Brenda (00:05.75)

You

Alex (00:06.83)

Well, welcome back to a new season of conversational counseling. It feels like it's been a while since we've been in front of the microphone. And I thought it might be fun for us to do just a little update of our families and what's going on in our lives.

Brenda (00:22.656)

Yeah, I feel like both of us have had a very full season with some fun things to report. Alex, on my side, just think back to Paul and I had the opportunity to go to Turkey and do another biblical studies tour, which was so rich and life -changing. We had lots of family fun. We had a grandchild visit. We had our son and his wife come down for Chicago to have a staycation. We are expecting our first granddaughter.

Alex (00:36.247)

Hmm.

Brenda (00:52.418)

So our girl is having a girl, the first girl in our family in 31 years and we're ecstatic and I know, so fun with you know the little boys out there. I've just already been purchasing all the little girl bows and dresses and outfits and cutesy stuff. So fun. And then you know something that I've not been able to talk about in detail on our podcast but I hope to one day is just a struggle in our family over the last 12 years that has been really hard for me as a mom and God has just been

Alex (00:52.671)

Mm -hmm

Alex (00:57.827)

Wow

Brenda (01:22.422)

doing some amazing work and some restorative work that is just only what God can do. And so that has just added such a sweetness to the season for me. What about you? You've got some big news.

Alex (01:33.017)

Mm -hmm.

I have some big news. My youngest daughter, Gracie, got engaged this summer. And so it's funny to think about that by the time this podcast airs, she'll already be married, likely. Maybe a little panic set in when I realized that this morning, but we're very excited. We're excited to welcome a new son -in -law into our family. And my oldest daughter is starting her

Brenda (01:41.468)

Woohoo!

Brenda (01:53.549)

hahahaha

Alex (02:06.391)

last year of her doctoral program and so she's starting her clinicals and so everybody's very busy this fall. It feels very much like a back to school season for us even though we don't have anybody actually in school but our son -in -law starts his last year of school and our daughter starting her last year of her doctoral program and so we're very excited.

Brenda (02:11.446)

Wow.

Brenda (02:32.17)

Well, that's amazing. Well, today we are talking about a topic that's really tender and really hard. And it might be even hard for some of our listeners to engage in this season, although we pray that we can present it in a way that they'll be able to walk with us as we unpack the topic of trauma.

Alex (02:53.623)

Mm -hmm.

Yes, this is something you and I've been learning about for several years and I've had several people ask us to do a podcast on trauma and it is a little intimidating because it's a vast topic and there's a lot coming out right now on the subject of trauma in all different areas but we're hoping that this not only ministers to individual hearts of people who have struggled with past traumas and continue to do that today but we're also

hoping that it becomes a way that helps to train and equip people in our churches to be able to minister and walk alongside people who are hurting. So lots of good reasons to jump into a difficult topic.

Brenda (03:39.21)

Yeah, and I really will hope that we can dispel two ideas. One, that trauma work is not important because there has been a season where we really didn't talk about trauma and I'll come back to that in a minute. But the other myth or maybe it's a myth I don't know that I'd like to dispel is that the everyday Christian cannot be competent or confident to help people who are experiencing trauma or who have experienced trauma to help those in our sphere of influence at some level. We may all play a

Alex (04:08.238)

Yeah.

Brenda (04:09.124)

different role, but we can all come alongside those who have experienced trauma and we want to be able to present this information hopefully simply, clearly, and biblically. And I was really thinking as we started into the season how I don't know that I

or heard the word trauma growing up. Certainly today there's an overwhelming amount of information about it, but my dad served two tours in Vietnam and witnessed horrific events. And every once in a while, some stories have leaked out, but it's something he's mostly just kept to himself. And then my mother, who's German born, she was born during World War II, experienced many, terrifying moments. Their house was bombed.

Alex (04:28.034)

Hmm.

Alex (04:42.264)

Yes.

Alex (04:50.691)

Hmm.

Brenda (04:56.164)

threatened by Russian soldiers, all kinds of coming back to desolation, seven children, her mother had a nervous breakdown. I just learned recently that my grandmother laid in the kitchen of my mother's house for six months having had a nervous breakdown because she didn't know, she had these seven kids and this is wartime, and that my mom just talked about how every day they would come in and they would touch her and love her and tell her they loved her and they would kiss her and tell her they needed her.

Alex (05:13.785)

Wow.

Brenda (05:26.084)

And it was just even such a powerful testimony to some of the things we're going to talk about, the power of presence and the power of prayer and the things that can heal us when we've been so wounded by trauma.

Alex (05:32.045)

Mm -hmm.

Alex (05:40.951)

Hmm.

Brenda (05:42.25)

Yeah, and I'd like to talk a little bit about maybe our biblical counseling experience and training with trauma. Alex, what have you found in terms of our journey? Because we've both been counseling a long time, but it's really only been in the past years that we've actually delved into the topic of trauma, really begin to study it, and maybe become a little bit more informed about some things we didn't know.

