Sometimes it can seem impossible to find God’s light in the darkness of depression and suffering. Keeping trauma experiences secret can make it feel like His light is totally nonexistent.
Depression—at least trauma-induced depression—acts as a form of spiritual and mental self-cannibalism. In trying to eradicate negative memories of trauma, the mind destroys positive memories instead. Eventually, only the worst recollections persist as startling flashbacks.
Throughout my twenties and into my early thirties, all I could remember of my high school experience was the trauma. I remembered being raped like it had just happened the day before. The night a friend died when the truck he was in rolled coming down from a hilltop party was etched in my memory banks. The terror of sexual assault compounded by the trauma of an abortion haunted me. There was nothing—not one single thing—that was good about high school. If there had been any good, it was long forgotten.
Depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress flashbacks were my constant.
No Longer Hiding Trauma Frees Good Memories
When I ceased my attempts to hide my shameful history, and instead brought it into the light, something amazing happened. Not only did I find God’s light, but I began to regain good memories I believed did not exist. While working on my memoir, I realized that I have happy memories from a time in my life that was also riddled with events I spent years trying to forget. As I’ve written about the damaging memories—recalling every detail I could—and allowed God to work in my heart, pleasant anecdotes began surfacing as well.
I lay in bed one evening, unable to sleep. Days before I had written one of the more difficult scenes of my yet-to-be-published book, and mulled over the next scene I needed to write if the manuscript was ever going to come together. As if someone was reciting it to me, I began to hear the poem Abou Ben Adhem in my head. It is one of a handful of poems by an obscure poet named Leigh Hunt.
In high school speech tournaments, I competed with an oral interpretation speech that consisted of this poem coupled with a passage from a book. Though I hadn’t thought about it for over a decade, I still knew this beloved poem word-for-word. In this simple image, I saw even in my darkest times God had never left me.
You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book.
Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.
— Psalm 139:16 NLT.
Remembering My Favorite Class
This poem, coming to mind unexpectedly, reminded me that my saving grace in high school had been speech and debate class with Mr. Rowland. I adored speech class. My favorite part was doing um-speech competitions. Mr. Rowland would split the class into two teams. We then alternated one person at a time from each team to do an impromptu speech. Mr. Rowland had a hat full of topics written on small slips of paper, anything from cats to mountain peaks to a person in the news. Very random, usually one-word topics.
Each student would pull a topic from the hat, take 10 seconds to decide what they wanted to say, and then start talking. With Mr. Rowland running his stop watch, the objective was to speak on point for one full minute without interjecting um, uh, aah, er, or more than three seconds of silence. Your time was up if you said any of the disallowed fillers. Then you wrote your time on the chalkboard for your team. At the end of the game, the team with the most collective time got a prize of some sort. Often it was a pizza party.
Remembering My Escape from Trauma
But what I loved most about speech and debate was getting out of Elma for a weekend. Speech tournaments were my escape from my usual escape. There I didn’t get drunk or stoned in an effort to drown the pain; I could be the person I had once dreamed I could be. I could find God’s light.
Speech class and tournaments were also where I hung out with my debate partners, Bob, Matt, and Kurt. They were guys who treated me differently. They seemed to respect me for my abilities and intelligence, and were not trying to trick me into sleeping with them. Plus, they were funny. I could laugh and joke with them in a way I couldn’t with guys I partied with or dated.
In addition to being on our debate team, I competed in both expository and oral interpretation individual events. An expository speech is simply explaining a concept or topic to the audience. One year my topic was gnomes. Don’t ask me why; it seemed like a good idea at the time. Expository wasn’t my strongest event, but it provided good experience for public speaking I’ve had to do in my work over the years.
Oral interpretation was my passion. It’s where I could express emotions I otherwise felt I had to keep to myself. An oral interpretation speech consisted of two or three pieces of prose or poetry connected by a central theme stated in an introduction, a transition, and a conclusion. Remembering the favorite pieces I used in this event—such as Robert Frost’s Nothing Gold Can Stay and Abou Ben Adhem—helped me realize my deep need to connect with a God I didn’t truly know or understand.
The Poem That Helped Me See God’s Light
I don’t recall what piece I connected this poem with in my high school speech, but the words of Leigh Hunt, now in the public domain, bring tears to my eyes still:
Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An angel writing in a book of gold:—
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the presence in the room he said,
“What writest thou?”—The vision raised its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord,
Answered, “The names of those who love the Lord.”
“And is mine one?” said Abou. “Nay, not so,”
Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerily still; and said, “I pray thee, then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow men.”The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blest,
And lo! Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest.
When I first recited this poem, I didn’t understand my name was already in God’s book—that I was already His beloved. I didn’t need an angel to pen my name in a gold-leaf tome. And I didn’t need any earthly guy to know true love. The love and light of God are what I longed for, but I had no idea it was a gift He would freely give.
Restoring Good Memories
Today, I remember more of the good things in my early years. Depression no longer holds me captive, mired in the shame that comes from keeping sexual trauma a secret. Once the locusts had eaten every good memory, but God restored to me what had been lost.
I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten—
the great locust and the young locust,
the other locusts and the locust swarm—
my great army that I sent among you.
You will have plenty to eat, until you are full,
and you will praise the name of the Lord your God,
who has worked wonders for you;
never again will my people be shamed.
Joel 2:25–26 (NIV).
A Stack Poem
And here is the stack poem shown in the photo above. I wrote this poem using the spines and titles of some of my favorite books in the poetry section of my home library.
Invisible Light—Poems About God
SHOUT
my soul feels lean
Light rooms—Dark rooms
in so few words
Chiaroscuro—Darkness and Light
To do this right
Ashes to Life
The Psalms for Prayer—Devotions
A Light in the Attic
Closing Prayer
O Lord, our God, I pray for anyone reading my words today who is mired in the shame of hidden trauma. Give them courage to speak up and speak out, to reclaim the good memories that You have kept safe for them. I pray You will heal their depression, anxiety, and PTSD from trauma, that they Your people will no longer be shamed. In Jesus name, amen.
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