“But God doesn't call us to be comfortable. He calls us to trust Him so completely that we are unafraid to put ourselves in situations where we will be in trouble if He doesn't come through.”
― Francis Chan, Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God
The subject I want to talk about today is "triggers". Addicts, abuse victims and people who have experienced trauma understand this word more than anyone, but I would guess everyone understands triggers to a degree. Triggers are anything that takes you back to a place you don't want to go, back to old feelings and even old behavior. For the addict it may be a song that makes them want to use. For the abuse victim it may be a face or story that makes them want to crawl under their bed. It can be as simple as a piece of clothing that reminds a person of a lost loved one and the tears come without warning and they don't want to face the day. Triggers can be controlled, but only to a degree. An alcoholic stays out of a bar for instance, can't control the advertisement for her favorite whiskey in a magazine she is thumbing through. In AA they teach you to deal with triggers, maybe call a friend, get to a meeting or go sit in church.
To the outside world a person may seem all together, but there is no way for us to know what goes on in a person's head. I have friends who see me as a person who has beaten a lot of my fears in the last months and I have conquered them here and there, but nobody can know what that means. They don't know that I begged God to be with me before I left the house. They don't know that I am seconds from panic. Sometimes I share these moments, but other times I don't. Why? Because sometimes asking, speaking it out takes the power out of it. Sometimes someone else knowing where I am mentally gives me strength, but there are other times when it has the opposite affect. Speaking it out seems to give it power. So, to the outside world things are fine and most times they are, but as I walk through this journey God has laid out for me, He is calling me to bigger things that can momentarily take me back to square one, because the same old devil is fighting me the same way he always has, but with a new determination. New levels, new devils.
We can think we understand another person, because we have experienced the same thing, but this is not always true. For example, two people may have suffered a beating, to the point of almost losing their life and they experience a lot of the same feelings, fears, and stages of healing. But, if one is beaten by a spouse and the other is beaten by a stranger there are going to be huge differences. I read once that the relationship between two people before abuse affects how the abused sees the situation. This made so much sense to me. Being molested by a grandfather is going to affect a person a lot different than if it was a friend's older brother. I am not saying one situation is less traumatic than another, they are just different. When we don't feel heard by a friend it hurts, but when we don't feel heard by a stranger we write it off faster.
I was at an AA meeting where a woman talked about a little saying her sponsor used on her. "It's not the amount of tricks you've turned, it's why you were turning tricks." The topic was facing character defects, so she implied that turning tricks was a choice. This woman said this with a woman in the room who had been forced into prostitution by her family for most of her life. All I could do was shake my head. What a HUGE trigger. My first thought, was why don't people think before they speak, but it soon went to "I wonder how many times I have said something so stupid?"
We can't always prevent triggers from falling out of our mouths. And we can't always decide we know what someone else needs or doesn't need. This is a good reason to constantly be listening to the Holy Spirit's instruction. He will stop us from saying the wrong thing if we listen. At the same time, the enemy wants words to come from us that will send an addict back to using, and abuse victim back into hiding, or a person in grief back to crying. Take every thought captive, before converting them to words. This is so important because there is life and death in words.
We also have no idea what God is doing in an other's life no matter how smart we think we are. If somebody is down and out and we want to help, God may stop that. Why? Maybe He is teaching them to ask for help. Maybe He is teaching them to rely on Him. We can show up on our white horse and totally destroy God's plan. I believe there are more well intentioned heart slashing's than deliberate. Don't they say the road to hell is paved with good intentions? God is looking for a people He can trust. Do we trust people who don't even listen to us? Why would God?
Can you imagine being the foreman at a construction site and nobody listens to you or they decide they know better than you. You have one guy building a frame for a wall 2 feet taller than the other walls. Maybe you have a guy who decided to buy bigger windows than what the frames were built for. Really? I wonder if this is what God feels like sometimes?
There is a difference between making a mistake while trying to follow God's will and deliberately putting our own will before His. His thinking is beyond ours and He knows the whole story. I just finished writing my story. The book starts when I was about 11 years old and ends 7 months ago, but I no longer think of it as my story, it's my part in God's story. He is the Author and we each have our own chapter, but we have to decide if we are going to write it ourselves or allow Him to write it through us.
“Will God ever ask you to do something you are not able to do? The answer is yes--all the time! It must be that way, for God's glory and kingdom. If we function according to our ability alone, we get the glory; if we function according to the power of the Spirit within us, God gets the glory. He wants to reveal Himself to a watching world.”
― Henry T. Blackaby, Experiencing the Spirit: The Power of Pentecost Every Day
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