FOREWORD
Overcoming:WhatScriptureandScienceSayAboutResilience
Few truths are more essential to life in this aching world than those contained in this book. Without them, we’ll be utterly unprepared for what we will inevitably face, like running onto a battlefield in a bathing suit. But when we live into these age-old truths and their practical applications found in the pages ahead although the road will rarely be easy we’ll live with confidence that we can survive and even thrive amidst a world that’s often far less than it should be. We’ll also be well-equipped to help others do the same.
A Clear-Eyed View of Our World
The Bible is nothing if not brutally honest about life on earth. We don’t always convey that in our supposedly Christian messages today. At times, we can sanitize Scripture and our faith into a shiny, happy pep talk.
Spend even a few moments in the Bible, and you’ll encounter something very different. Right alongside immense goodness and beauty, virtually every page is marked by pain Again and again, we see how humans wrong others and harm themselves. We ache at the ways the vulnerable are misused, even by those who ought to protect and care.
One thinks of Moses, taken from his family as a baby, set floating in a crocodile-infested river. There’s Joseph, sold into bondage by his own brothers, trafficked, enslaved, maligned, and imprisoned We see Esther, orphaned as a girl and raised by her uncle amidst a culture where enemies longed to obliterate their entire race. One could go on and on. In the Bible, adversity and trauma touches most every character.
And so it has been ever since. As Jesus stated boldly, “In this world, you will have tribulation…” (John 16:33) Those words proved accurate not only for his disciples, all but one of whom died a violent death. They’re also true for every child entering life on earth.
The Call to Lament
Scripture never downplays this reality. It carries no hint that we ought to ignore the bad stuff, paste on a smile and pretend it didn’t happen to them, to us. Rather, we are led into lament.
We are invited, even called, to grieve like David mourning the battlefield death of his best friend, Jonathan (2 Samuel 1:17-27). Like the bereaved Shunamite woman who lost
her only son (2 Kings 4:27) Like Jesus weeping at the tomb of Lazarus (John 11:35) Like Mary and other dear women at the foot of the cross (John 19:25).
This ancient Judeo-Christian call to acknowledge and mourn wrong is echoed in many contemporary discussions of trauma. Although using different words, they point to the same reality, acknowledging a world that is not as it should be.
As in every prior generation, so many children today have faced serious adversity. Many have experienced unbridled evil. Such experiences can not only bring immediate and obvious harm, but also can leave enduring marks upon a person’s physical, intellectual, emotional, social, and spiritual well-being.
This awareness of the ways that previous hurts can impact the present was sometimes ignored or discounted in the past. To acknowledge these impacts and take them into account in efforts to help a child, youth, or adult to heal is at the heart of the best trauma-informed work today.
Even Deeper Truths
At the same time, trauma-focused paradigms often leave out other truths, including some of the most important truths of all. These ideas reflect some of the most fundamental convictions in all of Scripture, ideas also affirmed by wise people throughout history. These include a deep-down confidence that:
1. Healing is possible.
In the past, the word “trauma” was typically used as a description. It conveyed that a person had experienced something very painful. Today, “trauma” is often applied as if it were a diagnosis. At times, it has even grown into a destiny, a label guaranteeing a dismal future. Indeed, for those of us who see the impact of severe trauma on a regular basis, it’s sometimes very hard to hope for better.
But even as the Bible attests to the reality of evil in our world, it attests to the reality of healing as well At times, this healing appears sudden and extraordinary At others, it is cultivated in small, daily actions. Through simple choices like those described in this book, we as parents and caregivers can participate with God in His restorative work. One thinks of the long, hard journey of recovering from a stroke, repeating simple exercises hundreds or even thousands of times, slowly renewing the connections and capacities of mind and muscle.
Modern neuroscience confirms this potential, providing marvelous glimpses of how it plays out. Every human action or thought choice activates a neural circuit. Expressing thanks rather than complaint. The simple motions involved in sweeping the floor or making one’s bed. Lifting a prayer in place of rumination. Maintaining eye contact for just a moment longer than before.
Each time the choice is repeated, its neural pathway expands, like when hikers pass through dense jungle. As the course is repeated, again and again, the narrow trace becomes a visible trail… a pathway… a road… a highway! What at first was nearly impossible has become not just passable, but clear and even natural what we might call “second nature.”
One way the Bible describes this restorative process of a person realigning with God’s original purposes is to be “transformed by the renewal of your mind.” (Romans 12:2) It is God’s work first and truly miraculous. Yet like so many things God does, He invites us to join Him in it, especially in small repeated choices. Healing is possible, and we and our children! can play an indispensable part in the process.
2. Strain is essential for growth.
No one wants to face difficulty, but Scripture offers a very different perspective on hardship than our world often does. Even while lamenting our world’s brokenness, the Bible also consistently reminds us that hardship is a necessary part of growth As the book of Romans puts it, we know that “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope” (Romans 5:3-4).
Good science and timeless human wisdom affirm this in myriad ways. For example, we see the necessity of adversity in the way that trees grow in greenhouses -- completely sheltered from any winds -- fail to develop the “reaction wood” necessary to withstand strong winds; they often splinter when exposed to storms later in life. We see this also in the way that human muscles only grow when they experience significant resistance and strain; this strain actually produces small tears in the fiber of muscles, which is essential for muscle growth. Whether heavy winds or heavy weights or heavy experiences, human growth rarely happens apart from significant challenges.
To be clear, trauma alone does not produce good. By itself, it will likely cripple. But when paired with strong relational connection and its tangible expressions described in this book, even the hardest things can become a source of strength in time.
