Week 4 · Lesson 1
Understanding Trauma and Its Impact
Week 4 of 23 · Trauma and Violence Awareness
How many people do you know who are not here anymore?
Count them. Take a second and actually count.
Now count how many of them you got to grieve properly. Not showed up and stood around. Actually sat with it, with somebody, long enough for it to move.
Look at the difference between those two numbers. That difference is what this lesson is about.
Key ConceptYou Have Been Grieving With No Funeral
Somewhere else in this country, when a family loses somebody, the world stops for them. Days off work. Food at the door. Somebody saying take your time.
You lost somebody on a Friday and you were outside Saturday.
Because you had to be. Because rent does not stop. Because if you sit down too long it catches you, and somebody younger is watching how you handle it. So you got up. And everybody around you was doing the same thing, so it looked normal.
Grief that never gets called grief does not go anywhere. It goes underground and comes back up as something else.
Anger. Numbness. Not sleeping. Going off on somebody who did nothing. Not caring whether you make it to twenty five.
You are not crazy and you are not weak. You have been carrying funerals nobody let you have.
Journal Question
Write one name. Not how they went, that is not what this is. Write one thing about them that had nothing to do with how it ended.
Teaching PointWhat Your Body Is Actually Doing
Everything below is your body working right, in a situation that was wrong. Read it like that.
You know who is off before anybody says anything. You sit where you can see the door. That is not something wrong with you. That is a system your body built because it needed one, and it kept you here.
The cost is that it does not turn off. Same alarm, no fire, running in a classroom or a job interview or somebody’s family dinner. A body that has been on alert for ten years starts wearing down.
Something happens and you go quiet inside, and you wonder what is wrong with you. Nothing is. Feeling things got too expensive so your mind turned the volume down to protect you.
The cost is that it does not turn down one channel. It turns down all of them. The pain gets quieter and so does everything else. Your mother’s face. A good day. Anything that used to make you laugh.
Three in the morning again. Your body will not stand down, because part of it still thinks it is that night. Time moved. Your body did not get the message.
Nobody handed you anything for this, so you found your own. Something to drink, something to smoke, something to take, the phone, somebody’s company. Something loud enough to keep the room quiet.
And it works. That is the honest part. It works for about four hours. Then it wears off and the thing is still sitting there, and now you owe it interest.
Activity
Four things. Circle every one that is you. Then write the one you would never say out loud in a group. Nobody is asking you to share it. Just stop lying to yourself on paper.
ScenarioThe One That Never Made the News
You were twelve. Coming back from the store, two blocks from your door.
You heard it before you understood it. And then you saw somebody on the ground who twenty minutes earlier had been standing where he always stood. Somebody’s uncle. Somebody who spoke to you every single day.
Police came. Tape went up. You went home. Somebody asked where you had been and you said the store.
Nobody at your school knew. There was no assembly, nobody pulled you out of class. It was not even on the news, because it was too regular to be news.
You were twelve, and the entire world’s response to what you just saw was nothing.
So your body did what a twelve year old body does when nobody comes. It decided it was on its own. And it has been running on that decision ever since.
Journal Question
What is your version? Something you saw or something that happened that nobody ever asked you about. You do not have to write the whole story. Write what you decided about the world that day, and whether you still believe it.
Spiritual Takeaway
He knew He was about to fix it, and He still cried
A man named Lazarus died. He was a friend of Jesus, close, and by the time Jesus got there he had been in the tomb four days.
His sisters came out and said the same sentence to Him, both of them, one after the other. If you had been here, this would not have happened.
Understand that Jesus knew exactly what was about to happen. He knew He was going to call that man out of the grave in a few minutes. He knew the ending better than anybody standing there.
And John says He wept.
Not after. Before. Standing in front of a grave He was about to open, He broke down anyway, because the people He loved were hurting and death is wrong and it moved Him.
That is the shortest verse in the whole book and it is the most important one in this lesson. God does not rush your grief. He does not tell you to be strong about it. He sits in it, and He does not need it explained to Him.
The same man went to a garden the night before He died and told His friends that His soul was crushed to the point of death, and asked God three times if there was any other way. He did not hide it and He did not perform. He said it, out loud, to somebody.
Psalm 34:18 says the Lord is close to the brokenhearted. Read what it does not say. It does not say He explains it. It does not say He fixes it on your schedule. It says close, and it says it about the crushed ones specifically, not the ones who have it together.
Say one name out loud to God and tell Him one true thing about how it actually feels. Not a prayer with the right words. One sentence, however it comes out. He already knows and He is not going to flinch.
Take it one week at a time.
Defining Narratives · Week 4 Lesson