In recent weeks a small snippet of scripture swirls in my mind. Words repeating themselves for days. Demanding acknowledgement. Forcing me to ask if this repetition gets its fuel from my anxiety or if Spirit speaks. The words are from Psalms:
Gentle words suggesting I wake to each day. Acknowledge my place in it. Plant myself in each hour’s time and space. Even in the too busy days of being a pastor, the chaos of moving and home repair, and the ongoing work of caring for family.
“So, teach us to count our days…”
A thought reflected on first while sitting in the quiet of an inn far away from our unpacked boxes and new unknowns. Vacation morning pulsing with no agenda. A day to rest in, hear the rhythm of. Once home, reflection continues in dawn’s daily quiet.
“So, teach us to count our days…”
Phrase reminding me to offer gratitude for the experiences contained in each day. Yet in my own situation—survivor of deep tragedy, pastor, son with chronic illnesses, new empty nester, partner again—I forget these offered moments of acknowledgement. Do not see them or push them away. And in doing so miss gratitude’s slow reveal of what loosens with change.
“So, teach us to count our days…”
I think in my own insecurities, anxiety, and unhealed wounds I hold tightly to my sons, having done so since conception. Even more since my first husband, Tony, died. Now as they move away from me in distance, I am brought back to the time before they existed on this plane. The stage before I knew and loved their father. An earthly space I occupied holding hope for them along with the despair that they might never exist.
“So, teach us to count our days…”
My sons, now six feet tall, are hope made real. And what connected me to something bigger than myself each day when raising them remains. Joined by the absorbing vocational work of writer and pastor. Past despair turning toward wondering: What comes next in this new iteration of our family’s “we?” Each of us counting our days separately yet with the others’ love and support. Life transforming from one time to the next.
“So, teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart,” the psalmist writes. Action words infusing my prayers.
God, you remain in every time and space. Teach us to live each day traversing change with grace and in doing so growing “the enlightened eyes of our hearts.” [2]Hearts seeing the truths of life together and apart. Truth building wisdom so that sight, gratitude, and compassion teach us to live well within ourselves, live well with others, live in healing, and live in you. Amen.
How like a widow she has become…she weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks. Lamentations 1:1-2
Reflection
Limbs fall limp. Eyes drop focus. Mind escapes into sleep. Allowing a few moments of respite.
Until roused by repeated visions and racing words. Breaking in with images and their clinging emotions. Bringing tears, sighs, tossings, and turnings.
Yet some nights the moon rises high mid-mind race. Light filters through closed window shades. Asking for breathing in of its essence. And a breathing out of sleeplessness’ broken record. Inhaling in and out once, twice, as long as it takes for buttock muscles to loosen. Cascading into other muscles letting go.
Until morning wakes. Sunlight slipping in after moonlight. Opening another day for what is possible in healing. Through a compassionate word here. A challenging one there. A few questions to think about. Not fully healed. Something though. Enough to keep going.
Healing Practice: Breadcrumbs
What keeps you going? Write down who and what gives you enough to want to do the work of healing.
Start just with one something. Add another something. Maybe two. Over the coming hours and days, collect five. Name them breadcrumbs. Follow them on your path into healing and restoration.
Prayer
“Restore us…” God, “that we may be restored.” In our restoration give us hope in you, in our now, in our future. Amen. (Based on Lamentations 5:21)
Before, during, and after we care for others in the aftermath and afterlife of traumatic experiences we care for self. Self-care is foundational in the care of others. When we do not care for ourselves, we inflict violence upon ourselves. And we risk causing others additional harm. Here’s a small moment of self-care, a micro minute surrounding your soul with goodness and love to use at any time in your day.
Begin breathing in through the top of your head. Thank God for your head.
Now allow your breath to slip down into your shoulders. Breathe in and out from your shoulders. Thank God for your shoulders.
Let your breath slip into the back of your neck and between your shoulder blades. Breathe in and out from the back of your neck. Then breathe in and out from between your shoulder blades. Thank God for your neck and upper back.
Now allow your breath to slip into your stomach. Breathe in and out from your stomach. Thank God for your stomach.
Let your breath to slip down into your hips. Breathe in and out from your hips. Thank God for your hips.
Now allow your breath to slip down into your knees. Breathe in and out from your knees. Thank God for your knees.
Let your breath slip down into the soles of your feet. Breath in and out from your feet. Thank God for your feet.
