Helping Each Other Heal
Sep 14, 2018 01:24:51 #
09/14/2018 Helping Each Other Heal (Part 1)
By Fr. Thomas Berg
Flight attendants always tell you to adjust your own oxygen mask before assisting others.
At the beginning of a personal and devastating crisis.
I had spent hours reaching out to others who had also been affected — phone calls, e-mails, counseling, trying to comfort and shed light.
At night, there was only fitful sleep at best.
I was really struggling emotionally and was fearful of what was happening to me.
After a few days, it became very clear that I had no choice but to switch focus and do something to take care of myself.
I had to adjust my own oxygen mask, and do it fast.
I just didn’t know exactly what to do.
Fortunately, I had a friend who did.
Accepting Help
Sensing that I was emotionally shattered, she reached out and offered to fly me down to Louisiana for a week or two and have me hunker down at her parents’ house where I could decompress, recover some strength, and begin to process what had just happened to me.
Although I could have come up with any number of excuses to turn down the offer, her gesture was so overflowing with understanding, love, and compassion.
And my own mental state so worrisome — that I immediately accepted.
I cannot insist enough how crucial that step was: to accept an offer of help. That step was life-altering and marked the beginning of my healing process.
As it turns out, my friend and her family were Hurricane Katrina survivors.
Little did I know that Nell and Guy — my friend’s parents — would quickly become not only fast friends, but also my first mentors in how to deal with emotional trauma.
And they knew a lot about dealing with emotional trauma.
Over the days, soothed and comforted by their incomparable Louisiana hospitality — and their out-of-this-world Cajun-Sicilian home cooking — I shared my story with them.
And then, in the days that followed, they began to share with me, little by little, their story — a story of survival.
Not quite four years had passed since the tragic days of late August 2005, and talking about Katrina easily reopened wounds.
If they were talking about it, they were telling me their story for me — for my sake.
In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
The most destructive storm in U.S. history — the media focused heavily on New Orleans. But many other communities were equally as devastated as the Big Easy.
Slidell — home to Guy and Nell — was one such community. Located approximately thirty-four miles northeast of New Orleans, Slidell is nestled on the north shore of massive Lake Pontchartrain.
Though technically not a lake, but an estuary connected to the Gulf of Mexico, Pontchartrain is a 630-square-mile oval expanse of water with an average depth of twelve to fourteen feet.
It was this enormous body of water that eventually wreaked much of the havoc endured by the communities of southern Louisiana.
Multiple storm surges off the lake left a trail of devastation in their path.
Guy and Nell had raised their family in a moderately affluent canalled waterfront neighborhood.
While their home of twenty-plus years was not obliterated by Katrina, it was severely damaged by the driving winds, storm surge, and eventual deposit of four feet of water, silt, sludge, and debris.
If they wanted to keep their home, they would have to gut it down to a shell and rebuild.
Their choice to remain and rebuild was a critical turning point, but it came at a heavy cost.
To the unspeakable heartbreak of losing home, furniture, valuables, mementos, pictures, keepsakes — so many of the heart’s treasures — was added the nightmare of enduring the rebuilding effort:
The herculean task of clearing, cleaning and gutting the house that lay before them, the lack of bare necessities, the waiting in line, the phone calls and being put on hold, the dysfunctionality of government agencies utterly unprepared to handle the devastation,
The waiting for federal assistance, the constant uncertainty, the frustration and gut-wrenching sadness that gnawed away at them continually day after day.
Over time, they, like many Katrina survivors, developed symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
And, not surprisingly, it seems this is how the human psyche responds when we’ve lost so much, when our entire life has been turned upside down in a single day.
I will always remember one afternoon in the car with Guy, as we were again sharing about their survival and my own recent personal catastrophe.
He gently helped me to understand that what I had been through was like “a spiritual Katrina.”
And while in many ways I felt uncomfortable drawing such a close comparison between my suffering and theirs.
