By Michael Strating, PhD
Samara is a Christian woman who works in healthcare and who was starting to plan ahead for her retirement. [1] She lived alone with her small dog until one day, while taking her dog for a walk at a public park near her home, her dog was suddenly and violently attacked and killed by a larger dog. She presented to therapy a couple of weeks later in a state of shock; she was scared, frequently tearful, easily startled, and experienced low appetite and sleep difficulties. She met diagnostic criteria for Acute Stress Disorder, but it was too early to determine whether her symptoms would persist into PTSD or if her symptoms would remit in a few weeks with some therapeutic support and coping strategies.
The first couple of sessions focussed on emotion regulation strategies and addressing faith-related questions. She was wracked with questions about why God would take this precious companion from her and why He would allow it to happen in such a shocking and violent manner. Like Job’s friends, she wondered if she was being punished for sin in her life. She already knew the Lord and had seen evidence of His goodness to her, so she just could not see any good that could possibly come from this violent and senseless death. She tried to let it go, but variations of “Why, God?” kept replaying over and over again in her mind. She simply could not come up with any satisfying answers to silence these questions… and neither could I.
Weeks turned into months, but her symptoms did not remit. She was sleeping poorly, she had recurrent nightmares and flashbacks of the attack, she avoided going near the park where it happened, she was easily startled by large dogs and other reminders of the attack, she was frequently tearful, and she struggled with brain fog and poor concentration. She felt sad, angry, shocked, and confused. She had been alone for many years and had largely accepted this as her lot in life, but she had never felt as lonely as she did right now. The silence at home was deafening. She did not have any particularly close friends and the people who knew her best offered well-intentioned, but unhelpful advice: It was just a dog. Maybe you shouldn’t have relied so much on this pet for comfort and companionship. Just get a new dog and you’ll feel better. If you sell your house and move in with your adult daughter you won’t feel so sad and lonely. The underlying message: stop feeling this way – it’s time to move on.
Rather than adding to the unhelpful advice or critiques, I simply listened to Samara’s story. As I listened, I discovered that this was only the latest in a long list of complex traumas. Abandonment was a recurrent theme in her life. Samara survived her mother’s attempts to abort her in the womb. She was raised in an orphanage where she was neglected and where two of her closest childhood friends died from preventable illnesses. She was abused and abandoned by her ex-husband, who held positions of power in the church and the military. She raised her two children as a single parent while living in poverty. She survived cancer. Her son died tragically. And then her dog was violently killed in her arms. Her heart cried out: God, why did you let this happen when I was just beginning to feel like myself again after my son’s death? And, even more poignantly: Why did you break my heart again?
We discussed how God sometimes grants peace by providing answers, whereas other times He provides child-like faith to trust Him even when we don’t have the answers. We considered ways that God does not rush us to “answers” or solutions, nor does He expect us to have a stoic and unemotional faith. Rather, God is compassionate and He permits us to sit with unanswered questions and unresolved feelings for a time. We can lament, confess our faith, and wait for Him patiently. She expressed feelings of loss, longing for comfort and relational connection, and a deep sense of unlovability. She felt let down by people and by God, reinforcing her difficulties trusting and seeking emotional closeness with others. We worked on exposure therapy, though this didn’t seem to penetrate to her deeper faith questions. Despite all this, she also recalled clear evidence of God’s provision throughout her life with a deep sense of gratitude. She was heartbroken yet she never stopped trusting God. I knew all of these faith statements were true and yet I wanted to be able to offer more. Aware of my own feelings of inadequacy and helplessness, I had to preach all of these things to myself even as I was striving to model for her how to embrace uncertainty and “not knowing.”
