It is not an ordinary hardship. It is not the loss of a good job. It is not the death of an animal. These are the ordinary human experience.
I listen to the stories of people as often as I can. What I usually hear is what people do, not who they are. That’s a drastically different thing. Stories usually are about where a person grew up, what kind of friends they had, whether they were in sports or didn’t participate in school events. What jobs their parents held and so on.
What if I asked this question: “Did your childhood hold trauma?”
Do we want to know? Does the person we’re chatting with want to tell?
The niceties of life are exaggerated in most people’s stories. They create a poster story for themselves, include the parts of the family they’ll bring forward, and then share the same thing time and time again.
Do all people have a traumatic event to share? I guess we’d have to ask ourselves the question, “What is trauma and what is not?”
In 2023 I’m praying that God will help you see you in the most accurate way possible. It’s where our freedoms live.