Breathe now through your whole being beginning in your feet, traveling through your body, and out the top of your head. Thank God for your body.
Continue breathing until you are ready to return to your day.
In health and human development we often use this term: survive or thrive. An either/or term with an embedded orbit between the two. Teachers, child development specialists, medical doctors, therapists, chaplains, pastors, loved ones, and really most of us want children and all people to move beyond surviving into thriving. Because surviving can be a time of waiting, frustration, fear, feeling stuck, and powerlessness. We use terms such as survival mode, subsisting, and stagnate to describe the extreme edge of this survival spectrum and softer terms such liminal space and limbo to describe survival as more temporary.
Environmental and systemic circumstances such as racism, genderism, joblessness, poverty, lack of resources, and poor or declining health attempt to hold us in survival. The ongoing worry about safety, food, housing, income, and health overtime can become a traumatic experience adding another layer of pain onto life in survival. Any traumatic experience may also keep us securely in perpetual fight or flight, even freeze states. Surviving then becomes a form of hypervigilant maintenance. Of keeping things as stable as possible while existing always on the edge of the next bad thing happening.
If surviving continues or moves into more security toward or into thriving’s beginnings, trauma’s leftovers from the time of living close to death can create more disease, the autoimmune and inflammatory kind. Disease throws us back into surviving once again shutting down the other end of this trajectory of survive or thrive.
Surviving is not to be minimized. The experience of just surviving seems relentless and unending for most people. Yet self and other compassion asks us to hold gently the miracle of surviving. Our bodies keeping us alive again and again after possible non-survival. Desiring us to move the other way toward and into thriving.
We survive then to thrive. Surviving becomes the living basis in which to add on layers of living. Layers such as growing in deep health, relationships, possibilities, accomplishments, and resources. When we cannot move toward thriving we of course feel stuck because flow is denied.
I, like many people, overuse the word thrive. I want my sons to thrive. I want my new husband to thrive. I want all my beloveds to thrive. I want all of creation to thrive. I want to thrive. The word thrive means “to grow vigorously,” and flourish.* Yet my heart embraces the word flourish as something more than thriving. A word meaning “to grow luxuriantly.”** Flourishing, for me, extends life’s various layers of growth. Creating an out of rather than an or. Instead of survive or thrive, we build: Survive first. Move toward and into thrive leading into a time of flourishing and beyond.
How can we build from surviving? Through healing. Deep, ongoing healing leads us out of surviving, into thriving and toward flourishing. Healing creates goodness within and around. In goodness we are no longer separated from love of self and others. In healing we create more internal and external space to ensure everyone has access to healing.
How do we heal? We begin with the simple desire to heal. Just a tiny mustard seed amount desiring something else. Something replacing the suffering in us and around us with hope. Something washing away the layers of pain bit by bit until we find ourselves where we’ve always existed, encapsulated in love. Love flowing in, above, under, and around us.
Then what do we do? Without thinking we connect and reconnect. Realize we’ve been shut down and away from the world and its people. The process of healing rejoins us to ourselves, others and all that is greater than ourselves–the universe and Spirit. This connection and reconnection, in Scriptural terms, uses the word righteousness or righteous. As in I have reconnected to God. Words which have come to mean, in some traditions, following God’s rules, being obedient to these rules even if they are the rules of powerful humans and not God. For so many people, myself included, these terms feel like more trauma turning my stomach around. I remind myself in healing that there are other understandings of these words.
So, what if we substitute righteousness with healed? Here’s what happens in Psalm 92, verses 12-15 when we do. (NRSVUE)
12 The righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon.
The healed flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon.
13 They are planted in the house of the Lord; they flourish in the courts of our God.
They are planted in the house of God; they flourish in the places of our God.
14 In old age they still produce fruit; they are always green and full of sap,
In old age the healed still produce fruit; the healed are always green and full of sap,
15 showing that the God is upright; God is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in God.
showing that God is healed and wants healing; God is my rock, and there is no un-healing in God.
There is no un-healing in God. What a thought! What a belief! God wants us to move beyond surviving. God wants us to heal. God wants us to build on survival into what is possible for ourselves, others, and all creation. And when some of us begin to move out of survival into thriving, God wants us to turn back toward those people still in survival. God wants us to connect, have compassion. Offer healing ways to all people, to all of creation. Only when we heal, connect, and ensure others will also heal can we truly flourish within ourselves and in our world. Flourishing then is an act of compassion for self and others.
