Raising Ebenezers
Probably one of the most challenging aspects of living with trauma is learning how to handle the unpredictability of its presence. It can surprise you at any time, in any place, threatening to ruin your entire day with a single, triggering moment that leaves you exhausted and struggling to re-center yourself. Part of the journey toward healing is figuring out how to prepare for and mitigate these sudden onset of disrupting symptoms and allow yourself the ability to return as soon as possible to your resting place of inner peace and help your body feel safe once again. The goal is, over time, being able to reach a spot where that gap of recovery time closes a bit and you can reset at a quicker rate than before. Doing so is a huge sign of progress. And I've learned from my own experience that, as this happens, it's important to celebrate and acknowledge these positive indications along the way - give them a moment and be pleased with how far you've come - to raise an ebenezer of sorts.
Ebenezer was a form of remembrance peoples in past cultures used to signify noteworthy markers. It's an ancient Hebrew word for "stone of help" and it become symbolic of God's intervention. The Israelites in biblical times used it often as a monument to a significant occurrence in Jewish history to recount and bless God for his help in a certain situation.
In our culture today, we're good at erecting memorials and stones for remembering the dead or some tragedy. Back then, they also put them up to mark a great victory - to celebrate divine assistance and liberation. This is something that perhaps, we could do well to implement in our own lives: noticing progress and seeing it in the context of where we've been and how God has carried us along the way. Especially when walking an extended journey of healing, being able to raise a marker of remembrance in some fashion helps you feel empowered to keep going.
Ebenezers are going to look different for each of us. For some, it may be celebrating an "alive day" following a significant accident or injury that nearly took your life. For others, it may be commemorating a particular date when you opened yourself to your past and took a step toward healing. It may look like sitting year after year with the sadness of a painful loss and realizing that, slowly but surely, you are able to find the light and love again. It may be noticing that certain things are triggering you less and you are more able to stay within your inner window of tolerance and remain grounded. It may come in the form of returning to the sight of a horrific event in your life and reminding yourself that you're still here, alive and figuring out how to create a hopeful future. It may be learning to trust again following an extremely difficult betrayal. It may be discovering how to set boundaries and have that hard conversation with someone important to you.
All of these things are situations that take a special kind of courage to confront or navigate and, as we do so again and again, giving ourselves the patience and grace we need to handle it as we're able, we gain strength and develop our own form of an ebenezer whereby we can measure our progress and thank God that we've come this far. To be honest, I don't believe we do this enough for ourselves. We're so focused on the future and comparing our journeys to that of others that it's easy to grow discouraged and lose hope because we're not reviewing our milestones enough and realizing that we've likely grown and changed and healed more than we realize. What may not be a big deal to someone else could be huge for us in light of where we've been!
Every one of us is taking our own path toward personal improvement and recovery. We are all in the process of developing an individual plan of healing that works for us and helps us find stability and safety in our bodies, minds, and spirits. Those of us further along the way can inspire and encourage those just beginning, giving them some life-infusing words of hope as they trudge along. And the milestones we set on our own trek can end up being the markers by which someone else takes heart later on.
It's important to keep viewing our progress in the context of our past and realizing that these moments of raising our own "stone of help" will likely only be appreciated by us and a few choice people who have taken the road with us. But we will honor these points of light - these points of hope - won't we? Yes friend, we will. We have to! Because it's our way of reminding ourselves that we have been assisted along the way and we have never walked a day on this journey alone. God has been there. Some close loved ones or friends have been there. Love has been there. Hope has been there. And we have survived.
As the old hymn says so well,
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