After experiencing acute or prolonged suffering, particularly in conditions like PTSD, the brain and body become locked in survival states. What neuroscience describes as dysregulation, Scripture describes as the condition of a wounded or hardened heart. But the Gospel does not simply invite us to cope with our wounds. It offers us freedom from all the parts of our hearts that are hurting, through promising us a new one.

Explaining what chronic Lyme disease feels like is almost impossible. Some people can comprehend the physical symptoms to a degree, the crushing fatigue, violent pain, migraines, nausea, ect, but the haunting sense of invasion, a kind of warfare with some invisible force, is not easy to articulate, not without questioning my sanity anyway.

It took me a long time to realise this wasn’t melodramatic or metaphorical. There is a reason chronic Lyme, Bartonella, and Babesia feel like a physical, psychological, and even spiritual assault….

Grief is not a prison, nor a chain,

it is a passage, a rite, a necessary flame,

and when it burns through, the heart remains-

not as ashes, but richer to have lived in its name.