Today, January 6th is Epiphany. It marks the end of the Christian season of Christmas and celebrates the arrival to Bethlehem of the wise men, as they followed a star that marked the birth of a king. A star that would lead them to a manger and Jesus. And so, today is the day we celebrate that.
But epiphanies are so much more than a one-day celebration. Epiphanies by definition are moments of sudden revelation or insights. We cannot manufacture them by ourselves. Someone will say something or do something, and we have a light bulb moment. Epiphanies typically help us move forward in our thinking. The thing with Epiphanies, once we have one, we can’t go back to not knowing…not understanding in a new way. We have to change our ways of thinking about what the epiphany revealed to us from that moment forward.
The story in the bible underscores that very definition. We celebrate Epiphany because that is when the wise men came and Christ was revealed to them. From that moment on they were changed. They changed to the point that they went home another way. Think about that for a moment. Herod asked them when they found the baby to come back to him and report where they found him. They disobeyed the ruler of that region. The repercussions of that act of civil disobedience was huge. Herod was known to kill his own family members because he was so jealous of holding onto his power and yet these wisemen disobeyed his request. And really, we should probably see the request more as an order. But they chose to go home a different way because Christ had been revealed to them and their lives where disrupted.
Epiphany celebrates disruption because at the heart of an epiphany is disruption. Once that light bulb goes off in our brain, we can no longer ignore what we now know. I was in my counselor’s office yesterday and something she said to me sparked an epiphany. It was one of those moments where you just realize that what you believe is completely wrong. For me it was minimizing my own trauma because I know people who have been through so much more. I firmly believed that my experiences were insignificant in comparison. My counselor simply said: “Beth, the body doesn’t know the difference. For the body, trauma is trauma.” Trust me when I tell you I saw Gru saying “lightbulb” in that moment. I had been trapped in the toxic ideology of comparison.
No matter what you have experienced in life that has inflicted trauma on you…it could be you were bullied in school, maybe there was an embarrassing incident you are struggling to get over, or maybe it was something really huge. My husband struggles with fireworks because of time he was in war zones even if it was briefly for a single job. Or maybe you are a woman who was raped (a very significant trauma) You might be a survivor of childhood abuse or abuse of any kind. Then there is medical trauma. Anyone who has undergone a significant medical event has residual trauma they should talk through. And of course, this list is not inclusive. Trauma, unfortunately, comes in many, many forms. The thing is whatever the source of your trauma, you need to understand it is all significant to your body. Your body holds that until you finally deal with it. And dealing with it and not minimizing your particular form of trauma in your life is important.
As we begin this new year, my prayer for all of you is that you will be kind not only to the world around you but to yourself. Give yourself permission to take a step back and deal with the negative life events in your life. Give yourself permission to put them in perspective with the help of a counselor so they stop impacting your present. Give yourself permission to live your best life free from the burdens life has placed on you.
Now, at the beginning of this new year, is the time to decide how we want to live. Do you want to continue to be weighed down by your past? Or, do you want to do the hard work to let the hurts of all your yesterdays go? I hope you make the choice to do the hard work. I can tell you it is worth it.
Peace,
Beth
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