Positive Faith in Scripture: A God Who Comforts

“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more. There will be no mourning, crying, or pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

Revelation 21:4, CEB

God’s goal, his plan, in fact, is to move creation to a place where there will be no death, no pain. There will be no more need for sadness because creation itself will perfectly embody his compassion, patience, mercy, and love.

And, even so, he will wipe away the tears from the sadness that has come before. Because he is a comforter.

There will one day be a time where no future comfort is needed- but we all have pasts- and he is here for us, to heal us.

Big T, Little t

We regularly talk about trauma in our community. We define it as either Big T trauma (a one-time cataclysmic event) or Little T trauma (think of it as the steady drip drip drip of being in a non-nurturing environment). These two kinds of trauma make it hard for some of us to recognize that we are experiencing the consequences of living with untreated trauma.

Do you wonder if you might be feeling the effects of trauma? One symptom is feeling different from others. Traumatic experiences (big or little) typically feel surreal. We are likely to minimize or excuse them - especially the Little T traumas. The type of trauma can dictate how an individual feels different or believes that they are different from others. Traumas that generate shame will often leave survivors feeling alienated from others. Feeling bad or fearing that they might behave badly, trauma survivors makes it even more unlikely that they will seek support and healing.

This sneaky trauma response might leave us more brittle and judgmental, or too pliable and people pleasing. Here's my point: it's not enough to just try to behave perfectly or believe flawlessly or better ourselves. We need to give ourselves permission to open up our lens of compassionate self-awareness. Get more curious! Explore the ways our behavior might be more about symptoms than character or competence.

This exploration has been tremendously healing for me; I hope you will consider the possibility that life could get better but the return to joy may require taking the road less traveled.

Make Life Less Hard

I am totally opposed to this belief that we should celebrate doing hard things as if hard things are awesome gifts. Hard things are stressful and can be traumatic. This is why my blood pressure goes up when somebody posts on Facebook, "Hey, I think kids who got spanked turned out better than those who were put in time out." This is utter bullshit - pardon my language. This kind of misinformation drives me nuts! Do you know how many grown ups slink into my office and recount the trauma and humiliation associated with being parented by an adult who took out their rage on a little kid and called in discipline? Again, I've said this before, do you notice how many high functioning adults we have dependent on alcohol to get through their day? Is anyone else curious as to the high rate of addiction and mental health disorders? Where do we think these problems originate? Trauma. Genetics. Deprivation - a belief that the world is not a place that cares or supports us when we are struggling.

However, I am thrilled with this concept that when faced with hard things, we will be less stressed and perhaps less traumatized if we recognize that life is hard. We are not being picked on, life is not treating us unfairly, we are not more stupid or especially cursed. We are living life. Life is hard.

Given that, I am on a personal mission to try to NOT make life harder than it has to be for myself or others. This requires me to learn and grow and accept responsibility for my life - every little piece of it. It requires us to go out and find the support we need heal and grow SO THAT we learn what support looks like - and we can support others as we have been supported.

The goal is not to make life easy; the work is to figure out how to mitigate the damage caused when life is hard and we do not have the resources we need to survive and eventually thrive as a result of what we are learning.

Today, try not to make life harder for yourself or those you love. Life is hard enough without us making it harder.

Attend to Yourself!

For a month’s worth of posts, I (Scott) am critiquing my own past blog posts. I’m viewing this as an experiment in being willing to admit when I’m wrong, change my mind, and to do so publicly.

Read the past few days before reading today.

If the son is not attentive to himself, and has done very little work, then a question from his partner about cleanliness will likely lead to an explosive reaction.  Overtime he's learned to associate his mother's standard of cleanliness (which he later attaches to any conversation about cleanliness) with a deep internal sense that he has no value, that he's a burden on others, that he is a failure, that he's inherently damaged, that he's completely misunderstood, or some other core message.  In this case, an innocuous question (from the partner's perspective) can lead very quickly to a conversation about whether or not this relationship is even worth continuing.  

Triggers don't mean that a person is weak or stupid or overly sensitive.  Triggers are merely things that remind us of our baggage.  If we've dealt with our baggage, triggers are not necessarily overly disruptive.  If we haven't deal with our baggage, they wreak havoc.  

We require attentiveness in order to discern what kinds of conversations or events create unnecessarily large reactions within us.  If we're able to recognize these reactions when they happen, then we can begin to parse out the root of these reactions.  

This is the beginning of learning to choose new and different responses. 

2021 Scott enters the ring to destroy the writing of 2017 Scott, and here’s his response:

I don’t have a tremendous amount of new things to say in response to these few days that I haven’t already said. I will continue to say that it’s a complex web of factors that leads to our healing. Some of it is attentiveness to ourselves and our patterns. Some of it is healing relationships. It might take counseling or support groups. It might take new hobbies. It might mean slowing down. It might mean a career path. Whatever the case may be, it’s worth asking ourselves: Am I living a life that I am excited about? If not, what is in my power to change that I believe might help?

Accepting Acceptance

For a month’s worth of posts, I (Scott) am critiquing my own past blog posts. I’m viewing this as an experiment in being willing to admit when I’m wrong, change my mind, and to do so publicly.

I suppose the most pressing question we have after the first 15 days is:  How do we stop trying to regain control in such destructive ways?

I am, obviously, not an expert.  I can only pass on some things I've been taught but haven't yet learned.  

The first step is always going to be finding ways to process and accept the various challenges life throws our way.  When we set things to the side and assume that time heals all wounds we will only find that time numbs pain, but it doesn't truly heal.  

Consequently, we need a support system for difficult times.  We need a support system that consists of multiple people.  For me and Brittany, the past two years have shown us that we need more support than we can find solely in the context of our marriage.  It's too much pressure on one person to be the sole source of support for another person.  Humans are not meant to function that way and, if they do, they are severely isolated.  We may convince ourselves we're not isolating because we have our spouse, or that best friend, or whoever, but we need more than that.  

If the wounds are large enough and deep enough we may need a skilled therapist.  If our wounds are spiritual in nature we may need to dialogue with (safe) pastor, priest, bishop, or whoever.  Sometimes friends and community are enough and sometimes we need specialists.  The point is, an isolated existence will not support our efforts to release control.  

Scott with grey hair’s (2021 Scott) critique of Scott without grey hair: 

I don’t think I talked enough about acceptance. Acceptance is such a key part of life. Let’s be clear- acceptance does not mean learning to enjoy, or even appreciate, hardship- it means learning to live with it. Learning to tolerate it. Learning to live with the fact that there are things that happen to us that we wish didn’t happen but that we also cannot change. 

What is it you struggle to accept? Do you think you could learn to tolerate it?