By Jenai Auman

My childhood home had beautiful, serene moments of peace. I lived on the outskirts of a small town in Texas, and I grew up sneaking sugar cubes to the horses in the adjacent pasture. Many days, I would help my neighbors feed the chickens next door, and I watched the sun set across open fields. But like glass, the stillness and quiet were broken, shot to pieces with bursts of rapid fire. My sense of safety often went from whole to in shambles multiple times a day. As a child walking with trauma, you really believe everything is normal. You believe that what you experience is also taking place in all the surrounding houses. My childhood was a mountain of trauma and conflict, and my idea of home carried baggage by the ton.

I processed the trauma as an adult. At 34, I’m still processing. Some of the cracks have mended. Multiple fissures have healed, and many of the agents of healing I found within my new home—the local church. My faith community redeemed my ideas of family and home. It was a grace to find a sense of shelter in my Creator. But history does have a horrific way of repeating itself, and the stillness and quiet of my soul was shot to pieces after spiritual abuse. Physically, my needs were met. I did have a roof over my head, but after religious trauma, I was spiritually homeless.

Finding safe shelter is difficult when your ability to trust is shot and shattered. Reaching out for help post-trauma is like bearing your belly in the middle of a battlefield. There is no peace, no gentle horses to sneak sugar cubes to, and no chickens to feed. You’re a wounded soldier laying in a once-serene meadow, and you just want to go home. But the bullets still fly, and after falling, you hope another will come to triage you. The trauma tells you to brace yourself—to help yourself—or run the risk of bleeding out. Religious trauma shot me down, and my sense of home was wrecked again.

I am mending more cracks and fissures. I’m still picking up the pieces of my broken life, trying to rebuild my faith from the ruins. Navigating the fallout, I found others doing the same. I have a renewed sense of community and home among the fellow fallen. Many of these souls are themselves healed enough to help bandage my wounds. Generously, these wounded healers pointed me back home to the safe harbors of my Creator. Now, I walk as a wounded healer, too.

God’s shelter is one where the pieces are kept and the broken are made whole. The Embodiment of Home removes the wounded from the battlefield, reinstates gentility and stillness, and quiets our hearts. He shelters me. I find peace among the creatures in his pastures. Though I may limp the rest of my life as a spiritual nomad, Christ will forever be my home.