I attend a huge church in Louisville, KY, called Southeast Christian Church. And when I say huge, I mean lots of campuses and lots of attendees. Southeast is comprised of 14 campuses, with the main campus sanctuary being so big it can hold something like 10,000 people. It is sometimes referred to as “Six Flags over Jesus”. Some people are “put off” by the size and attendance of the church thinking we belong to some cult. I hear things like “oh, you drank the Southeast kool-aid”. I think these comments stem from an insecurity, a curiosity and a longing to understand why many people can’t “quit drinking the kool-aid” of Southeast.
One of the things I love about my church is this: the leaders understand the importance of transparency and authenticity. Jesus was transparent and authentic-why shouldn’t a pastor be that way too? Jesus appealed to the most hurt, gravely sick, mentally & physically weak and made them feel seen & heard. I think this is why Jesus was tugging on my heartstrings so hard which led me to Southeast. My church has made me feel seen & heard at a time in my life I felt unseen and unheard. Now, don’t get me wrong, on the outside and to most people, I lead an amazing, very blessed life. I am married to a wonderful man and have 3 healthy, beautiful sons. I have an amazing job, wonderful friends & family, a lovely home and all of basic needs are more than taken care of. What on earth could I possibly missing? How could someone like this feel unseen and unheard? I felt so guilty about feeling these ways at the beginning of my #healingmarathon. I thought, how can I feel this way? I know I am blessed so why does my heart feel heavy? Why do I feel so anxious? Why do I feel like nobody really understands me? I know my husband loves me, I have healthy kids I prayed for, and I have a job I love! What could you possibly be missing, Abigail? I would posit these questions and the guilt cycle would start all over again…only making me feel worse.
Attending services at Southeast regularly and talking to Jesus intentionally helped me feel seen & heard in a way I never had. Here are men & women who are followers of Jesus, leaders of my church, speaking transparently about their own struggles making them more like me. They humbled themselves at the altar before the Lord, but also before their congregation. The sermons have spoken to my heart and helped me humble myself before Jesus. The people at Southeast have also made themselves accessible to me in a way that I needed – I Just had to humble myself and be transparent & vulnerable. These are also the very people who told me they could see God was doing big things through me…at a time where I needed it the most. There was no judgement, no condemnation, no talk of rules or regulations…they just poured love into me and told me I mattered to Jesus. The leadership at Southeast make sure the members understand how they too are sinful & and very much human. They remind us, through scripture, how they are able to reconcile their sinful behavior and find healing through trusting in Jesus.
And, as much as they believe in the healing power of Jesus, they are also careful to make the point that coming to church every Sunday or reading the Bible aren’t what makes you reconcile the sin done unto you or your own sin to find healing. They truly help us see that God wants to know each one of us in a genuine, authentic relationship so that we understand Him. God already knows us…but we cannot fully understand his LOVE & GRACE if we do not know him. They help us to see that just like my husband was elated when my kids FaceTimed him today, Jesus is just as elated when we FaceTime Him to talk to Him. And I’m careful to say FaceTime and not call. God wants us to FaceTime Him so he can see the real us. He doesn’t want us to call him on the phone to be able to hide behind the receiver and pretend we are ok. He wants us to show Him the real us. The one struggling with anger, guilt, lust, greed, pride of envy.
I didn’t find healing in the Bible. I found healing by being in a relationship with Jesus who showed me, retrospectively, that he was there the whole time during my journey sending me the tools to heal. He showed me that mental and physical health are equally important to spiritual health to make us a WHOLE person. Had I not tackled my mental health, my emotional health, my physical health, and my spiritual health, I would not have found healing. I had traumas in all areas of my life that I needed to reconcile with and heal from. I now know, God was there the whole time, guiding me along my journey and answering prayers.
MY PATH TO HOLISTIC HEALING
Answered prayers are not always what they seem and can not always be identified as an answered prayer at the time, hence, the power of perspective. Like the time a sweet friend recommended her therapist and urged me to call him when I felt like my life had become unmanageable. That therapist diagnosed with me complex PTSD and urged me to look at myself through the eyes of Jesus. He encouraged me to see adolescent Abigail as a little girl…but not through my eyes, through the eyes of Jesus…and to describe to him what I saw through God the Father’s eyes. I told him, “I see a sad, scared, anxious little girl who did not deserve the abuse.” Not only did the diagnose validate so much of the way that I felt, but the perspective of seeing myself through the eyes of Jesus allowed me to see myself & other people I come across through the eyes of Jesus. I see people as children of God and I am able to see beyond their present circumstances. I have an intuition for what shaped them to be the person they are in the present.