3. How we view the things we experience carries immense power.
Fascinatingly, many studies over the past decade have revealed that the ways we “frame” and think about our experiences often greatly influence how they will impact us, sometimes even more than the events themselves.
For example, we find that when a person believes that stress and other challenges are bad for them, those experiences are in fact much more likely to affect them in negative ways. Meanwhile, if a person understands that challenges can be a source of growth and strength, that belief becomes a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, both reducing the negative impact of a difficult experience and enabling the person to benefit and grow from it.
The point certainly isn’t that “positive thinking” washes away all harm Rather, it is that how we remember events and interpret their meaning can play a decisive role in how they impact us over time. If we understand an experience to be inherently crippling, we will begin to live as if it were. In contrast, if we recognize it to be a real evil that calls for earnest lament…yet also an experience God can redeem to become a source of growth, compassion and strength, that also is likely to prove true over time.
Of course, helping our children to see the world this way (especially in situations of severe adversity and trauma) calls for much discernment and tenderness. However, we must not miss that helping children to interpret reality is among the most important roles of any parent or caregiver, enabling them to decipher the meaning of their experiences through a biblical lens and to see themselves as overcomers.
4. With loving support, even the hardest things in our lives can become a source of great good.
At the very heart of Scripture stands the idea that God can take pain and loss even death on a cross!—and use them for immense good. Consider the adversities suffered by the Apostle Paul (For a shocking glimpse, see 2 Corinthians 11:23-28). Yet somehow this man could claim that nothing on earth is able to separate us from God’s love. He insisted this to be true even of things we’d regard as the worst adversities imaginable, “tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword” (Romans 8:35).
Yet Paul takes it even further. He claims that God can utilize these things – even the very worst – for good. The point is not that we’d choose them. But if we believe God can alchemize them to benefit us and others in the end, everything suddenly looks different. Our history remains the same, but the way we see it and tell it is transformed. What was done to us is still evil, but we are not “damaged goods.” Our identity isn’t found in what has happened to us, with little for us to do but seek a coping mechanism to numb the pain. Rather, we live with anticipation that God can redeem and even use these things in positive ways. We start noticing the unique gifts we carry because of the unique adversities we’ve faced. We start to share them with others.
In a word, we become marvelously resilient. Like Joseph of old, we can declare over evil in our world, “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good!” (Genesis 50:20) Joseph's confidence wasn’t just that God would help him to “recover” from trauma. It was that the very source of his loss and pain had itself become a source of blessing – not only for him, but for countless others as well.
As we’ll learn in the chapters ahead, myriad historical, literary and scientific sources beyond Scripture attest to this counter-intuitive reality as well. For example, historians have discovered that British Prime Ministers over the centuries were notably more likely to have been orphaned as children than their contemporaries. Likewise, studies have found that CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are significantly more likely to have struggled with dyslexia as children than others. In some mysterious way, the painful adversities these leaders faced as children became a source of their strength Again, we would never
wish orphanhood or dyslexia, or any form of pain or trauma, on anyone But if Scripture is to be believed, then even the places of our greatest hurt can become the places of some of God’s greatest work both in and through us.
When the Rubber Meets the Road
In my work, I see the reality of pain and loss play out every day. Week after week, I encounter and mourn the most heartbreaking of stories, sometimes from afar, sometimes up close. So many children are exposed to the most grievous of wrongs. So many parents and caregivers are straining as they seek to bring healing.
The book of Romans describes it so well. “Creation has been groaning together… and we groan inwardly” (Romans 8:22-23). Indeed we do. And more times than I’d want to admit, the words have flashed across my mind, “There’s just no hope for this situation, this family, this kid. The harm is just too deep…”
And yet, more times than I can count, I’ve been rebuked. I’ve been reminded there is always more to the story. Not that it’s easy. It almost never is. But I’ve seen again and again sometimes in a surprisingly brief period of time and at others across ten or twenty years of what honestly felt like fruitless prayer that these age-old truths remain solid and relevant as ever.
When my family and I recently spent a month in Ethiopia, we felt this again vividly in the life of a dear friend -- a young leader whom I respect as much as any in his generation. Belay was orphaned as a child after his mother was murdered. He grew up in an orphanage and faced traumatic encounters again and again. He’d have every reason to frame his life with these experiences.
Yet the primary frame through which Belay interprets his story is not trauma, but the deepest truths of Scripture. He speaks openly of very hard things he experienced and laments them. However, he does not view them as defining, whether of his own life or of reality itself.
Rather, Belay believes that God can use even the most painful things for good. He’s experienced this first in himself and then through him, including the truly beautiful ministry he leads caring for orphans and vulnerable children. He’s observed how the great adversities he’s faced produced many of the strengths and gifts he now has to offer. And he believes that one of his most important roles in the lives of the children he serves is to help them interpret their stories through this biblical understanding as well. When they do, Belay has told me, it can make all the difference in building a resilience capable of facing our world as it really is
Let’s Plunge In
I’m confident that this excellent book will help us all to make more of that kind of difference, too -- for children and youth we love and even for adults. It may also help us interpret afresh our own lives and hardships -- past, present, and future.
Although the Bible includes trauma on most every page, it never gives trauma the final word. Right alongside every wound is the potential for healing. Alongside every hardship is a sturdy hope of overcoming, not just as survivors, but as “ more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans 8:37) and a blessing to others amidst a world so full of beauty and brokenness.
If you share that hope -- or at least are open to considering it -- read on I’m confident you won’t be disappointed.
Jedd Medefind, President
The Christian Alliance for Orphans (CAFO)
