Category: Trauma

Grief, Healing meditation, Trauma, Trauma recovery

Clinging

Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez

“My soul clings to the dust; revive me according to your word…My soul melts away for sorrow; strengthen me according to your word.” Psalm 119: 25; 28

Reflection

Dust. Tiny particles streak air. On sunny, still afternoons. Light reflecting off silvery wisps of nothingness.

Dust. Swirls on dry, windy days. Masking sight. Adding brown to blue sky. Causing itchy eyes, parched throats, and protesting noses.

Dust. Accumulating. Blanketing surfaces. Scattered if moved. Slipping through grasping hands. Landing again. Only gathered in on soft cloths.

Soul unable to cling.

Healing Practice: Dusting

Open your arms wide and to your sides.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Breathe in gathering seen and unseen dust particles floating around you.

Breathe out into a hug.

Repeat gathering dust. As long as needed.

Prayer

God,

I cling to the ground. Lift me up.

I cling to the ground. Revive me.

I cling to the ground. Strengthen me.

I cling melted to the ground. Re-form me.

I cling for safety to the ground. Be my security.

I cling frozen to the ground. Move me.

I cling to the ground in pain. Show me healing’s way.

Amen.

Biblical Text: NRSV

Photo courtesy of http://www.pixabay.com

Grief, Trauma

August Lament

Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez

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Sand borders water’s end with land’s beginning,

Trees dip roots, branches into cool, flowing water,

Small ripples break surface glistening in summer’s sun,

Welcoming visitors into caressing embrace,

How long, LORD? How long?

 

Underneath invitation, creation’s wildness rages,

Imploding with thirty, forty, fifty mile force,

Swift, powerful, rapid,

Grabbing, pulling, clenching,

Sucking breath away from life,

How long, LORD? How long?

 

Those who know stay soundless, keeping the secret,

Strangers, named tourists, enter the water without knowing,

News reporting blaming victims,

While calling for more signage,

Announcements making lurking dangers transparent,

How long, LORD? How long?

 

Hearts reach for beloveds lost in secret’s rage,

Their words denied, kept out,

Bound from litigation by laws ensuring safety of others,

Governing entities shielded from suffering’s sorrows,

River allowed year after year to leach lives away,

How long, LORD? How long?

 

Each August search for names. Find new tragedies.

Unnecessary killings. Perpetuated through inaction laced with silence,

Today this year’s victims named. Remembered,

Unnamed Man, age 48, on July 22, 2020 

Pedro Merino Alcanter, age 46, on July 27, 2020

How long, LORD? How Long?

 

 

Written and shared in loving memory of Anthony D. Rodriguez. Killed in the Wisconsin River on August 13, 2016. 

 

 

*Photo courtesy of http://www.pixabay.com

 

 

Healing, Healing meditation, Trauma, Trauma recovery

Afflicted

Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez

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“My soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is; so I say, “Gone is my glory, and all that I had hoped for from the LORD.” The thought of my affliction and my homelessness is wormwood and gall! My soul continually thinks of it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases…”   Lamentations 3:17-22

 

Meditation

Bitter thoughts. Stewing from down below. Gurgling with stomach acids. Bubbling up. Burning the esophagus. Causing throat and breath to sour.

The writer of Lamentations uses strong metaphors. Wormwood, a plant smelling and tasting bitter. Gall, another name for bile. Words filling the air and us with pain’s felt presence in and out of our bodies.

But in the midst of severe affliction this writer dares to hope? What is it that this writer “call(s) to mind?” In the midst of smells so intense, so permeating that the writer curls. Caves in. What glimmers enough amidst affliction to speak of “steadfast love”?

 

Healing Practice: Glimmers

What gives you even a small glimmer of hope? A pin head of possibility? A fleeting thought of future?

What or who steadies you right now? Your therapist? The mail carrier showing up every day at the same time? The noon time factory whistle or downtown church bells?

Name these. Write them down. Even the smallest of the small.