How about the time my son’s preschool teacher confirmed concerns I had regarding him having ADHD? On my journey to help my son, who was diagnosed with ADHD from a pediatric psychologist, I questioned if I too had ADHD as so much of what I was learning through his diagnosis pertained to me. The question led me to seek help from a nurse practitioner specializing in psychiatry. She diagnosed me with ADHD, OCD, depression & anxiety, all common diagnoses that result from complex PTSD. I started taking medicine for my ADHD and anxiety that calmed my brain down. The prescription medication didn’t “fix” me, because my brain wasn’t broken. You see, my brain was just hard wired to live in a war zone from my years of trauma and the medicine helped calm down my vigilance from living in my fight or flight.
I tackled my mental health and emotional health in a multifaceted way. I later found out, from reading a book called “The Body Keeps Score” that the medicine helped calm down my fight or flight response hard wired into my brain and allowed me to process emotions through therapy more effectively. Being able to actually process my emotions helped me exercise my emotional muscles to strengthen my emotional health. In therapy, I was able to identify my “trauma triggers”. A trigger is a reminder, whether unconscious or conscious, to trauma we have experienced in our lives, whether it was one event or a series of events, like complex PTSD. My triggers were initially unconscious, but through the help of medication, meditation and therapy, they became conscious. When they become conscious, I could really start exercising those emotional muscles. Identifying my triggers were so important so that I could start “checking” my emotional responses to those triggers. I would have to ask myself, “Is Abigail the little girl coming out to fight or is this the adult Abigail ready for battle?” The answer to that question was almost ALWAYS the little girl.
What about the patient who recommended my functional nutritionist when I was suffering from pain due to my Ehlers Danlos Syndrome as well as chronic headaches? The headaches had been going on for over 6 months, happened daily, and I had already seen 3 specialists, had a CT scan, several different blood tests and was on my way to neurology. I was DESPERATE for answers. The first time my patient recommended the nutritionist, I wasn’t feeling desperate yet. She recommended her a second time a few months later. You see, the first time she recommended the nutritionist, it was an answered prayer, but I wasn’t able to receive the answer because I wasn’t ready to work as hard as I would have to in order to get results. God was still preparing me. I had to suffer more from those headaches to be in a place to see it as an answered prayer. He was preparing me for what the nutritionist was going to teach me. The nutrition program was hard, but had I not suffered or if the headaches were just intermittent or not “that bad”, I wouldn’t have had the discipline to finish the program which healed me from those headaches. The nutrition program revealed I had food sensitivities I was unable to uncover by 3 different food sensitivity tests.
ANSWERED PRAYERS TO ACHIEVE HOLISTIC HEALING
Perspective is required to see many of life’s answered prayers. Answered prayers often don’t seem like answered prayers at the time. My “answered” prayers to find healing only started revealing themselves after being intentional with God, learning how to be in a relationship with Him and attending church regularly to be in community with other followers. The tools God laid in my path only became clear after this intentionality started in my spiritual life. You see, it wasn’t that he wasn’t there, but it wasn’t as clear to me because I didn’t know Him.
It was an answered prayer, not coincidence that a friend at church was the one who recommended my therapist. A therapist I almost didn’t go to because he did a therapy technique called EMDR that I thought was so “weird” and I knew it would never work for me. A therapist who ended up specializing in PTSD, is writing a book about trauma, and changed my life & perspective in an instant when he helped me see myself through the eyes of Jesus. He helped unlock emotions that were trapped inside of me for years when he guided me to see myself as a little girl through God the Father’s eyes. He helped me grieve for her.
I’m also confident Jesus answered a prayer when he led me to get properly diagnosed with ADHD, anxiety and depression which led me to proper management. Proper diagnoses led me to take medicine to help calm my brain so I could actually process my emotions more clearly.
This is where I would like to make an important point: just because someone takes medicine for anxiety, depression, ADHD, etc, does not mean they are taking the “easy way out”. It doesn’t make them weak. And it doesn’t mean they don’t trust God with their healing. Talking to a therapist about your struggles doesn’t mean you don’t trust God with your mental health. Nobody ever questions a Christian who works out and is diligent about their physical health with questions like, “Why are you working out…you don’t trust God with your physical health?” The same should be said about mental health.