Which seemed to me in so many ways incomparably worse — Guy and Nell insisted that the analogy fit, and as I listened to them I began to get a sense of how I could recover — just as they had.
Their approach to healing was somewhat hit or miss.
They recounted how they reached out to friends and neighbors who were also rebuilding and formed a kind of support group.
They reminisced how, every day, neighbors deliberately tried to share some piece of good news with one another — anything positive to keep spirits up.
One neighbor’s breakthrough or success heartened everyone else.
The venting of tensions and pent-up emotions was also vital.
Of course, faith was the heart of it all. Guy and Nell are deeply committed Catholics.
When I asked Guy once to articulate what it took — on the human level — to stay, rebuild, and begin again, he spoke of three things.
He spoke of hope: the unshakeable conviction that they were going to get through this.
He also spoke of acceptance.
Not unlike that pivotal milestone in the stages of grief, this meant getting to that place where he and Nell could accept that certain things were now gone, and gone forever, while at the same time acknowledging the new reality and taking hold of it.
And while in many ways I felt uncomfortable drawing such a close comparison between my suffering and theirs.
Which seemed to me in so many ways incomparably worse.
Guy and Nell insisted that the analogy fit, and as I listened to them I began to get a sense of how I could recover — just as they had.
But Guy also spoke — after a long pause to try to articulate precisely what he meant — of what he called “conditioning.”
By this he meant the gradual awareness, as they strove day in and day out to put one foot in front of the other, that God had been preparing them throughout their lives for this moment.
“He knows what’s coming, even though we do not,” he told me.
“And God enables you … to just get it together.”
That’s a good metaphor for the healing process: God enables you to “get it together” again.
But if healing is a process of getting whole again, then other human beings — with whom we dare to be vulnerable and share our pain — are the glue.
(End Part 1)
By Fr. Thomas Berg
Flight attendants always tell you to adjust your own oxygen mask before assisting others.
At the beginning of a personal and devastating crisis.
I had spent hours reaching out to others who had also been affected — phone calls, e-mails, counseling, trying to comfort and shed light.
At night, there was only fitful sleep at best.
I was really struggling emotionally and was fearful of what was happening to me.
After a few days, it became very clear that I had no choice but to switch focus and do something to take care of myself.
I had to adjust my own oxygen mask, and do it fast.
I just didn’t know exactly what to do.
Fortunately, I had a friend who did.
Accepting Help
Sensing that I was emotionally shattered, she reached out and offered to fly me down to Louisiana for a week or two and have me hunker down at her parents’ house where I could decompress, recover some strength, and begin to process what had just happened to me.
Although I could have come up with any number of excuses to turn down the offer, her gesture was so overflowing with understanding, love, and compassion.
And my own mental state so worrisome — that I immediately accepted.
I cannot insist enough how crucial that step was: to accept an offer of help. That step was life-altering and marked the beginning of my healing process.
As it turns out, my friend and her family were Hurricane Katrina survivors.
Little did I know that Nell and Guy — my friend’s parents — would quickly become not only fast friends, but also my first mentors in how to deal with emotional trauma.
And they knew a lot about dealing with emotional trauma.
Over the days, soothed and comforted by their incomparable Louisiana hospitality — and their out-of-this-world Cajun-Sicilian home cooking — I shared my story with them.
And then, in the days that followed, they began to share with me, little by little, their story — a story of survival.
Not quite four years had passed since the tragic days of late August 2005, and talking about Katrina easily reopened wounds.
If they were talking about it, they were telling me their story for me — for my sake.
In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
The most destructive storm in U.S. history — the media focused heavily on New Orleans. But many other communities were equally as devastated as the Big Easy.
Slidell — home to Guy and Nell — was one such community. Located approximately thirty-four miles northeast of New Orleans, Slidell is nestled on the north shore of massive Lake Pontchartrain.
