From Hurt to Healing

By Patti J.

Never in any of my thoughts did I expect to lose my physical, emotional, relational, and financial foundations and support all in one swoop of time. One action destroyed all these secure foundations and left me hurt, humiliated, scared, and skeptical. My well-being was attacked from every side and there were no answers, and I knew of no place to turn that had the support system in place to help me.

My husband and I were injured, hurt and alone. There was no first aid, no triage center, no treatment plan, and no recovery plan.

We bandaged ourselves up, dealt with the pain, hoped we were doing the right thing and put one foot in front of the other on this very scary path we now found ourselves walking on alone. Limping alone.

We found our way back to a new normal, living with the effects of these hurts and in time, the scars healed over, and we moved on. Our hurts and injuries were never named, and never really accessed from a knowledgeable point of view. We wondered if we had caused the injuries and if we would experience it again. But life got busy, and we found ourselves in a new city in a new state in a new church and thought we had put this behind us for good.

But the assault on all those things that were attacked before started over again. The scabs that had formed over the past injury were ripped off and the pain and fears returned. But this time we had the name of a ministry that said they were about “Care for Pastors”. We reached out and that is what we found. Not only care, but validation of our current pain and a true sense of empathy for our past pains. They gave a name to our past injury; “Forced Resignation” and they acknowledged that we were reliving some of those past pains in the present. The phantom pains of the past were now a part of our present.

But what to do? They had answers. They walked through the current circumstance of hurt and pain with us, prescribed healing actions and gave us regular and insightful check-ups throughout this time. What a difference Care for Pastors made in our lives. The traumatic injury to our souls was beginning to heal and we were heading into a healthy state.

While some may say that emotional trauma does not hurt the body physically, it does. The trigger points are varied, but real. The physical knot in your stomach is real, the elevated heart rate that occurs at the sight of a person or the sound of a voice is real.

But what is also real is the trauma care that Care for Pastors provides and is developing more of all the time.

From hurt to healing to helping. That is our story. That is the result of the care we received from Care for Pastors. That is what we support now, financially, in time and in resources of our story and experience.

If you wonder, is trauma care really needed for those in ministry? The answer is yes!

Ron and Rodetta Cook had a vision to provide care to pastors and now they have a deeper vision to provide trauma care to pastors, their spouses, their children and even to churches.

Others have joined them in this quest to take a circumstance of life from hurt to healing.

We are so glad we have.