Author Archives: pastorjeremyhelmuth

Healing from Traumatic Flashbacks

I keep having flashbacks. The other morning, I was laying in bed starting to “wake-up” and my mind formed a picture of my mom laying in the hospital bed. She was sick with stuff hooked up to her body. This image disturbed my heart. I was a bit shaken by the flashback because my mom’s sickness was a traumatic experience for my family.

This flashback was vivid. Briefly, I forgot that I was actually laying on my bed in my own home. My mind traveled back to one of the worst periods of my life. The trauma occurred over a duration of 112 days. The daily doctor’s reports. The good news and then bad news. Knowing my mom was fighting for her life, confined to her hospital bed.

Trauma takes shape in many forms: years of abuse, months of divorce court, weeks of bullying, hours of a still-born childbirth, seconds of an accident.

One cannot measure trauma simply by how long or short the event. The intensity of the moment might affect future flashbacks, but so can the longevity of the undesirable circumstance in your own personal history.

My flashback felt so real because it produced a high level of stress within my body. My heart was pounding and my muscles were tensing up as if I was reliving this tragedy again. The hormones that coursed through my veins after I heard “bad news” about my mom in the hospital were the same hormones I was experiencing laying on my own bed.

Have you ever wondered why you get flashbacks of traumatic events? I have discovered that my mind is still learning to cope with seeing my mom in a hospital bed for almost four months. Maybe my mind repressed these thoughts for a later time when I would be more prepared to deal with them.  

That “later time” was last week. How do I handle a flashback like that? It was painful to visualize my mom suffering. I don’t want my mind to be transported back to this horrible period of my life. It seems that my mind needs healing from these events. Maybe your mind needs healing from a similar event?

I reminded myself at the end of the flashback that it was in the past. It felt real and I hated the way my body responded. Throughout the day, I kept thinking about this disturbing moment. My heart was filled with anxiety, that is, until I went to Christ and asked Him what I should do with this unsettling feeling. I could hear a gentle whisper say to my heart, “Read Hebrews 12:1-3.”

I opened my Bible and read the first three verses of Hebrews 12.

Since we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before Him He endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider Him who endured such opposition from sinners, so you won't grow weary and lose heart.

After studying these verses, the Lord gently told me that I need to focus on three truths in order to heal my mind from these flashbacks.

Truth #1: My mom is a part of the CLOUD of WITNESSES now.

The cloud of witnesses is an extension of all the men and women of the faith in Hebrews 11. Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Joseph, Moses, Rahab, Samson, David and many more were all commended for their faith and now make up this heavenly cloud of witnesses. But the cloud does not just have “Bible people” in it. Every Christian who has died is now in the cloud, witnessing God’s glory.

When you attend the funeral of a Christian, you can be assured that they are fully glorifying God in heaven and are very interested in what is happening to you on earth. This does not mean that they are always watching us, for they have many exciting new opportunities in heaven. But they are invested in your life here. They are rooting for you! They want you to also become a part of the cloud of witnesses.

God helped me combat my flashback by supplying me with Scripture that helped me look forward. Forward to what is real, not the past.  

My mom laying in a hospital bed is not reality anymore. What is true about my mom now? She is not suffering anymore. She is making new friends. She is watching my family and the events of the world. She is one of my biggest champions in heaven! Knowing this helps heal my heart.  

Truth #2: It’s now my turn to FINISH my race.

My mom has finished her race. Her race was approximately three-fourths of a century. My race might be half over, or maybe I haven’t even gotten to the back nine yet. No one knows when they will breathe their last breath. But someday, each of our races will be finished. And we will be able to look back and ask ourselves, “Am I satisfied with how I ran the race? Did I give God my all? Is God happy with my life?”

I don’t think there is anyone who arrives at the gates of heaven that will be completely satisfied with his or her race. Noah wished he wouldn’t have gotten drunk. Abraham hated that he lied so much. Sarah wished that she wouldn’t have doubted God. Moses regretted murdering a man. Samson bemoaned his weakness for women. And those are only the sins we read about. The so called “heroes of the faith” had many flaws and sinned much more than they planned to when trying to follow God.