Though technically not a lake, but an estuary connected to the Gulf of Mexico, Pontchartrain is a 630-square-mile oval expanse of water with an average depth of twelve to fourteen feet.
It was this enormous body of water that eventually wreaked much of the havoc endured by the communities of southern Louisiana.
Multiple storm surges off the lake left a trail of devastation in their path.
Guy and Nell had raised their family in a moderately affluent canalled waterfront neighborhood.
While their home of twenty-plus years was not obliterated by Katrina, it was severely damaged by the driving winds, storm surge, and eventual deposit of four feet of water, silt, sludge, and debris.
If they wanted to keep their home, they would have to gut it down to a shell and rebuild.
Their choice to remain and rebuild was a critical turning point, but it came at a heavy cost.
To the unspeakable heartbreak of losing home, furniture, valuables, mementos, pictures, keepsakes — so many of the heart’s treasures — was added the nightmare of enduring the rebuilding effort:
The herculean task of clearing, cleaning and gutting the house that lay before them, the lack of bare necessities, the waiting in line, the phone calls and being put on hold, the dysfunctionality of government agencies utterly unprepared to handle the devastation,
The waiting for federal assistance, the constant uncertainty, the frustration and gut-wrenching sadness that gnawed away at them continually day after day.
Over time, they, like many Katrina survivors, developed symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
And, not surprisingly, it seems this is how the human psyche responds when we’ve lost so much, when our entire life has been turned upside down in a single day.
I will always remember one afternoon in the car with Guy, as we were again sharing about their survival and my own recent personal catastrophe.
He gently helped me to understand that what I had been through was like “a spiritual Katrina.”
And while in many ways I felt uncomfortable drawing such a close comparison between my suffering and theirs.
Which seemed to me in so many ways incomparably worse — Guy and Nell insisted that the analogy fit, and as I listened to them I began to get a sense of how I could recover — just as they had.
Their approach to healing was somewhat hit or miss.
They recounted how they reached out to friends and neighbors who were also rebuilding and formed a kind of support group.
They reminisced how, every day, neighbors deliberately tried to share some piece of good news with one another — anything positive to keep spirits up.
One neighbor’s breakthrough or success heartened everyone else.
The venting of tensions and pent-up emotions was also vital.
Of course, faith was the heart of it all. Guy and Nell are deeply committed Catholics.
When I asked Guy once to articulate what it took — on the human level — to stay, rebuild, and begin again, he spoke of three things.
He spoke of hope: the unshakeable conviction that they were going to get through this.
He also spoke of acceptance.
Not unlike that pivotal milestone in the stages of grief, this meant getting to that place where he and Nell could accept that certain things were now gone, and gone forever, while at the same time acknowledging the new reality and taking hold of it.
And while in many ways I felt uncomfortable drawing such a close comparison between my suffering and theirs.
Which seemed to me in so many ways incomparably worse.
Guy and Nell insisted that the analogy fit, and as I listened to them I began to get a sense of how I could recover — just as they had.
But Guy also spoke — after a long pause to try to articulate precisely what he meant — of what he called “conditioning.”
By this he meant the gradual awareness, as they strove day in and day out to put one foot in front of the other, that God had been preparing them throughout their lives for this moment.
“He knows what’s coming, even though we do not,” he told me.
“And God enables you … to just get it together.”
That’s a good metaphor for the healing process: God enables you to “get it together” again.
But if healing is a process of getting whole again, then other human beings — with whom we dare to be vulnerable and share our pain — are the glue.
(End Part 1)
Sep 14, 2018 01:26:20 #
09/14/2018 Helping Each Other Heal (Part 2)
By Fr. Thomas Berg
Guidance, Support, and a Shoulder to Cry On
When you have suffered an emotionally traumatic event, you might be tempted to consider the hurt insignificant when compared to the sufferings of others.
We might think that we are “making a mountain out of a mole hill” and that we should just get over it.
Granted, with many things that happen to us in life, there can be some merit to that approach.
