Triggered: God, Trauma, and the Healing that Comes with It

I have been challenging myself to completely trust God. However, I can't help but feel a pull keeping me from total trust. The other day, I thought, “What is this piece of me not willing to just give God everything?” And then I had an aha moment. My trust issues are NOT with God, it’s from my experiences with people.

Can you relate? I think it's safe to say that we all have had trust issues at some point. If not with other people, maybe with ourselves? In this blog post, I want to tackle the root of our trust issues so that it stops interfering with our relationship with God.

Sooo let’s dive in...

Picture this. Me and you are meeting at Starbucks. I am pulling up a chair so that we can have a heart to heart. I get right down to business and ask you, "What are your trust issues? Where was the trust broken in your life?"

Maybe you have a parent that was just not there physically. Or maybe both of your parents were there physically but they weren't emotionally present. So fast forward to present day--you project those same feelings onto God. You fear that God won’t always be there for you. And so when you do something wrong, you think he's abandoned you so you pull away. You may have even ran away because you just know God is mad at you.

Maybe you had a close friend or family member who always made empty promises to you. You got your hopes up only to be disappointed time and time again so you stopped trusting people. And now, you feel like God will be the same way. He just can’t be a man of His word.

Or Maybe you were in an abusive relationship where the person that you loved took advantage of you. You felt used because they only wanted to “take” your sex, power, and anything else. They never gave you anything in return so now you feel empty. Fast forward to now, you side-eye God because what he has to offer seems too good to be true. His love HAS to have strings attached.

It’s like I can hear your disappointment, pain, and frustration through the page. Your trust and love has been tried, misused, abused, and maybe even broken so many times that you are afraid to get close to God. So you shut Him out. You’re afraid that because of past issues with people, God will be the same way. You may even blame Him for what happened to you.

First sis, let me say that I want to acknowledge the past trauma in your life. I am not here to tell you to get over it. There’s things you have probably been through that I cannot even imagine. I am not here to speak on how you should feel. I am simply speaking to the person who recognizes that her physical, emotional, or even spiritual trauma is getting in the way of her personal relationship with God. But you want things to change. It’s a real thing and I know it takes time to heal so I want to be sensitive to that.

I am on my own healing journey so I respectfully want to share this statement with you—God is not like us humans. It sounds simple but this fact changes the game. It is a simple statement that changes EVERYTHING. I am still learning how to not project what someone did in my life onto who God is and his character. I’ve had to learn to separate the two and that’s my main goal of this post.

Like I mentioned earlier, I don’t want to ignore your pain or trauma. Your feelings are so real. I think the biggest hurdle is that when we find ourselves in traumatic situations, we place blame on God. I’ve been guilty of this.

Sometimes, situations are consequences of our decisions. Other times, we had no part to play. We feel that since the heartache was NOT our fault, God should have prevented it from even happening. Sis, I’m not going to even pretend to get into the mind of God because that is impossible. I don’t know why you went through what you went through. Here me when I say this---God doesn’t need to create pain as a tool to teach us a lesson. He will use our pain. You may be thinking, “Okay, I know God didn’t cause my pain. I hear you saying he used my pain but why did he not stop it instead?” I guess to answer this, I will say that first and foremost, God gives us free will. This means we ALL have choices to make. And some of the people in our lives made horrible, painful, or even dangerous choices.

You may say, okay then why wouldn’t God stop those choices before (insert name of person who hurt you) made a decision that hurt me to my core? I can’t say for sure but I will say this—”Love that comes from free will is true love. Love isn’t genuine if there is no other option.” Think about it. If God stopped us all from making choices, we couldn’t choose Him in the first place. I heard this perspective, “It’s a love story between God and us.” Also, if God did not give us a choice, we would be robots with no mind of our own. He chose to create us even knowing we would make a few less-than-smart decisions. He factored it all in.

I want to use this blog post to share something that has helped me to separate God from people who have hurt me. I want you to pause for a moment, close your eyes, and think about that person or situation from your past or maybe even your present that is standing in the way of you fully embracing a relationship with God. Acknowledge the pain of the situation. Talk it out. Tell God what the deal is. He wants to hear how you feel straight from your mouth because He won't heal what we don’t reveal. Tell Him how much it still hurts you. This piece of your conversation with God will be a journey. God will walk you through the process of forgiveness and healing. It will be a continuous convo with you and God to get you to the other side of healing.

Here are some of the differences between that person who hurt you and God.

1. God loves unconditionally. We tend to love with conditions. If the person does not earn or even deserve our love, we withhold it. God isn’t like that. I think that deep down, we desire to be loved unconditionally but we can’t always do that for each other. God has that type of love for us.

2. God is forgiving. Some of us hold grudges because we feel that person does not deserve an apology. Let's be real--some people do us dirty. God forgives us immediately and he doesn’t punish us for our mistakes. That's love. Love keeps no record of wrong.

3. God is patient. We try to change people by dropping hints or maybe even telling them directly that they need to change. If we don’t see progress in a short time, we get mad and sometimes walk away from the person. But God works with us for the rest of our lives so that we can become better versions of ourselves. My grandma always said, “Don’t fall in love with potential.” Well, that’s what God is all about. He has a plan for us. Do you know how much patience and time it takes for us to grow into the person that will walk out that plan? Years! But God is not in a rush. Most of the rush we feel is internal.

4. God accepts us without ulterior motives. Sometimes, a piece of us "gives to get". God isn't like this. Think about it. If anything, we owe God but yet there’s nothing we could do to repay Him. That’s how pure his motives are.

5. God doesn’t change. We have friendships and relationships that grow cold and distant because we aren’t the same people when we first met the person. But with God, we continuously evolve while he never changes. And yet, he sticks around with us. Mood swings and all lol!

6. God stays. -- I think deep down, we all have a fear of abandonment or not being loved properly. We’ve had people walk away when things got difficult. Maybe they couldn’t handle you and all that comes with you. It’s innate to want to feel loved because we were created to love. No matter what, God will always be there. I love to say this phrase the most—-“God, thank you for being my constant.” I joke that if I didn’t have God, I think I would literally be crazy. I joke but I’m dead serious. My emotions run up and down and life is filled with highs and lows. Having God steadies me and gives me this stable peace in my life. How much easier is it to know when life gets out of control, there is ALWAYS someone in control?!

So I hope this post broke it down to where you’re at least open to healing from your trauma so that you can get to know God if you already haven’t! If you already have a relationship with God, let’s go deeper! There’s levels to our trust in God. I want you to be patient with yourself. Even knowing all of this, I sometimes still find myself treating God like everyone else. To bring this post full circle, I believe this is why I’ve had trouble completely trusting Him. I've let my past and fear get in the way of my faith. No more. I’m getting it together and I believe you will too sis! Let your past trauma lead you to a deeper connection with God. I’ll leave you with this--God is different so whenever life happens and people try you, remember this. He is not like us.

Side note: if you’re having difficulty dealing with your past trauma, don’t be afraid to talk it out with a trusted friend, counselor, therapist, or pastor in addition to bringing it to God in prayer. Prayer works and sometimes that answered prayer is through one of those avenues!