That is why it is called “finishing the race” and not “running the perfect race.” So, how can we finish the race? Two verses hold the secret:   

We want to get the prize. That prize is the ability to keep the faith. In the darkest days of her life, my mom kept the faith.

The hardest and yet most wonderful conversation I ever overheard between my dad and mom took place right before the doctors placed her on a ventilator. I was sitting in my living room. My dad was standing a few feet away from me holding his phone out so that I could hear my mom on “speaker.” The following is the dialogue as precisely as I can remember.

Mom: “I love you and love all my children and all my grandchildren. Please tell them all how much grandma loves them.”

Dad: “I will. You will get through this.”

Mom: “If I get through this, I will see you at home. But if I don’t, I will see you in heaven.”

Dad: “You will get through this.”

Mom: “I need you to know that if I don’t get through this, I will see you in heaven.”

She is now in heaven. Her prize is Jesus Christ. But she isn’t there because she was a great mom and grandma. There is no such thing as a “saint” who deserves heaven. After people pass away, we often do a disservice to those trying to grasp how we can actually get into heaven by turning those who lived an overall selfish life into a saint. We have all “raised our eye brows” listening to someone paint a perfect picture of a deceased person who was anything but a saint. While my mom was a super person, she was ushered into heaven because she accepted the gift of salvation.

Probably more than twenty years ago, my mom was vulnerable with me. Towards the end of a Sunday afternoon lunch, she shared that she didn’t always feel saved and often doubted that she will go to heaven when she died. Sadly, she grew up in a church that taught a subtle “saved by works” mentality instead of a “saved by grace” reality. We talked for awhile about what it meant to be saved by grace and how it was never based upon anything we could do past, present or future in our life.

I believe that was a defining moment in my mom’s spiritual life. She had been taught for decades that we might forfeit our salvation if we get too many things wrong as we run the race and will be left out of heaven. But little by little, year after year, over that twenty-year stretch, my mom would hear the teaching of “grace” at her church and by the end of her life, she didn’t have to fear at all where she was headed because she was convinced that Jesus was holding her safely in His arms and there was no one and nothing that could snatch her away.  

In the last chapter of her life, my mom realized what genuine salvation was and how we are truly saved by the grace of God. The last four lines of this song say it all:

Oh, when I come to die,

Oh, when I come to die,

Oh, when I come to die,

Give me Jesus.

My own race must be ran with an increasing awareness of God’s grace. I want to grow more secure in His mercy, compassion, and love. And so when I approach the final lap of life, I will have known that God has always been and will forever be the “starter” of my faith and “finisher” of my faith.

Truth #3: I can endure and persevere by FIXING my EYES on Jesus.

The last few months of her earthly race were painstakingly difficult. Almost unbearable at times.  

When I get those flashbacks, I must remind myself that those four months in the hospital was a “light and momentary trouble” that achieved for my mom an “eternal glory that far outweighs everything” (2 Corinthians 4:17).

“Endurance is not just the ability to bear a difficult thing, but to turn it into glory.”

William Barclay

What I saw in that hospital room was temporary, but what was unseen is eternal. Knowing this truth, I fix my eyes on the unseen, not the flashback of my mom in that bed.

What does it mean for us, after any traumatic event, to fix our eyes on Jesus? It means calling out to Jesus to help your heart heal. For Jesus to sustain you with strength when you feel weak and you want to give in to the struggles of life. Jesus always comes through. This is how Jesus came through for me.

Seventeen hours had passed since I had the first flashback. I kept thinking about the flashback throughout the day and was trying to fix my eyes on Jesus. I repeatedly asked Him to heal my heart and wash away the pain of that picture in my mind.

Around 11pm, I did my normal “check on the girls in their rooms” before I turned in for the night. I walk into each of their rooms, shining the light from my phone in order to see their faces. After checking on one of my daughters, I turned to walk out of the room, and my flashlight shined on a picture on the wall. It was a picture of my mom with my daughter. I froze and started to tear up. I heard the Spirit whisper to me, “Fix your eyes on that picture and remember your mom in this way, with a big smile loving her grandchildren.”

This is the picture I have fixed my eyes on every night the last couple weeks before I fall asleep.

The sweetness of the Spirit filled my soul, and I could feel the anxiety melt away. For Jesus was right beside me, mending my broken heart.    

Dealing with the Death of an Estranged Relative

Two times. I met my grandpa two times in my entire life.

A study from the Journal of Psychology and Behavioral Science found that more than 40% of those surveyed (ages 18-56) said that they had experienced some form of family estrangement during their life.

A severed relationship is beyond difficult when it includes relatives. If you’ve lived long enough, you’ve probably found yourself estranged from a family member. You can learn to live without this person in your life. But how do you handle the feelings of emotion that begin to flood you when you either hear of that person’s death or that they have little time to live?

How should you react? Should you act as if you are on good terms with this person? Should you avoid seeing them because God would understand? These are not easy questions to answer when someone who should be near and dear to you is distant and destructive to you.

I grew up with two amazing parents and three wonderful grandparents. All five of these individuals taught me what it meant to love and be loved by other humans. But my grandpa was different. He was selfish. Life centered around him.

He wasn’t just a bad grandpa. Before that, he was a terrible dad. Absent and self-absorbed, my grandpa eventually deserted his family back in the 1950s. He left his wife and six children. One of those children had down syndrome. My grandma was abandoned with six mouths to feed.

What my grandpa did was rotten. To the core. Who does that? Who “up and leaves” their family to fend for themselves? And this was in an age when almost all women relied upon their husband’s income. I’ve been told a few times over the years that my grandma was on the brink of a nervous breakdown because of all the stress and financial pressures of raising six kids. When I think about my grandpa, this verse comes to mind:

Anyone who doesn’t provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever (1 Timothy 5:8).

My grandma survived the first several turbulent years of “single motherhood”. The six children eventually grew up. One of those children was my dad. He was the opposite of his dad.

My grandpa was pre-occupied on his own stuff, my dad was ever-present with his children.

My grandpa worked so that he could buy himself a new car almost every year, my dad worked so that he could pay for his children’s college.

My grandpa ended up leaving his family, my dad is the glue that holds his family together.

My grandpa lost the opportunity to know his dozens of grandchildren, my dad daily hangs out with his grandchildren.  

Two men from the same bloodline. Complete opposites. My dad is my hero. My grandpa was a villain. I don’t have any happy memories of my grandpa. Zero. I cannot think of one good moment with him. The last time I saw him, I was eighteen years old. And after spending a little time with him, I left feeling like he didn’t want us to ever come back again. He closed the door on any potential relationship with us.

I was okay with never seeing him again. But I had some deep bitterness and hatred hidden in my heart towards him. I despised what he did to my grandma. I loathed how he abandoned my dad, three aunts and two uncles.

Then one day he died.

Several years had passed since my last encounter with him at age eighteen. My dad called and shared the news with me. I didn’t feel emotion. He might have been my biological grandpa, but he was a stranger to me.

My dad asked if I would like to officiate my grandpa’s memorial service. I immediately said,

“Nope.”

I shot back a response that now seems careless: “Why are you even having a memorial service for him? He doesn’t deserve it.”

My dad told me he understood my position and respected it and would let the rest of his family know that they would need to find someone else to lead the memorial service.

I regret saying,

“Nope.”

Many years have passed since his death. I genuinely wish I would have handled this differently.

Looking back at my younger self, I wish I would have had more wisdom and compassion for the events that were unfolding. I allowed bitterness, hatred and self-protection to direct my thoughts and words. And I regret it.

I wish I would have looked into the hearts of my dad, aunts and uncles and saw that they needed a time to heal from all the pain from their past. I could have stood before them and helped them work through those feelings and guided them towards closure.