Alex (06:05.337)

Yeah, I think you're right about that, Brenda. And I used to think it was because biblical counseling movement was behind. And I think to some degree that could be true. And I also think the biblical counseling movement focused a lot on sin as we've talked about in the past. And that has caused us not to look at the suffering, trauma aspect of our lives. But I'm also realizing that it's also culturally become a topic of conversation in the last 10 years.

in a way that it wasn't before. And so what I mean by that is I've talked to people who've been trained in other counseling spheres as psychologists, as licensed counselors, who've actually said that in their training they did not have trauma training. And so there's been a gap for all of us in understanding what trauma is and the effects of trauma, not just biblical counselors. But I still think as we always say, like as biblical counselors, we have the opportunity

to have a really robust view of the human experience, a what's the word I want to use, full and complete view that is really undermined and reinforced all through scripture. And so I'm glad that it's come into our conversation as biblical counselors and I'm even more glad that it's come into the conversation of the church because I think as we'll talk about through this whole season, the church has a real opportunity for ministry.

the area of trauma and in order to do that there are some special or practical things we need to know about people who have suffered trauma if we want to help effectively.

Brenda (07:48.768)

Yeah.

And not only, you know, in the church and as Christians do we need to have a full and complete understanding and experience of people, but I think the church can offer a full and complete understanding of healing better than really anybody else can because of the resources that God has given us. And I do think, you know, I like what you said because I think it is easy to bash the church and say, well, the church has done such a terrible job of, you know, helping people in trauma. But the reality is, is there's a whole

of people I've talked to that have not dealt with their trauma because nobody was talking about trauma. Right? And I think in terms of the modern biblical counseling movement, of which we're a part of, that some of the reaction was against a movement away from personal responsibility in the world. In other words, there was a lot of counseling in the world that was leaning toward, it's maybe your parents caused this, it's your environment that caused this, and there was a leaning away

Alex (08:25.133)

Right.

Alex (08:39.767)

Mm

Brenda (08:49.84)

from, you need to take a look at yourself, but I think there was an overcorrection in that. And so then it became that everything is your personal responsibility instead of really being able to nuance, like what is your sin and your responsibility and what is your suffering. And then I also just think there, you we like to have our little Christian mantras and you and I have a dear brother in Christ who we know and love who really suffered intense, you know, abuse from his

Alex (08:54.679)

Right.

Brenda (09:19.67)

mom. Growing up, he was bullied relentlessly.

Also during his younger and school age years, he actually held his best friend while he died in his arms. And so there was just one thing after another and then how he began to deal with that trauma also was very destructive. He didn't know what to do. But I can remember in my first conversations with him trying to kind of open up some doors about trauma. mean, man, he would just flip to Philippians 3, 13 and 14, forgetting what is behind this one thing I do, straining toward what is ahead. I press on.

Alex (09:51.213)

Hahaha

Brenda (09:55.992)

And he said that's really what he was taught. Once he came to realize that he needed to go back and look at what had shaped his life, like who and what had influenced him and that a lot of his life was in fact a reaction to things that had happened to him. That didn't mean he didn't have personal responsibility, but he also needed to look and see what had happened to him. And I just think it's been really beautiful. We've just witnessed such a transformation in his life.

Alex (10:11.513)

Mm -hmm.

Alex (10:24.279)

Mm -hmm.

Brenda (10:26.032)

So I would say that if we look at the whole Council of God, there is a time to forget, but there is also a time to remember. And the Bible is full of history, past stories, many of which are painful, and there's often times that God reminds the Israelites of their painful past, both of their sin and their suffering stories.

Alex (10:33.155)

Mm. Mm -hmm.

Brenda (10:51.476)

So why, let me just ask you this then Alex, in a nutshell, why would you say it's important for us to look back at our personal history and especially the harm that's been done to us?

Alex (11:01.953)

Well, I wish I had the exact quote in front of me, but what most neuropsychiatrists and neurobiologists tell us is that the past isn't really the past, right? That our brains have been formed and they've been shaped in such a way that the past is playing out in the present if it hasn't been healed, if it hasn't been put in its proper place, so to speak, in our brains. So what we tend to think of as the past is often not back there somewhere. It's actually informing our present moment.

And so I think that's the body response, but the soul response is also just to look all through scripture and see that I don't have the numbers, but I see all through scripture that God is reminding the Israelites, the Hebrew people, especially particularly in the Old Testament to remember like you said, and the thing that he calls them to remember most often is their collective trauma, their time in Egypt together.

there in slavery and the rescue of that. And so he is reminding them of what the pain was like so that they can remember what the healing, so to speak, was like, what the rescue was like that he did for them. And I think that we have a great model there in scripture of God saying like, nothing that's happened to you is beyond my reach. And so it can be really hard to go back. It can be really hard to talk about things from the past, but God reminds us all through scripture that he was

Brenda (12:24.116)

right.

