Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and the Candle
of Hope
“There will be signs
in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations
confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from
fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the
heavens will be shaken. Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a
cloud’ with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take
place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
Luke
21:25-28
I’ve been in my 6th decade of life for a couple
of years now, and I’ve realized
something about myself. I’m a bit jumpy these days. I’ll give you a for-instance:
I used to enjoy going to the shooting range or hunting birds in an open field.
Nowadays, though, I physically and uncontrollably jump whenever I’m near
gunshot. It’s not just gunshot, however. It has to do with loud noises--any
loud noises. I believe it is tied to one particular instance about 20 years ago
when an emergency situation arose (rather, “exploded”) in my home when my son had a seizure in the
next room and hit his head on the kitchen counter on the way to the floor. The next
moments were full of trauma and emergent care. After a visit to the hospital,
including a CT of the head, all was eventually well, and we tried to get back
to “normal”. But here is where I learned the true nature of PTSD. Some days
later, while my wife and I were sitting quietly and comfortably in our twin
easy chairs enjoying a peaceful morning, a sound exactly like the one that had
alarmed us before caused us to jump, and our hearts to skip with fear. Only
this time, we looked at each other with tears in our eyes. Although it turned
out that it was only a watermelon we had bought the day before that had rolled
off the kitchen counter and onto the floor with a sudden and unwelcome crash,
internally we were jolted to that recent bad memory of finding our son writhing
on the floor. And I began to understand why some combat veterans, upon hearing
a car backfiring on the street, will take cover beneath a parked car before
their minds can tell them it was nothing to fear. It is an involuntary
reaction, sewn into the fabric of the autonomic nervous system by a previous
trauma associated with a sound, or in some cases a smell, or some other
sensation. So you could say that in one sense my nerves are “shot”, because
loud noises cause an unpleasant, visceral reaction. And I’ve never even been to
war. To this day, whenever one or the other of us is about to do something in
the house that will create a loud noise, we call out “loud noise” as a courtesy
to warn the other not to be alarmed.
This is what Jesus is trying to do with His disciples in
this Sunday’s Gospel reading. He is trying to say, “LOUD NOISE” to prepare them
for wars and rumors of war, earthquakes and roaring seas; i.e., what to them looks like the end of the world. “These things must
happen,” He says. But when you see these things happening, “Look up, for your
redemption is drawing near.” Our natural reaction to real or threatened
calamity is to react with dread, to cower, or to duck-and-cover. Who can “stand
tall and look up” when every instinct has taught us to get low and to cover our
heads? Every generation experiences this.
Many things conspire
to keep us from lifting our gaze, but when we do, it is often then that we can
see the promised Son of Man coming. It is only when we stand up and raise our
heads that we recognize the presence of Christ among us--even when all seems lost.
How do you hear Sunday’s words from Luke? Does the world
that Jesus describes as marked by “fear and foreboding” sound like anything you
have experienced? What might you see if, instead of cowering, you were to stand
up and raise your head, or to encourage others to raise their heads in the midst of trauma and confusion? Where might you see the promise of the coming Christ?
We will light the “Hope” candle on this 1st
Sunday in Advent. It is not an empty hope, but one full of the promise of Jesus
Himself.
Chris Huff
Advent 1
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