Using a similar list to the one I described in the post last week, we considered the different purposes God has in allowing Christians to suffer. We did not arrive at any definitive answers to her why questions, but she did discover a newfound curiosity about the possibility that God might be using this event for the good of other people beside herself, to reveal God’s character, or to cultivate communion with Christ in His sufferings. For example, we considered the Psalms of lament. We meditated on Jesus’ anger at sin and death despite knowing He would raise Lazarus from the dead just a few moments later. Though the violent death of pet dog might seem insignificant compared to other kinds of suffering, we affirmed that God cared about this small creature and what this beloved pet meant to Samara. We also considered ways that her dog’s death shares some similarities with the shocking, violent, unprovoked, and unjust death of Jesus on the cross – yet, with one major difference in that Jesus willingly faced abandonment and sacrificed Himself in order to save sinners, including her and I. We reflected on themes of patient endurance and the eschatological hope of future restoration.
There are several clients I have worked with who, like Samara, are working through chronic and severe suffering that seems to have no immediate answers or solutions. There is “Hagar” who faces profound isolation and abandonment yet demonstrates fierce survival, resourcefulness, and persistence. Hagar has witnessed the effects of intergenerational trauma following the sexual abuse of multiple family members, including abuse perpetrated by a family member that was dismissed by church leadership. She chronically endures harsh criticism, judgmentalism, and emotional neglect in multiple relationships in her life. She is surrounded by broken people and broken relationships; when she looks around her there is much evidence of sin and brokenness and little of redemption and restoration. Hagar holds on to her faith, but she also questions why God doesn’t do more to protect the vulnerable. She strives to earn God’s approval of her own efforts to care for and protect others, but she has given up on hoping that God would protect her.
There is also “Ona” who endures and suffers in her care for others. She was parentified from a young age. As a child, her parents forced her to be their designated driver for drinking parties. As a young adult, her father did not take responsibility for managing his diabetes, relying on Ona to care for him, and so he died from diabetes-related health complications shortly after she moved away for university. Her mother was emotionally labile and regularly made suicidal threats as a form of emotional manipulation. Ona lives with fibromyalgia and chronic health issues; she is frequently in and out of the hospital for one health issue or another. She never dared to imagine that she could some day have a future with a husband and children. To her surprise, she did get married, but then she and her husband struggled with infertility. Eventually, her first child was born, but her son had significant medical, dietary, and behavioural issues. Then, they were surprised with a natural pregnancy soon after, but their second child miscarried due to a gruesome abnormality. In many ways her life seemed like a living demonstration of Murphy’s Law – that “anything that can go wrong will go wrong.” One time her husband even got stuck in the elevator when coming to visit her in the hospital. It might have been comical had it not been so unrelenting. Ona desires to trust God, but she desperately wonders if God will ever give her a break from her daily struggles.
I often feel inadequate and helpless when working with clients like these. I am acutely aware that I cannot offer any meaningful solutions to fix their problems or circumstances. I know that I cannot help them on my own when they have few (if any) other people in their life to turn to for support. (Interestingly, all three of these women work in helping professions providing support to others.) Samara’s why questions have not gone away and her work in therapy is still not finished. Neither of us know where this journey will go and if/how this pain will be resolved in her life. Nevertheless, when asked about her perceptions of therapy, she highlighted how comforting and powerful it was simply to acknowledge her pain and to be given permission to lament to God. And so I will continue pointing my clients to God’s sovereignty and (especially) to His compassion and goodness in the midst of suffering. We may not get all the answers we desire, so instead I pray that God’s strength will be revealed despite my weaknesses and limitations, that He will send others into my clients’ lives to embody and demonstrate Christ’s love in action, and that my clients’ trust in God will deepen so that they can endure patiently with and for Him, entrusting themselves to His wisdom and care. This is the best that I can offer.
[1] Samara is a composite, based primarily on one person. Several identifying details have been changed to protect privacy while other details have been added or adapted from other people whose struggles are consistent with hers. The name Samara means protected or watched over by God.
Dr. Strating completed his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at the University of Windsor as well as his residency with the London Clinical Psychology Residency Consortium. His areas of focus include working with relationship concerns, difficulties managing or engaging with emotion, anxiety, panic, anger, grief, depression, self-criticism, perfectionism, trauma, and OCD. He is also experienced in research as well as teaching and supervising therapist trainees.
He is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Redeemer University and a practicing Clinical Psychologist at Abide Psychology.