The writer of Lamentations puts hope in God. Maybe you do too. Maybe you don’t. Or maybe God is a glimmer of what can be.

 

Prayer

God of what can be, bring breezes filled with fresh air. Blow away bitterness’ smell. Settle my stomach. Give relief to my soured throat. Spark my imagination. Fill my thoughts with hope’s tiny glimmers. Amen.

 

~~~

Biblical translation: NRSV

Image by Evgeni Tcherkasski from Pixabay. 

Faith, Trauma, Trauma recovery

Slow Trauma, Psalmist Style

Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez

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Every day I check the maps. First, my state map. How many cases in my county? How many deaths in my state? Watch Iowa’s numbers increase daily. Each day showing additions. Not subtractions. Yesterday, 1710. Today?

Move to the country’s map. How many states in the United States of America are on stay-at-home orders?  Most states now have them. Mine does not. Governor refuses. Claiming freedom, more important than life. Asking us to die for it. Her stubborn stance making us more anxious, lonely, afraid, and unprotected.

My last check, the world. Numbers, never the same. Never less. Only more. Throwing me back into the cushions I lean on. Despair’s long sigh escaping through my nose. Sinking my heart lower and lower. Until questions erupt. Not of maps, leaders, or politicians. But of God.

 

How long, O Lord?

Will you forget me forever?

 

 How long will you hide your face from me?

 How long must I bear pain in my soul,  and have sorrow in my heart all day long?

 

 How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

 

Ancient words still keening. Sounded from the psalmist. Written in Psalm 13, first two verses. (NRSV) Naming our feelings of abandoned-ness, pain, sorrow.

Walk on path one bright day. Hear frogs sing. Filling woods with sound. Notice flock of gulls dancing in sun’s rays. Breathe in spring’s warming air.  “I feel like a bowling pin,” I say. “A bowling ball rolls toward me. In slow motion. Growing larger as I watch.”

Mind sees me standing with all my beloveds. Facing forward. At the end of alley ’s lane. Watching the ball. Praying it veers off to one side, teeters on the edge, finds the gutter. But the ball stays on course. Toward us. As we freeze. Immobilized. Caught in a slow form of trauma. Spanning days, weeks, months. Trauma approaching, getting closer and closer. As we continue standing. Hearing ball against wood floor. Feeling moving vibrations beneath our feet. Ball growing bigger and bigger. Soul asking again like the psalmist. “How long, O LORD?” (v 1)

Brain, a funny organ in humans. Mine flashes. With wonderings in trauma’s watch. How does the psalmist manage hope in the last two verses? Beginning with, “But I trust in your unfailing love…” (v 5)

How do we hope when the ball keeps rolling? Answer my own question. Out of something I tell my son these days. “We can hold both sadness and hope at the same time.”

A paradox. Holding both. Something I learned from living in concurrent grief and trauma recovery. Sadness, sorrow, and despair are emotions. But hope? Hope is learned. Practiced. Acquired. What is called a cognitive function.

Holding both, wisdom. Excelled in by the psalmist. Through first naming and listing experiences surrounding pain. Pain, intrusive thoughts, sorrow, abandonment, defeat. This listing, a crying out called lament. Lament defining deep unmet basic needs such as safety. Lament leading to an ask for help called prayer.  “…Give light to my eyes…” (v 3) the psalmist prays.

Then the psalmist shifts. Into recognizing gifts. God’s gifts of “trust,” “unfailing love,” and “salvation.” ( v 5)  Remembering these good gifts, the psalmist builds hope. In a future filled with song and “good“-ness . (v 6)

Yes, we can hold sadness and hope at the same time. Sadness begins a necessary journey in emotional survival. Leading us to act by lamenting. Lament opening us into another act. The act of prayer. For our pain and needs. Leading us into naming the gifts we have already received. Gratitude for these gifts creating a sense of hope from within. Hope living alongside sadness. Sadness, the beginning. Hope, the last word. Together creating a never-ending map for living. One providing ongoing healing balm. Making the ball rolling toward us something we can deal with.

How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?
    How long will you hide your face from me?
2 How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
    and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
    How long will my enemy triumph over me?