Alex (12:31.717)

there then, he's here now and he can deliver us out of that just as he did the Israelites out of Egypt.

Brenda (12:39.574)

Yeah, that's so good. Well, I think it'd be great if maybe we could give some definitions of trauma and try to give some language to what trauma is. Again, we live in a moment in time where trauma is kind of everything and trauma is nothing. There's just this wide spectrum. So we know that trauma comes from the Greek word that literally just means wounding.

Alex (12:56.163)

Mm -hmm.

Alex (13:02.957)

Mm -hmm.

Yeah, and so a lot of times what can be hard is to nail down exactly what is trauma to one person versus another, and we're going to talk about that. But I think we need to recognize that when we're talking about trauma, we're talking about pain, right? And sometimes those are little T traumas is what we call them. Sometimes those are big T traumas. Seems like people can agree on the big T trauma, but then the little T trauma are specific to each person's life and experience.

Brenda (13:21.73)

Hmm.

Alex (13:36.047)

and we'll talk about why that is. But I think the main thing we need to realize is that life in a fallen world means that no one escapes traumatic experiences. Like you said, Brenda, with your parents, even the trauma of your parents affected you. And so even if those weren't your particular experiences, the trauma of our caregivers affects us, the traumas that we experience at a young age are often more impactful. And then we do have to be careful.

like you said, that if we name everything a trauma, then nothing is. I was in a store the other day and I heard somebody say, that I was traumatized by something, something, and I just had to smile because I thought, maybe not. But so I mean, we are hurt, but I think we, we want to be careful to name trauma well. And we also want to be careful. And this is what, you know, I want to keep saying over and over again, we want to be careful to lean in when

someone call something trauma and understand why they do before we even think about arguing with them that it's not.

Brenda (14:44.49)

Yeah, because at end of the day...

there is some sort of pain, some sort of suffering, some sort of hurt. And at some level, what we teach about helping people in trauma is true for any wound on the spectrum. And I like the word wound so much because I think when we think of wound, if we think about wound in the physical realm, we know that we have to be tender. We have to apply carefully the bandage or the medicine or the rehabilitative efforts that typically when we have a wound,

Alex (14:57.751)

Yes.

Alex (15:05.133)

Mm -hmm.

Brenda (15:16.354)

just magically disappear. Right? And the more significant the wound, the longer time it will take.

Alex (15:18.295)

Right?

Alex (15:23.298)

And the great thing about making the analogy to the physical wounding is that just like in our physical bodies, there are conditions that are set up that cause a wound to not heal or to last longer or be more impactful to the body. Just like we have these physical conditions in the body, we have those in our emotional self too. And so one of the discussions that's really interesting right now in the trauma world is what causes some things to traumatize some people.

and yet the same event doesn't traumatize other people. And we can't always figure that out because it's a complex soup of a lot of different things. But if we think about the physical body, it's not that hard for us to understand. We can have a wound at one period of our lives and because of a whole lot of different factors, it heals quickly and maybe the same wound at another time doesn't.

Brenda (16:01.249)

Yeah.

Brenda (16:18.174)

I think that's a good point.

One other thing I do want to bring up is just in a biblical worldview, we have to recognize the impact of sin and the reality of evil. Because there are, mean, we, you know, this wounding started in the Garden of Eden when sin entered the world. And at that point, we're going to talk a little bit more about this later in this episode, but just like what happened that sets in motion our sin and our suffering stories. And, you know, if I think about just

Alex (16:35.431)

That's right.

Brenda (16:50.06)

the impact of sin and the impact of evil on trauma, we think about natural disasters.

Alex (16:57.1)

Mm -hmm.

Brenda (16:58.078)

We think about human causes. There are evil people. We don't like to talk about evil people. We really don't. We don't like to recognize that, but there are people who are evil. People do evil things. And then there's demonic causes. I think that's another thing that we don't often think about is that demonic forces are sheer evil and we have those forces at work in this world.

Alex (17:12.737)

Hmm.

Alex (17:17.059)

Mm

Brenda (17:22.513)

And you know, this is where our future hope really matters because Christ did defeat sin, death, and Satan on the cross. And so our greatest hope is neither sin nor suffering nor evil are going to have the final word.

Alex (17:38.249)

Mm -hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Brenda (17:43.735)

Will you?

Alex (17:44.058)

I think one of the things that's going to be difficult as we do this episode and as we move forward is to really zero in on a definition because one of the things that's happened in this conversation of trauma is that everybody is naming or defining trauma differently. So we're going to take our stab at

at defining trauma, but we want to kind of maybe give a few examples of ways other people have defined trauma first.