The best treatment for a bad case of hurt feelings sometimes is to put the issue in a broader context, step away from the barrage of emotions, and ask whether the real culprit here is not me.
My misplaced expectations, my oversensitivity, my lack of a healthy sense of humor, taking myself too seriously, and the list could go on.
That indeed might go a long way toward helping me get over it.
Quite another thing is genuine emotional trauma.
Here we’re truly dealing with a laceration of the spirit, an assault on the heart. Here we need to stop comparing ourselves to others, silence the inner voice that says we are exaggerating, and actually admit the hurt, recognize it, and validate it.
In addition to minimizing what’s happened to us, other obstacles can inhibit us from accepting help when it is offered to us, or from reaching out for it ourselves.
As my friends Art and Laraine Bennett explain:
Our pride (“I can do it myself”), our vanity (“I don’t want to let people know how hurt I am”), or our laziness (“I do not have the time, energy, or money to get help”) may prevent us from addressing the issue.
There is also the issue of trust.
This is often the most difficult barrier: I trusted before, and my trust was abused.
How can I trust anyone again?
Traumatic wounds are serious and generally need both spiritual guidance from a qualified priest, deacon, sister, or lay spiritual director, and professional help from a qualified therapist.
The integration of a spiritual and psychological healing is the best way to address these serious wounds.
As Art and Laraine emphasize, addressing emotional trauma will often require a professional counselor or therapist.
I was fortunate to be friends with the Bennetts.
Art is a licensed marriage and family counselor with years of experience.
I eventually reached out to him to get some coaching on how to deal with the array and vehemence of the emotions that I was experiencing.
His help was invaluable.
Likewise, I was blessed to have the guidance of a very experienced spiritual director endowed with the gifts of discernment and prudence.
But as Art and Laraine rightly point out, there is also an issue of trust here, and of vulnerability.
Opening up our hurt to another involves a risk.
Being vulnerable means exposing the hurt.
It means talking about it.
And it means, at times, opening up the floodgates in a caring person’s protective presence, and letting out emotions and, quite possibly, copious tears.
Sound spiritual guidance and, depending on the severity of the emotional trauma, therapy or counseling — these are key to the healing process, along with friends to lean on, and at least one shoulder to cry on.
For some people, these are not easy to come by. And that can add to the heartache.
But I’m a firm believer that where there’s a will — and we have no reason to doubt that God wants our healing — there’s a way.
Sooner or later, experience tells me, the necessary connections can almost always be made, and we can find the right individuals to help us.
It depends on God’s mercy and guidance, of course, but it also depends on our willingness and determination to reach out, and not stop until we get the help we need.
Owning the Hurt
I began writing about my hurt to help myself heal.
That I needed to heal was a tough concept to swallow, though.
I was a priest.
I was in the business of ministering to others.
They were the ones who needed healing. Not me.
I consequently found myself, several months after my crisis had hit, reassuring friends that I was — in so many words — over it.
Thanks be to God, another close friend knew better.
She herself had been through personal trauma of a kind that required years of healing.
One evening at dinner with her and her husband, I was again making the case that I was doing much better, that I had healed, and that the hurt was behind me now.
Having held her tongue patiently on previous occasions when I had made similar affirmations, this night she finally broke her silence, looked me in the eye, and laid down the hard truth:
“Tom, you are not over this!
Healing from a wound like yours is going to take a long time!”
This was tough stuff to absorb for someone who is in the business of helping others heal.
I had not wanted to hear it — but how I needed to hear it! I had needed someone to force me to look directly into the gaping hole in the center of my being.
She forced me to deal with reality: I was deeply wounded, and I was only at the very beginning of my healing process.
My friend’s blunt honesty also helped me to start absorbing another reality: the wound was going to have a lasting impact on me.
Sure enough, it wasn’t going to define who I was (unless I let it), but neither was it just going away.
Rather, the wound and how I chose to deal with it would have a lasting influence on who I would become from that point on in my life.
