Look For the Marks of Healing

Real talk here: overseas work and trauma often go hand-in-hand.

It’s not always big “T” trauma, like a major life event, but it can be. More often than not, however, in the life of almost every global worker, it’s those little “t” traumas that stack up until life feels overwhelming and unbearable.

I know firsthand how this goes. My first three years on the field were filled with trauma, both little “t” and big “T”. Numerous minor traffic accidents. More cases of food poisoning than I can count. Missing birthdays and major life events with family in our passport country. Flub-ups with language. Visa stress. Border stress. But also . . . my son getting malaria at a year old. Witnessing a death in a traffic accident. Scary cultural interactions we were unsure how to navigate. Mourning the death of my grandfather. Witnessing a horrible crime against a woman and not being able to stop it. Grieving with a colleague who mourned the unexpected loss of his teenage son. My son passing out from crying in the middle of a flight. There were little traumas, and there were big traumas. 

We all face these things. I don’t say this to diminish my own experience or yours—it’s really just the truth of this overseas life. The difference comes with what we do with these traumas.

For me, I held them all close inside and let them slowly destroy me. 

So many parts of my day held triggers that it became hard to leave my home.

It was like a tower that threatened to topple at any moment—and sometimes, it did. 

Maybe you feel this, too?

When we find ourselves in places like this, the question becomes: “Can I heal from this? What would the path to healing look like?“ 

I came across Lauren Wells’s book The Grief Tower a few years ago, and I think it holds many of the answers. Meant as a book for TCKs (third culture kids), the research and messaging are honestly applicable for any global worker of any age (and really, for any person, anywhere). The idea of Wells’s book is that our traumas and grief stack up to make a tower, much like how I described my own life. Unless, that is, we take the time to unstack the tower, face the traumas and process them, and lay them down, apart from the stack. The book is full of ideas for unstacking the tower both for you and your kids. I highly recommend it! 

For me, unstacking looked a lot of different ways. It looked like a lot of therapy—I can’t recommend this enough. It looked like taking intentional rest and even time away from the triggering things so that I could deal with them without being consumed by them. It looked like changing some of my circumstances so my brain and body could truly heal. 

Healing is a tricky thing to quantify though, isn’t it? There’s a supernatural element to any kind of healing which means we both struggle to define the healing and struggle to create it of our own accord. 

So, as I’ve unstacked my trauma and the tower has gotten smaller, healing has often looked like not adding trauma to the stack by processing it first. It has looked like naming things as they happen and knowing how to navigate them with more grace for myself. It has looked like practicing radical self-care in the face of ministry duties. 

It’s also been a discipline to look for the marks of healing in my life. Noticing how I can drive through an intersection without having flashbacks to the face of a dead man on the sidewalk. Recognizing how I can take a whole flight without thinking once of my passed-out son. Naming the way I can cuddle my child through a headache without automatically freaking out that they have malaria. Being able to let my kids hold my phone in the backseat of the car without worrying that someone might reach in and rip it from their hands. (Okay, I still worry about that one!)

Just as trauma sneaks up on us, sometimes healing can sneak up on us too. As we continue to trust the Lord, follow him in obedience, and bring our grief to him (and sometimes professionals!), he brings the supernatural, sometimes subtle yet profound healing our hearts and bodies need to keep doing his work.

Take some time today and consider: where is there grief and trauma that you need to unstack? Where can you see the marks of healing from past trauma in your life today?