Mrs. Eaton always kept the terrible fluorescent lights a little dimmer than the rest of the high school teachers. She decorated with bits of greenery and quotes from classic literature that encouraged young minds to question everything and share their light. Each of her class periods started with 5 minutes of silent reading, a beautiful refreshing reset from the overstimulation of loud, sweaty hallway chaos. In each of her classes I got to be such a nerd for what I loved most. We spent entire class periods picking apart small sections of Shakespeare, and comparing 1984 to our current world. Man, I live for that! I should probably join a book club or something because I love over analyzing literature. I guess that’s probably why I enjoy teaching the Bible.
I genuinely don’t remember what we were studying, or why it came up, but there was a moment my freshman year, in Mrs. Eaton’s English class, that the subject of purgatory came up. Now, I didn’t grow up going to any kind of church, so this was a new concept to me. If you don’t know, Purgatory is a Roman Catholic belief. It’s a sort of in between placement after physical death where the souls of sinners face punishment and have a chance to eventually enter Heaven.
There was a waiting room of sorts between Heaven and Hell where you sat and waited to be judged?
Never even occurred to me.
And you could just be forgiven for what you’ve done to other people?
Preposterous.
But now I had this really triggering dilemma. I sat there, with this new concept of a passage way to eternity, absolutely frozen in fear. My throat began to close, and tears quickly trickled to my eyelids. In a classroom full of people, I was alone.
I began to panic at the thought of my abuser seeing me again. Maybe in purgatory.
Here I was as a 15-year-old, assuming the man that abused me would burn in hell, and all of the sudden I was bashed in the face with this reality that we might end up in the same place, at least for a possible period of time. I just assumed we were going separate ways, but with this new information, the spiral began. The thought of being anywhere at anytime with him petrified me. And now I was sitting in what I consider a sacred, safe space, trapped inside thoughts of him.
I quickly dismissed myself to the bathroom, terrified of a breakdown in front of my class. If they really knew I was upset, God forbid what I was upset about, I would be ridiculed and made fun of the rest of my life. I took several minutes to dry my tears and breathe deeply, and I eventually returned to class. I was welcomed back into that space with a love, warmth, and sweet care by my favorite teacher in the whole world.
Looking back at that memory now, I see several things wrong with my thought process. Not only did I assume that I was guaranteed to enter Heaven, but I had this assumption that someone who did something terrible was obviously damned. And in that moment one random day in English class, that was all flipped on its head. That’s some strong but also wishy washy theology for someone who didn’t claim any god as her own.
However, I do have a faith of my own now, and these are all ideas I’ve genuinely had to wrestle with the details of for the last 8 years. When it comes to my Christian faith, it’s really hard to think about people who have really hurt me deeply sharing eternity with me. That’s just real life, as selfish as it may seem, though I do believe there has been great growth in my heart since I first began picking these heavy topics apart.
This is one of many reasons why I think being trauma informed when approaching and teaching the biblical text is very important. There are troubling things in the Bible, and reading some of that stuff through a trauma lens is not always easy. It takes grace, patience and care to sift through some of those letters and stories alongside our personal experiences.
I believe it's particularly important to pay attention to those themes when you're teaching scripture to other people. It takes extra patience to observe how certain stories and phrases can be harmful when you don't share a traumatized world view. It can be challenging stuff, but I do my best to always be mindful of trauma perspectives when both telling my personal stories and especially when teaching the Bible. I don't always get it right, but I do my best to respond with love and learning.
I had a woman sit with me in our church offices just this week who asked questions I never would have predicted I would ever be asked. They were questions about specific Bible stories that she found very troubling and triggering, to the point where she spoke her questions through tears. They were about stories I had heard a million times over, stories I spent almost a full semester analyzing in my couple of Bible classes, but never in my life had I read or interpreted those passages through the lens of pain that this woman carried with her.
Mrs. Eaton always used this metaphor when working with seniors about how we all had a suitcase, full of the things that made us who we are. Each of those things influenced who we would become in our careers and future endeavors. Now, she used this as a beautiful, encouraging illustration, but all this thought about her classroom and trauma lenses has me thinking about the reality of how what we've been through shapes how we see the world.
In my vocational context, the way I have seen and experienced the world, has a huge influence on how I see and experience the Bible and, therefore, faith. This means that how I interpret scripture to then teach it is affected by my experiences, trauma included. While I believe choosing to follow Jesus, means living differently than the world, I'm still a human who is living in this world and who is effected by human experiences. I have no choice but to view any piece of writing through my own eyes first. That's the only perspective I really have full access to. I can always work to remove bias, but what I know is what I know.
All that to say, the Bible, Christianity, theology, and spirituality are all complicated things individually. Adding on our own fear, misunderstanding, and past hurt only complicates it more so, but I don't at all believe any of this stuff is unapproachable. Freshman Makaela had a vastly different heart than current me. I've come leaps and bounds in having peace about my abuser still existing freely in the world while having the same access to Jesus as I do. While being triggered is real, and I still experience it, sometimes unexpectedly, I don't have to be kept in a chokehold by my past. There is strength that exists inside of me to approach troubling scripture and a God who can handle my difficult questions. I believe that healing, freedom, and strength is accessible for you too.
How you see the world is valid, and no matter what suitcase you carry, I hope you know this: You are truly and deeply loved.
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