I wish that I could have still loved my grandpa even though he never showed an ounce of love to me. I could have shared with the small crowd that God loved grandpa and created him in His image and that grandpa’s life is a perfect picture of why we all need grace.

I wish I would have gone to the memorial service and hugged my grandma and thanked her for fighting hard for her family. I would have encouraged her that she was the most amazing “single mom” I have ever met.

We call this the picture of BLESSING. My grandma (age 98) was tenderly interacting with my youngest daughter (age 2).

But I didn’t do any of those things. And I regret it. I’ve never understood people who say that they have “no regrets” in this life. I was watching a documentary on a famous singer the other day. She had been popular in our culture for approximately twenty years and had been through several difficult times in her life, mostly because of her immature actions. The interviewer asked her if she would have done anything different in her 20s or 30s. Her answer was no. She stated that she had no regrets. Really?

I sure have regrets. There are certain events I wish I could turn back the clock and do differently. But life doesn’t work that way. I wish I would have honored my grandpa even though he didn’t deserve it. He deserved avoidance and ridicule, and so that is what my grudge-filled heart gave him.

I should have learned a lesson from my dad. Did you know that my dad never spoke derogatorily about my grandpa? He could have complained about how hard his dad made his past. But he never blamed his old man for having to work at an early age to help put food on the table after his departure. My grandpa made my dad’s life so much harder than it needed to be, but I never sensed any kind of unforgiveness.

One of my dad’s jobs was getting up at 4:00 a.m. to load turkeys into a truck before school each morning. He said it was “the worst” if it rained (wet feathers)!

I am convicted to the core of my being that my dad was one of the best “husbands-fathers” to walk the planet because he RELEASED the POISON of his own father’s past.

My dad was NOT CHAINED to his dad’s despicable shortcomings. My dad didn’t try to dig deep to get all the answers about why his own dad was rotten. I have seen too many people try to find an answer that doesn’t exist. You can torture yourself over why someone did what they did, but in the end you’re right where you started.

Here is the SECRET: Accept that you might never find the root cause for your relative’s behavior.

The ability to show care, concern and compassion to a family member who doesn’t deserve it lies exactly upon whether or not you are willing to forgive that person of whatever wretched sin they committed in the past (or even how they are acting in the present). Fixing a relationship takes two people, but forgiving only takes you. Don’t bottle up all of your hurt, instead pray to your heavenly Father so that He can heal your wounds.

Here is another SECRET: Expect nothing from them. Be kind. Bite your tongue. Give generously.

Don’t set such high expectations of them that you are devastated when they fail you.   

But you might ask, “What if they are already dead?”

You can still forgive him or her. You can still soften your heart to whatever the Lord wants to teach you.

Life is too short to hold onto bitterness and resentment. We might think that these emotions are necessary, but they are keeping you from becoming the person God wants you to become.  

Be determined that you will not act like them. But don’t think that you are better than them and that you would never stoop to their level of living. Satan will sniff out that pride and lay a trap for you to fall into some of the same problems that you hate about someone else.

There are some relationships that will never “get fixed” in this lifetime. What will you do when death knocks at your door and after walking around in heaven for a few days you see someone that surprises you? You will walk up to them and give them a hug. That’s what you’ll do. Because God has reconciled all things to Himself.

If my grandpa is in heaven, I will embrace him when I see him someday. Not because he deserves it. But because I will be completely filled with the perfect love of Christ. And he will also be made perfect in Christ’s love. And he will have an eternity to be a much better grandpa.

The most powerful thing you can do for your mind and heart when you are struggling with an estranged person is to picture that moment in heaven when you both lock eyes with each other. If they aren’t in heaven, then you won’t have to face them. But if they are, God will have made all things new.

New beginnings and second chances…that will be one of the best realities of heaven.

We might be surprised at who we see in heaven. But why should we be? Jesus seemed obsessed with inviting sinners into His kingdom and He made the path to salvation simple, sure and filled with amazing grace: 

"In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace" (Ephesians 1:7).