And it is not by accident that the nutritionist told me early on in her program, “Abigail, God created our bodies to heal.” The answer to my headaches was not more medicine or tests…it was understanding how food worked in my body according to how God created my body. God sends us tools to help us find healing outside of reading the Bible or going to church, you just have to be ready and seeking the answers with His guidance.
HOLISTIC HEALING
I found healing in mental health professionals, my nutritionist, my physical therapists who have helped me with physical pain related to my Ehlers Danlos syndrome, in taking medicine and in Jesus. We spend so much of our lives convincing ourselves we are “wired this way” or that we can “start tomorrow”. We tell ourselves “God loves us in whatever shape we are in” so we stop pursuing our physical health and we ignore our mental and emotional health. We think these things are disconnected from our spiritual health. Some of us Christians either believe or preach we can only gain a healthy mental status through going to church, loving God and being a “good Christian”. We believe we can just “pray our problems” away. If we did this, helped this person, started this bible study, or volunteer at church, maybe God will heal us. We need to fix something in order for God to fix us. We prioritize doing for God as opposed to being with God. Some of us are taught to elevate our spiritual health above all of our other needs, physical, emotional and mental. We have to understand and accept that we are WHOLE people and not just spiritual beings. The whole human being is the sum of an individual’s mind, body, emotions and spirit, which can be developed. We have to prioritize all aspects all aspects of one’s health, emotional, mental, physical and spiritual to be able to become who God created us to be. If one of those systems is out of alignment, then you will never fully understand the unconditional love Jesus offers. Ignoring one aspect of your health can prevent you from experiencing true peace and being able to live the life God intended for you to live.
To get started on this path, you must embrace the following commitments: surrender all aspects of your health to God, stop making excuses and start making baby steps to change. You have to start somewhere…so start today! Every day you wait is another day in delaying monumental healing that is on your horizon.
Someone once told me, “Abigail, you just make it look so easy.” I’m here to tell you, it wasn’t. I’m transparent and don’t like to set up unrealistic expectations. This has been a long journey but I only started getting intentional about my healing 2 years ago. Before that time, I dabbled in healing but would back away because it was hard and I felt like I wasn’t making any progress. My journey to healing started the moment trauma occurred in my life….sometime after 1983. But, the slow growing impacts trauma had on my life didn’t become unmanageable until April 2020. The last 2+ years have been so trying with an internal battle raging on in my body that nobody could see. Not one person could feel what I felt, accept for God. I wish I could have recorded my heart rate, blood pressure or cortisol levels during this time. I could then objectively show people my body was keeping score of the impacts trauma was having on my life. But I was determined to beat the battle with trauma.
Emotional Marathon Training
The emotional muscles were some of the hardest for me to work out because it required a lot of intentionality and a lot of restraint.
Our emotions are stunted at the age the trauma occurred. So, when someone would upset me, I would lash out with the emotions of a child. If I’m mad, I’m going to yell, scream, throw a tantrum or I’m going to shut down and ignore you. Expressing age appropriate, mature emotions was so foreign to me because I had never been allowed to express how I felt as a child. If I’m sad, I’m going to cry like a baby. If I’m happy, I’m going to be over the top in my reactions and emotions. I was stunted. Every emotion was seemingly over the top for what was happening.
In anger, my husband would ask me, ”Why are you yelling?”
“I’m yelling because I’m mad.”
“But you don’t have to yell just because your mad. Just talk to me.”
I didn’t know how to talk in anger. My body, my brain and my unconscious hardwiring were telling me to fight!!! After being diagnosed with PTSD and ADHD, my laser focus of ADHD led to me research a lot about trauma. I was voracious learner about PTSD and the brain. I listened to a lot of books and podcasts and one message was clear, the brain can rewire because God created our bodies to miraculously adapt to our environment to survive. After making this realization I stopped telling myself that I couldn’t stop the emotional outbursts because I was just “wired this way”.
And so the emotional training began! First, with great restraint, I stopped yelling when I got angry. I was still intense and passionate in my delivery, so my husband still heard yelling. I would get so frustrated because I felt like I was making huge progress, but the intensity still triggered something in him to walk away so our conflict would never get resolved. After I was able to check the yelling, I had to figure out a way to stop the anger from leaking out of my pores in my non-verbals. How do you stop intensity in your voice and your eyes? At this point, the word “can’t” was wreaking havoc on my brain. I said several times to myself, “I can’t stop the intensity. This is who I am. This is how I’m wired.” But I had to find a way to mature those emotional muscles more because although my voice wasn’t raised, he still heard yelling. And so I prayed for restraint and kept exercising.