Brenda (18:16.842)

Yeah, I just thought it was interesting. went back just to look kind of at what was the secular definition. The National Substance Abuse and Mental Health Association says there are three E's to trauma or the three E's of trauma are the event, the experience and the effects. And I thought, huh, we'd say the same thing. Right. And then Christian psychologist and trauma expert Diane Langberg. And I do just want to say right at the start that probably nobody has impacted my view of

Alex (18:46.561)

Mm -hmm.

Brenda (18:46.786)

dealing with trauma more than Diane Langberg. would say if you're, if she's got...

She's guest on podcasts often times, she's got YouTube videos, Suffering in the Heart of God is a great book. There's just so much she's written. She has done work in this area for 50 years. One of the podcasts that I listened to was so interesting, just hearing how she comes into understanding trauma and her beginning experiences with the first woman that she counseled and it's too much to go into, but it's just, it's really very enlightening to see kind of the history

Alex (18:56.973)

Mm -hmm.

Alex (19:04.184)

Yeah.

Brenda (19:23.349)

trauma counseling through her lens, but then also just her expertise in this area. But here's what she says, trauma occurs when suffering overwhelms normal human coping. So great simple definition, but suffering...

Alex (19:35.326)

Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Brenda (19:40.17)

trauma occurs when suffering overwhelms normal human coping. But Alex, in your study, you've kind of come up with what you feel like is a good working definition. And that's the definition that we are going to primarily be using for our podcast series.

Alex (19:54.935)

This just helps me. hope it's helpful for other people. I'm not even saying I've written this in stone anywhere, but this is my working definition, meaning it could change. right now I kind of define trauma as our experience of a painful event that causes us to feel powerlessness and abandonment and that results in shame and fragmentation. And I know it's a little wordy, but I think there's some really key words in there that I'm not willing to get rid of any of them. So painful event.

that causes us to feel powerlessness and abandonment and that results in shame and fragmentation.

Brenda (20:32.099)

Well, there are a lot of words and each of those words I feel like is packed with a lot of meaning. So I think it'd be really helpful if we took a minute and just broke this definition down almost word for word. So let's talk about the experience and what you mean by experience.

Alex (20:43.352)

Yeah.

Alex (20:49.421)

Yeah, so as we talked about before with the body, it's the same in our emotional body and our emotional self that the event doesn't necessarily make an event traumatic, but how our brain and our body experiences the event can determine whether it's traumatic. And so there are often many complex set of conditions that are set up around that. And so it is how we experience the event and we're gonna keep unpacking that.

because the, as we said, there could often be two people who experience the same event and then walk away having a different, sorry, there could be two people who have the same experience but walk away experiencing it differently. I think I messed that up.

Brenda (21:38.6)

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Well, and I think almost we're saying two people could experience the same thing but have different outcomes. Could we say it just that way? The outcome could look differently. So let's talk a little bit about that. Let's go ahead and maybe look at...

a young girl, let's say. And this is an example from Adam Young, who's a clinical psychologist and the host of the podcast, The Place We Find Ourselves. But Alex, he gives this great example of two girls, both sexually assaulted in their neighborhood. And can you walk us through his analogy and let's continue to layer on, like what's the experience, the painful event, where are the feelings of powerlessness and abandonment and how does shame and fragmentation come into play?

Alex (22:03.863)

Mm -hmm.

Alex (22:20.183)

Yeah, I think it's a great example and I really thank him for walking us through this. So both girls sexually assaulted in their neighborhood, but one girl runs home to her parents, tells them what has happened and then is met with emotionally responsive and engaged parents who they hold her, they connect with her, they help her give language to what her experience was and process this. And in all those ways that they begin the process of healing.

in her and then they seek help. You know, they seek medical care. They seek emotional care. They involved law enforcement and so she feels surrounded by her community of people who are there to help her not just help her process but help her understand what happened to her and she has a sense that she's not alone. She's not abandoned. She has a sense that even though the event happened to her and it made her powerless

her community is empowering her to talk about it, to make choices that help keep her safe. She's able to communicate to them and they respond to that and so they try to diminish the amount of powerlessness that she experiences in the aftermath of the event and in doing that what they're doing is they're lowering the experience of shame because they're not isolating her, they're hearing her and they're helping her put her story

Brenda (23:45.42)

Hmm.

Alex (23:50.017)

back together which is what fragmentation does the opposite of. It pulls her apart. It pulls her away from her emotions, from her own experience, from so many things and in receiving this care she's able to put back together, puzzle back together what's happened to her.

So that's the good side, but we could have a girl, a second girl, have the same experience and she runs home to her family and nobody's there. And even when she does tell her parents what have happened, they won't engage with her. Her dad doesn't believe her. Her mom tells her she should have known better to play with those boys. And no care is given. No physical, emotional, spiritual care is

given. So she tries to provide her own sense of comfort. She tries to make sense of the experience in her own mind because she can't talk about it with her family and she has an incomplete, she has a child's experience of a very traumatic event and so she goes to sleep at night feeling alone, feeling abandoned, feeling powerless because she doesn't even know what happened or understand what happened to even know how to prevent it from happening again or how to reestablish safety for herself.

