counseling

We were created for loving, trusting relationships, with God and with others. But when someone has gone through traumatic and painful experiences of abandonment, neglect, and abuse of various kinds, that trauma often rewrites their story. It distorts their understanding of God, of themselves, and of others. It numbs their ability to love and to receive love. It shatters their trust in others, even their trust in God.

In our years in Uganda, we have encountered so many broken people who carry so much pain and bitterness in their hearts that holds them in bondage and keeps them from seeing and experiencing the love of God. The effects of trauma gives them a broken set of lenses through which to view and interpret the events of life and the actions and intentions of others, leading them to react to life in unhealthy ways that often bring harm to themselves and to those around them. Those broken lenses are also what they use to interpret the Scriptures and to understand the character and ways of God. They need the Lord to give them a new set of lenses.

And we have often witnessed the eye-opening freedom that God brings to their hearts and lives through Biblically sound, Spirit-led counseling. Just as their hearts have been wounded and their identities have been twisted through the narratives created by the actions of others against them, people need to walk with others in a safe environment where trust can be rebuilt. This enables them to process the pain in a healthy way, to engage it with godly wisdom and love, and to reshape their identity and restore a sense of hope as they begin to see themselves through the lenses of God’s love for them. As people experience love in a safe relationship with a counselor who walks with them like a wise and godly friend, they are able to begin to reclaim their story, to find healing from the pain, to release bitterness and to forgive those who have hurt them the most, and to live with a real sense of hope.

future vision

The number of people we meet who desperately need this counseling is often overwhelming. We want to create a space where this can happen on various levels. Our vision for the next few years is threefold. First, to have a center where people can come for trauma counseling intensives, to get to the root where healing can happen. Second, to facilitate trauma counseling training seminars for pastors and ministry leaders. And third, to identify at least four people who can be equipped and qualified to be full-time trauma counselors where people can go to start on the road to freedom and wholeness in the love of Christ.