On painful healing - and a disability seminar

Long overdue catch up from Tanya Marlow, writer

Dear friends

Thanks so much for signing up to my newsletter, which I’m afraid has been woefully neglected for the past few months. I’m hoping this will be a place that I update more regularly with personal news and my thoughts on God and the mind, body and soul.

Today, check out the disability and theology seminar I’m running online especially for CHURCH LEADERS (details below). It’s the first time I’ve offered this seminar online for church leaders at large rather than in theological training colleges.

I’m doing it by request because when disabled people hear my seminar the one thing they say is, “I wish my church could hear this stuff.” So if you are a church leader or you know one, please send this Substack to them and highlight the seminar!

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The Vulnerable God: Disability and the church

A Seminar for Church Leaders with Tanya Marlow

Tuesday 24th September 2024

13:00–15:00 GMT online (08:00-10:00 ET)

Cost £20 (plus £2.38 Eventbrite fee)

Disabled people often feel unwelcome in church. This seminar goes beyond ramps and hearing loops: we will explore the subconscious messages we write over disabled bodies and, from there, form a more robust theology of disability.

We will be grounding it in the practice of ministry: discussing how this changes our preaching, prayer ministry and pastoral care.

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This is a story about a tooth. But this is also a parable about trauma.

Recently, I had a wisdom tooth removed. If there were a competition for the slowest-growing tooth in the world, I reckon my left third molar would win it hands down, and so I have been teething, on and off, for more than twenty years. Finally, I got to the stage where I just wanted it gone, and the NHS wrenched it out of my mouth.

Naively, I had only anticipated the potential pain during the removal of the tooth and hadn’t accounted for the painful process of healing afterwards. I sent out a quick ‘top tips for post wisdom tooth removal’ request on social media and got all kinds of helpful advice back that I hadn’t any idea about before. Don’t drink with a straw or you’ll get ‘dry socket’ which is by all accounts extremely painful. If you have a bitter taste in your mouth, that may be the first sign of infection. Wash regularly with salt water rinse, but don’t spit it afterwards, let it dribble out of your mouth.

It was a whole new world I hadn’t prepared for, and to my surprise I found that the simple act of my body healing took up all my energy and activity. Things I took for granted suddenly became delicate, stressful chores: I couldn’t eat anything unless it was puréed and at room temperature, drinking was done in small sips, and tooth-brushing was suddenly fraught with danger. Nothing about my life could be on automatic pilot, everything had to be thought through afresh so as not to bring harm. And it was exhausting, ridiculously exhausting, as my body dealt with the shock of the removal and the hard work of healing.

One friend of mine, Amy, had such a bad experience of having her four wisdom tooth removed, with complications afterwards, that she said, “I regretted it for a long time. The healing was worse than the original pain.”

That phrase has stuck with me, because it’s something that is often true about escaping traumatic situations. I’ve heard the stories of people who’ve escaped violent partners, people who’ve left abusive work situations, adults processing their childhood abuse, Christians who’ve left the church that spiritually abused them, have all testified to the toll it takes on you not just in the situation, but afterwards. The littlest things can trigger huge trauma responses. Sometimes the healing feels worse than the original pain.

I say this because so often it feels counter-intuitive. “Why am I being triggered over seemingly nothing? I got through the big thing, why can’t I now deal with the small things?” But like my wisdom tooth leaving me unable to eat solid food for a while, the soul has been through a huge shock, and healing is slow, careful work that means that almost everything we used to be able to do automatically, we now have to work at. For while, it may almost seem worse than before, and it’s important to remember that this is part of the healing. It’s still a good thing to have escaped from the traumatic situation.

We talk about the Israelites’ time in the wilderness as a testing time, but it can also be read through the lens of healing. They had escaped their traumatic state of slavery, as well as ten plagues, but before they get to the Promised Land, they suffer in the desert. As they have selective nostalgia about the old days of melon and cucumbers (Numbers 11:5), they begin to regret even leaving. God has to keep reminding them that they were mistreated by the Egyptians, and now they were free. When enough time had passed, they were finally ready to leave behind their past of slavery and embrace their new identity in the Promised Land.

The movies don’t show it, but there’s a stage between the escape of the terrible thing and the living happily ever after, and it can be a lengthy one. Healing is the cocoon where we fall apart so that something new can form.

So this is for anyone who is going through the slow, painful work of healing today, whether that’s physical or emotional. Healing is tiring, but it brings freedom and ultimate wholeness. It’s also best done with company. I was so grateful for the wisdom (no pun intended) of my friends who’d had their teeth removed, and it protected me significantly. I wish you strength for the journey and God’s comfort as you go.

Questions for you:

When have you experienced healing as a painful process?

What are you healing from now? What is hard about it? What is good about it?

Who has helped you in leaving trauma behind? What did they say that helped?

Thanks for listening.

Tanya

P.S. If you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, please do spread the word and share this with others. And if you haven’t already subscribed to the newsletter, please do so!

P.P.S. Don’t forget to encourage your church leaders to come to my disability theology seminar on Tuesday 24th!