Brenda (24:51.735)

you

Alex (25:07.432)

And so the fragmentation from that event continues possibly into adulthood.

Brenda (25:15.445)

Well, just, I want to tell you how I was feeling.

It just might like in my body and in my heart as you were telling both these stories I I could feel a little bit of my heart racing in both of them and I could actually feel like my gut like a little knot in my gut and to be honest with you both times I felt very uncomfortable Very uncomfortable. The only difference was on the first one. I went from feeling uncomfortable to a sense of relief and joy like She's getting help. This is this is gonna end well, right? And the second one I just that

Alex (25:19.728)

Hmm?

Alex (25:44.439)

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Brenda (25:48.664)

pit is just in my stomach. And it's interesting because I was just noticing that as you were talking about the stories. And I think the point I want to make is like, it's going to be hard if you engage or if you don't engage in your own story or somebody else's story. And it's going to be messy. And it's going to feel terrible.

Alex (26:00.811)

Right. Great point.

Alex (26:06.775)

Yeah.

Brenda (26:08.608)

There's not a way like these. can't be ignored. can't make these things just go away. And even if there people who have been abused or have trauma of some sort, try to forget, you can't forget. But I think the thing that is so different is that there is hope in the first story. And there's the reality that life can come even where evil and death have come to destroy. so that is, I don't know, I thought that was beautiful and it was just something that I

noticing, but I think when we are entering into our own story of trauma or other people's story of trauma, we just need to understand that even if we're entering in for healing, it's going to be hard. It's a hard path and it may make us feel really yucky to have to go down that path. But if we will go down that path, not alone, but with Jesus and other people, there is life on the other side of it.

Alex (27:01.879)

Yeah, well said. And I hope we convey even just with this little example that for both of these girls, this abuse is going to be part of their story forever. But how this abuse affects them...

for the rest of their lives and how it impacts their relationships, their jobs, their bodies, that can be completely changed by the response of a community that comes around them. so I hope that in no way are we diminishing what happened to either one, but we're really trying to emphasize that the response and the complex set of circumstances surrounding the same type of event can change how someone carries

that into their adult life.

Brenda (27:49.32)

Mm -hmm. Yeah, I think just a final thought on that is even the response felt really hard to me, the appropriate response. Do you know what saying? Like, it wasn't like I was like, yay, she's gonna get help and we're gonna tell these people. And it's like even the response, I just felt myself going, because you're dealing with such a tender wound. You're having to try to apply.

Alex (27:57.025)

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Alex (28:09.079)

Right.

Brenda (28:12.234)

comfort and balm and salve and all of those things to something that's so tender and to a person who's so tender, right? And so again, I think this work that we're talking about is going to be not just tender for the person that we're working with, but we have to realize it's going to be tender for our own hearts as well.

Alex (28:19.532)

Right.

Alex (28:33.035)

Yeah, this is a great point. And oftentimes why a community like parents in this example can't sustain that type of care is because of their own untended to wins. so things that have not been tended to in them, they don't know how to tend to in someone else or we don't know how to tend to in someone else. So it really is our little plug for, you know, if you have an unresolved trauma in your own life, it is going to impact your ability to sit with others.

who are in that tender place because we will have a response to someone else's story and it will impact whether we can sit for the long haul. You know we give this example in just a few minutes but we recognize that that process even for the little girl who's cared for well, that process didn't unfold in just an hour or two. It didn't even unfold in a day or two. It unfolds over time and in a place where she can continue to revisit whatever comes

Brenda (29:24.962)

That's right.

Alex (29:33.039)

for her and if we're going to be able to do that we're going to have to tend to the trauma in our own lives. Our own wounds need to be healed so that they are not pushed on or irritated or flared up as other people enter into other people's stories.

Brenda (29:52.064)

Yeah, and throughout this podcast, we're going to be talking about what happens to the person who didn't get that kind of care as a child or as an adult who's experienced trauma. So I just want to say if you didn't receive that kind of care on the back end of a traumatic event, there is, there is still great hope, right? That God is not bound by the time.

Alex (29:57.507)

Mm

Alex (30:10.221)

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Brenda (30:15.296)

between a traumatic event and the time that we are cared for, he's just concerned about us getting cared for. So again, if that's not been your experience and you're still holding on to trauma or you're dealing with somebody who has never cared for well, then we can become the people now who care for that person well and help bring about the healing that they really need and that God really wants them to have.

Alex (30:20.759)

Mm -hmm.

Alex (30:32.44)

Mm -hmm.

Alex (30:38.615)

Mm -hmm.

Brenda (30:39.274)

So we talk about just the Bible and trauma, Alex, you you're not going to find the word trauma in the Bible. Can't go to our concordance and look up the word. But we are going to, we do have to recognize that the Bible speaks extensively about pain, suffering, oppression, brokenheartedness, and healing and wholeness. Shalom, right? And so sometimes we have to go beyond maybe the labels that we use

Alex (30:56.739)

Mm.

