Do you want to know the best kept secret to processing the pain, nightmares in your life after sudden losses occur? Read on.....

Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you 1 Peter 5:7

When we were created, God gave us a brain that would become a powerful hard drive, capable of collecting information, storing memories, and the skills needed for our survival.  When sudden losses occur memories may live on in the form of flashbacks that typically awaken us in the middle of the night depriving us of a fitful night of sleep.

Those who treat veterans with PTSD know first hand the impact these bad memories can have on those returning home from those fierce battles on foreign land. Sadly, many veterans turn to alcohol and drugs just to cope with the pain of such traumatic images. Sadly,  are the thousands of veterans who commit suicide each year because they are simply unable to process this pain. In one such study on veteran suicide http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-veteran-suicide-20150115-story.html, the following was reported:

Among veterans in the current study, there was one suicide a day.

The rates were highest during the first three years out of the military.

Veterans who had been enlisted in the rank-and-file committed suicide at nearly twice the rate of former officers. Keeping with patterns in the general population, being white, unmarried and male were also risk factors.

Men accounted for 83% of the veterans in the study and all but 124 of them died from suicides. They were three times more likely than women to take their own lives.

Female veterans, however, killed themselves at more than twice the rate of other women — a difference much bigger than the gap between male veterans and non-veterans.

Although I cannot relate to the savagery these men and woman see on the battlefield, I can see how those constant images can effect their ability to function upon returning home. Especially when society expects them to return to what they were doing before the war as though it was a simple process. 

Inside the minds of all of us affflicted by the powerful images of how our loved one died is a war. A battle is raging in all of us as we reach for our weapons to fight the onslaught of those painful memories..It's as though we're in the trenches trying to kill the memories which seem to come from all directions.  From my own experience,  unless you are able to find a way to process those painful memories, the battle will linger on with no end in sight.

But there is hope. The most important skill I developed from my younger years was the skill of journal writing. This skill was one I learned from my involvement in a Men's accountability bible study called Navigators.http://www.navigators.org/Tools

As I look at my bookshelf I see many of my journals from my younger years filled with pages of items that I struggled with in those years.  It was those skills that would become my way of coping and processing my own memories from 2007. When I read those earlier journal entries, I see a pattern of God constantly coming to my side and rescuing me. I see that I wasn't abandoned, forgotten, nor forsaken.

Today,  we have a wonderful new tool known as the internet that makes it easier to keep track of our thoughts.  Blogging has become a new past time for many people. 

 Blogging has now become a common method and I believe will become a more common method  for anyone still in the trenches fighting their war. I'm including this link for anyone interested in learning how to set up their own personal blog. www.blogger.com

The American way of processing pain has traditionally been to 'just get over it', 'it;s been 6 months since your loved one died', or 'just keep busy.' As well meaning as this advice may sound, it hardly helps the person who wakens at night unable to sleep because of the war with their traumatic memories they are fighting.

Blogging does not replace the need for professional counseling, but blogging combined with counseling will help them heal quicker.  If we all develop the ability to write out what is troubling us, the healthier we will be in the long run.