I’ve been traveling a lot lately. And in my travels I’ve met many people harmed by some form of Christianity. Some by my own denomination. Yet all the people I’ve met still seek something greater than themselves: The earth, other gods, nature, other ways of believing in something. But God, the God I proclaim, seems absent.
Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs, Colorado
I too, know this sense of God’s absence. I felt it in the depths of trauma’s aftermath. I feel it now as I write these words. What I’ve learned though is that fatigue, anger, and stress impact my daily sense of God. And experts tell us that the experience of prolonged spiritual absence is a symptom of unhealed trauma. Healing and self-care uncover our innate spiritual selves. Yet not necessarily back to the pews of our past. But back to something–named or unnamed.
God, are you always with us? Even when we cannot feel your presence. See you in nature, animals, other people? Even when we cannot trust you? Or believe in your presence anywhere? Hold us in hope for the return of our spiritual selves. Amen.
If your organization, church, podcast, conference, library, or literary festival is interested in inviting me to speak, preach, or lead a workshop, please click here: Invite Jennifer to Speak.
BONUS SECTION
From an early draft of my book.
The minute I laid down I knew something was wrong
For days I felt tired. Tired to the bone. Slogging through my days. Achy as if coming down with something.
School was in session. Is Paul bringing home the latest bug?
Sure, I was working out more if only to save my skeleton. But my new regime began weeks ago. Really! My body should be used to all these weights and prolonged walks by now!
Yes, I was writing all the time. For work. For me. For seminary. Lower arms feeling a bit stiff at the end of each day. But that’s to be expected, isn’t it?
But I also felt edgy. Tense. So tense I couldn’t break out of it no matter what I did. Then I started having headaches. Really bad headaches accompanied by nausea. Happened at church one Sunday morning. Left worship to ask around for some acetaminophen. “What’s wrong?” a friend wondered.
“I’ve been reading the Old Testament book of Amos all morning for seminary. I think I have Amos head.”
“Well, I’m glad we have a name for it,” she replied.
At noon I laid down to nap. Too tired to go on. Study more. Write more. Take care of more bills, schedule more appointments, wash more dishes, do more laundry.
In bed my body spoke to me. Nervousness rushed everywhere within me. Agitation kept me from stillness. Even though this felt different, I breathed like I would in an anxiety attack. Long deep breaths in through my nose. Blown out through my mouth in steady pulses. Rhythm bringing in hope. Pushing out pain.
It worked, sort of. But not completely.
So, I waited. Breathing taking the edge off for a time. Never forever. Forever requiring deep healing for this stuff to cease residing in my body, any body. Is this a relapse? Or is it the next layer of pain ready for healing?
Checked my calendar. Another EMDR session in a few days. Healers and healing on their way.
THE VALUE OF NEWSLETTERS & REVIEWS
Being an author, especially a spiritual author, means also being my own marketing director. And I admit I have all sorts of feelings about being tied to the social media self-promotion cycle. Yet there has always been a business side to writing. So here’s what publishers, book sellers, and writers know about getting books into readers hands, eyes, and hearts:
NEWSLETTERS: The more people on an author’s newsletter email list, the more the author sells their books. You can be on my newsletter list by simply following my blog. To do so, press the SUBSCRIBE button on the upper left side of this page.
REVIEWS: The more online reviews a book receives, the more a book sells. Please consider reviewing my book on Goodreads and at my Amazon author’s page.
Thank you!
WHAT I AM READING
I’ve never been much of a fan of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) person. Tony, my late husband and trauma therapist, was not either. We both felt professionally that its effects were not long term nor reached for root causes. When it comes to trauma recovery, many of the primary researchers agree. Why? Because CBT is about the mind, not the body. And trauma infects our entire selves. Yes, I use some CBT methods at times but as an adjunctive method and not for my deep, long lasting healing needs.
Medical doctor and author Paul Conti agrees. He writes, “The idea that we can simply get over difficult things that happened to us in the past is far more common than it should be, and in my opinion, some cognitive-behavioral therapy techniques (CBT) perpetuate this notion.” (71)
Read his book for an insider view of how the medical treatment of trauma often goes wrong.
September Newsletter, 2022: All rights reserved by the author.
Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez 