Note to the reader: I have found it isn’t common to find devotional literature that makes someone healing from trauma feel seen while also feeding them Christ.1 So this season, as a lay counselor, I am sharing these weekly liturgies for each week of advent, hoping to give words to their struggles, their fears, and their experience. In these, I aim to fix the reader’s gaze on the triune God, the one who walks with us, who sits with us in our darkness, and who alone can make us whole. Please share if you think this would serve someone living life after trauma. I wrote this especially for one healing after spiritual trauma.
Week 2- Peace
An Advent Liturgy for the Life After Trauma - Week 2: Peace
God,
When peace like a river does not flood my soul,
When hyperarousal and hypervigilance are constant and intense,
When my questions and doubts are a storm in my mind,
When fears crowd every corner of my heart,
I praise you.
I praise you because Christ won your favor on my behalf, and so even
when my body feels threatened,
when my mind is paralyzed and broken,
when insomnia is a close companion,
even when You feel far and unsafe,
your heart for me doesn’t change and
your peace is mine in Christ Jesus.
You, Father, are the God of peace. A God of order.2Even in the midst of chaos, you remain present. You are never confused, never perplexed, but steadfastly ordering and redeeming all that is broken.
Holidays bring up anxiety and even panic as I grieve what I have lost, as I struggle to make sense of what’s happened and its effect on me. Shame wants to give an explanation but refuses to provide a road to your comfort. Instead, it insists on pointing me to a road that leads to dependence on me.
It wants to shame me into more striving, more performance, more doing what is needed to survive, instead of showing me what it means to sink into your mercy, and how to trust your deliverance.
But advent shows me a better way. It reminds me that Christ is trustworthy. That he can be trusted. He was born to die so I would die with him and also in him find new life.
By faith I have a new being - a soul that is well - and so now,
no matter how threatened I feel,
what my intrusive thoughts say,
how dissociated my mind is,
Grace is always my place of residence, where I stay in the middle of the storm, how I can still have true peace. 34
I need this reality to keep sinking deeply into all the layers of my mind, especially when the accuser wants me to feel guilty because of the dissonance between my reality in Christ and the reality of my body.
I have peace with you,5 but it seems like hyperarousal and hypervigilance disagree. Post traumatic symptoms kick in and I wonder, am I sinning in this intense dysregulation of my nervous system? Is the lack of peace in my body something to repent of? Is God not pleased with me right here, the way I am this very minute?
But I praise you that right this very minute, you are pleased with me - I am always in Christ - and nothing but favor governs your dealings with me.6
So Father of peace, in all your dealings, I trust you to sanctify me completely - mind, body and soul.7 I trust you to make me whole. Fulfill your promise to crush Satan and all chaos and destruction under the feet of those who hope in you. 8
Christ, increase my faith in your rescue. You are my red sea road - my way to freedom, the child born so I would have a Champion of peace. You shed your own blood so I could know the peace that passes understanding.9 Help me to see how you
lead through the storm,
rescue through the wilderness,
deliver through death.
Spirit, hover over the voids of my mind.10 I trust your restorative work to bring light and order and every bit of creative goodness.
Triune God, as I look forward to Christ’s second coming, and to the road between now and then, I bless you that it is your peace that guards me in Christ Jesus and not that I have to guard it myself.11
Amen
The Book of Common Courage is a collection of prayers and poems based on Psalm 23 written by author and therapist K. J. Ramsey, for those living in trauma and pain.
1 Cor. 14: 33
Rom. 5: 1-2
I love how the arabic translation highlights this. Grace is not where we stand… but where we live. Even when we are weak and falling, we still get to live in grace.
Rom. 5:1
Luke 2: 12-14
1 Thess. 5: 23
Rom. 16: 20
Col. 1: 20
Gen. 1: 1-2
Phil. 4: 6-7
I love this, Aylin. And I love Book of Common Courage. It's been used by God to shepherd my soul through some dark valleys. Thank you, friend.