Healed, but Still Limping As I Serve
Guest Post from Fatherhood Instructor, Kevin Stupca
I serve and volunteer in an area all too familiar to me from my very own childhood experience: dysfunction and abuse. I went out into the world having no genuine tools for fostering healthy relationships and unconditional love. I couldn’t trust in anything or anyone, and I wasn’t able to feel things without wanting to numb it all. Any feeling created an automatic response to flight or fight. FEAR and anxiety were the norm, and they infected my faith as well. I could quote verse after verse on grace, but could never feel it. I couldn’t keep up with my relationships (God included) when fear crept in. It was like a cancer that popped up in every relationship: family, marriage, church, work, you name it. None of them lasted because none were healthy.
Many of the men I’ve worked with in my role as volunteer Fatherhood Instructor at Zoe, A Women’s Center have the very same backgrounds and themes woven throughout their lives. As Mark Twain stated, “History doesn't repeat itself, but it sure rhymes!" Indeed, sometimes the process of coaching and walking through seasons of change tend to feel like pulling up dandelions. You snap the tops off, but never get to the root, and the issues come back tenfold.
Generational traumas and abuse only continue without God’s intervention in the form of help for learning new, healthy behaviors outside of the family of origin. But sometimes, people are too scared to ask for help or begin trusting another human being, let alone God.
My initial prayers for those I serve are for God to open their eyes to any intolerable realities they may be suppressing with some form of self-medicating. I pray for them to be teachable. I petition the Lord that either silence or positive messaging would replace whatever is still speaking shame from the past into their lives. Mostly, I pray for healing to take place and that they would discover a true relationship with God.
They say it takes time to heal. TRUE, but healing doesn't mean walking without a limp the rest of your life. I can tell you I’ve "healed" in many areas of my life, but I'm not pain free. Abuse and trauma are like a skier slamming into a tree and shattering a leg in seven places. It may heal, but there will still be days when it aches. Although Jacob was blessed after wrestling with God through an entire night, he limped the rest of his life. God had changed him for the better, but it came at a painful, exhausting cost.
Nothing provides the restoration and healing afforded to all like the gift of God’s salvation as we discover abundant life in Christ. I’m thankful God’s been able to use my own broken past to help me coach and mentor others who need to experience His hope and grace as they journey through fatherhood.
