The Inside Job: Healing Trauma and Family Relationships

Scripture’s earliest images reveal the spectrum of challenges that all of humanity encounters. In family relationships, God set the blueprint at creation in a perfect environment. God created a world for His people to live in harmonious fellowship with Him and one another free from trauma.

Despite this, a real enemy threatened what God had envisioned. He sought to destroy the Father’s Image by persuading Adam and Eve to not only doubt God, but themselves, and one another.

Although Adam and Eve were made from the same material and fashioned by the same God, sin split their bond. Disobedience distorted their perceptions to view the Father as withholding goodness. Instead of acknowledging the role of the serpent and their own culpability, they blamed one another.

Their experience reveals how sin fragments us and weakens our connections. We tend to believe the lies whispered by our enemy instead of embracing the Truth that we were created to live.

Tormented by trauma

The Genesis story is rather familiar because it seems that we have heard it many times. However, as many times as we have read about it, we don’t realize that we are often living the same script.

Like the first humans, we mirror Adam and Eve who cowered in the shadows. While they assembled fig leaves to shield themselves from their awareness of vulnerability and exposure, we tend to cover ourselves with possessions, seeking people, or pursuing activities to keep our minds busy. In doing so, we break fellowship with the Father and injure one another because we worry about what we might discover about ourselves in the stillness.

Rebellion created a chasm of emotional distance and dysfunction. Sin changed the way that humanity would experience relationships going forward. We still experience its effects today.

Our fallen world, full of imperfect people, yearns for the sons and daughters of God to arise and bring peace to the earth, even as we share the light of Christ. Jesus left peace that the world can’t give us and we can’t obtain outside of faith in Him. The trouble is that we are still writhing in pain, living with less than Jesus intended, and tormented by the trauma of family history.

Made for more

Our closest relatives may have wounded us, altering our hearts and perspectives with the trauma induced by toxic patterns of thought and behavior. Errantly, we sometimes believe that our salvation eclipses the need for soul wellness.

Although we have accepted and believed in God’s Truth, we limit our spiritual wellness to questions of morality and where we will spend eternity. Though important, it is incomplete. God cares for our spirit; but He made all three parts: spirit, soul, and body, to thrive.

Dear friend, I pray that you may enjoy good health and that all may go well with you, even as your soul is getting along well. – 3 John 1:2, NIV

Those who have placed faith in Christ are regenerated spirits, with a soul (mind, will, emotions), living in a physical body. When we accept Christ, we gain access to a new life that doesn’t just reset when our bodies expire, but rather makes our spirits new right now (2 Corinthians 5:17). That spirit is either starved or nourished by spiritual practices and disciplines.

We can walk in the Spirit, feeding ourselves with the Word and navigating our lives in partnership with the Spirit of God. Or we can leave our spirit weak and famished by neglecting and depriving it of the life mined in the Word, prayer, and healthy fellowship with others, including our family members and believers.

Jesus wants to do more than simply save us from eternal separation. He came to bring life to the full, so we could experience not just Heaven after earth, but a revelation of Heaven on earth (John 10:10). He has given us everything that pertains to life and godliness, the spiritual blessings that enrich and elevate our entire lives (2 Peter 1:3; Ephesians 1:3).

God desires to transform the parts of us where trauma and pain camp, distorting the mindset that manufactures our perceptions. He wants to minister to or serve our entire person with what only He can give, and align us with Him in not only what we think, but how we think, which impacts our emotions and experiences in life.

New creature, new chapter

The Bible describes presenting ourselves as living sacrifices. We welcome Him to alter us by renewing our minds. Past experiences such as traumatic incidents, abusive patterns, and dysfunctional cycles of behavior may have warped our minds and thought patterns. When they inform our family dynamic, they shape our early experiences and mold our behaviors.

We care for our souls, by surrendering to the Lord on an ongoing basis. Here, He is free to work in and through us, though uncomfortable and awkward, so we don’t persist in unnecessary pain.

This sanctifies or sets us apart from the pattern of the world marked by worry, pain, stress, anger, and unforgiveness. It is a process that continues to draw us into a deeper relationship with Him, characterized by peace and joy.

This enables us to grow in awareness of how uniquely we are loved. Out of that love, we respond to Him in faithful obedience. While we don’t necessarily undergo total transformation overnight, it does happen. God fashions miracles out of lives twisted by trauma and pain.

Transforming the place of trauma

God wants to prosper us and bring us into holistic health, from the inside out. He wants to meet our families in the same place as well. We may need to take a few steps to navigate this uncertain territory. It is important to recognize that we cannot save anyone, including ourselves. There is only one who can save and that is Jesus.

Trust.

Trusting Christ for our eternal salvation and our ongoing healing and deliverance needs to be met with patience and kindness. These are part of the fruit of the Spirit, or attitudes and attributes of godly character (Galatians 5:22-23). The Holy Spirit develops this within us as we encounter His abiding counsel and comfort in various life experiences.

The original word for salvation, sozo, also has to do with healing and deliverance. God wants to filter His transformation power throughout our entire lives and beings, for now and eternity.

Triage.

Healing may come through meeting with a counselor to resolve the pain of trauma that we have not addressed. When we bring it to the Lord, we triage what is hemorrhaging from within. Instead of retreating to the shadows as Adam and Eve did, we uncover the shame of what happened in our families and early experiences.

While God already knows everything, our decisions and actions reinforce that we trust Him enough to handle what is beyond our scope and ability. This is where we are authentic, yet vulnerable, and He meets us in grace, being a strength for our weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9).

Turning it over.

Although our lives may offer an example of healing and hope, people have to make their own choice to follow God. We can love and pray for our families, turning them over to God and trusting Him for the outcome. The Holy Spirit may work through our conversations to soften their hearts into repentance or open their eyes to see what they hadn’t before.

It requires the confidence to know that God loves them as He loves us. We cannot force them to accept or align with the Lord. He allows people to choose Him, not just for salvation, but also to live in the healing that He has made available.

Time.

In the meantime, we need the patience that the Spirit builds in us. While we are going through a healing journey, there will be times when we wonder if it is worth it. We may question if we are doing the right thing. Healing hurts. It takes time and endurance to unpack trauma and negative patterns of belief and behavior.

We are not on this journey alone. While we may have experienced traumatic incidents that upended our lives, we don’t have to remain rooted in them.

Jesus was prophesied to be the Wonderful Counselor, but He also was spoken of as One who endured significant grief and sorrow (Isaiah 9:6; 53:3). As our Perfect Sacrifice, He atoned for the sin that entered the world and broke our relationships. As our High Priest, who advocates for us with the Father, He is the One who fully understands what it is like to be us with our unique pain and problems because He endured them, too, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15).

Christian Counseling for Healing from Trauma

When we receive this revelation, we can renew our minds and perspective to guide us in going forward. God wants to do a healing work, unburdening us and our families of the trauma that we have encountered and even perpetuated in our interactions. God can do the work, but He has also placed wisdom in godly counselors to help us along this journey.

Search our site, and seek a professional to further address these issues in your life. Although the hurt is present, healing is available and works from the inside out.