“Triggers” have become a popular topic in both personal and spiritual development circles. 

They often show up unannounced and uninvited. Events, words and even certain smells can trigger an old belief, uncomfortable emotions and even anxiety.

Triggers take us back to difficult places we’d rather avoid like the school playground, the unhappy home, broken marriage, failed relationship or childhood trauma.

We can try to avoid trigger-causing situations but occasionally they happen.

Triggers become transformative when we allow them to show us those wounded parts of our souls where healing is still needed.

Time and experience has taught me that you cannot eat, shop, drink, date, marry, sleep, work, spend, distract, deny, ignore or scroll away your triggers and the underlying wounds they stem from.

To do so just results in excess weight, regret, clutter, debt, overwhelm, exhaustion and frustration. 

Yet there is hope and we thankfully don’t have to stay in those dark spaces of our past.

Last week I experienced a situation that triggered an old, ugly childhood belief I hadn’t felt in years.  My first impulse was to immediately remove myself from the situation and stop the negative emotions flooding my mind. 

But I’ve learned (the hard way) that doing so would just delay any healing and until I face what’s causing the trigger I’m never going to move past it. It’s a vicious cycle indeed.

So in this very public place I stood and mentally acknowledged the exact events from my past that triggered my current feelings and asked God for help and healing.

Unhealed wounds are emotional bullies that until confronted will continue to make our lives miserable at every opportunity.

When it comes to our triggers and the events that created them, what if we face them, embrace them then take them to the Lord right then in that moment so the wound can begin to heal?

God’s clinic is open 24/7 with no appointment necessary and He can cure in mere moments what we’ve spent years, time, money, tears and energy trying to fix and failing.

Triggers can serve a powerful, positive purpose if we let them. The underlying causes of triggers seldom simply disappear on their own and will keep showing up until faced head on.

Even the most spiritual people have triggers and no woman is immune.

God knows the wounds from our past we carry that are still triggering us in the present. He promises to heal us and restore us back to emotional, spiritual and physical health and God never breaks a promise.

“He heals the heartbroken and bandages their wounds.” Ps 147:3 (MSG)

Sandra Hubbard