The Body Keeps the Score

A few years ago, I think it was about 2020, I read a book that at one time I would have dismissed without a second thought.  Unfortunately, it took me going through several traumatic events to have my eyes opened to the abuse that many people encounter.  I wish that it wouldn’t have taken me walking through painful trauma myself, yet I’m grateful for the lessons learned.

My first physical symptom came in 2018.  I had just walked and frankly was still walking through a most painful and defining moment of my life.  I had heard the horror stories of leading churches, but I hadn’t had the experience that I so often heard talked about at pastors conferences and get togethers….until 2017.  That year I experienced a new level of stress and heartbreak that couldn’t be chronicled in such a short article (don’t worry a whole book is coming).  After the initial adrenaline rush of making it through a full 12 months of crazy, I found my body keeping the score.  My first symptoms landed me in a doctor’s office, running tests and prescribing antibiotics to fix my issue.

Yet, the trauma kept piling and the body kept keeping the score.

See, this book that I read spoke to Vietnam War veterans who were experiencing physical symptoms long after the traumatic event because events have a way of imprinting themselves upon your body.

Over the next several years, I would deal with these ongoing symptoms that largely related to the ongoing stressful events that I largely had to deal with in SILENCE.  This was creating a perfect storm.  As we had to navigate an organization through an inordinate number of high stress and high volume of dysfunction, I found my physical symptoms would manifest after the height of stress.  We would navigate the organization through a highly public sexual scandal of multiple individuals of which people refused to believe the overwhelming amount of evidence.  I had seen the text messages, pictures and proof yet there were people who targeted my family for protecting young people from this influence.  The body kept the score and I found myself experiencing increasing symptoms.  It was brought to light that there were leaders engaged in embezzlement of funds.  The body kept the score.  Bullying became more than just something to stand up against, it morphed into a reality that I became the target of.  The body kept the score.  Multiple accusations of abuse by a leader were brought forward and ignored by leadership.  The body kept the score.  Organizational officials hired a lawyer using bully tactics to silence.  The body kept the score.

The score finally caught up.

See, I’ve largely experienced the last six months in a stress free zone.  I found what it was like to breathe again.  Then, out of the blue….the body kept the score.  I woke up one Friday in December in a pain that had become familiar, yet this one was different.  It sent me to the ER – a place I had never had to visit with these symptoms.  I spent one night in the hospital, but I thought it would be like the other times…so many times…here’s some antibiotics, this time in an IV, and then you’ll be good to go.  Except that it wasn’t.   I couldn’t kick it….so about two weeks later I checked myself back into that ER to find myself with a medical situation that required a procedure, a two night stay and a referral for surgery.  I had a blown a hole in my intestine and this wasn’t going to just go away.

So, less than two weeks ago, I had 12 inches of my intestine removed in a surgery that I didn’t see coming, but the Scorekeeper did. 

God is so faithful.  While the body was keeping the score, God was preparing me for a completely new game.  It’s as though the score was reset back to zero.  It wasn’t the way that I would have chosen, but I truly am overflowing with thankfulness and praise.

My recovery has been nothing short of a miracle.  What requires many people to stay in the hospital for up to a week, I spent one night.  What keeps many people from working for 6 – 8 weeks, I only missed a little over a week.  I feel better than I have in a long time.  The Scorekeeper still works miracles and is able to reset.

While I was in church this past Sunday, I felt the Lord so strongly impress upon me to ponder some of the details and it brought me to tears — how God used even the specific number 12 in such an intricate way to remind me that He is the one who restores all the years that the enemy has tried to steal and He repays what the locusts have eaten.

I hope that if you have made it this far in the article, that you are encouraged to know that we serve a miracle working God.  He is so good.  He resets.  He restores.  He is the God of recompense.  He won’t ever let you down.  Your body may keep the score, but God determines the outcome.