And this kind of ruggedly honest grappling with hard truths also left me wide open to God’s light, to his grace and healing touch.
But it required me to accept and own those hard truths.
God had made me a priest, and healer, and minister to others.
But I had to absorb and embrace the reality that I was now very much a “wounded healer.”
Never in my life could I have imagined that this metaphor — brought into vogue by the spiritual writer Father Henri Nouwen in the 1970s —
Would come to characterize me so painfully well.
My friend’s blunt honesty had provoked in me a kind of surrender.
I was forced to put down my defenses.
The painful experience of such negative emotions had led me to present to the outer world a kind of false self: a self that had gotten over it and had it all together again. It was a kind of denial.
Now I was forced to stop deflecting the reality.
Most important, I was finally in a position to really bring my wounds to prayer.
Little by little, I started to understand that my wounds, as humiliating, embarrassing, and infuriating as they were, would not destroy me.
My identity would not crumble and deteriorate because of what had happened.
On the contrary, the hurt would ultimately enhance who I was.
The hurt would not destroy me, it would not absorb me. Rather, I would have to absorb it, and this meant accepting what had happened and integrating it into my self-understanding.
It meant owning the hurt.
And this, it seems to me, is a critical step in the healing process.
Most especially when wounds are life-altering: this happened to me, it is now part of who I am, and will contribute to shaping who I become.
And that’s okay. And, in fact, I can now become a better person because of it.
(End Part 2)
By Fr. Thomas Berg
Guidance, Support, and a Shoulder to Cry On
When you have suffered an emotionally traumatic event, you might be tempted to consider the hurt insignificant when compared to the sufferings of others.
We might think that we are “making a mountain out of a mole hill” and that we should just get over it.
Granted, with many things that happen to us in life, there can be some merit to that approach.
The best treatment for a bad case of hurt feelings sometimes is to put the issue in a broader context, step away from the barrage of emotions, and ask whether the real culprit here is not me.
My misplaced expectations, my oversensitivity, my lack of a healthy sense of humor, taking myself too seriously, and the list could go on.
That indeed might go a long way toward helping me get over it.
Quite another thing is genuine emotional trauma.
Here we’re truly dealing with a laceration of the spirit, an assault on the heart. Here we need to stop comparing ourselves to others, silence the inner voice that says we are exaggerating, and actually admit the hurt, recognize it, and validate it.
In addition to minimizing what’s happened to us, other obstacles can inhibit us from accepting help when it is offered to us, or from reaching out for it ourselves.
As my friends Art and Laraine Bennett explain:
Our pride (“I can do it myself”), our vanity (“I don’t want to let people know how hurt I am”), or our laziness (“I do not have the time, energy, or money to get help”) may prevent us from addressing the issue.
There is also the issue of trust.
This is often the most difficult barrier: I trusted before, and my trust was abused.
How can I trust anyone again?
Traumatic wounds are serious and generally need both spiritual guidance from a qualified priest, deacon, sister, or lay spiritual director, and professional help from a qualified therapist.
The integration of a spiritual and psychological healing is the best way to address these serious wounds.
As Art and Laraine emphasize, addressing emotional trauma will often require a professional counselor or therapist.
I was fortunate to be friends with the Bennetts.
Art is a licensed marriage and family counselor with years of experience.
I eventually reached out to him to get some coaching on how to deal with the array and vehemence of the emotions that I was experiencing.
His help was invaluable.
Likewise, I was blessed to have the guidance of a very experienced spiritual director endowed with the gifts of discernment and prudence.
But as Art and Laraine rightly point out, there is also an issue of trust here, and of vulnerability.
Opening up our hurt to another involves a risk.
Being vulnerable means exposing the hurt.
It means talking about it.
And it means, at times, opening up the floodgates in a caring person’s protective presence, and letting out emotions and, quite possibly, copious tears.
