Surrendering (Not Erasing) Your Trauma

how Jesus healed me from decades of chronic gaslighting, invalidation, & feeling unseen, unheard, and misunderstood.

The Fear Beneath Surrender

There came a point in my healing where I realized I had unknowingly built my identity around surviving. My pain had become proof that what happened to me mattered, and I feared that if I truly surrendered my trauma to Jesus, it would somehow erase the significance of what I endured. This was especially true because nearly every grief and wound inflicted upon me by the enemy was denied, minimized, mocked, spiritualized away, or even punished by the people around me for decades, both as a child and as an adult.

My soul clung tightly to the truth of what happened because so many people in my life had tried to convince me that it had not happened at all. They wanted me to forget. They wanted me to move on. They wanted me to stop talking about it because my pain disrupted their comfort, their image, or their version of reality.

When I first started hearing phrases like “just surrender it to God,” “let go and let God,” or “put it at the foot of the cross,” it did not feel comforting to me. It felt like agreement with the very voices that had spent years silencing me. It felt like saying, They were right. It did not happen. You are overreacting. It was all in your head.

The deepest wound was not only what happened to me, but what happened afterward when my grief was repeatedly dismissed or distorted.

When Trauma Becomes Proof of Reality

What made surrender so difficult was not merely the trauma itself, but the years of being taught not to trust my own reality. When someone experiences chronic gaslighting, the nervous system begins learning that remembering feels dangerous and letting go feels even more dangerous.

My mind and body held tightly to the pain because it felt like the only remaining evidence that the suffering had been real. In many ways, my trauma became intertwined with my ability to trust myself. The thought of surrendering it felt less like healing and more like disappearing.

God, in His compassion, never approached me the way wounded humans did. He did not shame me for struggling to let go. He did not rush me into healing before my heart felt safe enough to trust Him.

Psalm 56:8 says, “You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in Your bottle.”

The Lord never needed me to convince Him my pain was real because He had seen every moment of it all along.

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The God Who Sees

A few months ago, I started seeing the phrase “The God Who Sees” everywhere. I will admit, though, I did not fully understand it. Abuse had distorted and confused something that should have felt so simple.

Being abused and then told day after day for decades that the abuse did not happen has a way of forcing a child into invisibility. Chronic gaslighting teaches a person not only to question their experiences, but to question their very existence. My thoughts, feelings, pain, and reality were consistently denied, minimized, rewritten, or dismissed by nearly everyone around me for most of my life. Feeling unseen became normal to me. Feeling unheard became expected. Feeling misunderstood became inevitable.

So the idea of a God who truly saw me felt foreign.

How could that possibly be true when my entire life experience seemed to testify otherwise?

One day, I finally asked God what it meant. I simply prayed, “Lord, show me what it means that You are ‘the God who sees.’” Have you ever done that before? Have you ever been confused by Scripture or struggled to understand some aspect of God’s character, only to stop striving and ask your Heavenly Father directly for wisdom? Scripture says in James 1:5, “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault.” Our Father delights in revealing Himself to His children.

When He finally revealed what that phrase meant, something inside me began changing.

I slowly started understanding that surrendering my trauma to Christ was not agreeing with the people who denied it. Surrender was finally placing my pain into the hands of the One who had fully acknowledged it all along.

Humans had rewritten my reality, but God never did.

Scripture repeatedly shows God drawing near to the oppressed, the grieving, the rejected, and the silenced. Hagar, abandoned in the wilderness, called Him “the God who sees me” in Genesis 16:13. David cried openly about betrayal, fear, grief, and anguish throughout the Psalms without being condemned for “dwelling on the past.”

Jesus Himself still carried scars after the resurrection. In John 20:27, He invited Thomas to touch the wounds in His hands and side. The scars remained, not as ongoing sources of death, but as evidence of what had been overcome.

“Surrendering my trauma to Christ was not agreeing with the people who denied it; it was finally placing it into the hands of the One who fully acknowledged it.”

