We’re Here Again!

I really haven’t done a particularly good job at writing more regularly. It’s been more than a year since my last post, in which I declared so confidently that I would post more frequently. I’ve also just reread it. Wow! I left it on quite the cliff-hanger. Sorry about that.

I could say it was a deliberate dramatic pause, similar to what you would get between seasons of your favourite Netflix show. But that just isn’t true. What is true is that life suddenly got very busy after I wrote that – I’ve had two new jobs and a baby! Oh and there’s the small matter of this Covid pandemic we are still in living through.

Rereading that last post brought back some horrific memories. Not just the memory of what I was going through, but also the recollection of what my family were experiencing. They all described this next stage of the journey as the worst part: the fact that I ended up in exactly the same A&E bed as the first time I was blue lighted to Frimley Park certainly gave Mim a heightened sense of, “Oh my gosh, we’re here again!”

In all honesty, I think perhaps that may also be the reason it’s taken me so long to write about this next bit. Shortly after the last blog post, in the Autumn of 2019, I started counselling, as we had come to realise that, although I was continuing to recover really well physically, I wasn’t even close to recovering emotionally.

This realisation came in the middle of the night when neither of us could sleep and Mim got up to go and read in the lounge. A good friend, my old pastor, had described what happened in 2018 as though I had fallen of the wall (Humpty Dumpty style!) and was now completely broken down. I know, so compassionate, right?!

But at the time it was just what I needed to hear because he followed it up with, “But I believe that God is going to pick up the pieces and put you back together: Keeping the good and leaving the bad behind. I believe that what will emerge after you have been put back together will be better than what was there before.” What a picture of hope from despair. Light from darkness. Joy from sadness.

However, that sleepless night at the end of 2019, I got up, went into the lounge, sat on the sofa next to Mim, lay my head in her lap and cried. And in response to the question, “What’s wrong?” I simply replied, “I still feel broken and I don’t know how to put Humpty back together again”.

Any kind of trauma leaves us with scars and unless we acknowledge and own those scars, it is very difficult to move forward in life. The reality was that as we were focusing so much time on my physical recovery, I had failed to spend any time dealing with the emotional scars of my trauma. And as a result, I was finding it really difficult to move forward.

I was clinging to the word from my friend: God was going to put the pieces of me back together; and what emerges would be better than what was there before; but it seemed so far out of reach.

Counselling really helped. It’s now just over a year on and I find myself in a new job as Youth and Young Adults Minister at a local church. This week I’ve been researching ways of supporting both young people and adults with their mental and emotional health and wellbeing.

I was recommended the charity Kintsugi Hope who are a UK based mental wellbeing charity. The following is taken from their website.

‘Kintsugi’ (金継ぎ) is a Japanese technique for repairing pottery with seams of gold. The word means ‘golden joinery’ in Japanese. This repairs the brokenness in a way that makes the object more beautiful, and even more unique than it was prior to being broken. Instead of hiding the scars it makes a feature of them.

What a beautiful picture that is – that the scars we pick up in life don’t need to be hidden away, as if we should just push them deep down inside us and try to forget about the trauma that created them – but that the brokenness can been repaired with a golden thread. Bringing them from darkness into light and displaying them as treasure for all to see.

I am still on that journey of being put back together, but I know it’s important for me and others looking in, that I am open and honest about the scars.

My hope and prayer is that as I continue to share the trauma that created my scars, you will get to see the ‘golden thread’ that God has – and still is – using to heal the brokenness.

And as you do, may you begin to see yourself as God sees you – PURE TREASURE.