I tried contacting another. She still doesn’t want to talk to me.
I did not ask for that darkness to overcome me. That darkness so thick I could not see and lost track of directions. I heard the voice of my friend calling me. My only guide. She kept warning me of the danger, kept asking me to come out. At first, I was in so much darkness I did not realize I was in danger. I was in so much pain I did not know I was hurt.
Trauma is a brain injury. Waking up after a brain injury takes time to readjust.
I thank God for pain. It drives me to Him. Today, I see the completion of the cycle. He is faithful. I have had my doubts. But now, I see He has been faithful all along.
Why People Run from us When we Suffer in Trauma
It seems the people who are closest to us desert us when we need them most. This is a perception of relativity. In truth, WE are the ones who have shut down. Our brains have stopped functioning. Our memory is gone. Time skips and jumps. Those close to us are watching in real time. They have a front row seat telling us of all the dangers we are in, hoping we will just stop what we are doing and get out of the trouble. We of course cannot tell we are in danger. We cannot tell we are damaged. Our brain is shut off and frozen.
When we do start to thaw out, the brain tests to see if it is safe to work again. We ask for help and observe the response. We look around not realizing months have passed. We wonder “Where are all our friends?” From their point of view. We have frightened them. They are traumatized by our reactions as they watch what we are going through.
We might wonder why they are so cruel. In reality, they have been hurt and can take no more.
I had to start over: What does it mean to not lie? I had to rebuild myself from scratch. What does honor mean? What is fornication? Was this a sex sin or not? In the physical world, if an injury inhibits us, we must start over Learning how to sit up; Learning how to walk; Learning how to run again. In the emotional, psychological, spiritual world we must also start over. There is no telling where the poison has damaged us. We need to rebuild from the beginning.
The first step is to get out of danger if possible. Then, with God’s help, we start from the beginning to relearn everything. This is why I include the section on the 11 Aspects of Humanness To be healthy, we must be healthy in all aspects of life.
I am not there yet.
You help me, and I will help you.
ceg