At this time of spiritual midlife, we experience a series of rude inner awakenings where we begin to see things about the inner state of our souls that we had not had the ability to see before. We suddenly realise that our relationship with God - even if it has been growing in depth and emotional intimacy up to this point - is still full of fear and insecurity. And we realise that in spite of our great desire to live out the gospel values, we are actually deeply incapable of knowing HOW to do so from a place of true freedom and authenticity.
This paragraph from the last issue of Begin Again describes a point of reckoning that interior pilgrims will reach if they continuously seek to draw closer to the heart of God. It is a point in the journey in which we will gradually realise that everything that we have learned and grown stronger in with regards to our religious understanding and identity has been tainted and distorted by wounds buried deep in our psyches and in our hearts.
People who reach spiritual midlife are often those who have worked hard to develop a deep personal relationship with God. Faith has been important to them for a long time beyond just ritual and practice. These are often people who have long "dropped their nets" into Intentional Discipleship in the terms of Sherry Weddell, author of "Forming Intentional Disciples: The Path to Knowing and Following Jesus".
Spiritual Midlife Crisis a Turning Point for Intentional Disciples of Christ
It is precisely because those who have become intentional disciples of Jesus are committed to growing in intimacy with God in their personal relationship and to discern how they are called to live their lives for Christ that we (as such disciples) will reach a point in the journey where we are forced to realise that we are not yet interiorly free enough to follow Christ as we desire to. Crises we face as we attempt to serve zealously in God's kingdom will humble us until at some point we are lead to a kind of identity crisis.
We may suddenly realise for the first time that we do not really know who we are even though we "know" we are God's beloved. We begin to recognise how broken we are and how that brokenness seeps through our interactions with other people, causing havoc and harm even where we only intended to love and help others towards Christ.
The crux of spiritual midlife and whether we go through it or stop at its gates (which is also very common) is whether we are able to build enough internal safety within ourselves and in our relationship with God to confront the trauma that has fragmented our hearts - trauma that is often complex and relational stemming from our families of origin and other life experiences. Trauma alienates us from our inner most selves and cripples our capacity to receive and return love freely and authentically. Trauma fragments our trust in our own goodness and our ability to have a truly embodied belief and experience of being unconditionally loved by God.
Trauma and Love
In the first half of our spiritual journey, it is often the case that we can make a lot of progress in our relationship with God without attending to the lack of integration in our emotional development. We can still follow Christ and come to know and love him more in spite of our brokennes. This is similar to us falling in love with someone - there is a great deal that we can learn about the person we love, there is a great deal we can do to show our love for him/her etc without addressing our psychic and emotional wounds.
When we are in the earlier stages of any relationship, there can be a lot of growth even without us having to confront the dark corners of our own hearts - that is until we make the commitment to love "in good times and bad, in sickness and health, till death do us part". It is often after a couple gets married and actually tries to live out their vows that reality hits them between the eyes. Suddenly, all the love they had felt for each other in their courtship days is not enough for them to deepen in real intimacy and to learn to love each other truly.
Spirituality author Thomas Green SJ describes maturing stages of prayer in his book "Experiencing God: The Three Stages of Prayer" as reflecting our relationship with God from Knowing God, to Loving God, to Loving God truly. I propose that spiritual midlife is when we are confronted with the truth that while we love God, we are not yet able to love him truly, and that the reason for this is in large part because the foundations of our human affectivity - our lived capacity to give and receive love - has been compromised by trauma and requires healing.
Not Just Sin, But Trauma
Just four days ago (24 October 2024), Pope Francis' newest Papal Encyclical was shared with the world. Titled Dilexit Nos ("He Loved Us"), it is an exhortation and reminder to us about the centrality and aboslute importance of the HEART, of our affectivity, in our ability to love God, love ourselves, and our neighbour. Pope Francis reiterates in several places that it is the heart, not the intellect or will, that is the seat of our personhood and of intimacy with Christ. When our heart is wounded, our capacity for knowing and loving both ourselves and God is compromised.
While Pope Francis names various reasons for the fragmentation of the human heart (e.g. individualism and narcissism in para. 17), a trauma-informed lens towards spirituality helps us to understand that very often, our individualism, narcissism, or excessive materialism and even addictions are part of defensive coping mechanisms we have learned to survive the trauma we had experienced in our lives. So if we wish to address the root causes of the behaviours we exhibit that harm our relationship with God and others, we need to turn our attention to the fragmentation within ourselves due to trauma.
Healing of Trauma is a Work of the Heart
The Wall invites us to integrate our spiritual selves with the rest of us. And that involves facing our own and others' demons. We must face that which we fear the most, and that is why it is so unsavory, and why so many people only enter the Wall under duress. At the Wall we are usually asked to embrace our illnesses and addictions and to relinquish that which we've clung to or which we worship. We encounter oceans of unresolved grief covered by anger, bitterness, martyrdom, hurt, or fear.
The Wall is a place where we confront the desire to deny or disguise the inner self and begin to mentor the true self -the self God intended for us-and recognize the meaning of our shadow.... The Wall is the work of the heart but it is not for the weak of heart. That is why we have so many clever ways to avoid it.
In the book "The Critical Journey: Stages in the Life of Faith", The Wall is part of Stage Four and perhaps the deepest, hardest, most challenging dimension of what I call spiritual midlife.
The authors write, "The Wall is the place in which we integrate and embrace our spiritual selves as well as our physical and psychological selves. God calls to us through our minds, our bodies, and our spirits." Spiritual midlife is the point in our journey where in order to continue moving deeper into intimacy with God, we need to integrate our spiritual selves with all the other aspects of our humanity. We cannot do this without addressing trauma's imprint in our bodies and how that distorts how we relate to God, to our Self and the world.
Can Trauma Be Addressed Before Spiritual Midlife?
Of course it is not only during spiritual midlife that people can address trauma in their lives. There are also those whose journey in human healing and emotional integration takes off before their spiritual lives do. Some people may grow in emotional wholeness a long while before they start their spiritual journeys. Others, like myself, begin the spiritual journey in earnest first and only stumble upon the importance of emotional and psychological healing within the context of trying to make our spiritual journey.
Either way, it seems that at a certain point in our interior journey, there needs to be integration of both these dimensions before we can continue moving forward. Whichever dimension was "lagging behind" in the first half of our journey will need to "catch up" because an embodied and authentic spiritual maturity can only be possible within an integrated human personhood.
Resource to Learn More About Trauma
If you are new to the concept of how trauma can so affect our ability to be ourselves, and to be able to love well, I highly recommend you watch the documentary "The Wisdom of Trauma". This moving film was my introduction into the world of trauma recovery and I find it a lot more accessible and impactful as an introduction than most books about trauma.
I hope this sharing gave you new insight to why healing of trauma is an absolutely essential dimension to our interior journey!
Journeying with you,
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