God’s heart toward wounded people is not impatience with their pain; it is compassion for the burdens they were never meant to carry alone.

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The Brain, the Body, and Survival

Once God began healing those deep invalidation wounds, He showed me that healing and surrendering does not require forgetting. In both neuroscience and Scripture, healing comes not through denial, but through integration, surrender, and transformation.

Trauma research shows that overwhelming experiences can keep the nervous system trapped in a prolonged state of survival, where the brain continually scans for danger even after the threat has passed (van der Kolk, 2014). The amygdala becomes hyperactive, stress hormones remain elevated, and the body begins carrying memories that words alone cannot resolve.

When trauma is repeatedly denied or minimized by others, the nervous system often becomes even more dysregulated because the brain cannot properly process what it is continually being told is not real. The body remembers while the mind is pressured to suppress. This is why trauma can feel ever-present instead of past.

Studies on neuroplasticity show the brain is capable of rewiring when safety, truth, emotional processing, and supportive connection are introduced consistently over time (Siegel, 2020). Healing does not erase the memory; it changes our relationship to it.

God created the brain with the capacity for renewal, not through pretending wounds never existed, but through no longer remaining imprisoned by them.

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Renewal Instead of Bondage

Scripture revealed this truth long before neuroscience could explain it. God never asks us to pretend evil did not happen, as much as those walking in darkness and willful rebellion would love to brush it all under the rug. Instead, the Bible is filled with honest lament, grief, betrayal, and suffering brought openly before Him.

Psalm 34:18 says, “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”

God does not shame wounded people for hurting; He draws near to them. Unlike the people who had often made me feel punished for my pain, God’s presence became the safest place for my honesty.

Jesus Himself carried scars after the resurrection. His wounds were no longer killing Him, but they still testified to what He had overcome. In the same way, surrendering trauma to the cross does not mean pretending we were never wounded. It means allowing Christ to carry what was too heavy for us to bear alone.

“Come to Me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest… For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” Matthew 11:28–30

Surrender is not passive resignation, erasing the evil inflicted upon you, forgetting the pain, or forced silence. Surrender is trusting that God can hold the weight of our pain without denying the truth of it.

When Brokenness Becomes Identity

After spending years fighting simply to have my reality acknowledged, loosening my grip on the pain initially felt terrifying. Holding tightly to my trauma felt like preserving proof, justice, and meaning. Eventually, however, I began realizing that it was also preserving my bondage to it.

Neuroscience shows that repetitive rumination and remaining emotionally trapped in trauma can reinforce neural pathways connected to fear and distress, strengthening the brain’s expectation of danger (Perry & Winfrey, 2021). Gratitude, meaning-making, emotional processing, and secure attachment can help create new neural pathways associated with regulation and hope.

“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Romans 12:2

Healing is not becoming someone who was never hurt. Healing is becoming someone no longer ruled by the hurt. Slowly, surrender stopped feeling like betrayal of myself and started becoming trust in the God who had NEVER, not ONCE, gaslit me into thinking what I experienced wasn’t that bad or worse, never happened at all.

The Enemy Wanted Me Trapped

I also began recognizing something deeper happening beneath all of this…how the enemy did not merely want me wounded, he wanted my identity permanently rooted in the wounds themselves.

If the enemy could keep my entire life trapped to orbit around survival, grief, fear, hypervigilance, and pain then nothing good could come out of it. Trauma may have been what happened to me, but the enemy wanted it to become who I believed I was.

If I believed my trauma from the enemy was the story of who I was created to be instead of believing I was a story of redemption from a loving God, then I would never be truly free.

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.” John 10:10

Satan does not gain victory simply through suffering itself; he seeks victory when suffering keeps us trapped, hopeless, bitter, fearful, silenced, ashamed, or spiritually paralyzed.

