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"There are not enough mental health professionals to meet the immense need for comfort and to teach basic emotional strategies that can bring relief and healing to people in our communities-including children and teens. This is how the church can help." Excerpt from the Life Hurts, Love Heals curriculum. Trauma is part of the human experience in the broken world. Trauma happens when a person is overwhelmed with fear, helplessness, or horror in the face of death or threat of death. This affects their psychological, physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. This is the tragedy of trauma:
Which brings up our central questions. How do people recover from trauma? Can the Bible help? What can the church do? You know I have been involved in the adult and teen curriculum for Healing the Wounds of Trauma. This month, I also had the opportunity to participate in the children's version. Why is Children’s Trauma Healing Needed? Whenever a community is traumatized, children suffer, but often they are without a voice and their heart wounds go untreated. Children have some basic needs: safety, structure, order, protection, comfort, intimacy, adults they can trust, autonomy, and control of their lives. But when there is trauma, it fills their formative years with violence, abandonment, neglect, chaos, unpredictability, danger, cruelty, abuse, boundary violation, and exploitation. Living in the present, children have no backdrop of the past to help them under stand what has happened. Because they believe adults are good, often they conclude they are responsible for bad things that happen. They have great difficulty articulating their inner pain because their language skills are still in development. When adults don’t know how to help traumatized children, their response is one of frustration, which only increases the child’s pain and despair. This is where the Children's Training in Healing the Wounds of Trauma can help. In Uganda, we did a 3-day classroom training with 26 adults and then facilitated a 5-day Healing Hearts Club camp with 84 kids from the ages of 8 to 13 in attendance. It was a long 8 days but beautiful in how we saw the Lord work, including 7 of those children giving their lives to Christ. We are thankful for the facilitation team who made it possible, Good Shepherd's Fold for hosting the event, and the Trauma Healing Institute for continuing to develop tools for our tool kits in helping those whose hearts have been wounded! Thank you to my partners in the states for making it possible for both me and Rumbi to attend!! Thank you for your continued love and support, Misty Prayer requests and praises:
Would you prayerfully consider becoming a partner of Misty Bodkins in 2020? There are 2 ways you may donate to Misty at Ministry Care. You can make checks payable to “Ministry Care” and send them to:
Ministry Care 14934 Pacer Ct. Carmel, IN 46032 Or you can also make an online donation, using Givelify, on our website at www.ministrycareinternational.org Ministry Care is a 501c3 therefore your donation will be tax deductible. If you have any questions feel free to email us as ministrycareinternational@gmail.com
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AuthorMisty Bodkins has a Master's degree in clinical psychology. She has worked both stateside and internationally doing counseling, training, teaching, and research. Her passion is working with people who are in crisis. Archives
February 2020
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