Life doesn't give us many guarantees. This is quite unfortunate because as humans, we are programmed with a desire for certainty. We are curious beings, we want to know what's going on and what's going to happen. This is wired into our DNA for a simple reason: survival.
For example: You notice a cool plant. Great. But what is it? Can I eat the fruit? Do I need to stay away from it? Could the leaves have medicinal properties? (Just realized I might not want to include that as I write this post from leafy Colorado. Too bad - I'm leaving it in.) The point is, curiosity is important. It's how we learn about the world. And our questions continue until things make sense.
Our brains actually reward us with a surge of feel-good dopamine when we figure out patterns, when we complete stories. They don't have to be true necessarily, because our dopamine receptors can't tell the difference, but as long as we're sure we've figured out what's going on - reward time. Job well done. Move on and wonder about something else.
So with a body that desires patterns and stories it's troubling to live in a world that 1. Is chock full of uncertainties, confusion, and things we don't/can't understand and 2. Is satisfied if we come up with an explanation (even if its not true) and rewards us for explaining the complexity we've experienced.
This is fine most of the time and in general allows us to operate and function in the world and interact well with people around us. But the system suffers when you add in painful, traumatic events. Especially recurring ones. Now your brain is learning a story - over and over again. It's learning that if you do _______, then he will yell at you/call you names/chase you/trap you/degrade you for hours on end. If he even starts getting mad, then the yelling will continue all night long. If he calls you one name, its going to turn into a tirade confirming all your worst fears and insecurities about yourself. Your brain learns this story well and in some ways it enables you to survive because you also know that eventually it will end, and you will fall asleep somehow and tomorrow will come.
But what about a year later when you are trying to write a new story? When you've met someone else and he doesn't call you names, he doesn't yell, he doesn't chase. Most of the time the old story is forgotten, or at least not called into your conscious memory. But what if....what if something happens that makes your brain think you are back in that same story. One comment that your brain can't make sense of....so it searches. It searches the database for a pattern - desperately trying to finish the story. It finds something - not quite right but it's close enough. And that's it. The rest is already written. You know what's coming next. Or at least your body thinks it does. So it responds. Just like it learned how to - as if it was yesterday.
Fear washes over you like a flood. Breathing is difficult. A clutching feeling in your chest. You're walking away and can barely stand up. Where's the closet? I need to run and hide. I've shut down. Can't engage. Just let me be.
And the way this should finish is that he continues yelling but since you've hid in the darkest corner of the closet he eventually gets fed up and storms out of the house to go drink and smoke. You've survived. You'll have a couple hours to recover and hopefully get to sleep before he comes home.
But wait...that's not how this story ends. Not tonight. Tonight it's not him. It's someone who actually cares that you're hurting and wants to hold you close and comfort you. He has no clue what just got triggered and the crazy road you just went down. But he's here. He's not chasing you, he's hugging you, asking you to come back inside. And as much as what just happened must scare him, he stays calm and he holds you and rubs your back until you stop sobbing and can breathe again.
A new ending. There was no guarantee it would end this way. And as far as my neuronic memory was concerned, it wasn't going to. It was going to end how it always did.
Endings are hard to rewrite. It's hard to literally retrain your brain to script a new story. Uncertainty is scary. But it's time to learn how to sit in it for a little bit and let a new story take the place of what's wired in right now.
You know what guarantee life does give us? Hard times will come. Always.
Well that's depressing.
Sure, if that's the end.
But it's not. Grace exists. Freedom exists. Jesus' work on the cross promises us a new ending. Love wins every time. Freedom from fear and uncertainty is ours for the taking. It's not easy, but what good thing ever was?
It is for freedom that I am set free. Not to live in the repetitions of stories of abuse. But to courageously let Christ help me write new endings of comfort and peace and healing.
