John Eldredge, in his book Resilient, says “you can’t heal trauma without grieving it.” There is power in telling the story; healing can begin when a person allows themselves to come to terms with what has happened to them and then begins to process those experiences and how they have been shaped by them.
Naming things is important.
We see this in Scripture. In many of the Old Testament stories, God was involved in the act of naming – giving names to people, to places, to events, even to Himself.
Assigning a name to something meant acknowledging its value and its impact.
In Genesis 22, we see the story of God calling Abraham to offer his only son Isaac as a sacrifice. Abraham obeyed. He walked his son to the top of the mountain, preparing to do what God had commanded him to do. As much as it would pain him, and as little sense as it made to him, he would be obedient. He trusted God, even if it was scary.
At the last minute, God spared Isaac. Behind Abraham, caught in a bush, was a ram – an animal provided by God to be the substitute for the sacrifice he was about to make.
Abraham understood. He got the picture. His obedience had been tested. He had passed. And now God was rewarding his faith.
After it all was finished, Abraham gave this location a name:
So Abraham called the name of that place, “The Lord will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.” (Genesis 22:16)
What was the name given? Jehovah-jireh, in the Hebrew.
Abraham gave a name to that mountaintop. The name was based on the story of what had taken place there. God had stepped in and had provided, when Abraham needed Him to the most.
Abraham embraced that story. He named the experience. It had changed him, and he would never forget it.
Looking at Scripture
Notice these other examples from Scripture:
Therefore its name is called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth. (Genesis 11:9)
Therefore he called that place Beersheba, because the two of them swore an oath there. (Genesis 21:31)
So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: “For I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.” (Genesis 32:30)
And he built an altar there and called the place El Bethel, because there God appeared to him when he fled from the face of his brother. (Genesis 35:7)
So he called the name of the place Massah and Meribah, because of the contention of the children of Israel, and because they tempted the LORD, saying, “Is the LORD among us or not?” (Exodus 17:7)
So he called the name of the place Taberah, because the fire of the LORD had burned among them. (Numbers 11:3)
Something significant happened to or among God’s people, and each time, in response to the event, a name was given – either a name ascribed to God, or a name for the location where the event took place, or a name to commemorate the day it happened.
In some way, the people of God were called to acknowledge the event and put a name on it, to honor it, to understand the significance and weight of what happened, to let it be a part of their story and not run away or hide from it.
We need to own – not ignore – our story.
Brene Brown says this about owning our stories:
What does this mean for us when it comes to looking back on the traumatic or painful things that have happened to us?
It means we stop running from it; that we stop to consider the weight of it, the weight we’ve been carrying all these years; that we acknowledge it’s impact, and that we begin to break ourselves free from its hold.
To quote John Eldredge again: “Healing from trauma involves naming what the trauma was, and what its effects upon us have been.”
What we resist tends to persist, and what we avoid just keeps coming back to the surface, often at the most inconvenient and undesirable times.
To break free, we have to come face-to-face with what we’ve experienced. We can’t keep hiding or running away or avoiding.
We’ve gotten really good at avoiding, haven’t we?
We fill our down time with social media scrolling, watching dumb videos online, chatting with friends, getting lost in a book. In themselves they aren’t bad; but as ways to avoid dealing with things that still haunt us, they are unhealthy at best.
So what can we do?
We can stop the avoidance; drop the distractions; walk towards the story instead of running away from it.
Eldredge (himself a former therapist) poses these questions to consider, to help in processing past hurts:
– What’s it been like for you?
– What’s been hard?
– What made you mad?
– What do you wish had never happened?
Sometimes in my own counseling sessions, the question is presented this way:
– What’s the worst thing that ever happened to you, and how do you think that has impacted you since it happened?
Either way, there is value in processing the things we’ve been through. But that has to begin with agreeing to name it, to stop avoiding it, to be willing to sit with the experience and the pain it caused, to accept it as part of your story, and then to step into how to heal from it.
This is hard work, but it’s so worth it.
In Conclusion
To quote Dr. Sharon Fieldstone from the Apple TV series Ted Lasso, “Remember Ted, the truth will set you free. But first, it’ll piss you off.”
Are you willing to face the truth? To try understanding how it has shaped you? Stepping into this process is the first move towards freedom.
We just have to be willing to be get mad first.
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