Alex (31:01.78)

Mm -hmm.

Brenda (31:09.248)

now to recognize that there are a lot of words and just like we've talked about trauma being a wound to being on a spectrum I think the scripture speaks to that beautifully we can see a lot of words that might express what pain and suffering look like or synonyms for pain and suffering and stories and what they look like.

Alex (31:32.983)

Yeah, so one of the things that a lot of people come into my office and say, and I'm sure they do with you too Brenda, is they'll say, well, I know that compared to what other people are experiencing in the world, this isn't a big deal. And I want to remind them really quickly that number one, comparative suffering is never going to work. It's just going to put us in a place of shame, right? We're going to feel ashamed that ours is worse or we're going to feel ashamed that ours isn't as bad. And so it's really a losing game all the way around.

Brenda (31:54.113)

Right.

Alex (32:02.061)

But the second thing is that we don't compare our trauma with other people. We don't compare our wounding with other people. Really what we need to be looking at is what God intended. What did God create us for? What are these creation longings or what we call them that he put in us? And then how were they martyred or twisted by the fall? Because that actually defines our trauma better than comparing to other people. And so one of the things we keep going

back to is that God created us in these ways in his image to reflect him and he put these longings in us and we talk a lot in Christian circles about how those longings are corrupted by sin, how they're twisted and corrupted by sin, but we don't often talk about how they are corrupted by trauma so we just kind of wanted to break down these categories and talk about what trauma does to and I think what what people will see is this is where she got her definition of trauma because it comes directly out

out of these four categories. So the first thing is that, you want to say something about that?

Brenda (33:08.02)

Yeah, I was just going to say that

I think that what I hear a lot is the minimization. There's the comparison to trauma and then that almost always creates the minimization. And it is interesting to sit with people because if your trauma, particularly childhood trauma, is your normal or even your marital trauma, somebody who's been in an abusive marriage for 30 years, then you don't even know, you don't even know what's normal anymore. And so a lot of times what I find is that, you know, it's the actual opportunity to sit with somebody who can

Alex (33:14.423)

Mm -hmm.

Alex (33:24.29)

Right.

Alex (33:32.343)

Right.

Brenda (33:40.344)

be a witness to that, to your trauma, to say that actually this is a big deal. I guess I'm just amazed at how many people I sit with who don't think their suffering has been that bad and I'm sitting there with my jaw open, right, going like, my goodness, this is way worse than I even thought you gonna say. And are you gonna use Adam and Eve as we go through this, Alex? Because I wanted to say something about that. So as we go through creation longings, I know you're gonna use Adam and Eve and I was just thinking how I think most of my Christian life I've all

Alex (33:50.539)

Right. Right.

Alex (34:01.222)

huh.

Brenda (34:10.403)

looked at Adam and Eve as just big fat sinners because they were right but I don't know that I've ever really you know stopped to think about the level of suffering that occurred in the garden when the fall happened and again it's just it's kind of this I don't know it's this

Alex (34:14.797)

Yes.

Alex (34:26.221)

Mm. Mm -hmm.

Brenda (34:34.166)

disposition I think we tend to have to really focus on sin because at our core sin is our greatest problem. We need forgiveness to be at peace with God and be made right with God. But with that peace comes also healing and wholeness from the suffering that sin creates whether it's natural suffering, whether it's from other people or whether it's even your suffering that we inflict upon ourselves. And so I just think this is a beautiful opportunity because when we did our series on sin and worship and idols we were really looking at how

desires, our desires did get corrupted and how that started in the garden. But I think here we're saying that the desires are twisted.

Alex (35:07.801)

Mm -hmm.

Alex (35:12.579)

Mm -hmm.

Brenda (35:13.786)

I think about like a knotted tree, right? Like a root system that's growing and it's twisting. I can't think of like those trees that get all twisted up as they grow. But it really does have this twisting impact on us as we move forward. So I think this is just gonna be a challenge. I hope for our listeners to be thinking, gosh, I've always thought about what happened in the garden from a sin perspective, but maybe I've never really considered what happened from a total suffering perspective.

Alex (35:20.813)

Mm -hmm.

Alex (35:42.103)

Yeah, and so before we jump in, I will say I do want us to make available, I have a chart with creation longing and the corrupting of sin and then the twisting of trauma that I think will help kind of maybe give that complete picture and to be able to see how we have focused on the sin and how we're trying to bring this into the trauma and suffering realm.

So let's jump into the four. The first one is that Adam and Eve were created for beauty and rest. We see that from the beginning, God placed them in a place of beauty and the garden was beautiful and cultivated. And he also modeled rest for them before the fall, which I think is super interesting because I rebel against rest and I don't want to do it. And yes.

