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Face Fear and Childhood Triggers
Episode #807
5/22/2022
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
This is a continuation of a series of podcasts started in Episode #802
It’s not fun but it’s incredible kindness that God allows us to deal over and over with the triggers of our story.
Martha:
I have a trigger that I’m going to share with y’all. It illustrates a trigger and the purpose and how it works.
There was a little situation inside my family and it was like a truck ran over me. My son and his precious wife were here and we sat down and my son said, “Mom, why were you so weak in the face of this issue? You needed to say no and you didn’t say no to the situation.” I went, “Then I need to know what’s wrong with me but it’s a character flaw.” I’ve talked about this a little bit, haven’t I?
This situation exposed me. We were sitting in this little group here and the Holy Spirit came and all I could say is, “This is a character flaw. If I can’t say no when no is called for and when I need to say no and I can’t do it then something is wrong with me and it’s a character flaw.” My daughter-in-law said, “Oh, Mimi, you have a wonderful character.” I said, “No, I really do have a flaw here. Thank you darling but I know something is wrong with me and it’s character.”
I said, “Lord, show me what it is.” And it was a trigger to my childhood and how I got there was just prayer. It was very complicated. I just said, “Oh, I know what the flaw is.” It’s a flaw that Jesus will not tolerate-fear. I was afraid. I began to pray and ask the Lord to show me the fear. Oh my gosh my whole childhood was full of fear; if it wasn’t one thing it was another. I don’t want to expose my parents; they were wonderful and I adorn them and I have forgiven; huge time I spend dealing with that.
This was the sin and the character flaw because Jesus doesn’t tolerate fear of man. I had to go back with the Lord and remember and see it from the light of being an adult and realizing. Jacquelyn helped me so much. The Lord was telling her things about it.
I remember I was such a weird child. I had a tree in the backyard that I would climb literally two floors, equal to two floors on a building; if not more. I was up so high that I could see the town way, way away. And then I would scoot on down from the tree. My mother stood in her kitchen window and watched me go up and come down and my sister thought, “She must be having too much fun. I want to get in on it.” So, she gets on the bottom limb and she can’t get back down. She said, “Go get me a ladder, Martha.” So, I did everything she said for me to do. I got the ladder and I was getting it up to the tree. My mother said, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH THAT BIG LADDER?!” I said, “Mary has got to get down.” She said, “Mary can get herself down.” I went, “Oh, I can’t use my ladder to save my sister?” And I didn’t see what she was afraid of because I was always skiving up and down that big tree. But she did finally jump off and solved the problem.
I went back to so many aspects of making me afraid. I used to go to the library to learn how to be a parent and one of the things I read is “Please know that the smallest practical thing you do for your child makes them secure. If you put a Kleenex box next to them then that child knows he will have everything he need.”
We as human beings have a tendency to put fear on our children to control them. My father had a temper I’ll say and it seemed to always be directed at me. That’s where I developed an inner core of fear. Many other situations in my childhood and in my young adult life, too, were things that produced fear.
I am telling you this for your sake because I feel like healing is an issue in our midst and it’s not just healing of a broken heart or a broken foot but what you experienced as a child becomes a form of sin.
I am seeing my childhood through different eyes than I’ve ever looked at it. And in that childhood was an awful lot of fear. I had basically, humanely climbing that tree I had no fear of the tree but boy did I have fear of my daddy. And that had to be resolved and I thought it had been resolved because he was precious in so many ways.
When we first moved to TN we lived in a rented house and it you had to draw water from a well outside and bring water in the house. We lived there a few months until we found something else. I wanted to carry that bucket. I would beg him and he would say, “It’s too heavy for you.” I would say, “I want to carry the bucket.” Do you know what he did? He took hold of it and he took all the weight of the bucket and let me hold on to the bucket and think that I was helping.
There are all kinds of things in childhood that we are what we were as child. We are what was done to us and failed to be done to us. Where there is lack in my childhood there was fear and uncertainty.
I have had a trigger! I feel like it’s really been something to resolve an issue. I’m not finished because I have to recover from fear. As Jacquelyn said to me, “This is your wound. This is what hurt you as a child.” God will take care of it. He gave me a promise that said “I will heal your wounds.” I went, “What does that mean?” Well, now I know. I asked the question, “What does that mean, You will heal my wounds. I don’t have any injuries.” Though I’ve long since forgotten the question to Him He brought it back up so that I could forgive and let go and accept.
I feel my sicknesses have been resolved with healing. My medical reports are glowing. There’s absolutely nothing. Everything is healthy. My liver is working! I know you’re not interested in that.
I’m not ruled and owned by fear. I’m getting healed and He’s doing it just by showing me what it felt like to the child. That why Ecclesiastes says, “God requires the past.” What does that mean? It means that we have to deal with it and we have to be willing to be a little introspective if you can put that word on it.
I said, “Ok, You heal my inner wound and then You heal my body. And so much of it is connected.
John:
So He basically He writes us a story line into our life; sovereignly that’s written into our life. And then we are given the opportunity to go back and continually work out that storyline. We don’t get to escape it. We get to work it again.
Martha:
Thank you.
John:
Triggering, those triggers that have happened to you, the triggers that have happened to me are literally giving opportunity to focus and face my story that God has written on my life and really make peace with it. I can go into a trigger and be freaked out and triggered…. Triggers aren’t fun because, I’ll speak for me, I’ve avoided things in my life, facing things, so all of a sudden the trigger is me having to face it. It pisses me off. It really makes me angry that I have to face something that I wanted to NOT face.
Martha:
And not remember.
John:
And not remember and not deal with. God’s like, “No, this is the story I’ve written on your life. This is it. I’ve written this story and you will have to face it and I will give you ever ability to face it and to deal with it and to sovereignly accept it and embrace it. But when it comes back around, the trigger comes back around it brings me right back face to face with it and I have to say, “Ok.” (phew) There are all the emotions that were there from the old trigger, from the old wound, the old trauma and now I have to focus on it. I can deal with it. I think it’s incredible kindness that we deal with it. It’s not fun but it’s incredible kindness that He allows us to deal over and over and over with our story.
Martha:
And it takes over and over to resolve it.
John:
It does. It not like a one rodeo and you’re done. It’s over and over.
Face Fear and Childhood Triggers – Episode #807 – Shulamite Podcast
The triggers that have happened to us are literally giving us opportunity to focus and face our story that God has written on our lives to make peace with it.
