Three years into recovery, you find yourself musing in those late-night “what if” brain overload sessions that replace healthy sleep, that if the time taken to undo the effects is equal to the time spent in a state of trauma, I will be 72 years old when I feel “normal” again (not that I ever knew what normal actually was) and if I don’t experience trauma again (pffft – like that could happen).

Welcome to the beginning stages of recovery of an overthinking, overactive, hypervigilant, thought-intruded, worst-case-scenario-planning mind of a person living with Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD). Please make yourself comfortable in the maze of misaligned neuropathways of my mind state fuelled by anxiety, caffeine, and a bucket of adrenaline.

This might sound overly dramatic, but what is life without a bit of drama anyway – at least it makes for good reading…

Eddy was kinda right, though. While I do have that wicked sense of humour, and I am relatively interesting, that trauma has led to me subconsciously seeking out interpersonal relationships that mirror the abuse of my formative years because I don’t know any other way of living.

Thankfully, I have begun to turn a corner in seeking those relationships. I now keep everyone at arm’s length, am suspicious of people’s intentions, and expertly read between the lines. Still, even though I know better, I fall victim to the same traps that have become a comfort zone. It feels like a curse.

With all that said, there is something liberating in naming the monster 37 years into living with trauma and its effects.

I no longer (constantly) ask myself, “Why can’t you just be a normal person?” I find myself now being able to answer myself – sometimes with kindness, sometimes not – “Because you are recovering from years of abuse. You have CPTSD. That is not your fault. You did nothing to deserve it. It was ‘gifted’ to you by those meant to protect you.”

That, too, can trigger anger, bitterness, discouragement, and bouts of tear-inducing laughter from sharing memes with PTSD peers. Ultimately though, it reminds me that this is just something that is part of my current reality.

It does not define me – the same way that having tonsillitis does not define a child.

The only difference is that the kid can have their tonsils removed in 45 minutes (followed by all the ice cream they can eat), the effects of trauma might take years to be extracted from my psyche, or possibly I will have to learn to manage the symptoms for the rest of my life. I can still eat all the ice cream I want, though.

The small wins still count.

Recovery is always about those small wins. Whether it is having ice cream whenever you want to or being able to dream about a future more than three hours ahead of the present moment, it boils down to one thing—agency.

Agency is what makes us complex creatures. This is possibly one of the most beautiful gifts that God could have given us: the agency to follow a lifepath carefully inspired, curated, and designed to bring out the fullness of the Creator’s influence and desires.

Speaking of God, amid the battle I do often feel like God has forsaken me – if He was with me, then why have I faced such an uphill battle? Why did He allow that trauma to continue for so long unabated? Where is he? Why me? Why? Why? Why? Why?

It is so easy for those ‘whys’ to flow free and to feel alone and forsaken. It is so easy to be in the middle and ask Jesus if He even cares. Honestly, up until recently, with my vision clouded by trauma and my mind reverting to a negative default of “you deserve this trauma – you don’t deserve His presence,” a shift has begun to take place where I see that He has been with me every step of the way – even though I was too depressed to see it.

A famous pastor once wrote that if it is God’s will, it will come to pass, and if it comes to pass, it is God’s will. While this is true from certain theological viewpoints and accurate in the context that the author intended it to get people “just to do something,” in this path I have been walking in recovering from CPTSD, it has taken on a new meaning.

God doesn’t delight in trauma, but He does see it as an inevitable side effect of this world’s fallen nature. But, and this is a huge but, His presence persists in these moments of pain – sometimes even more than in moments of ease or joy.

Lazarus died, people were shocked, they grieved for a young life, they looked to Jesus for answers, and His first response was to weep. He cried. He saw the pain. He felt the pain of those suffering. He experienced His own pain at the loss of His friend and the grief it caused Lazarus’ family. He wept. The funeral-goers responded. “See how He loved him.” He bore withness.

See how He loves you.

Jesus gives us that agency to look to Him in the midst of this – we might not get the answers we want from Him in that moment, but He invites us to look to Him, to hear Him say “I am so sorry this has been so tough, I am so sorry you feel like you are losing your mind – I know what that grief feels like, I know what it is like to want to back down and walk away. Just know that I am with you because I know your pain. My withness is there whether or not you see it – I just hope you can lift your eyes long enough to see it…”

And right here in the middle, with the right lenses on your eyes, you can see His withness in everything. That unexpected phone call from a friend, the opportunity to take a breather and do something you once enjoyed, little pieces of the puzzle that make up your life mysteriously falling into place, that one morning you open your eyes and instead of your first thought being about the fear of what it means entering into a new day, it is replaced by hope or excitement, or more realistically, just not dread. That is Him with you. That is a small win. It is all about those small wins. And the more you see it, the more frequently you see those small wins.

So here I am, after (and still in the middle of) many different setbacks, beginning to dream about what agency would look like and, more importantly, how it feels to practice it with Jesus as my guide. Well, let me tell you, dear reader and fellow sojourner – it feels damned frightening to attempt to break the stranglehold of being reactive to life’s situations to becoming proactive and starting to dream.

Dreams are great, but what they don’t tell you is that dreams mean leaving your comfort zone and facing the possibility of failure – the obscenest of the f-words for those of us who have lived through countless narcissistic relationships.

What if my dream fails? What if my dream succeeds and I am not good enough or dreaming the wrong dream?

Like a chess grandmaster, the misfiring synapses fuelled by anxiety think 5, 10, 50 steps ahead of me, and now I am tasting familiar defeat before I have begun to dream.

This fear serves nothing but to hold us back. Fear is the antithesis of agency – once again, you are held captive by another who does not have your best interests at heart.

This begs the question – how do we find that path to agency without giving into fear?

Courage.

Not the Rambo kind, but the courage that is defined by knowing the right thing to do, being scared of doing it, and doing it scared anyway. If you allow yourself to try and see the fingerprints of Jesus in each situation, courage feels a little easier to invoke.

So this is where I am now. I’m sorry if you wanted a happy ending. I am still in the middle, daily learning to become a slightly fuller version of what Jesus intends me to be.

The mere act of seeing these words appear on the screen is a testament to my agency, to knowing what I need to do and doing it scared, and to the withness of Jesus and of each person (you included) who shares has become part of my journey of fullness.

“A little childhood trauma builds character…”

If looked at from the right angle, Eddy was right. The trauma in my life has led to a healthy and rounded character emerging from the worst of situations – all you need is to allow yourself the agency and willingness to let Jesus help you to start to dream again.