Hemmed In
Just over a year ago I published a book, sharing emotional details of deep struggle during my years serving in the military as a young officer – sexual assault, depression, depression, and suicidal thoughts. I also wrote about the immense faithfulness of God through it all.
Not long after sending my story out into the world I began to have nightmares and intense anxiety mixed with total apathy and numbness. Many nights I dreamed my rapist was coming after me to kill me, and even in my waking moments I Googled his name obsessively, trying to find out where he was living and if there was any way he would read my story and seek vengeance.
Eventually I sought help at the PTSD clinic at a nearby Veteran’s Affairs center. After an extensive appointment with a clinical psychologist I left for home feeling justified. I’d met nearly all the diagnostic criteria for PTSD, and it was no wonder. I’d been through hell and had kept my trauma largely to myself for the better part of a decade. But sharing my story publicly had unleashed a torrent of emotions and layers of myself I hadn’t been prepared to process and understand. Having a diagnosis put a tidy label on all the complex things I had been feeling over the previous few months.
Over the next month my nightmares and anxiety continued. I felt irrationally fearful much of the time, expecting catastrophic fallout from publishing my book and a story about my rape and sexual abuse in a widely read internet military publication. The Lord dealt with me gently and protected my heart while I was buffeted around by my emotions like a ping pong ball in the wind. I fully gave myself up to my PTSD diagnosis – it was the price I had paid for everything I endured.
In the midst of my wandering in the desert (what I affectionately call this phase of my life) I carried so many fragile dreams of sharing my story of healing and God’s faithfulness to other women who needed to hear there was hope after trauma. I wanted to run in the direction of those dreams, but I felt God’s hand so heavily hold me in place that I couldn’t move. Finally, I understood how David must have felt when he wrote “you hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me” (Psalm 139:5). I was immobilized, sunk in the depths of a healing and refining process, which required my absolute and total surrender of body, mind, and spirit. I couldn’t have moved an inch from God’s presence if I tried.
One day shortly before Christmas I attended a craft event where I sold copies of my book at a nearby church and shared small pieces of my story with holiday shoppers. A middle aged man, also a veteran, stopped by my table to make small talk. After reading a brief description of my book he looked me full in the face and said, “I can see the pain behind your eyes, Soldier.” Instantly something fierce rose up inside of me, protesting his assessment. I had felt particularly peaceful that day, resting in God’s presence as I shared what he had done for me over the years. His words felt incongruent and untactful.
I prayed and processed that interaction with God over the next several days. Loudly and clearly I heard him say, “You will no longer be defined by your brokenness.” The realization hit me quickly and fully – I didn’t want to be identified by my PTSD or to carry around my trauma baggage. I wanted my life to be marked by God’s goodness and the miracle of grace, not by what I endured. God desires restoration and abundant life for us, not for us to carry our wounds around the rest of our lives. His Spirit had risen up in me and protested the world’s assessment that I was marked by pain and suffering.
God set me free from PTSD that day, but even more so from the lie that my current brokenness was an even exchange for the suffering I had experienced. The manifestation of pain and deep hurt does not have to be a crippled spirit. Our God is one of restoration beyond our wildest dreams. He can turn our barren desert into streams of living water, and “restore the years that the swarming locust has eaten.”