When you have experienced trauma, you then have an internal battle to fight. It is a fight for survival, and then you fight to thrive in and after recovery from that trauma. I have been through various traumas, and in those, multiple abuses.Some people are able to win that battle and they thrive, some people are not able to overcome them and it swallows them whole. Having grown up in a single parent household, I chose not to talk about what was happening. I chose to be silent and to fight the internal struggle on my own. I didn’t grow up with a deep faith, I didn’t truly grow into my faith until I was a grown adult. So my young brain got jumbled with thoughts, scenarios, memories, feelings, and the like.
I developed a really bad habit of numbing everything around me in order to survive. I chose to block a lot out and I chose to not ever speak of it. The problem with that, is that once you bury it deep down it doesn’t stay gone- it festers. It makes you mentally, emotionally and physically ill. Rage grows, depression and anxiety grow, trust withers and sleep becomes a distant memory. Your reasoning skills are altered as are your ability to comprehend the why behind many things. There are days it is really hard to work past all of the trauma; triggers happen at the least expected moments- and I think and move slower because I am fighting the inner fog. You have to suck it up, keep going about what you are doing and make the best possible sense of it.
With the trauma and abuse I have been through the last 6 years with my ex-husband, it has been particularly challenging. Being a believer of God and a follower of Christ, I am called to live higher and to forgive others for their harm against me; so that I may be forgiven for the harm I myself have done. The human nature in me that has been ravaged by trauma would rather slide into the abyss of anger and despair and hold these offenses as grudges against the individuals who have done them.My spirit cries out at this and mourns for the loss and pain, but craves better for me and of me.
It is a daily choice to follow God and to make right choices about my feelings and my wants. Majority of the time, that means that I don’t get what I want (because it is not a right choice) and my feelings are residual that I am learning to walk rightly through. On the days that I let my emotions come first, it is a mess for everyone and nobody wins.
In a matter of honesty, my ex-husband shared that he is being tested for Colon Cancer. I am ashamed of my response, because immediately I had a sense of relief that maybe he might feel some of the pain that he had caused us. Not apathy, but ill intent. He said to me, “I’m scared, I know I haven’t done right in my life, what if this is God’s way of punishing me?” To which I disagreed, because I don’t believe God would do that.Then mild remorse for having my initial thought, followed by the wonder of how I would walk my son through potentially losing his father to a horrible disease when I wasn’t sure if I could actually express a proper grief response so as not to traumatize my son further.
Like I said, I am not proud of these thoughts. They are weighing heavily on me, because it makes me grieve for my human compassion and it scares me that at some point I will stand before God and be judged for my words, thoughts, actions and I will have to respond to His question of my reaction on this. It will not be pleasant at all. I don’t want to be that person.
This is the dark seeded battle the enemy implants within our human minds/hearts. To hold grudges, to be angry, to wish ill will on others, to keep it all a secret and let it fester instead of bringing it to the light and/or seeking help for it. To hold onto and embrace a victim mindset that we allow ourselves to believe is the only way we can continue. I am challenged several times a week with triggers of this man, he has 50/50 custody of our son. We see him 2 days a week, we hear his voice, and we are triggered by my son’s behaviors as he works through the transition of back and forth living and hearing comments from his siblings that we try our absolute best to separate from him.
As the majority of our house is in trauma recovery from this individual yet our son goes back and forth with him, we continue doing our best to support him, be courteous so that our son see’s positive role modeling and Godly responses while honoring where everyone else’s recovery journey is at. We walk this mine-field of emotions and recovery very carefully; because our son picks up on the tensions and the things that are said about his dad yet we have to honor and respect the healing process for all of them and that task is often overwhelming. To err is human, and while this man has erred, so have I. I am not better than him, and just because he made some harmful choices does not mean that he deserves to die from a horrible illness.
My faith and my human nature are often at war with one another. I firmly believe that having my faith is what has made me a better person, given all of the challenges I have had to overcome and the constant pressing on my character and deciding who I truly want to be, who I want my children to be- and how rising above is the best way to make that happen. I choose not to continue this horrid thought path, I choose to hold it captive and decipher why I thought it and what I truly choose to do about the feelings that caused it. While I am aware there is deep anger and resentment I continue to work through, I am also aware that I follow God and He is greatly saddened by these thoughts. To continue following God, I have to continue denying that part of myself that lives against what He says. I choose to ask God to forgive me for trying to assert justice- even in my own mind.
I challenge you to work on forgiving yourself and others for the wrongdoings. Nobody wins when we hold onto them.
