On Trauma

Trauma is often long-lasting, because the victim often (and understandably) feels obligated to revisit it over and over in their memory. If the victim stops thinking about it, who will? Who is going to fix this, if the victim forgets? This makes the victim feel like a witness in some trial that never comes, always ready to give their testimony to the crimes committed against them. This isn't universal in how trauma affects the victims, but it's certainly common.

But GOD can and will remember these wrongs. "Vengeance is mine, says the Lord" is not about how God is angry, in general. It says that people don't need to seek vengeance or stay angry or look for perfect justice here on earth, because God will remember and judge fully in the end. We can ask God to remember and judge these wrongdoers, so that we can be set free from the obligation. Using the previous analogy, the victim is the witness who presents all of their accusations and testimonies to God, and then God says, in effect, "You have no more responsibility for this trial, I will present all the evidence myself when the trial comes." And in fact, some counselling for PTSD has the person walk carefully through their trauma, undermining the "panic response" by breaking the trauma up into multiple small chronological steps, to deal with them one at a time. For the Christian, we can take this and go even further, listing out each offense at each small step, boldly asking God to remember and to judge.
It's probably unavoidable that when trauma happens, it redefines the life of the victim. In fact, they become "a victim", and this identity often follows them for a long time, personally if not legally. Now, everyone heals in different ways, at different rates. We should not burden trauma victims with our own expectations. However, once God receives the "testimony" of those who have suffered wrong, they certainly have the potential to look forward to a time when they no longer call themselves a "victim" or someone "suffering from trauma". Eventually, just living one's life will fill up the soul with other things, and the trauma will occupy a smaller and smaller area of the heart. Sometimes I think about Jesus saying, "I came that they may have life and have it abundantly." The painful parts of our lives don't go away, but they get "diluted" by the abundant experience of life -- even Jesus himself -- that the Holy Spirit pours into our souls. 

Now, it is true that we have a couple of verses that say something like, "God, forgive them, they don't know what they are doing." This is WAY beyond merely forgiving someone for wrongs done to us, this is asking GOD to forgive them ENTIRELY, to ask God to forgive them for the wrong against GOD, against his law. I think sometimes we take these verses as burdens on ourselves, "Oh, if I'm not asking God to forgive them in this way, I'm not truly forgiving them at all." I think this is a recipe for despair, and a bad lesson to draw from these passages. We should think of these statements as basically miracles of the Holy Spirit, exceptional acts that mirror the exceptional forgiveness of Jesus on the cross. But God deals with us where we are right now: "A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not quench, until he brings justice to victory."