Due to technical issues, Session 1 of the series was not recorded.

GYC 2025: Seeing the Invisible

<p>Due to technical issues, Session 1 of the series was not recorded.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Grace for the Broken: Finding Healing and Restoration Through God

Ann Hamel

Loren Hamel

We All Have a Story

So if you were here in the first session, we spent time talking about how life is beautiful.

Anticipating that we're gonna be talking about tough times, but obviously recalling, remembering, praising God for where he has blessed us is helpful, is protective.

You know, in this session, we're gonna talk about some things that are, in fact, challenging.

And recognize we put our toes in the water in the first section, we're gonna get fully wet on this round, and I'll start.

I shared with you how I thought my life was beautiful in Berrien Springs.

A young physician, owned his practice with a house and a wife and children.

And by the way, as young children, we brought them to Florida many times.

This is the medical conference capital of the world.

You can always find a medical conference in a nice hotel next to Disney or someplace else that is fun.

My wife decided she'd rather live somewhere else and moved to the West Coast.

And I'm a young physician, divorced, 4 children.

And obviously when things like that happen, you know, everybody has something to learn.

I certainly had things to learn, many things to learn.

But that is as tough a period as I have gone through in my life.

The sense of shame, of loss, of loneliness, of exhaustion runs very, very deep.

My youngest daughter was about 6, 5 or 6.

And all of a sudden you're responsible for everything.

You know, for laundry, for food, for transportation, for keeping the house clean, for all the medical things that I, of course, had to do to support the family.

And when you look around your home, if you've ever gone through divorce, it's pretty typical, and it's certainly the case in my divorce, that half your furniture is gone and more than half your money is gone, and debt has increased.

We enjoyed it, had a nice car, sold it, got something that was much more modest.

1 of the things I did at that juncture that I did not learn from the literature, that I learned from watching my patients who had gone through tough times, 1 of the things I worried about is doing stupid things.

Because oftentimes when you're in a situation of trauma or suffering, you don't make smart decisions.

And I'd seen that enough time that I said, you know, I really can't afford to do that.

And so I actually named a few folks and said, if I'm going to make any big life decision, I'm going to talk to you first.

And with my staff at the office, I recall this well, taking them aside and saying, I need you all more than ever.

You know, if I'm not living up to my commitment to take great care of everybody that comes through this office, if I'm turning away people because I'm tired or needy at home, but they need to be seen, they need a doctor, I need you to call me out.

Make sure that we're taking great care of our community.

I mean, that is pretty common when folks have been traumatized.

And so I would be alert to that in your own life, be alert to that in the life of your friends and your loved ones.

And by the way, oftentimes folks in that circumstance don't listen well.

It's harder to listen, much harder to listen when you're suffering.

Your brain is preoccupied with your needs and your emotions and your feelings.

I at that point made a commitment to not to date for 2 years and not to marry for 4.

And that may sound fairly arbitrary, maybe it was, but I thought that's what it would take to make sure that I did things in the best interest of my family and in the best interest of myself.

So that was a commitment at that point in time.

I don't know, is there anything you want to say then I'll move on to Job.

As I shared in our last session, I loved being a missionary in Rwanda.

I loved being the mother of 3 adorable little boys.

Africa, Rwanda was such a perfect environment for them to grow up in.

The government of Rwanda had given the church a 240 acre deserted plantation for the university.

And our boys, with the other missionary kids on the campus, explored that and had fun.

I loved being in a supportive role to my husband.

I loved being involved with the landscaping of the university.

And I just enjoyed so much about being there.

You know, the challenges and difficulties didn't feel like challenges and difficulties to me.

But I remember some missionaries coming back from the market in tears.

For me, it was a, you know, I loved bargaining.

To me, it was an opportunity to practice my French or my Kenyirwanda.

And I remember buying a whole big bucket of lemons once and I had spent like 45 minutes getting a good price for these lemons.

And I showed my husband proudly, look what I bought, I did it all in French, it was so fun and exciting.

Did you forget that we have a lemon tree?

And I had completely forgotten that we had a lemon tree and it was full of lemons.

And you know, the bargaining is a part of the culture.

And my boys would go, they thought they were selling the chickens for pets.

There were parts of the market I didn't take them to, but they enjoyed it as well.

You know, the water was dirty and none of our clothes were white.

They were all tan because and if they were originally white, they became tan, because our water had a lot of mud in it.

You couldn't see the bottom of the bathtub.

I looked around me, and I had a faucet where I could turn it on and fill the bathtub.

And there were ladies walking by my home with jerry cans on their head, walking sometimes 5 miles to get a bucket of water.

And the challenges didn't feel like challenges.

And I remember my husband and I got a letter from his mother, and she said that his aunt and uncle were moving to Zambia.

And we thought, that's a great place for us to go and visit.