Brenda (36:32.469)

You and most people I know.

Alex (36:35.263)

and yet God put them in this place of beauty and beauty is restful but also he modeled rest for them knowing that he had work for them to do and so trauma just by definition is destruction and pain and it is the opposite of beauty and rest. We see suffering, we see the twisting like everything about trauma is the opposite of the beauty that God created us for.

Brenda (37:02.646)

Well, so let's just put our imaginations on for a moment and let's just imagine we're Adam and Eve. And we have been in this beautiful garden and we have been resting in God and resting with God, right? And then all of a sudden we're on the outside of the garden. We're outside of that beauty and now work.

that was established in the garden has now become hard. So there's this, man, this has created so much suffering for them.

Alex (37:26.018)

Right.

Alex (37:32.013)

Yes. Yeah.

The second thing is agency that God put in us this ability to choose that we Adam and Eve, he gave them these choices between what he said, what he asked them to do right and wrong. And they, know from the story that we, they chose against him and that ushered in this place of deep powerlessness for them. And this is where it sticky, right? Like you said, we focus on Adam and Eve sin and we say, but it was their sin that did this. So we can't call it suffering.

But Brenda, how many people have we sat with and how have we experienced it in our own lives that does some of the worst trauma that we suffer is is brought about by our own choices. I mean experiencing the effects of our sin is very traumatic and we see it with Adam and Eve because immediately from the fall and God pronounces these curses and he pronounces these consequences on them and they cannot make the consequences

Brenda (38:15.564)

Hmm.

Brenda (38:19.244)

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Alex (38:34.516)

stop. They cannot make the emotional pain from the fall stop immediately. They're hiding and they're in shame and they can't make the physical consequences around them. We see within one generation we have their sons killing each other. They cannot stop it. And so it is an immediate domino effect into they had choice and their choice ushered in this deep sense of powerlessness.

Brenda (38:50.454)

You're right.

Alex (39:04.479)

overall that their choice was going to result in.

Brenda (39:08.972)

Yeah. Okay, well what about the next longing that we talk about, belonging and safety? How has that impacted and twisted by trauma?

Alex (39:19.893)

Yeah, we see God, you know, places them in this garden and Adam's in relationship with them and he says it's not good for man to be alone and he creates Eve and they have, he has this beautiful poem of who Eve is to him. They are each other's person and they, you know, they experience deep intimacy, not just with God, but with one another and immediately upon choosing what God has told them not to choose.

they turn on each other and they're blaming each other. And so that system, so to speak, of safety that they have around them, of intimacy and relationship and connection, all of a sudden is broken. It's broken between them and God, and it's also broken between them and each other because now they're pointing at each other, they're blaming each other. And so we see that trauma brings in this sense of abandonment and betrayal.

Like we feel betrayed by the ones who have hurt us and we feel abandoned. Sometimes that abandonment is from real wounding that people have done and sometimes it's from neglect but it's still abandonment. And then we don't share the experience of the trauma because it feels so shaming which results in further feeling of abandonment and aloneness.

Brenda (40:45.206)

You know, one of things we just see as you're talking is that there is this cycle or domino effect or kind of a spiraling down, right? Like it doesn't ever come up. It just goes down, down, down. So what about purpose? How does that play into trauma and how does trauma impact our sense of purpose? And what do we mean by that? That one of our longings is purpose.

Alex (41:11.309)

Well, one, think that, you know, immediately when God created us, He gave us a job to do.

And he told us who we are and he gave us a job to do. He told us that we are his, that we're the creature and he's the creator. And he gave us this job to do in the creation mandate, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and keep it. And so we had this identity because we knew what our relationship was with God. We knew what it was with each other. We knew what it was with our environment around us and what we were there to do. And yet we see as soon as the fall comes and that Adam and Eve

have a real sense of shame and hiding. They want to be pushed back and be away from each other so that shame alienates them from who God says that they are. And it causes what psychologists call fragmentation in the sense of that sense that we know who we are and what we're about is gone. And that fragmentation occurs in that we don't have that sense of who we are anymore. We don't have even language sometimes. Fragmentation is literally something that happens in the brain where we can't access our work.

so we don't know our own story. We don't understand and we no longer feel in relationship with one another so our relationships become fragmented. So in every way the sense of who we are and why we're here goes away as shame comes in and distorts our purposes, distorts our identity, distorts those connections in relationships and fragments or disconnects us from God, from ourselves, and from others.

Brenda (42:47.422)

I love the way you've broken this down, Alex. I think it's really, really helpful and some of this is just...

Just things that we need to chew on. I think a little bit more and I know if we had more time you could even add more to each of these longings and how they've been twisted. But maybe that would be something our listeners could post on our social media sites. Just to let us know what are some ways maybe you've seen that twisting in your own life or you've seen it as you're working with other people. So I just want to say to leave this on a note

Alex (42:57.923)

Yeah.

