Have you ever had a deep tissue bruise? Not one that just hurts for a day or two, but one that really lingers. When you first get the bruise, it looks a little ugly. It hurts and everyone can see it. It turns weird shades of purple and eventually green before it slowly fades. But the thing is, with deep tissue bruises, even after it fades and the surface pain is gone, if someone jabs it, it’s going to be really sore and you’re going to have a physical and emotional reaction. You’re going to cringe, maybe yell and get angry, and most of all you are going to want to get away from the thing or person that jabbed that bruise.
God gave me this analogy a few days ago in regards to understanding triggers. You know, a specific set of circumstances that cause an intense negative physical, mental, and emotional reaction in a person. Triggers are born out of trauma, whether that be physical, mental, emotional, or sexual. My last week in Costa Rica I experienced a trigger for the first time since I’ve been on the Race. For anyone who knows anything about my past or my childhood, it may come as no surprise that someone snapping at me or raising their voice in a harsh, angry manner would be a trigger. Living in my house growing up was like being in a warzone. For sixteen years of my life I lived tip-toeing around my father. I walked on eggshells constantly, waiting for him to explode at any moment. The majority of my memories of him involved him yelling, screaming in anger, trying to harm or even kill himself, and berating my mother, my sisters, and I. Don’t get me wrong, he had his good moments. Every night he would hug me, kiss me, tickle me, and tell me he loved me and that I was his favorite (but not to tell my sisters because they would be jealous) – after he died in 2008, I learned that he told this to all of us. Sometimes on very rare occasions we would all play Uno around the dining room table. My dad would laugh and make impolitically-correct jokes. I would watch movies with him, and I remember always watching the Andy Griffith Show with him. That was his favorite.
Even in all my sixteen years I had with him, I only have a small handful of happy memories absent, in those moments, of the anger, pain, and turmoil he put us through.
These triggers developed after years of mental and emotional abuse, but I never really realized it because I did like many victims of abuse do and I normalized it. “It wasn’t that bad,” I would tell myself. “Abuse is too harsh of a term. Daddy didn’t abuse us.” But that’s a lie. I am coming to terms with the fact that I was a victim of mental and emotional trauma and abuse. When I first came to the realization that I have a trigger, I was in a small state of denial, but the more I examined my reaction to the situation in Costa Rica, God began opening my eyes to what it really was. A person snapped at me and raised their voice harshly in this situation and let me tell you what happened: my immediate response was to shut down. I went straight into flight mode and I felt like I had to get away from the person and the situation. I was terrified that even just my presence would make them angry and I had no greater desire in that moment than to make myself invisible. Lies poured into my mind in an instant, lies that I had gathered from my youth and how my dad treated us: your thoughts aren’t important, you shouldn’t speak, you aren’t right, you’re stupid, you make people angry, you aren’t wanted, and you most definitely are not wanted here. My body wanted to flee and I developed a frog in my throat. I felt like I was on eggshells again. I spent the rest of that morning waiting for the other shoe to drop. It didn’t.
You see . . . this isn’t a normal, healthy person’s reaction to confrontation. This is the reaction of someone who has been conditioned by abuse. This is the reaction of someone who has been lied to during the most important, crucial years of their development; not just lied to, but degraded and put down. For years. I never realized this – that I’d suffered abuse and trauma, or that it had left me scarred with triggers. My daddy died when I was sixteen years old, and after he was gone, I barely was in any situations where I experienced that reaction of anger that would trigger me before. Or if I did, I paid it no mind. I went through the motions of the reaction and worked through it to calm myself down.
Maybe for a moment a couple of years ago I entertained the notion that I had experienced abuse at the hands, or more-so the words, of my dad. But I abandoned it, because I couldn’t accept that that had happened to me, or anyone else in my family for that matter. When I got to training camp last year, I thought the only thing I had to work through in regards to my dad was unforgiveness, which the good Lord released me from in an instant . . . But now the Lord is showing me that forgiveness toward my dad was only the first step in the healing process . . . Now I have to go deeper into the next steps of healing which, if I’m being completely honest, I haven’t even stepped into yet. I’m terrified to encounter my younger self. I’m terrified to look back and relive the time with my dad. I’m terrified for suppressed memories to resurface. I’m terrified to experience that pain again, because I know once I start this process, there’s no going back. I was posed a question last weekend by a squad leader: am I going to choose fear or faith? Fear of moving forward because of the pain and the unknown, or faith in moving forward trusting God will heal me completely of this tragedy.
Well, I’ll tell you now: I. Choose. Faith.