We wanted to visit Victoria Falls and we had been so busy helping to build the university and getting it established that we had not traveled a lot while we had been there.

So we began planning a trip to Zambia to see Victoria Falls.

And another couple with 3 young children as well, they decided they would go with us.

And it's always a good idea to go with 2 families.

If you have car trouble, the other can help or whatever.

But it was at a time when communication was very slow.

It Still Hurts

I'm grateful that you folks are not asleep after that good lunch.

Hopefully most of you had something to eat.

If you are here for the first time, the slides here, the titles here don't match perfectly, the titles in the back, but if you're on the lecture about suffering and recovery, you're in the right place.

So in the last hour we were together, at least those of you that were here, we spent some time talking about, in fact, everybody suffers.

I told my, I would say, small case suffering story about divorce and Anne told her capital S, underlying bold suffering, about divorce.

And I mean about death, not divorce, about death.

And it was, you know, I hear that story, I've heard your story many times, it brings tears to my eyes every time.

We're gonna spend some time talking today that in fact it still hurts for a lot of us for a long time.

And that's important to realize, important to address, important to understand how suffering and trauma impacts us because that is the way we recover.

You know, If you know those things well, understand them, work through them, in fact, there's a path toward wholeness and to restoration.

And so we'll spend an hour talking about that.

For those of you who are joining our session for the first time, I just will briefly introduce ourselves.

For the past 15 years, he was a hospital CEO and president and led a health care system.

And for the past 15 years, I've worked for the General Conference providing mental health care and support for missionaries around the world.

We both have a passion for caring for those who are suffering.

And we are both recently retired this past year.

And whatever we do in the future, we will do together.

So it's a privilege for us to be here today.

We are grateful for this opportunity to share what we know about suffering and how to help people who are going through hard times.

So first text up here is, And now my life ebbs away.

In his great power God becomes like clothing to me, he binds me like the neck of my garment, he throws me into the mud, and I am reduced to dust and ashes.

I cry out to you God but you do not answer.

I stand up but you merely look at me." This is 1 of many of Job's laments and it's pretty personal, it's pretty direct.

He is respectful toward God but just does not understand what's happening to him and why and is working to hold God responsible and accountable for his suffering.

Another 1, my tears have been food day and night while people say to me all day long, where is your God?

We heard as we listened to stories together from each other the last couple hours.

We've heard where folks have a sense of feeling abandoned in their suffering, abandoned in their pain.

Anne told you her story as she emerged from consciousness in Belgium, her story of feeling totally abandoned by God very common experience From our own experience and from research on traumatized people Feeling abandoned by Cod and isolated and cut out from other people is a common experience.

When I did regain consciousness in Belgium, and some people, I hear that I wasn't really unconscious because I talked and I interacted some, but for 4 days, I have absolutely no memories.

I remember crossing the border, and then I remember regaining consciousness or whatever in Belgium.

And I learned what had happened, that we'd had a head-on collision with a truck, that my husband had been killed instantly, that my three-year-old was 4 floors above me on the pediatrics unit, his skull was fractured, his leg was crushed, 2 toes were missing.

I also learned that my husband had already been buried in Africa.

My six-year-old and eight-year-old sons were still in Rwanda.

They were the only 2 family members at their father's funeral.

And this text, my tears have been my food day and night.

I recall crying all day every day in Belgium.

And I remember feeling ashamed, wanting to be a witness to God's goodness, and not feeling like I was a witness at all.

Feeling like I was failing God because of my devastation at what had happened.

And even though he revealed himself to me in various ways, the pain was still there.

And for some of you who have experienced trauma, Even though God makes himself known to you, it doesn't mean the pain goes away.

I didn't think I knew anybody in Belgium.

In fact, I didn't know anybody in Belgium.

But 1 of our neighbors in Rwanda, a fellow missionary, was Belgian.

He was from the church there in Brussels.

And every day, somebody from the church visited us.

I didn't realize how great a gift that was until later, but to have, to be a member of a worldwide community of faith, That when bad things happen, even though you don't know anyone, people show up for you.

What an incredible blessing that was to me.

Trauma is when you experience something bad and we, life is full of bad things.

And it's not just experiencing something bad, but it overwhelms your capacity to cope.

And it continues to hurt or harm you for a period of time afterwards.

If that period of extreme pain and adjustment is less than a month, it's called an acute stress disorder.

If it lasts beyond that, it's post-traumatic stress disorder.

There's lots of types of trauma, physical trauma, motor vehicle accidents.

Did you know that 1.3 million people die annually?

And yet, think of how many people safely get from 1 place to another.

Unfortunately, most of those deaths occur in low-income countries that have very poor roads, have lax motor vehicle safety requirements.

If you've been to Africa, sometimes you can see a pickup truck with 30 people on the back.