3 Look on me and answer, Lord my God.
    Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,
4 and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
    and my foes will rejoice when I fall.

5 But I trust in your unfailing love;
    my heart rejoices in your salvation.
6 I will sing the Lord’s praise,
    for he has been good to me.

 

This post also appears at https://compassionatechristianity.org/trauma-recover/

Photo courtesy of Pixabay at http://www.pixabay.com

 

 

 

Faith, Healing meditation, Trauma, Trauma recovery

Sitting Lonely

Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez

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How lonely sits the city that once was full of people!
How like a widow she has become, she that was great among the nations!
She that was a princess among the provinces has become a vassal.

Lamentations 1:1

Walking my normal route. On a Sunday afternoon in early spring. Temperature in the fifties. Slightly overcast with sun flitting in and out. Air smelling of trees swelling into resurrected life. And soil. Soil pining to be planted. So much so I must breathe in its scent as breezes brush against my face.

I see no one. No people. No one out. No children playing on the playground.  No families strolling by pushing baby carriages. No runners. No other walkers.

Cars roll by slowly. No longer in a hurry. But not many cars. Cars resting. Found parked in driveways, garages, and along the streets of my neighborhood. As if it is Thanksgiving or Christmas day. Everyone home on forced holiday.

Back home my son reports the store shelves are bare. He returning from stocking up on a few items—toothbrushes, acetaminophen, milk. Tells me this news as we make a list for my grocery run the next day. Writing down what we really need. What we can do without. Thinking ahead for a future we do not understand and cannot predict.

Like most of my friends, I spend time on the phone with loved ones scattered in other places. Feel a need to connect daily now. Check in. But also to help convince or plan. For my oldest to leave Mexico amidst flight cancellations and possible border closings. For my mother to stay south as long as possible instead of coming home to community spread.

When not on the phone or email or text, check the maps. The ones telling me the latest reports. The ones showing the growing numbers. In between checks trying to study, answer emails, read the latest update from seminary, reschedule my life as meetings, events, and deadlines change hourly. All part of my new job as home manager of crisis’ constant change.

The writer of Lamentations imagines or looks out over an empty Jerusalem. After war’s sieges took lives. Captured prisoners. Enemy conquering, creating new reality. Forcing residents to move far away. Emptying a city. Leaving smoldering bits of a recent past. Only seen by those remaining. A desecrated temple. A destroyed way of life.

The prophet looks out over what once was and is no longer. Allows the scene to enter his body. For woe to fill his heart.With scene in mind, heart, and body, calls it like it is. Words allowing the sharing of sorrow with other mourners. “How lonely sits the city…!”

We live in a new form of exile. Not exile like those escaping war or political persecution or famine. Even a pandemic does not compare to these atrocities. Yet there remains a flavor here of exile now. Of being refugees. Even if our camp is in our own home. We are torn away from loved ones, work, friends, activities, faith communities, and school. Separated from routines, predictability, and calm.

So I sit at my kitchen table. Stare out the window. Watch a dog and its person walk across the field. Track their progress. Become aware of my held breath.

Begin to breathe. First in, then out. Again. Again. Deeper. Fuller. Breath reaching behind tired eyes. Loosening jaws. Unfurling forehead. Finding shoulders through collar bones. Down arms into fingers. Belly filling up. Hips letting go. Breath running down silent legs. Into ankles, toes. Eyes closing. Mind blanking. Body breathing into prayer spilling out.

Be present, God. Here. Everywhere. Make your presence known to all. Heal us with holy breath for this day. And tomorrow. And the days already on their way. Strengthen us. For the work to be done. The decisions to be made. The sacrifices we must make for neighbor and stranger and self. Fuel and refuel us with your Spirit each hour, day, week, month. Grow Spirit’s compassion in us. For each other. Amen.

~~~

Scripture quotation from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

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