When Tigger is a trigger!

Tigger, you know the beloved character of Winnie the Pooh fame:-

“A wonderful thing is a Tigger,
a Tigger’s a wonderful thing.
Their tops are made out of rubber,
Their bottoms are made out of springs.
They’re bouncy, bouncy, bouncy,  
bouncy, fun, fun, fun.
And the most wonderful thing about Tiggers,
Is I’m the only one, I’m the only one!

In one episode Tigger has bounced rabbit one time too many, and upset the apple cart. Rabbit makes Tigger promise not to bounce any more. Rabbit is demanding Tigger not be Tigger!

Have you ever met someone for the first time,  and instantly disliked them? I’m not talking about discerning of spirits, I’m talking about something in that person that triggers an emotional reaction to a difficult event,  or period of your life.  A trigger, is any stimulus that stimulates such a memory. This is deep stuff, but we can have cognitive memories, memories that come with words, or emotional memories, memories that come without words. An abused dog has an emotional memory, when it slinks away from its master’s stick! Jordon Peterson says that most people think that the purpose of memory is to remember the past. but the purpose of memory, he says,  is to extract lessons out of the past,  to structure the future.

Not everybody appreciates my sense of humour, I am not even sure I do! But apparently I am a tigger. I remember a dear friend telling me that my being tigger is not funny.  I told her “you don’t find it funny, but other people do!”  She just could not believe it! As we worked it through, as we are committed to do, this dear lady was able to process the memory.  She had suffered abuse as a child and had had a miserable childhood as a result. Her uncle,  with the best of intentions,  was constantly trying to make her smile, and she hated it. Something in me had triggered that memory. Fortunately our relationship was strong enough that we could work through it, and once again come to the understanding that the Lord opens up wounds in order to heal them. It was a perfect example of iron sharpening iron  (Proverbs 27:17).

Father, so many of us are somehow unaware that we are so deeply wounded by life.  There is a theology out there that says we don’t need to visit the past because it’s all under the blood. Meanwhile people who are hurt, hurt people because we operate out of our woundedness. Lord please raise up teachers to teach your church to deal with our issues that half the time we don’t even know that we have. Otherwise, we will never show the world we are Your disciples by our love. I pray these tings in Jesus Name Amen