Dr. A'Shellarien Addison explores how trauma challenges faith and why healing rarely happens overnight. She uses Job's story to show how suffering makes people question God, and urges listeners to seek help from therapists, counselors, and pastors instead of facing pain alone.
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It's another day and it's another opportunity to allow healing into your heart and into your mind. Welcome to A Healing Moment with Dr. A'Shellarien Addison Addison. Today our topic is going to be what happens when trauma collides with your faith. Now you think about it, you say, I have faith to believe God, I have faith to trust God, I have faith to even walk with God even when I don't know the plan. The challenge to some of that is when trauma collides with your faith, our faith is challenged and we begin to question. We say, where is God? We begin to say, why is this happening to me? We begin to say, why do bad things happen to good people? Well, the answer to that is we don't know. We can make stuff up, but the truth is we don't know. We look at the story of Job, good man, had everything under control, and God decided to brag on Job and say to the devil, have you considered my servant. So sometimes in our lives, trauma will come. And I'm not saying that all trauma comes to challenge our faith, all challenge comes to cause us to stand flat-foot on the word. I'm not saying all trauma is like that, because sometimes we are the collateral damage of other people's disobedience. We're the collateral damage of other people's foolishness. There are other times when trauma comes and it collides with your faith. And what do you do? How do you hold on even when your feet are swinging in the wind? Well, you give yourself the grace and the space to deal with it the way that makes sense to you. Some people say, "Get over it, suck it up and drive on." There are some things you will never get over, yet with God you will get through. So as you think about trauma, you think about your faith, think about how God fits into your life and how you fit into God's plan. Think about how God fits in your life and how you fit in God's plan. Sometimes we are overly excited about what we say we gonna do. If this ever happened to me, I'm gonna do this. If this— I'd never do that. I'm always going to do this. The truth of the matter is, until you are in the seat of pain, in the seat of pain, you don't know what you're gonna do. Now, that's good to talk about what you think you're going to do, but when all chaos is all around and you're coming out of one storm, you're in one storm, you see another storm coming, you know that there's going to be challenges in your life. That's when you have to really know that you know that you know that you know without a shadow of a doubt that God is real. So when you think about trauma, you think about your faith. Allow yourself the grace and the space to take this thing one moment at a time. Everything is not going to be fixed now. There's a difference between the process of healing and then the immediate deliverance of healing. Now, absolutely, God is able. We could— God could deliver you in an instant. There are people who've been addicted, and the taste, the desire for drugs and alcohol immediately leaves them. There are other people who struggle for years and years and years to overcome, and the struggle to overcome does not mean you don't have faith. So when you think about that with trauma, you think about mental health, there's some people absolutely delivered from depression and suicidal ideation. There are other people that the process takes some time. The process of healing takes some time. So when you think about trauma colliding with your faith, give yourself the grace and the space to go through the process one day at a time. And let me tell you, you can't do it by yourself. You're gonna need some help. So I want you to know I'm here for you. If you want to talk about it, let's talk about it. As Shrek always says, better out than in. So talking about it really helps. You think, I don't need to talk to anybody, I could just talk to God. Let me tell you, God is a spirit, and God has blessed doctors, therapists, counselors, pastors, pastors, chaplains with the ability to sit with you and allow you to talk through your pain. So I encourage you today, if you are in need of some help, please don't sit in silence. Say something. We don't know what you need unless you tell us. So thank you for joining me for a healing moment with Dr. A'Shellarien Addison Addison. We'll talk soon.
