When my brain came alive.

My counselor told me at one of our very first appointments, "trauma is what makes your brain come alive."

It made absolute sense to me.

My first memories aren't ones of sweetness or happiness. My first memory is of pain. Of abandonment. Of abuse.

But it's a weird thing - trauma. You see, oftentimes, trauma happens and then is never spoken of again. But it is thought of...all the time. And when you're a young girl, your brain goes back to those memories over and over again.

Vivid details are still there, but wait...did that happen or did that happen?

And instead of processing or discussing out loud with someone, you try your hardest to remember. You try to fit all the pieces of the puzzle together, but you're not really sure what the puzzle picture is actually supposed to look like...

Things I remember: 
I remember a pop up tent on top of my bed. I remember a beer can. I remember Barbie dolls. And chairs being pushed around. And blue lights. A screened door. Was it my birthday? Maybe?

I would think of that night over and over again as a young girl.
WHAT HAPPENED? 
Some things are too deep, too dark for a little girl.

Ping.  
And my brain came alive. 

From then on, that faint memory would follow me for the rest of my life.
Something bad would happen...PING. I could remember every detail. My brain was ready - ready for the next attack.

My brain and me, we would know what to do the next time.

And what followed were years of ping.ping.ping.
I couldn't let any of the trauma go.
I couldn't process it.
I couldn't move on.

It just stayed there, ready to pop open at any moment's notice.
And this is how I lived my life until I was nearly 30 years old.

I'll never forget the moment a bottle of red nail polish broke on a hotel bathroom floor in Tybee Island, Georgia.
It looked like there was blood everywhere. 

And right then and there, I broke like that bottle.

I spilled out onto the floor of that hotel bathroom. Every traumatic memory was ready. It was like they had been waiting for that moment for my entire life. It was the first time in my life I couldn't control anything that was coming out of my mouth or my body. My mom and my little toddler Annie Lou stood there, watching me...not sure what to do or how to help.

I have little recollection of what happened next. It's a blur, but something shifted after that day. No longer would those traumatic memories sit below the surface, hidden out of sight.

Oh no, now they were exposed, ready to be seen AND heard.

A spill happens at the breakfast table. A bottle of water pours out. A stack of toys fall. Something goes wrong. My Annie Lou trips and falls.

And there I am again. Broken, pouring out with no way of stopping or slowing it down.

Until I speak of these occurrences with my counselor, they happen almost daily. We talk about a processing exercise called EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing), and there is hope. I have gone through countless EMDR exercises to process some of the most traumatic moments in my life.

And it's not easy. In my own experience(s), in order for me to receive the healing, I had to feel it all again. The hurt. The pain. The unknown. Feel it all. 

And then put it away.

My brain (and my heart) had to learn to LET IT GO. 
I'm still working on the heart part.

I am unsure why I feel lead to share all of this, but I know that this was a stronghold in my life for a long, long time. The enemy used these experiences to keep me in the past -- and however in the world could I move forward if I have one foot in the past?

I'll tell you the answer: I didn't move forward.
I let those experiences build walls around my heart. I let those experiences tell me lies. I let those experiences keep me from experiencing true freedom that can only be found in Jesus Christ.

Now when I think about that red bottle of nail polish breaking, I think about Jesus. I think about how He is with me always. I think about how He was with me in that little pop up tent on my bed. I think about how He held my hand as I watched my dad be taken away in a police car. I think about how He sat with me in a small office with my counselor as I walked through those valleys again. I think about how He took those memories...the trauma, and He PUT IT AWAY.

It wasn't me. It wasn't some fancy therapy.
It was Jesus. 

Life is full of hurt, disappointment, anger, trauma...and if we are not careful, our life will be one marked by and lived in hurt, disappointment, anger and trauma. It takes work to leave the past in the past. But this is a life worth living in the moment of TODAY, not in the troubles of yesterday. Take that messy slate, full of marks and let him wipe it clean. Wake up tomorrow, live in just that day, and then do it all over again. 

 

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” 

Philippians 4:6-7

 all my best and many blessings,
Lena

*I am in no way an expert on trauma - this is just a re-telling of my own story.