Why do you reject my soul, Lord, and hide your face from me? I have been mortally afflicted since youth; I have borne your terrors and I am made numb. Your wrath has swept over me; your terrors have destroyed me. (Ps 88:15-17)As the psalmist makes clear, trauma--real trauma--wounds our psyche, our body and our soul in the deepest and most profound ways. This is demonstrated in the books The Body Keeps the Score, by Bessel van der Kolk and Shattered Assumptions, by Ronnie Janoff-Bulman. Joining Dan and Tom to discuss this topic is Sean Kelly, LPC, a mental health counselor with The Center for Christian Counseling and Relationship Development (CCCRD.org). Sean echoes the Psalmist by describing how trauma dis-integrates us from the healthy whole that God created us to be into damaged parts that cause us--and those who love us--great pain. However, despite the last line of the Psalm referenced above, the very fact that we have a Psalm 88 proves that the trauma did not in fact destroy him. Instead, the song demonstrated his survival, an outcome only possible because he had hope in a touchstone to which he could always go: trust in God.

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A