Grow: Post-Traumatic Growth
Note: This blog is a personal recollection of survival and faith, and not a substitute for professional counseling or advise. Read at your own risk. When in doubt, seek out a professional opinion.
What I Couldn’t Always See
There was a time when I couldn’t imagine feeling real joy ever again. Yet, do you know that as the years have passed, I have felt moments of incredibly deep joy? To me, this is nothing short of a miracle.
It’s something that I would never have believed to be possible, even if someone had stepped right out of a time machine to tell me. I have felt joy in the summer, when I’ve watched my children’s staticky hair bouncing in the air as they jump on the trampoline in the backyard. I’ve felt it in the winter, when we’ve tumbled around in our snowsuits trying to stay upright long enough to finish building a fort at the park behind our house. I’ve even felt it when the same ol’ sweetness of God’s presence has surrounded me in church during a chorus of community worship- just the same way it used to do before the accident ever happened. In fact, I believe that because of what I’ve been through, I have often treasured these beautiful moments in life even more than I would have before. To me, there is an extra preciousness to them because I didn’t know I could ever feel that way again.
Now, it wasn’t something that came back to me right away. It took a whole lot of time to start feeling it again. Not to mention, it has ever since been “mingled with grief” (as Tolkein put it) and not without competing feelings of (at times - deep) shame. All the same, it’s still been a miracle to me that I’ve been able to experience it at all.
And fundamentally, this has made me realize more and more that we cannot put our ultimate hope into what we think or feel or see during one solitary season of our lives- even if it’s one of the most difficult ones.
Or should I say, especially if it’s one of the most difficult ones.
Center Stage
The past few years my mind has been on eternity more than ever before. When I think about it, it makes me consider the idea that a big part of the journey of life (I believe) is just God trying over and over again to help us to see past the physical. Not everything is about what’s right in front of your face, after all. In fact, most everything is not.
God presents us with this concept from the very beginning by enveloping us with the intangible priceless value of a caretaker’s love. Then, throughout the course of our lives we are constantly being tasked with the decision not to choose anything based on its face value. We have to go a bit deeper, examining beyond the superficial, if we want to understand the true nature of anything. In our business transactions, our relationships, in our trips to the grocery store where we must stare down boxes of Lucky Charms and Hostess Angel Food Cake. Aren’t the covers ever so very appealing?
It makes me think of photography. Have you ever thought about how every great photo has a defined focal point? Choosing what that focal point needs to be matters immensely, because by necessity everything else is going to fade into the background- right into obscurity. The background has its own purpose, but compared with whatever is taking center stage, it is “vague and incomprehensible,” to quote Solzhenitsyn.
There’s what really matters in life, and then there’s everything else. In Scripture, it’s that which will last forever, and then that which will not.
God is trying to get us to understand what really matters in life.
Our part is to “not be like the horse, who has to be led by bit and bridle” as the psalmist says in Psalm 32:9. We are to instead purposely place our desires (and store up our treasures) into the part of the known universe that is beyond what we can see or hear or taste or touch. We must reach for the intangibles that are more real and everlasting than any of the tangibles ever could be. As they always were. We just needed to zero in our lens on what mattered the most all along.
So, what are these intangibles, you might ask?
1 Corinthians 13:13 says:
“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” (NIV)
These are abstracts, and there’s more that awaits us in the “new heavens and the new earth” than abstract ideas. But, these are a great place to start!
One could take an entire lifetime trying to keep faith, hope, and love on center stage.
Why Does This Matter?
When it comes to healing from trauma, we each have the choice to either “become bitter, or become better.” I believe a huge part of “becoming better” is choosing to focus on things of eternal worth (like faith, hope, and love) rather than focusing on the here and now. The here and now is messy, and depending on the moment, it can look deceptively bleak. It cannot fully be trusted, because our lives are still being tossed too and fro by each day’s events.
“On the surface of swift-running water you cannot make out the reflections of objects near or distant. Even if it is not muddy, even if it is free of foam, reflections in the ceaselessly wavering ripples, the boisterously shifting race are deceptive, vague, incomprehensible.
Only when, from stream to stream, the current has reached a placid estuary, or in still backwaters, or in small lakes with never a tremulous wave, can we see in the mirror-smooth surface the smallest leaf of a tree on the bank, every fiber of a fine-combed cloud, and the intense blue depths of the sky.
So it is with you and me. If, try as we may, we never have been and never shall be able to see, to reflect the truth in all its eternal fresh-minted clarity, is it not because we are still in motion, still living?…”
Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, Reflection in Water (translated)
Emotions are fickle. Some days are much harder than others. It can be tempting to make decisions based on the circumstances that are right in front of your face. Yet there’s so much we can’t see day to day. One unexpected tiny spark of kindness can alter the course of your entire existence.
When you cannot rely upon how you feel today, put your faith in the One who knows your story from beginning to end.
Jesus tells us,
“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33).
He is reliable, when all else is shifting sand beneath our trembling feet.
Growth Takes Eyes of Faith
One intriguing thing about suffering is that it doesn’t always lead to growth. Not by itself anyway. That’s something we have to choose on a daily basis. Yet, when you focus your lens on Christ and the things of eternal worth, I believe you will find yourself at a place where you are ready to grow - even in the harshest drought.
“They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.”
(Jeremiah 17:8)
It won’t be easy. It might be very messy at times, and it might not always look like growth (in the traditional sense of the word). Yet if you believe it’s possible, you may just have a fighting chance!
