I signed up for a workshop on healing the wounds of trauma thinking it would be a helpful tool to share with the widows that we work with, and it was. I didn’t realize how much the workshop would help heal my own emotional wounds. It had been over two years and I was still having vivid dreams. It had been over two years and I could still barely speak about it without tears. I’d moved countries, changed ministries, gotten married, had a baby—and still, the pain lingered, festering under the surface, unhealed and untended.
When I left my passport country to volunteer at a children’s home in Kenya, I told myself I would not be one of those people who waltzed into the kids’ lives and then left. I was in it for the long run. I wanted to be that stable presence they could count on after facing so much instability in their short lives. And yet, just nine months in, I found myself packing within the space of a day and saying goodbye to kids I had learned to love as if they were my own. Due to difficulty with the leadership who started the home, the team I was serving with made the incredibly hard decision to leave. It was traumatic, to say the least, and for months I felt so much numbness mixed with so much pain.
Somehow I boarded a plane “home”. I remember just over a month later sitting in a Mother’s Day service at church where all the moms were asked to stand. A friend, who had been like a mentor to me in college, leaned over and told me I should stand—didn’t I just return from helping raise 19 children? I stayed frozen in my seat. What kind of mother allows her children to be taken away from her? I thought. Not a very good mother.
The presenter of the Healing from Trauma workshop caught my full attention as she talked about the differences and similarities between physical wounds and “heart” or emotional wounds. A physical wound is often visible, but while a heart wound is not, it shows up in a person’s behavior. Both are painful and must be treated. Physical and emotional wounds both get worse if they are not treated. If a physical wound heals on the surface with the infection still inside, it will cause the person to become very sick. With an emotional wound, if someone pretends they are healed when they are not, it will cause the person greater problems. Untreated physical wounds can attract flies. Untreated emotional wounds can attract sin. Both take time to heal.
We spent the week writing personal laments. We wrote an honest letter of forgiveness to someone who had caused us hurt during a time when we had faced trauma. Many chose to physically burn those letters during the final session as a way of letting go of past pain. We drew pictures to help us process and shared in small groups as a way to further heal. I thought I was taking that workshop to help others, but it turned out to be a loving gift from the One who can heal all wounds bringing healing to my hurting heart. The vivid dreams where I would be with my kids from the home one minute, just to have the founder of the home come and suddenly take them away from me, stopped. I could talk more openly about what had happened. There was still hurt, but especially after writing and burning that letter, there was so much emotional healing.
As I have continued in this cross-cultural journey, I have heard many stories similar to my own where dreams were shattered, hearts that came with such good intentions were left broken, doors that were once open suddenly closed. Often, there is trauma when that happens. If this mirrors your story in some way, I pray you will take time to process, to lament, to set your broken heart in the hands of the one who longs to gently bind it as only he can. There will be scars, and that’s ok. Scars show that you lived, you loved, you recovered, and you came back stronger and yet more tender all at the same time.
Have you faced trauma or heartbreak in the midst of your cross-cultural life? How has the One who heals the brokenhearted met you in that tender place?