Sound spiritual guidance and, depending on the severity of the emotional trauma, therapy or counseling — these are key to the healing process, along with friends to lean on, and at least one shoulder to cry on.
For some people, these are not easy to come by. And that can add to the heartache.
But I’m a firm believer that where there’s a will — and we have no reason to doubt that God wants our healing — there’s a way.
Sooner or later, experience tells me, the necessary connections can almost always be made, and we can find the right individuals to help us.
It depends on God’s mercy and guidance, of course, but it also depends on our willingness and determination to reach out, and not stop until we get the help we need.
Owning the Hurt
I began writing about my hurt to help myself heal.
That I needed to heal was a tough concept to swallow, though.
I was a priest.
I was in the business of ministering to others.
They were the ones who needed healing. Not me.
I consequently found myself, several months after my crisis had hit, reassuring friends that I was — in so many words — over it.
Thanks be to God, another close friend knew better.
She herself had been through personal trauma of a kind that required years of healing.
One evening at dinner with her and her husband, I was again making the case that I was doing much better, that I had healed, and that the hurt was behind me now.
Having held her tongue patiently on previous occasions when I had made similar affirmations, this night she finally broke her silence, looked me in the eye, and laid down the hard truth:
“Tom, you are not over this!
Healing from a wound like yours is going to take a long time!”
This was tough stuff to absorb for someone who is in the business of helping others heal.
I had not wanted to hear it — but how I needed to hear it! I had needed someone to force me to look directly into the gaping hole in the center of my being.
She forced me to deal with reality: I was deeply wounded, and I was only at the very beginning of my healing process.
My friend’s blunt honesty also helped me to start absorbing another reality: the wound was going to have a lasting impact on me.
Sure enough, it wasn’t going to define who I was (unless I let it), but neither was it just going away.
Rather, the wound and how I chose to deal with it would have a lasting influence on who I would become from that point on in my life.
And this kind of ruggedly honest grappling with hard truths also left me wide open to God’s light, to his grace and healing touch.
But it required me to accept and own those hard truths.
God had made me a priest, and healer, and minister to others.
But I had to absorb and embrace the reality that I was now very much a “wounded healer.”
Never in my life could I have imagined that this metaphor — brought into vogue by the spiritual writer Father Henri Nouwen in the 1970s —
Would come to characterize me so painfully well.
My friend’s blunt honesty had provoked in me a kind of surrender.
I was forced to put down my defenses.
The painful experience of such negative emotions had led me to present to the outer world a kind of false self: a self that had gotten over it and had it all together again. It was a kind of denial.
Now I was forced to stop deflecting the reality.
Most important, I was finally in a position to really bring my wounds to prayer.
Little by little, I started to understand that my wounds, as humiliating, embarrassing, and infuriating as they were, would not destroy me.
My identity would not crumble and deteriorate because of what had happened.
On the contrary, the hurt would ultimately enhance who I was.
The hurt would not destroy me, it would not absorb me. Rather, I would have to absorb it, and this meant accepting what had happened and integrating it into my self-understanding.
It meant owning the hurt.
And this, it seems to me, is a critical step in the healing process.
Most especially when wounds are life-altering: this happened to me, it is now part of who I am, and will contribute to shaping who I become.
And that’s okay. And, in fact, I can now become a better person because of it.
(End Part 2)
Sep 14, 2018 01:28:47 #
09/14/2018 Helping Each Other Heal (Part 3)
By Fr. Thomas Berg
Reaffirming Foundations
One of the effects of suffering a severe emotional trauma such as betrayal is the sense that our life has been upended.
Our compass seems suddenly to fail and we lose our north. Long-held convictions about life, love, and purpose — once foundational for our own self-understanding — can be abruptly shattered.
It can give us the terrifying sensation of being held to the precipice of an existential void.
Anxiety attacks and depression are not uncommon responses to such interior turmoil.
When we’re in the midst of the darkness, that’s when we need to beg God to send us his light. Life has taught me that God never refuses that prayer.