And if that vehicle has an accident, there are no safety belts, there's no protection, it's hard.

So a lot of those deaths occur in countries that have very limited health care available.

Natural disasters, it's a part of our world.

So there are all kinds of physical trauma that people experience and emotional trauma.

Emotional trauma is often a part of all types of trauma because it affects us emotionally.

But the death of a loved 1, the death of a spouse is considered 1 of the most traumatic experiences that a person can have, or the loss of a child, especially a young child.

But the loss of a spouse affects your life so much because the 2 become 1.

And you're half there, it feels like, after the death of a spouse.

Interpersonal trauma, infidelity, divorce, abandonment.

You know, I did a workshop for women's ministry on spiritual abuse by those spiritual leaders.

If you are a Christian, the bar is higher.

Love as a Strategy

Take just in review of our sessions so far.

We started off this morning with Life is Beautiful.

There's more good in our world than there is bad.

I was so moved by it, even though I know his story and I've heard his testimony.

But even in Chad there's more beautiful than there is bad.

Our Father in Heaven's love permeates our world.

Life is beautiful, but in spite of that, bad things still happen.

And that impact can last a long, long time.

When bad things happen to a child, it impacts the developing brain of a child.

And that impact can last throughout their life.

It can cause long-term mental and physical health problems, chronic diseases.

If a person has experienced 4 or more ACEs, 4 adverse childhood experiences, It increases the rates of suicide attempts astronomically.

It lowers life expectancy, my reading is by 20 years, if it's 4 or more ACEs.

So the long-term impact of bad things happening can be huge.

But the best thing, the best news is that the long-term impact of a traumatic event is determined more by the level of care that 1 receives in the aftermath of the trauma than it is by the severity of the trauma itself.

And that is where we, as the body of Christ, have a role to play.

We can have an impact on how people's lives turn out when they go through bad things Things can hurt a long time but God created the mind to heal just as he created the body to heal.

And just as doctors do things to position bones, for example, to heal properly, there are things that we can do to help the mind to heal properly.

And I think it's important to remember that there are things that we can do as a church, as individuals, for ourselves and for others, but there are also times that we need to see a professional.

After our accident in Rwanda and when we came back to the States, well, even before, when I was in Belgium and I was crying all the time, they referred a psychiatrist to me to help me because I was so overwhelmed.

So I saw a psychiatrist in the hospital in Belgium, and then I saw a psychiatrist in the hospital in South Carolina.

Then I saw a psychiatrist in Atlanta, and then I moved to Andrews.

But in those 3 places, I didn't see a psychiatrist that had a faith and trust in God.

And the help that they offered was limited.

But when I went to Andrews, God arranged for me to meet with a Christian psychologist that helped me work through not only the emotional crisis I was in, but the spiritual crisis that I was facing.

And that's where my life calling came into place, where I saw a new mission field, not somewhere far away, but in the hearts and lives of hurting individuals.

And it is a sacred calling to enter into someone's private pain.

It's a sacred trust to be able to do that.

Today we're going to talk about what we can do as individuals and as a church to help people heal.

But keep in mind, it's also very, very valuable to work with a Christian mental health professional because Sometimes you need professional help.

I'm grateful for physicians and surgeons who can help us when we need physical help.

And don't be ashamed to seek mental health care when it's needed.

The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and save those who are crushed in spirit.

Or do you know someone who is brokenhearted?

The Lord is close and he saves those who are crushed in spirit.

For I will restore health to you and your wounds I will heal, declares the Lord, physically and mentally.

What a treasure as Christians we have to have this verse.

Okay, trauma-informed care has 2 basic principles that we, as Christians, can use and acknowledge.

Recognition, it acknowledges and understands how trauma affects people's bodies, emotions, behaviors, and relationships.

So if somebody tells you their experience, the worst thing you can do is not believe it or to minimize it or discount it.

You know, the woman I told you about in the finance office in the hospital in Atlanta who said, God knows best, that was painful because it wasn't a good example of God knowing best.

We need to acknowledge the pain, acknowledge what happened, and the impact that it has on them.

And then the response, use that understanding to shape services in ways that create safety, build trust, support choice, and empower individuals in healing.

And we're going to talk more about that today.

And Anne mentioned the things in trauma-informed care that you should never do.

And we've emphasized this a couple of times.

You can do this with absolutely the best intent.

But it's incredibly important not to blame the individual.

If you hadn't gone there, if you'd have just been more careful, if you'd have dressed in a different way.

Those are all ways that transfer blame to the victim.

Anything that shames them, that minimizes their pain, that silences them.

It's very common, you just tell me the story, you need to tell me the story.

They'll tell you the story if they're comfortable, once they trust you, when they're ready and not before.

Series

Grace for the Broken: Finding Healing and Restoration Through God

Love as a Strategy

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

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