BAND AIDS

Do we not all love band aids?  From my earliest memories, there was just something about that elastic adhesive covering my wounds.  Remember I was a Tom Boy & the wounds were numerous.  I am certain my knees stayed raw until my teenage years from all the bicycle wrecks.  Momma could not keep enough band aids to cover the wounds of her 3 children.

Now they make those war wound covers with characters on them.  My grands all loved the characters when they were small.  It seems to take a little away from the pride of having a covered wound when it has Barbie or Woody on it.  I digress. 

Do you remember the story of my oldest FW grand selling band aids on the playground?  He might have told his friends some story about the nurse's band aids not being sterile enough or her being stingy with issuing these bandages.  Some teacher caught on to his money making scheme and shut him down.  We are willing to pay good money to cover our wounds.

The thing about band aids is they cover the wound and you can not see that wound under the white part of the bandage.  If you do not wait long enough to pull that bandage off, the wound will not be healed.  I have been known to pull off a scab with a premature removal and have to go back to square one in healing.  Those band aids also lose their stickiness once you have pulled them off.  They never stick quite the same way again.  How many times have I discovered while getting ready for bed that the band aid I reapplied was lost during the day.  The stickiness lost its  effectiveness with the premature removal.

Sometimes we have emotional wounds we have covered over with God's love.  If we leave His bandage on until the wound is healed, we are given a reprieve from some of the pain associated with our wound.  If we prematurely rip His bandage off by revisiting some aspect of the cause of the pain, we are only prolonging healing.  We then open ourselves up to losing the bandage entirely and having to endure the really slow process of healing from within.  With God's help, our healing is always endured with grace.  When we decide we need to look at the wound and reexamine it, we are prolonging the pain.  We have feet of clay--and can be our own worst enemy.  Leave the bandage on and give yourself  time to heal is always the best answer.

"Lord my God,

I called to you for help,

and you healed me."

Psalm 30:2 

WHO FIRED THAT SHOT?

 In my never ending quest to figure out who I am and why I act and react as I do, I am currently reading THIS book

Be forewarned--it is NOT light reading.  In fact it is a great deal like a text book.  DEEP!  I have spent weeks slowly reading it.  It is worth the effort, I am learning a great deal about the effects of trauma on us.

I would dare say most of us have experienced some form of trauma in our lives.  This book is an in depth discussion about the effect trauma has on our brain, mind and body.

There are triggers which when pushed can cause us to relive some part of our trauma.

It could be a sight, a sound, a smell, a touch or almost any physical stimuli which reminds our brains of a trauma we suffered in the past.  Without thinking we are jerked back to the trauma and find ourselves reacting as the danger bells begin ringing in our sub-conscious.  You might find yourself more affected by one sense than the others.  For me it is the power of words which often cause me to remember events I would prefer to keep buried.  For all my laughing about my loss of my memory, those powerful traumatic events are not forgotten.  Perhaps on the surface we are able to stuff them down into a hole, but the body is always ready to create a reaction when someone pulls the trigger or pushes the button to release the flood of memories.  

Who would pull that trigger or push that button?  Most of the time, it is quite inadvertent.  My startle reflex is set off when I am not aware of someone coming up behind or beside me.  It is amazing how high I can still jump without even intending. And then there is the innocent conversation where some memory from the past is lightly brushed and you are off again on the rabbit trail.  Frankly I find myself at times reliving a past event and cannot figure out what set me off.  From my reading, something I saw, heard, smelled, tasted, felt reached way back in the recesses of my brain without my even being aware the trigger had been pulled or the button pushed.  

The World of Movies would have you believe you always hear the gun being cocked ~ the trigger being pulled back.  That is not necessarily so.  Sometimes we are blindsided without ever being aware someone or thing is about to push the trauma alert button.  Trauma is a powerful force with life changing consequence.  I am learning we can learn to deal with our traumas.  The brain is powerful and we can learn to live with the consequences of our traumas.  The starting point is educating yourself on how the brain works.  The next step is taking steps to heal yourself.  God is our great Physician and Healer.  He is where our journey to living a full, abundant and joyful life begin.  The best medicine is always a large dose of time spent seeking Him.

"Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,

and He delivered them from their distress.

He sent out His Word and healed them,

and delivered them from their destruction."

Psalm  107: 19-20

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