Dr Paul Allen

Trauma is a certain  kind  of suffering — the kind that overwhelms one’s ability to cope. A whole class of wounds that cripple. A wound that buries itself deep in our consciousness. A tragedy too heavy for us. It happens in the past, but asserts itself over and over in the present. Sex, too early. Death, sudden. Violence, familiar. Betrayal, intimate. Neglect, prolonged. Violation, normalized. Abuse, excused. Pain, pervasive. The trauma of combat and the trauma of abuse have similarities, but are not the same. We are focusing here on trauma related to abuse which, despite often happening so close to home, requires wartime metaphors to make sense of the tumult in our minds and hearts. How do we faithfully navigate the overwhelming wounds and unpredictable triggers as believers? Trauma for Christians Some Christians have been trained to think that proper believers will not continue to experience traumatic symptoms for the rest of their lives because of Christ ’s libera

Image via Wikipedia The number of our military personnel returning from Iraq and Afghanistan who are suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder  (PTSD) or Traumatic Brain Injury is larger than what the resources provided to the military medical departments or Veterans Affairs Treatment and Hospital Centers can accommodate. By 2008, the number of military personnel who served in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in treatment for PTSD was 67,717. The number of those not seeking or not accepted for treatment in military or VA facilities is thought to be many times higher. Most of the troops serving in these wars are from the Reserves or National Guard . These personnel do not return to military bases but return to communities, like yours, in the civilian sector, where there are few with a knowledge of what they have experienced, nor are there enough facilities to treat them. The incidence of PTSD is compounded by a high suicide rate in the military, which is now about twice the nati