Karen A. McClintock - When Trauma Wounds: Pathways to Healing and Hope

My most sincere wish is that the Living with Hope series will offer comfort, wisdomand hopeto individuals facing lifes most common and intimate challenges. Books in the series tackle complex problems such as addiction, parenting, unemployment, pregnancy loss, serious illness, trauma, and grief and encourage individuals, their families, and those who care for them. The series is bound together by a common message for those who are dealing with significant issues: you are not alone. There is hope.

This series offers first-person perspectives and insights from authors who know personally what it is like to face these struggles. As companions and guides, series contributors share personal experiences, offer valuable research from trusted experts, and suggest questions to help readers process their own responses and explore possible next steps. With empathy and honesty, these accessible volumes reassure individuals they are not alone in their pain,
fear, or confusion.

The series is also a valuable resource for pastoral and spiritual care providers in faith-based settings. Parish pastors, lay ministers, chaplains, counselors, and other staff and volunteers can draw on these volumes to offer skilled and compassionate guidance to individuals in need of hope.

Each title in this series is offered with prayer for the readers journeyone of discovery, further challenges, and transformation. You are not alone. There is hope.

Beth Ann Gaede, Series Editor

Nurturing Hope: Christian Pastoral Care in the Twenty-First Century
(Lynne M. Baab)

Dignity and Grace: Wisdom for Caregivers and Those Living with Dementia
(Janet L. Ramsey)

Jobs Lost, Faith Found: A Spiritual Resource for the Unemployed
(Mary C. Lindberg)

They Dont Come with Instructions: Cries, Wisdom, and Hope for Parenting Children with Developmental Challenges
(Hollie M. Holt-Woehl)

True Connection: Using the NAME IT Model to Heal Relationships
(George Faller and Heather P. Wright)

Waiting for Good News: Living with Chronic and Serious Illness
(Sally L. Wilke)

Carrying Them with Us: Living through Pregnancy or Infant Loss
(David M. Engelstad and Catherine A. Malotky)

A Grief Received: What to Do When Loss Leaves You Empty-Handed
(JL Gerhardt)

When Trauma Wounds: Pathways to Healing and Hope
(Karen A. McClintock)

Addiction and Recovery: A Spiritual Pilgrimage
(Martha Postlethwaite)

On a Tuesday morning I was sitting at my office desk shuffling folders, preparing for the week ahead. My draft of the Sunday bulletin needed work, but itll do, I thought, and pushed it aside to watch a noisy blue jay outside my window in the courtyard. The sky was gray. In Californias central valley the fog rolls in almost every fall morning. By noon, however, I could count on sunshine.

As I was turning my thoughts toward a sermon on Jesuss encounter with the leper, the phone rang. I heard a frantic voice on the other end of the line and couldnt recognize it.

Hello, Karen, she said, as if we knew each other. I know this is very awkward, but my name is Sarah, and I work for Child Protective Services. I have a situation I think you could best handle for us. We have an eight-year-old girl whose father is in prison and whose mother drove her car off the side of a winding mountain road and died this morning. Im on my way to the school to pick her up. I dont feel comfortable telling her this news, and Id like to bring her to you so you can tell her.

I asked Sarah for the childs name and realized that I had met her one morning walking toward our Sunday school classrooms with a friend. She was the quieter of the two girls and looked as if shed grown awkwardly taller ahead of her peers. She was pale and slightly disheveled. She was the kind of kid youd notice and grow curious about.

I would soon learn the details. Sarah and the girl were on their way to my office. To this day, it astounds me that a social worker, with years of training and experience, felt it important for the pastor of the girls only church connection to tell her this bad news. It was as if this tragic news was too much for mere mortals and had to be handled in a sacred space.

I paced the floor for a few minutes and went to the bathroom. I felt nauseous and took a few deep breaths before walking slowly back to the office. My palms grew clammy. I hadnt a clue what to do in this situation.

I let the secretary know that we would need privacy for this very difficult conversation. I filled her in so she wouldnt greet the girl with a funny joke or lighthearted humor as she might have done otherwise. They soon arrived.

This is still one of the hardest memories I have of my years as a local pastor. I was not trauma trained. I leaned on God in a wordless prayer and held that little girls two small hands in my larger ones as she heard the news that her mother had died. I felt a nearly imperceptible trembling in her hands. I had imagined that shed scream or cry, but she sat stone still as if she was refusing to hear my words.

The words of Paul came through to me in the sadness at that moment: Nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God. Not height or depth or even this? Not even when a little girl needs her mothers arms around her and will not have them to lean on from this day on? The scripture passage showed up like a familiar tune you cant shake off and pointed me toward a peace beyond this crazy confusing day when a pastor, a social worker, and a little girl sat with a terrible reality. A day when the sun wouldnt likely break through the fog at all.