It’s just a matter of not panicking, not giving in to despair.
We have to ask humbly and then wait — patiently, confidently, and attentively.
It was in a passage from Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians that I found the answer I was looking for:
For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that he may grant you in accord with the riches of his glory to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner self, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith;
That you, rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the holy ones what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Now to him who is able to accomplish far more than all we ask or imagine, by the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
Epheisans 3:14-21
“Rooted and grounded in love.” This line of sacred Scripture became for me a source of immense healing.
It became clear to me that none of that, nor anything I had suffered, could destroy, minimize, or even touch the reality of the love of Jesus Christ.
I was rooted and grounded in love, in the love of Jesus for me, and in my love for him.
No hurt could take that away from me.
No nightmare, no betrayal, no scandal could touch the love that Jesus and I shared.
I rediscovered that, at my core, my life was anchored in that experience of the love of Jesus, something I was blessed to have experienced from an early age.
“Rooted and grounded in love” has come to mean for me that I am, at my very core, a human person, created and saved through the Word of God, loved by God from all eternity, and called to an eternal destiny.
It means I am called to be a disciple of Jesus, to live the days of my life immersed in the mystery of Christ in us, “the hope for glory.”
Col 1:27
Where the wounds have threatened the very foundations of our faith and belief, the road to healing must lead us back eventually to what grounds us as Christians.
No hurt, no matter how severe, can touch the love, the personal knowledge, the pledge of friendship stretching into eternity that Jesus offers us.
To rediscover that we are anchored in Jesus, that “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:38-39)
This is key to healing.
Jesus is the reason why, ultimately, no matter how deep the hurt, healing is always possible.
(End Part 3)
By Fr. Thomas Berg
Reaffirming Foundations
One of the effects of suffering a severe emotional trauma such as betrayal is the sense that our life has been upended.
Our compass seems suddenly to fail and we lose our north. Long-held convictions about life, love, and purpose — once foundational for our own self-understanding — can be abruptly shattered.
It can give us the terrifying sensation of being held to the precipice of an existential void.
Anxiety attacks and depression are not uncommon responses to such interior turmoil.
When we’re in the midst of the darkness, that’s when we need to beg God to send us his light. Life has taught me that God never refuses that prayer.
It’s just a matter of not panicking, not giving in to despair.
We have to ask humbly and then wait — patiently, confidently, and attentively.
It was in a passage from Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians that I found the answer I was looking for:
For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that he may grant you in accord with the riches of his glory to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner self, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith;
That you, rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the holy ones what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Now to him who is able to accomplish far more than all we ask or imagine, by the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
Epheisans 3:14-21
“Rooted and grounded in love.” This line of sacred Scripture became for me a source of immense healing.
It became clear to me that none of that, nor anything I had suffered, could destroy, minimize, or even touch the reality of the love of Jesus Christ.
I was rooted and grounded in love, in the love of Jesus for me, and in my love for him.
No hurt could take that away from me.
No nightmare, no betrayal, no scandal could touch the love that Jesus and I shared.
I rediscovered that, at my core, my life was anchored in that experience of the love of Jesus, something I was blessed to have experienced from an early age.
“Rooted and grounded in love” has come to mean for me that I am, at my very core, a human person, created and saved through the Word of God, loved by God from all eternity, and called to an eternal destiny.
It means I am called to be a disciple of Jesus, to live the days of my life immersed in the mystery of Christ in us, “the hope for glory.”
Col 1:27
Where the wounds have threatened the very foundations of our faith and belief, the road to healing must lead us back eventually to what grounds us as Christians.
No hurt, no matter how severe, can touch the love, the personal knowledge, the pledge of friendship stretching into eternity that Jesus offers us.
To rediscover that we are anchored in Jesus, that “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:38-39)
This is key to healing.
Jesus is the reason why, ultimately, no matter how deep the hurt, healing is always possible.
(End Part 3)
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