Healing Trauma, Hoping for Reconciliation

Serving in the war-torn country of South Sudan, Rev. Nancy Smith-Mather sees firsthand the suffering and pain that people in that country are experiencing.

She and her husband, Shelvis, work with RECONCILE, an indigenous, ecumenical organization that reaches out in various ways to people who have been displaced by the civil war that continues to take its toll across South Sudan, the world’s newest country.

“South Sudan has been through so much. Last July, the country fell back into civil war,” said Smith-Mather during a break from a recent trauma-training workshop organized by World Renew and the Christian Reformed Church’s Safe Church Ministry and held at the CRC’s Grand Rapids, Mich., office.

In South Sudan, Smith-Mather and her husband participate in training events that address and seek to build peace and reconciliation between warring ethnic groups. She attended the workshop to enhance the skills she already has.

“I’m grateful to be here so that when I go back, I’ll be better able to understand what people are going through,” said Smith-Mather. “Being here reminds me of how important it is to be present and listening and understanding so I can minister to the people.”

Put on by the Trauma Healing Institute of the American Bible Society, the three-day Trauma Healing Equipping Session was held to teach participants basic biblical and mental health principles to trauma care.

It also had the goal of helping participants explore whether they personally had been traumatized, and, if so, to bring that trauma to Christ, as well as to learn how to lead trauma-healing groups.

“I like how the workshop weaves theology in with mental health skills,” said Nate Bowman-Johnston, who works in administration for the Trauma Healing Institute and attended the event to get a better idea of how the process works.

“I like how this offers a combination of mental health and best practices. As I process and digest it, I see how this can be very effective in places around the world.”

There were 35 participants at the workshop -- coming from West Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia, South Dakota, and California. In addition, said Carol Bremer-Bennett, director of World Renew in the United States, “We also had someone from a Middle Eastern country.”

Following the initial session of the program, participants will share what they learned with others in their communities. They will then complete the process with an advanced session in trauma care.

“Trauma healing is an important part of World Renew’s ministry around the world. We see this as an essential program, and we were pleased to be able to offer it to people,” said Bremer-Bennett.

Topics in the workshop, she said, included the following:

• If God Loves Us, Why Do We Suffer?
• How Can the Wounds of Our Hearts Be Healed?
• What Happens When Someone Is Grieving?
• Caring for the Caregiver
• Response: Taking Your Pain to the Cross
• How Can We Forgive Others?

A husband and wife who work with a missionary organization that sends them to troubled spots all over the world spoke about their work, but for security reasons they didn’t want their names published.

“We are living in a more broken society than ever before,” said the husband during a break from the workshop. “Things are getting more volatile.”

They work in pastoral care with women who daily face physical danger and grinding poverty. They sit with and listen to refugees who talk about having lived under the brutal threat of the military, living in places where bombs constantly went off and where they faced threats of being kidnapped and facing torture.

The couple said they minister to people who have seen unbelievable violence and have lost loved ones to war. They bring the love of Christ to them in the midst of awful suffering.

“You want to help people process the huge trauma that they talk to you about,” said the wife. “So often these are people who face trauma every day. We meet with them, and I stay in contact with them over the Internet.”

In South Sudan, said Smith-Mather, she and her husband try to “stand in the gap with community leaders” and give them the skills to work with others. But first, she said, they have to deal with their own trauma.

“Walking with and listening to them is so important because in the end we are trying to help them address their own trauma so that they can eventually get to reconciliation” with what happened to them and with those who perpetrated it — and then pass this process on to others, said Smith-Mather.