Since a recent post where I’ve divulged a bit of a childhood accident and the ensuing confusion that resulted, I’ve been thinking of all the unsaid things that could be shared. A writer is hopeful that the readers will be able to fill in the cognitive gaps between what is written and the reader’s level of understanding. They hope for new synapses, bridges, and ahah moments.

Today’s hot words are different than the buzz words of a decade ago. Today, trauma decompression, therapy, and coaching are the peak of the intellectual wave crashing on modern Christianity’s shore. (And as any movement does, they bring their downfalls in the door right with their strengths.) The term “trauma” is used a lot in podcasts and social platforms these days. Attending to trauma is a bit like an elk sighting. If you live in Colorado near Estes Park, an elk sighting on your way to work is not worthy of snapshots that make the family photo album. However, when tourists come to Estes Park, they fill their camera rolls with snaps of ne’er-seen-this-close-before moose, mountain goats, and bears. By day three of sighting elk, the tourist quits taking pictures. Along day five, he’s even complaining that he’s seen bigger and better elk before, and would this one please move off the road, he’s late for the predicted geyser at Old Faithful.

So too, when conversations about trauma creep out of the forests of our faith, initially we’re wowed. “That’s crazy. I had no idea the brain worked like that, and the central nervous system remembers trauma even when our conscious mind doesn’t, and no way, there’s this thing called secondary trauma when you listen to some one recount their first-hand trauma.” Enamored, dumb-founded, we jot our notes and download those podcasts and start those hard conversations. And then. Long before we develop a sustainable compassion for those altered by trauma, we are on day three of our elk sighting. Seriously, can they just get off the road. We are ready for a different sighting.

Well.

There’s this thing called compassion. And without it, the intellect is a bloodless machine of processes and functions, unable to conjure lasting change upon those facing their trauma.

Pepper Sweeney and Dr. Curt Thompson believe that the defining thing with trauma is not just whether it was a significant, “large T Trauma” vs “small t trauma” but whether the individual has connection over the trauma.

Allow me to explain.

Let’s say that one day this individual is witnessing a family fight that has been brewing for months. Mom and Dad are in an all out brawl, punches get thrown, angry words yelled, the vulnerable child is verbally abused, thrown against a wall, and breaks his femur, spending six intolerable weeks in a spica cast. Tragic. But, says Sweeney, if this child grows up and divulges this story to someone who values his story, doesn’t downplay the tragedy, cares about him, and says, “Man that had to be tough,” that person has experienced safe bonding and acceptance over one of their darkest places of pain and rejection. The runner in their cardigan has been painstakingly stitched over and now the cardigan is more reinforced and meaningful than ever. That’s why motivational speakers like Corrie ten Boom and Nick Vujicic often speak from lives of joy that has birthed from the loins of suffering. They are reinforced, more durable, and resilient. Their joy is other worldly, contagious, and hard earned.

However, if that child’s tragic story is minimized, the trauma is reinforced. “Aww it wasn’t that bad. You were just a kid. You can’t remember most of it anyway.” Riiip, the cardigan runner has stretched further. It holds in less warmth and lets in mosquitoes of bitterness and rejection.

In this trend of trauma conversations, the goal is not to dig up bones of rotten family ancestry so we can blame our faulty lineage. (We are all faulty.) Neither is the goal to snap trendy pictures of the elk and then ignore them a week later. The goal is to mend the cardigan, reinforced with double-stranded stretches of truth and victory. “Jesus loves you. He wants you to forgive them. You will overcome.”

Sometimes the people wearing these ripped cardigans join The Offended sector of society. They label themselves as victims. Everything is offensive to them. You don’t stand with them on their opinion? How could you? You think they ought to walk in as much freedom as possible? Unthinkable! And so they huddle together, on Facebook groups and other places, rattling their posters of defeat and rejection. They don’t want to experience resilience, purpose in the pain, or freedom. They want the world to know that they have been wronged and somebody’s gonna feel their wrath. Waving their placards, they ignore the mosquito bites. Mmm, the bite of bitterness settles into their bloodstream. They are virally infected and ineffective at finding a path forward in their pain.

“They overcame him (the devil) by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they loved not their lives to the end.” Revelations 12:11 If I heard Nelson Coblentz recite that verse once on CD, I’ve heard it dozens of times. It was sealed in my mind as an anthem of triumph. Coblentz was a small featured, feisty man with an alcoholic problem, extra-marital affair and child, wife, and daughter when he surrendered his life to the lordship of Jesus Christ in 1973. His life was radically changed; he went on to live a transformed life of fidelity, sobriety, and ministry to the down-outs of society, and tell his story of Jesus to thousands of inmates. Listening to him claim this verse blazed into my mind that we are co-laborers with God for our freedom. You want to be an overcomer? Claim the blood of the Lamb and tell what the Lamb has done for you. Tell how you were a no good, Offended Sector member and Jesus called you out of that club and treated your mosquito infection. Tell how Jesus healed your trauma. Tell how you forgave, and still forgive. You limit your own spiritual trajectory if you’re too afraid to testify.

And so I say to you today, your trauma needs to be heard. Find someone who will stitch over your rips and join you in swatting the bitterness away. And then testify. And then stitch some more. And then pick up your own needle because it’s now your turn to sew up your neighbor’s rips. And then testify again. It’s a cycle of restoration and resilience guaranteed to keep you out of the Offended Sector club, so long as you testify and heal.

You limit your own spiritual trajectory if you’re too afraid to testify.

It remains to be seen what the next Christian wave will be, but for now, this is what we’re dealing with, and frankly, I’m excited about it. Loving God involves our heart, soul, mind, and body; nothing is exempt from Him.

And I also say to you today, if you haven’t experienced large T Trauma or small t trauma, you are not an Estes Park tourist in this landscape. You have a knitting needle capable of helping repair rips in the cardigans around you. Your compassion and prayer will go a long way in calling people out of the Offended Sector club and helping them find wholeness. Because restoration from trauma looks a lot like using a knitting needle to bind up the broken hearted and less like having all the knowledge and continuing to pass by.