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PACEs in the Faith-Based Community

Does Childhood Trauma Affect Our Relationship With God?

 

On April 20, 2019, I started posting information about Adverse Childhood Experiences on my social media accounts – primarily Instagram.

On March 22, 2020, I started adding posts centered on Bible verses which I found meaningful, helpful, and insightful to my personal and spiritual life. I saw it as an addition to what I was doing, not a pivot to something new.

Then, on August 17, 2020, I started adding some thoughts to each of the Bible-centered posts. Most of them made only implicit reference to the verse, but each of them addressed what I thought was a practical application of the verse. I had hoped that my daily posts were (and still are) inspirational and helpful.

And then a good friend asked me not long ago why I was mixing both “secular” and “sacred” on my social media. It was a good question and came in response to my lamenting that I wasn’t receiving quite the traction in my business which I had hoped for in 2020 (COVID not withstanding).

He said, “Donald Miller [of the StoryBrand framework] makes a good point — ‘if you confuse, you lose’ and that may be the case for you in 2020. Don't get me wrong, I support your doing what you believe in... but I also see a mixed message when I see your posts about faith and biblical references and then see your posts about trauma-informed leadership.”

Yeah. He was right. Good point.

And then I thought about what another good friend often said about me when we worked together, “You’re just a little bit different.”

Maybe I am different. Maybe I don’t hold to the conventional wisdom of how social media is supposed to work. Maybe I don’t write blog articles the way they should be written. Maybe I’m not growing my business the right way because I continue to send mixed messages. Maybe I won’t be successful.

Then again, maybe I need to lean in harder and be more explicit in the connection that adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and childhood trauma. Maybe I need to focus not only on our physical and mental well-being, but also on our spiritual well-being.

If you would like to keep reading the entire article, please click here.  Thank you.

Chris

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Comments (3)

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" Does childhood trauma affect our relationship with God?", I believe it can make a positive or negative impact depending on the relationship that a person has with Him. If you are a religious person you will solely rely on God to help you through the trauma. Conversely if you don't believe in  God you may blame God for what has happened despite the fact it is not His fault. I'm not sure I understand your question regarding mixing social media being secular or sacred. Social media is what you make of it. Social media is used to promote spiritual and secular information therefore there is no reason why you can't post both.

 

Keep gowing your business, Chris. God excels at trauma informed leadership and even peer relationships. Post all the God stuff you want, but maybe separate most of it from your business posts.

Yaaaa, You! Yaaaa, God!

Your fan,
Rev. Liz Brimm

"God is love." 1 John 4:8



Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone

Thanks for this post... and the more complete one on your website.  Chris, I’d encourage you to consider making comments available for your website visitors to make.  This would create a healthy dialogue about your topics..  be well, Dale

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