What came next only came with the knowledge of my triggers, the medicine to help me calm my brain to see the past vs. what was happening in front of me & Jesus. I checked my tone, my intensity, my eyes and my overall delivery. With unbelievable mental restraint, physical restraint & prayer, I started talking to my husband when I was upset and checked anger at the door. I took the angry emotion entirely out of my external presence, although it felt like I had a straight jacket on, and I just talked. He still got offended but I found power over my own emotions. I found the tools I had been searching for. I had been exercising my emotional muscles for a long time to get here. It still required work. It still required vigilance, prayer, being in tuned to God and my inner little girl, but I did it. I found the tools to take control of my own emotions. The power of free will. The power to choose. You see…from the time I was born, those traumatic responses were hard wired into me. They were hard wired into my DNA. There was a threat every day in my life. A threat that caused my cortisol to spike – an involuntary response to stress. A threat that would rewire my brain to be more equipped to live in the unpredictable zone. These were physiological changes that occurred in my body because God created our bodies to adapt to our environment to survive. I realized He designed my body to save myself. He rewired me to be able to survive in my unpredictable war zone.
But now, I don’t live in a war zone. So, I had to mindfully, intentionally, and with the power of Jesus, rewire my brain to live in a peaceful zone. I didn’t need to fix a brain that was broken. I just had to retrain it to live in a different environment.
EXERCISE YOUR MUSCLES TO FIND HOLISTIC HEALING
The more I worked out my emotional muscles by separating figuring out if my emotion was from the little girl Abigail or from the grown up Abigail, I gained more control of my emotions and didn’t lose myself in the moment. The more I worked out my body by feeding it food that was meant for my body & working with physical therapists, the better I felt and the pain was not constantly taking control of my brain. The anxiety medicine and ADHD medicine helped calm my brain, like ibuprofen helps calm the muscles of someone who has done a hard core physical work out. And, because of the medicine, my brain could better process the emotions I was feeling and helped me separate what was present from what was in the past. This ability to check my trauma responses and separate present from the past, helped me further mature those emotional muscles. All the while, I was exercising my spiritual muscles by listening to guided Christian meditation, learning to talk to Jesus, going to church regularly and trying to find a community of people that loved me through the eyes of Jesus. You see, my journey wasn’t easy. It required a lot of intentionality and trust. I was scared, frustrated and felt overwhelmed along the process.
JESUS FACE-TIMED ME
But, do not be discouraged or overwhelmed by the work because I am living proof and here to tell you it is worth it!!! I can tell you for the first time in my life, my mental, physical, emotional and spiritual beings are all in alignment. When I found wholeness after exercising my emotional, mental, physical and spiritual muscles, that is when Jesus finally FaceTimed me back and said, “Welcome Home Abigail! I was here the whole time.” And I also want to be clear that I know my healing is not complete, because we are all on the same journey to find eternal healing.
However, having all of my beings aligned helped me gain perspective & it allowed me to heal in ways I never dreamed. My healing has led me to a “peace beyond all understanding”. The very peace that the Bible promises followers of Jesus, is the very peace I experience today. And by peace, I don’t have a false sense of security thinking “nothing bad will ever happen to me”. This is not what peace is. Peace is being joyful in hope, patient in affliction and faithful in prayer. Peace is knowing you are worthy and you are forgiven. Peace is a feeling I pray everyone I am blessed to encounter in this life finds on their own journey to healing. Peace is knowing when I take my final breath, I know where I will be going to experience eternal peace and healing from the suffering I endured and the suffering I will experience in the future due to our broken world.
So, don’t ignore those nudges to start your #healingmarathon because healing happened in some of the most unexpected places in order for me to achieve holistic healing. And I know God was there with me the whole time. He was there instilling that fight in me to help me achieve this peace. The fight that was instilled in me as a trauma sufferer is the same fight He used that helped me crawl my way out of the darkness into the light & finally break the chains of my childhood trauma.
I’m here to tell my story because when you bring your darkness into the light, it loses its power over you! When I started this blog, I was not as enlightened as I am today. My motto, #nobodyrunsalone, is now symbolic of not only my passion for shedding light on the impacts of trauma and helping others find healing, but it is also symbolic of the fact that I know with every fiber of my being, God has been my training partner in every aspect of my healing. #thehealingmarathon #nobodyrunsalone
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