Brenda (43:25.698)

of hope and that is that Satan came and the wounding, that idea of wounding is to

to bring pain, to hurt, and to destroy what God has set up. But we know that right there at the beginning of the story that there's the promise of a Savior who is going to restore our creation longings. And we talk about salvation being a process that we were saved, we are being saved, we will be saved. And kind of the idea of these longings that the ones that are twisted as we are able to tell

Alex (43:35.358)

Mm

Alex (43:56.877)

Mmm.

Brenda (44:03.68)

our stories truthfully, as we are able to invite God into our story, to comfort us, as we are willing to allow other people to walk alongside us, to be witness, to actually incarnate the love of God, the compassion of Christ to us, that we can begin to see healing in the now and not yet, right? Like we can begin to see healing before we get to heaven. Now we have to say, Alex, and I know you've met some people like this too, like there are

Alex (44:25.303)

Mmm.

Brenda (44:33.59)

scars, first of all there are scars we're going to take to heaven. Jesus took the scars on his hands. But there's also, I think just we do have to realize that there are some pains that are so great that only heaven is really going to be able to heal them. And yet God can give us great comfort, he can give us great endurance, he can even give us the ability to be useful.

Alex (44:35.992)

Hmm.

Alex (44:48.291)

Hmm.

Alex (45:00.333)

Hmm.

Brenda (45:00.462)

in areas where maybe we're going to have to sit with some sadness, some lament, maybe throughout our lives. But it doesn't have to define us, it doesn't have to destroy us, it doesn't have to have the last word.

Alex (45:11.683)

you

Yeah, I'm so glad you're bringing the grand narrative in one because we have a whole season on the grand narrative on God's story.

But two, because again, when we talk about reasons to look at our trauma, like what we're really talking about is going deep in our own story of the fall, our own understanding of the fall. And it's, it's not when we skim over it, that redemption and restoration become precious to us. It's actually when we really deeply understand the wounds, the twisting, the deep effects of trauma. When we really understand that we more see our need for the savior and

Brenda (45:51.361)

Yes.

Alex (45:51.705)

we more long for the redemption that he that he purchased for us. And so again, if, if this podcast feels really heavy, go back and listen to the grand narrative podcast, right? To remind you to look up, there's a big story playing out above this story. But also what we're really talking about and understanding your own trauma is understanding your fall story. And we think that's important because you also have a great redemption story purchased by your savior who

Brenda (45:54.624)

Yes. Yes.

Brenda (46:02.648)

hahahaha

Brenda (46:07.82)

That's right.

Brenda (46:21.164)

Amen.

Alex (46:21.685)

who experienced far worse trauma than anything that we have. And he also purchased a restoration that is coming, a restoring of all things. And so there is so much hope in knowing what our trauma story is. There's so much hope in walking with others in trauma. And the grand narrative once again helps us remember that.

Brenda (46:43.724)

Mm -hmm.

I we can fall into two ditches. We can either go thimble deep on our suffering story and see deep on our sin story, or we can actually flip that. We can go thimble deep on our sin story and oceans deep on our suffering story. I don't know if I got that right or said that right, but you know what mean. But we need to realize both are so important for our understanding of who God is and actually falling more.

Alex (46:50.771)

Mm -hmm. Yes.

Alex (47:03.029)

Yeah. Yeah.

Alex (47:11.928)

Mm -hmm.

Brenda (47:14.666)

love with Him and understanding His incredible care and love for us. And that's what's going to motivate us toward change is when again we begin to understand and see who God really is and how this God cares so deeply that He would send His Son Jesus to die for our sin and also to die so we could be truly comforted in our suffering and ultimately that our suffering would be swallowed up into an ultimate victory one day. So I want to

Alex (47:20.11)

Mm -hmm.

Alex (47:42.969)

Mm -hmm.

Brenda (47:45.057)

our time today, Alex, with a quote by Diane Langeberg from Suffering in the Heart of God. And again, I just would commend this book to our listeners and anything that she does is fantastic. But here's what she says. The church's greatest mission field in the 21st century is trauma. We must become representatives of God to suffering people.

People who are suffering long for help and comfort. It is an open door for the church to bend down, like her Lord bent down for us, and enter into the great traumas of this world with real help and companionship and comfort.

Alex (48:24.856)

Yes, beautiful. Nobody says it better than Diane Langberg when it comes to articulating trauma and the scriptures together. So Brenda, where we're going in the rest of the season is we're gonna look at different types of trauma. We're gonna look at the impact of trauma. And then we're gonna look at a little kind of a trauma model that I've been using in counseling that more and more.

Brenda (48:30.041)

That's right.

Alex (48:52.525)

just becomes the way that I think about how do I walk with others in trauma and how do I understand my own trauma. So I think it'll do both. So I hope that even though this is a heavy topic, our listeners will stay with us and realize the great benefit and reward that comes out of understanding trauma.