It’s been a long time since I have written. I have felt . . . empty. So many things were always going thru my heart and life that writing seemed pointless. It could never encircle or encompass all I was experiencing.
My life is settling down, we finally have regained that sense of safety and predictability and returned to a sweet, albeit new, normal in many ways. But in that place of external peace, the internal rumblings of my heart are picking up. Now that outside me is safe, the inside of me is beginning to process all that has felt not safe to me.
Perhaps that’s one reason why ever since the wreck Modern Art has captured me. I always hated it – thought it was useless and silly and didn’t communicate anything discernable. I pridefully assumed it communicated nothing of value and required little thought or talent.
It’s one of many odd differences in me since the car accident, but I’ve been craving the wildness of form and color and that sometimes lack of clarity, line or message. I have wanted something to describe the chaos I have had internally. Words couldn’t capture it, nor pictures. And of all art, modern paintings came the closest to expressing the inexpressible inside of me.
I need to express what is inside me. Or, at least, I need to try. I have felt validated by an amazing book on trauma I have been reading, where she says essentially that traumatic incidents in our lives are horrific places which cannot truly be expressed. Yet, ironically she notes, it is in voicing them that we regain that feeling of safety and control that was ripped from us during the event(s).
I need to use my voice in the midst of the buzzing internal noise. I don’t pretend to think people want to read this. It’s one thing to “know what’s going on.” It’s another thing to keep reading and staying when the story gets raw.
Some people are able to enter into others’ pain and suffering, to sit with them and not look away. But I can recognize my own deep discomfort so many times over the years, discomfort with others’ tears or depression or struggle or poverty. I have wanted to run from the conflict of entering someone else’s painful story. I have run, and I do still often run from it.
I don’t want to. I find that the more I sit with my own story, and see Jesus sitting with me in the good parts but especially the painful parts, the less afraid I am of others’ deep emotions and out-of-my-control stories. Jesus wants to sit with them, too.
Last week a heavy object fell on my fingers, breaking part of my nail off. It was seriously bloody and super painful, and I couldn’t bear to look at it for days. When I looked at the doc cleaning it, I almost passed out. Why?
Because it’s natural to look away. I didn’t want to see myself bloodied and broken, even on a minor level. It was traumatic to me to look down and see part of my nail gone. Looking again at it later reminded me of the pain and brokenness of it.
The very essence of trauma is the horror that drives us to look away.
That becomes one of the great questions of our lives – will we gaze upon horror or will we look away? In Christ, we see this ultimate reality expressed. The very thing we are told to look at is the most grotesque, unjust, abominable and certainly traumatic event in history.
Just as there were many who were appalled at him[b]—
his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being
and his form marred beyond human likeness— Isaiah 52:14
“He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.” Isaiah 53:3
Truly, it is so much easier to not just look away, but RUN away. Jesus’ death was awful, so we look away. Then, we want to look away from the ugliness of our own hearts, the anger and murder we can feel towards others, the jealousy and disdain and secret gleefulness of someone’s downfall.
Once we look away from our own hearts, it is easier to look away from the absolute horror of high percentages of child abuse and sexual abuse, half a million children in foster care, violent inner-cities and schools. We can avoid discussing the controversial yet real horror of mothers aborting their own children and men glued to screens watching sexual and often violent acts against women and children – horrors so many of us have participated in and have often yet to face.
Looking or running away can look very holy. It can be focusing on our own spouses and children, it can be being busy at church or USAID or the military or work or volunteering or many other “good” things.
Looking away from hurting people can be harshness instead of comfort, control instead of acknowledgment, fear instead of compassion. It can be being busy instead of still and present, hurrying people rather than giving them grace, tolerating races and political leanings in our speech but not next door.
It can be living for what is good for self, rather than what’s good for the other, even the other on social media or the news.
I am no longer willing to look away. I want to expose my hurt and wounds and make a place for others to expose theirs. I want to look at people straight and acknowledge them and walk with them and learn their real story. I don’t want to ignore the details that emerge as rifts in their story, behaviors that point to unhealed trauma or pain, or isolated comments that would penetrate deep.
I want to advocate for care, care for souls and hearts and minds and bodies. Care for myself, my family, but also for people and children that have no advocate.
Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Proverbs 31:8
I am writing this because it’s easy to look away from those we don’t know. In fact, sometimes we honestly must, because we cannot bear all the suffering of the world.
But the ones we know are the ones we must try hardest not to look away from. Perhaps some of us just need to learn what it’s like for that friend who has been traumatized. Perhaps a friend is out there who hasn’t told anyone, hasn’t learned to share the traumatic parts of her story. I can be a little of those words for that friend.
Perhaps a friend needs to know it’s safe to feel traumatized, that acknowledging those feelings doesn’t mean we are powerless – it actually means we are making an honorable though difficult choice.
And as I heard often during our journey, many of my friends need to know they can and should enter someone’s trauma, even uninvited. Entering with love gently and with purity of heart can never be the wrong thing to do. Listening, being present, and serving someone who is hurting is always right. Staying away, even out of respect, feels like looking away to the person hurting. It can feel like rejection and add shame to an already vulnerable situation.
So I am opening myself up to being seen, and thus being avoided, to being a mess yet being present. I am learning to invite people into my present pain rather than logically explaining past pain. It is extremely uncomfortable.
Sin allowed trauma to enter the world. Like trauma, sin tears. It shreds or cuts or snips pieces of our lives and then hides them away. But this tearing is damage – damage changes the original picture. Sin is always tearing at the beauty of our life in God and our lives as His children, tearing us apart from ourselves, others, and most of all – Him.
God’s answer, ironically, was in the Son of God being torn. It was not in Jesus’ avoidance of sin (perfection) or avoidance of being hurt (self-protection), but in His full embrace of the Father’s will and giving up of His own rights that He, and we, experience freedom.
Jesus Himself clarifies this act by saying, “The reason the Father loves me is that I lay down my life – only to take it up again. NO ONE TAKES IT FROM ME, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again.” John 10:17-18
Jesus could have avoided all of his suffering – but He knew we didn’t have that luxury. Jesus didn’t avoid, fight, or protect himself out of fear of being hurt or rejected. Abiding in perfect love with His Father cast out His fear. Fearless, He chose to fully enter our broken experience, so we could know we are understood, never alone, and highly honored.
Beautiful, bleeding Jesus.
