The Gift

Last Christmas I don't really remember very well. I remember it being very busy and very dramatic. This year is busy and dramatic but in a different way. In this season I always look for ways that God seeks to bless me or give me a gift that isn't something I was looking for but was something I needed. Last year it came in the form of community. This Christmas it comes in a form of deeper healing and deeper connection with God.

Last year shortly after Thanksgiving I was diagnosed with PTSD. This is something I've struggled with for years but actually never really recognized or dealt with it. Which made it challenging for me in relationships and academics because my sensitivity to triggers really messed with me. But I just never felt like it was something I needed to deal with. Part of that probably had to do with the lies I had believed for years about myself. It took a lot digging and shoveling through muck and gunk before it became clear what was going on. At that time my therapist and I discussed doing some EMDR but I was at such a chaotic point in my life that he felt it wasn't the right time. I wanted it to be time but agreed I needed to wait it out. In the year between God brought certain things into my life that challenged me to face my triggers in ways I never thought I needed, it came in the form of community and brought me to a place of healing and redemption.

Recently my triggers related to the PTSD have become more and more clear and specific. It took me a year to sort through a lot of stuff before I finally was able to narrow it down to very specific things, specific questions, specific reactions. It was very clear and definite. And my therapist again broached the idea about doing EMDR. So I prayed about it, researched it and felt it was time.

So last week I started. I had done a lot of prayer and preparation for weeks (although consciously I didn't think of it as "preparation", it was more where I was at in life) and had broken through in my relationship with God. Finally. Like real legit breakthrough and I was coming back to where I had been before the fiasco that happened last year. I stepped into the session and was asked to describe what my "happy place" was. I knew exactly.

Some of you who have been following me for some time may have come across a poem I had written called "The Garden". This garden is my special me and Jesus spot and had become a central piece to my faith and life since I was much younger. Over the last few years the garden has grown to include an open prairie field, a forest, a seashore, a beautiful valley, a desert, and the waters have become more full of fish and coral and life in general and taken on a more defined depth to them. And each location has a very specific meaning and purpose between me and Jesus. This is where I am when I worship, when I pray, when I spend time with God. This is my "happy place".

In EMDR what happens is your "happy place" becomes your center and out of your center your brain becomes rewired around trauma. Put all of this together - the Garden, me and Jesus, brain rewired, trauma healed, and my mind was blown. I don't know about you but I thought that was AMAZING! Literally I hold something that causes me anxiety and I hold the garden together in my being and through these things called "tappers" (they give you bilateral stimulation - aka they vibrate in one hand at a time) all combined my anxiety drops - my brain becomes rewired around the thing that causes me anxiety and I no longer have an issue with that thing.

But this was the gift - that God is healing me of the trauma through some cutting edge treatment. It's not just a treatment that is based in a field that comes straight out of humanism and secularist mindset, it's God infused in the treatment, guiding me and directing EVERY SINGLE STEP of the process. To explain further this week when I went in I had to hold something mildly irritating (a leaky faucet) and the Garden together and be there until my anxiety dropped from a 6 to a 1. At first I was wandering through the Garden unsure of which location I should be at. I didn't feel settled so I went back to the river and I looked in the river and there were these little fishes swimming around in the coral there, playing together. And I enjoyed watching those little fish play together. My anxiety dropped from a 6-4. Then little animals came to sit beside me and play with me. My anxiety dropped from a 4-2. Then I had to hold something moderately irritating (stop-and-go traffic) and the Garden together. Jesus came to sit beside me while I played with the animals and watched the fish play with each other. My anxiety dropped from a 7-4. Then Jesus wrapped me up in a big hug and played along side me with the animals. Anxiety drops from 4-2. Then Jesus asks me to come chase him through the prairie grass. Anxiety drops from 2-1.

God directing every step.

I think from time to time we miss out on the Gift because we fail to realize that we hold no control over pretty much anything but our actions. We look and seek for things that are often right in front of us. Often perceiving the gift as less than what it really is. Sometimes that's people, sometimes that's things or events, and sometimes that is just this fact that we get to be in relationship with God. This gift surprised me this season - I was not prepared to be so immersed in a healing process with God. A few months ago I wasn't even in a position to really enter into this sort of relationship dynamic with God. It was only through a situation that arose that led me to a place of total surrender and total dependence on God to help me through that I found myself again.

Like the innkeeper who was seeking some peace and someone to lessen their burden. Or the shepherds who were looking for meaning and hope. Or the young couple who were looking for provision for their basic needs with a baby on the way. Or the wise men who were looking for fulfillment. All received a gift that Christmas day, a Gift that met their every need and satisfied every desire. And they almost missed it because it wasn't what they were looking for.