Take a moment and reflect on post-traumatic stress disorder. I’m willing to bet that rape victims, soldiers, and people associated with traumatic accidents come to your mind. I’m also willing to bet that missionaries do not come into your mind.
Because why would they?
From an outside perspective, from someone not closely associated with a missionary, we were on a vacation this year. We paid money, got to travel and go to exotic places. How can you have PTSD from THAT?
Yes, that is what we did. But the reality is, this was not a vacation. I didn’t spend my year in resorts and spending thousands of dollars to enjoy a life of luxury. I spent thousands of dollars to live in smelly one bedroom buildings with six girls, and to experience life in the slums with the beautiful people that live there. I did not love everyday of this journey, there were so many days when I sobbed and wanted to give up. My heart was broken again and again and again.
This “vacation” led me and other missionaries to come home with a type of PTSD known as Normal Stress Response, this isn’t your typical response to vacation.
We spend a year in ridiculously close community, we meet friends and broken people all over the world, we see oppression, spiritual warfare, spiritual heaviness, homeless abandoned children, and then we are expected to come home and be okay.
We are expected to come home and be okay.
I can’t just be okay after everything I’ve seen. I left a world that would love to do something as simple as eat a bag of chips and came into a world that throws those chips away without a second thought.
Coming home, I struggled with the idea that I was okay. I wanted to be okay, I felt like I needed to be okay. But the truth is, I’m not okay. I’m still in shock that I ran the race, and with that, I was unsure of how to continue forward. So I reverted back to my old ways. I threw myself into the American way of living, and I lost those moments that were so precious. I decided that if I didn’t think about it at all, I would be okay, instead, I became apathetic or would just cry constantly about seemingly nothing.
This is part of PTSD.
When a friend suggested that I may have PTSD, I shut her down. It wasn’t possible. I’m not one of those people I mentioned earlier, there is no way I’m dealing with that.
But this week at Project Search Light, I learned that PTSD is real and normal. Along with that, I received practical tools to make sure I don’t lose those memories that I hold so dear to my heart. But also tools on how to deal with PTSD and how not to let it take over me.
I once prayed for God to break my heart for what breaks His, to lead me to His people that need Him the most. He did not disappoint. I will forever choose this “vacation” over the typical one and I will be forever grateful for my battle with PTSD because I know it was the product of God breaking me down to build His kingdom up.
