Trauma doesn't always come by way of a fist or seeing a mangled body. Words, attitudes, and actions can inflict wounding. Broken promises and a broken heart can induce trauma in the trusting soul. During trauma, parts of our brain shut down to protect us. We say to ourselves; this isn’t right. My soul feels violated by this.
My way of handling emotional trauma was to deal with it myself. I didn't invest in long-term counseling. I didn't have close friends to talk to. I'm an introvert—a loner. And that’s the trait Randy hated about me. I was no fun. And so reaching out for help was hard.
Once I married Mark, I didn't talk about my deepest feelings. I had tucked the memories away. But years later, the trauma shook my core like an about-to-explode bomb demanding to be decommissioned.
What resulted were physical symptoms. Anxiety. And so, I went for therapy at last, as a much older woman, the memories still on the surface to be told.
And my therapist helped me work through them.
Then, during the COVID-19 pandemic, I decided to write my story.
It was a way of shedding my old wineskin (renewing my thinking) to prepare myself to move forward in a new wineskin. Find my story here.
Matthew 9:16, 17
The Patches and the Wineskins
"No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. For the patch will pull away from the garment, and a worse tear will result. Neither do men pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst, the wine will spill, and the wineskins will be ruined. Instead, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved."
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