You Are Not Your Trauma

While enjoying my weekly morning breakfast with a group of friends last week, I mentioned that widowhood was something that happened to me, but it’s not who I am, and it doesn’t define me.  Unbeknownst to me, another friend who lost her husband earlier this year overheard what I said and shared with me a few days later that it had an impact on her and her thinking.  I am incredibly humbled to help encourage anyone in any way I can, but it also made me realize just how much people need to hear this……… You are NOT your trauma.

Any time tragedy strikes, or difficult times arise, and your life is turned upside down, people can put you in a box, categorize you, label you, and expect you to toe an unspoken line of appropriate behaviors.  Many times, we even do it to ourselves.  Those walls that you or someone else put up may seem safe and comforting for a while, but whenever they are left in place for a period of time, they reveal themselves to be prison walls built around our hearts and minds.  It can become crippling, and it pushes healing far down the list of priorities.  I want you to know that God has SO much more for you.  He desires for you to have an abundant and radiant life that reflects His love to others!  Anytime we believe the lie that we are the sum of our circumstances, we stop growing and start shrinking.  You cannot put your healing in the hands of others.  God will certainly use others to lift you up and support you, however accepting where you are at and healing your heart is a work that is done between you and Him.  You give Him your shattered heart, and piece by piece, He gives it back to you, fully restored.   I know it’s dark at times.  I know that people have abandoned you in the midst of your pain.  I know that it feels like it just can’t get better.   I promise you, it does.  You are not a victim.  You are a survivor, and your scars are a beautiful reminder of what you’ve come through.  You can thrive on the other side of this.  You are NOT your trauma.