In my experience churches in general aren’t very good at dealing with hard. Let alone dealing with someone who is going through something as hard as PTSD, or any other mental health issue I’d imagine. In my opinion for a bunch of reasons you can blame them for & also for a bunch of reasons that you really can’t. Unfortunately it is what it is. And these are good people I’m talking about. The arseholes that you find anywhere & everywhere are found there in churches too, but I figure they’re self-explanatory.
If you really want to know the truth, I would suggest looking for the individual(s) who possess wisdom rather than just knowledge alone. And better still a church that values them rather than silences them. For me, as soon as I thought ‘but you don’t understand’, I knew I was talking to the wrong person & to continue never fared well for me. Right or wrong I had reached the end of their knowledge & it was time to seek out a better source.
Joyce Meyer has been a great source for me. One of a few I can access without having to attend a church & I believe her background is one of abuse. I can’t think of a time off the top of my head that I ever felt that she had no idea what she is talking about. I have thought from time to time that I don’t agree entirely with her, but she is definitely one of the rare ones who tends to have real answers for real problems.
I don’t say this to convince you to start listening to her or anyone else’s teachings, but rather should your case be more of a people problem rather than a God problem I wanted to illustrate that there are others & other ways that can help.
I hear you & where your at. It’s hard to accept that with His power, why He doesn’t always seem to use it. But it’s because he keeps his promise not to force anyone to do anything they don’t want to do, that you can trust that he will & does stand behind all his other promises as well. If someone truly wants to hurt you, he will not force them to do something they do not want to do. Not because it’s right but because he keeps his word. But that doesn’t mean he leaves us alone. And partly that is where we come in. There’s a Mathew West song, Do Something that I really enjoy. Not just because it has an uplifting message but also because I don’t feel quite as alone in my frustrations with the church & my faith, etc. Basically the point is that God didn’t create ‘man’ only for His own benefit but also for the benefit of us all & each other. And we’re just not utilising that potential anywhere near what we could be.
And when ‘man’ fails, as we often do, we are also created by design to fracture/splinter, dissociate, compartmentalise, create emotional parts, etc. & so on, so that we may survive the un-survivable. Much like a modern day car is designed to crumple around it’s passengers in order to absorb the shock of the impact. Of course God didn’t design us to be able to fall apart without a way of putting us back together. The answers are there in the Bible & thankfully science, research & technology, in a lot of ways already has & is catching up. PTS is not the problem, it holds the keys to the healing solution. PTSD (the disorder) is only when we get stuck somewhere during the healing process of PTS. It’s not about curing the symptoms of PTS, it’s about getting unstuck within this healing process. PTS (or PTSD) was never designed to be a destination. It was & is designed to be a through. More of a case of ‘yes it is wrong, but don’t worry I have provided an answer for it, do the work so that you can get on with the living of your life the way it was intended’. And the answers are available both within & outside of the church. Preferably a combination of both. Of course this is a concept in its simplest form & by no way easy. And what stops us the most is fear, not whether it has anything to do with it being possible or not.
This is my truth & this is what I believe. Again I don’t say this to tell you what you should believe or do or that I’m right & you’re wrong. I have no idea what is best for you. But I do know this. The single determining factor that will decide who you are & what life you have will be according to what you choose to believe.
I have had the privilege of working with some great leaders in the field of PTSD & read some of their research. Some of their notions & findings are at odds with some of the ideas I find in this forum. At odds with terms like lifelong, permanent damage, more resistant strains, more severe types of ‘severe’ trauma or types of PTSD, etc. In fact, as I was rummaging through the data of one study I came across statistics for: a) Criterion A participants & b) Non-Criterion A participants (hmmm controversy??). Not even a hint of debate or discussion about it. These guys in particular have received worldwide recognition & accolades for the work they are doing. The Australian Government funds a program to help PTSD sufferers based on their findings. I believe someone from Beyond Blue sits on their board as well as other local & international partnerships. All very above board. On a separate & independent approach to my recovery I worked with a Clinical Psychologist who interestingly enough shared similar views (coincidence??).
As a result of working with these guys & in conjunction with my own faith, I honestly can’t tell you the last time I had to deal with a symptom of PTS. Stress maybe. After all, there’s no escaping life’s problems. And I haven’t qualified for a PTSD diagnosis in years. I really enjoy my life & wake up wanting to get stuck into it. The future months & years hold very exciting times ahead. All of which I genuinely want to be a part of. And I feel whole & that nothing about me has been lost or not given back to me.
My point is this. I do not believe what I believe because of the people or evidence that I came across, but rather that I came across the evidence & people that I found because of what I believed.
My prayer for you is this. I hope & pray that you choose wisely when deciding what it is that you do want to believe in & that is in line with what you really want to get out of life. And may you have the strength, courage & conviction to change your beliefs when or if it proves not to be serving you very well.
And yes there are animals in heaven. A reference that comes to mind I believe is in Revelations when talking about the trumpets & people riding down from heaven on the back of horses or something to that effect. I’m pretty sure there are some other references, but the short answer is yes there are animals in heaven.
Take care & God bless.
