In January I wrote a piece for Firebrand about God’s role in healing from trauma, acknowledging our debt to, but also challenging the dominant (secular) model popularized in The Body Keeps the Score by Besel van der Kolk. I read something recently that would make an interesting addendum to that reflection.
Somewhat on a whim I listened to What it is Like to go to War thanks to my local library. I had never heard of this book, but it turned out to be a moving account of one Marine’s experience in Vietnam, and what it was like living with the trauma of combat in the decades since. The author describes an experience years after his time in combat, when he was attempting to work through some of the trauma with the help of a Catholic priest:
Two nights later a dark presence entered my bedroom, waking me from a sound sleep, a presence so malignant and evil it seemed to fill the room with dark oppressive liquid, squeezing the very hair from my lungs. I felt the prickles running up and down my spine. […]Whatever it was, it was angry…I knew this was way beyond me, so I just started praying for help.” (199)
As I read the book, this sudden turn in the narrative was startling. The author didn’t seem to be an overly spiritual person. In fact, up until very late in the book most accounts of religious leaders were negative. He didn’t strike me as someone who believed in the demonic. And yet he narrates an experience of palpable evil that is chilling.
From his priest friend he received further instruction, and holy water was strewn and prayers uttered throughout the house. He goes on to say:
The presence never came back. On rare occasions I feel its whisper on the edge of my consciousness, but it has never returned as it had in those days after the Mass for the Dead. it wasn’t defeated. It’s never defeated. It just stopped bothering me. It left for other fields to plow. I know that, if I allow it, it will come back, but it will come back unseen and unfelt. it’s the problem with evil.” (201, emphasis original)
This gels with what I mentioned in my Firebrand piece about the experience of Louis Zamperini. He experience a dramatic healing, and yet retained a sense that constant vigilance would be needed to keep his newfound wholeness.
Moreover, this names another gap in the secular model of trauma: spiritual warfare. I’m not the type to look under every rock for a malevolent force, but I’m also not going to dismiss the author’s account of his experience with supernatural evil. What is needed are religious folks who can incorporate secular views of trauma and healing into their faith, and secular healers who are able to learn from religious people both about unknown spiritual traumas and often ignored spiritual resources for healing.