Page 106 - Biblical Counseling II

Trauma

Connect…

The Battle of Gettysburg was fought in the United States on July 1-3 of 1863, during the Civil War. The
following story occurred over 100 years later:
“When I was in junior high, my family took an
educational vacation to Gettysburg. We ended our
battlefield tour at a house that was used as a surgical
hospital on the day of the battle. Outside the house,
there was a huge tree, and there was a cannonball
stuck in the tree. And there was a plaque (sign) next to
the tree that said this cannonball was shot into the tree
on the day of the Gettysburg battle, and it almost killed
the tree because on the day of the battle, the
cannonball was almost as wide as the tree. Today, the
tree is huge, and the cannonball is small. When these
traumas come into our lives, through which Christ
makes us His and clarifies who He is for us, it’s like
getting hit by a cannonball, and you almost die. You
don’t know how to take the next breath. And what
happens is, by God’s grace, that cannonball becomes
part of our life. And we live with it, and it changes us
forever and stays part of our lives. We can’t get rid of
it” (Troup, 2016). (Photo: pinterest.com)

The Lesson ...

Trauma

What is it and how does it impact people in your community? What do you think of when you hear the word?
Often, the first image that comes to mind is of soldiers who have experienced a serious traumatic situation
like war. However, the dictionary has three different definitions for trauma:

1. a deeply distressing or disturbing experience: "a personal trauma like the death of a child" (google.com)

2. physical injury: "rupture of the diaphragm caused by blunt trauma" (google.com)

3. an experience that produces psychological injury or pain (dictionary.com).

The third definition is the one we will focus on in this course. It is interesting to look more in-depth at the
word trauma. Some synonyms, or words that mean the same, for trauma are injury, damage, hurt, wound,
and wounding. An antonym, or word that means the opposite, for trauma is healing. This word is critically
important as we think of counseling those who have experienced trauma. When I taught at IBCZ in the past,

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