In an age where people overuse and self-diagnose mental health conditions like a second language, I go out of my way to distance myself from the buzzwords of “depression,” “codependency,” and “boundaries” and leave the decision up to the medical professionals. Yet after a horrible week of medical procedures, pain killers, and immobility, I laid on the floor in my room and let all the tears come cascading down my cheeks in a flurry of anxiety, fear, and yes, depression. While my summer has been wonderful, filled with joy, education, and growing up, I couldn’t fathom how quickly I was falling as I watched my body break down and lose everything I had spent four years building back. It’s one thing to be broken-hearted with a physically fit body, but it’s another entirely to feel yourself sinking because your body cannot do so many of the things for which you yearn. When you feel in a funk and have a physically functioning body, you can get up and move to improve your mood, such as making a healthy snack for yourself or going for a jog outdoors. This causes your serotonin to activate and this can increase your joy, giving you some sense of autonomy. However, when your body is the cause for your heartache, you lose that sense of authority in your own life and ability to help your happiness. You, unfortunately, are stuck in the same position for endless hours at a time, are forced to rely on others for your basic necessities, who are not always as kind or as gentle as your heart needs them to be, and are required to rearrange your life on the drop of a dime. With no warning, losing your physical capacity to such an extent is a form of medical trauma, and as someone who’s experienced this type of trauma twice in four years, I can attest that this is just as emotionally crippling as it is physically. Thus, as I stared at the groves on my bedroom floor, sobbing like I was sixteen once more, I couldn’t help but wonder the same old question humans have been trying to solve since the beginning of time – if God is so good, why do such bad things happen? But in such a state of despair, the only two words I could ever think were simply Why, God?
Have you ever been there? If you’ve spent one second in this world, my guess is you have, and for that my heart bleeds for you. Life can be incredibly and emotionally abusive but to lose your bodily autonomy on top of such a mentally devastating experience is a whole other can of worms that changes hourly. You wake up and you can’t believe how much better it feels, so you use your crutches to limp to the bathroom. But the second you try to lower yourself onto the toilet, you immediately feel rearing pain as you scramble to adjust your positioning, but not too swiftly or you risk undoing the work the doctors had done. Your quote “good” leg is in constant discomfort for overcompensating as you try to stand, holding onto the sink for dear life, and you wonder if next time you have to go, you’ll simply hold it for as long as you can to avoid this fiasco unless it’s an emergency. But deep down, you know that’s unwise cause you can’t even walk unassisted, meaning that any movement needs to be a conscious exercise in endearment that requires your full attention at all times, meaning every trip to another area of the house is a preplanned tour. And that’s just the first five minutes you’re awake, not the whole damn day.
It’s these little inconveniences that pile up and strip a person of all of their energy that deflates their creativity and their desire for communication, for who has the ability to talk casually when every other aspect of their life is far from casual? Medical trauma is a constant cycle of physical discomfort, bodily pain, mental anxiety, and emotional depression that can alter your day in just one moment, one wrong step, or one insensitive word from someone else.
An old soccer injury reared its ugly head while I was studying abroad during a pick-up game, meaning I was unable to see my doctor or receive any treatment for nearly four weeks. Although my professors and fellow students were entirely and lovingly supportive, making adjustments to our trip itinerary for my safety and creating alternative plans so I could still participate, my host parents were adamant that I should have never played that game due to my medical history and that I should never touch a ball again with my “delicate” body. Infuriated, I fought back tears as I tried to explain myself away, arguing that I knew my body better than anyone, especially any man, could and feeling ashamed for wanting to play with my friends. Thus, on top of all the physical pain I was in, I experienced the far more crippling side effect of guilt for doing what I loved, which made advocating for myself in a room full of male doctors and relatives who wanted me to wait around for a miracle I knew wasn’t come all the more daunting. As bad as all this dismissing is, what strikes harder for me is when people started telling me that this was where God wanted me and that God wouldn’t give me this if He didn’t think I could handle it. These cliches have become the hallmark Christian comfort, and while I believe the majority of people use these phrases with harmless intentions, I’m afraid the consequences of these cliches are anything but harmless, both for the speaker and the recipient.
No where in the Christian Bible does it ever say that “God doesn’t give you more than you can handle” nor that “God causes trauma.” We do know that God works all things together for the good of those who love Her, but there is a difference between that and claiming that God causes everything for a reason. In the Romans verse, we see the glorious promise that God has made to us, that even the horrible, terrible things that begall us will be used by God, at some point, for our blessing. Yet this does not mean that God caused this physical pain to happen to us – this does not mean that God delights in our suffering as a form of discipline. Love is patient, love is kind, it does not harm but rather protects. And since God is love, I feel it is purely blasphemous to insinuate this of God’s character, meaning that the speaker is not only smearing the name of the Most High God but also lying to another child of God about Jesus’ heart. Thus, the words intended to comfort instead have the potential to turn believers away from Christ, for God is not a god of trauma. I am more convinced than ever after this second knee surgery that God does not cause bodily trauma nor delight in the pain that comes with such a grueling experience. Sometimes, the only way we can know the depth of God’s love and Hagia Sophia’s character is when we experience such physical impairment, because then we see how damning these Christian cliches are, designed by people who are able-bodied and pain-free. Only in disability theology do we have faith perspectives from the disability community, which I invite you to study here, for we often forget that a huge percentage of the people Jesus walked with in the New Testament are people with disabilities, both physical and mental. This implies that Jesus never intended for His believers to sideline people with disabilities but rather that they should be at the front and center of the Church and Christian theology, for pain and physical inability forces us to rely on God in ways that people who have not undergone medical trauma can experience nor understand. Only once we have lost our physical mobility do we realize how crushing such an experience is and how the Great Physician would never injure nor delight in watching Her patients suffer. What earthly doctor would, much less the God of the Universe who breathed life into us and formed our flesh in love’s own image?
To say that God is the God of trauma in the sense that Christ is our Comforter, our Counselor, our Advocate and our Shelter is an accurate statement that reasserts God’s presence in the darkest valleys in a vein of compassion and community. But to say that God is a god of trauma in the sense that God causes trauma as a way to “test” us is a cruel manipulation of God’s infatuation with us and only serves to drive souls away in the name of heresy. We are not meant to understand everything, including trauma, in part I believe, because God didn’t want to burden us with such knowledge of how dark and lifeless this world can be. So instead of trying to provide answers as to why God allows our bodies to break down, ask instead how you can support them through this season of life and make sure that they know they are not their body but rather the soul God destined them to be. And to the person experiencing such bodily trauma – I’m sorry. I’m sorry that you are experiencing this and I wish I could give you a hug right now. Continue to do what you love and can – whether that be reading, drawing, or spending time with loved ones – and know that our Great Physician is here to heal you, never to harm you.
Last Love 