Once the Lord showed me that, everything began changing. I grew tired of living oppressed and giving the enemy power from what life he had already stolen and killed and destroyed from me. I grew tired of survival mode feeling more familiar than peace. I was no longer willing to give the enemy another foothold in my life by allowing him to use my suffering to keep me bound from the very purpose and healing God intended for me.

Ephesians 4:27 warns us to “give no opportunity to the devil.”

God had not preserved my life all these years simply for me to remain trapped in the ashes. The same is true for you, too.

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11.

Once I realized the enemy wanted my suffering to imprison me while God wanted to redeem it, surrender stopped feeling like defeat and started feeling like freedom.

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Redeemed Pain

What changed me most was realizing that surrendering my trauma to God did not rob it of purpose; it finally gave it purpose.

“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” Genesis 50:20

God does not call evil good, but He is so sovereign that He can bring redemption from what was meant to destroy us. Redeeming evil is the only thing the enemy cannot even touch or try to twist or counterfeit because it is SO good.

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.” Romans 8:28

Not that this verse does not say all things are good. Abuse, betrayal, death, grief, and trauma are not good. God is capable, however, of weaving even those things into a story of healing, wisdom, compassion, and restoration.

The very pain that once convinced me I was unseen became the place where I encountered the God who saw me most clearly.

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Freedom Without Validation

For so long, I thought letting go meant all the suffering and decades of others denying that I even suffered at all, would have been for nothing. However, I have learned that clinging to trauma keeps us chained to the moment of injury, while surrender allows resurrection to begin. It literally has allowed God to use my suffering for good instead of keeping my trapped in the evil done to me.

Jesus did not come merely to help us survive our pain; He came to redeem it.

“A crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning.” -Isaiah 61:3

The scars may remain, but they no longer define who we are. Instead, they become evidence that darkness did not have the final word.

By surrendering my trauma to God, by finally placing it fully into His hands, He showed me something that changed my life… I never needed to convince anyone what happened to me.

I never needed perfect proof, endless overexplanations, or for every person around me to validate my pain in order for it to be real. God Himself bears witness to the testimony He authored in my life.

My confidence is no longer rooted in whether people believe me, understand me, or approve of me. It is rooted in the God who saw every hidden wound, every silenced cry, every injustice, and every tear.

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.” -2 Corinthians 1:3–4

What emerged from this revelation was freedom.

Freedom to boldly proclaim what God has done in my life without fear of mockery, disbelief, scoffing, or rejection. People may scoff. They may roll their eyes. They may misunderstand me, dismiss me, or refuse to see. Scripture prepares us for this reality repeatedly. Jesus Himself was mocked, rejected, falsely accused, and disbelieved by many of the very people He came to save. John 1:11 says, “He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him.” Isn’t this true within our own communities God has placed us in, including our own families? They deny the Spirit within us and what is true over and over again. Yet, our strength comes from knowing that rejection from people does not determine truth in the eyes of God. Even Christ, the sinless Son of God, stood before people who refused to see who He truly was.

God knows and sees all and everything you and I endured, every hidden wound, every injustice inflicted upon us in this broken world. It is because He knows that I am finally free to rest in that truth. My peace no longer depends upon everyone… or even ANYONE understanding my experience, validating my pain, or agreeing with my testimony. Regardless of what anyone else chooses to believe, the truth remains unchanged before God. I said it before, and I will say it again because this is what I pray lingers in the hearts of those reading this: what matters most is that God bears witness to the testimony He Himself authored within me.

This gave purpose to the decades of intense pain I endured for thirty-seven years. When suffering is surrendered to God, it is then redeemed. It no longer remains meaningless suffering, which is a form of bondage and oppression. Instead, it becomes testimony. It becomes freedom. It becomes a light that helps lead other wounded people home back to the One that gave you the soft heart, eyes to see, and ears to hear that not one person will ever understand like the God who sees.

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References

• Perry, B. D., & Winfrey, O. (2021). What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing. Flatiron Books.

• Siegel, D. J. (2020). The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are (3rd ed.). Guilford Press.

• van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Viking.