Trophy Case of Trauma

I used to think I was stuck because I didn’t have a choice. I thought maybe God just forgot about me, or maybe I messed up too bad to be rescued. Eventually I realized that I wasn’t stuck. I was just comfortable. Not happy, not healed… just committed to the pain I already knew.

We don’t talk about it enough, but sometimes, we hold onto pain like it’s a trophy.

We set it up on the shelf. We polish it. We dust around it. We show it to others like, “Look at what I survived.” And yes, what you survived was hard. Horrific, even. It mattered. But you were never meant to build your whole identity around the thing that almost broke you.

Some of us are dragging around trauma like it’s a personality trait. Like the only way we feel valuable is if we’re telling the story from the valley.

Like we wouldn’t know who we are without the heartbreak.

Without the betrayal.

Without the abuse.

Without them.

We cry out to God asking for breakthrough, but we don’t want to let go of the very thing He’s trying to heal. That pain? That anger? That bitterness? It became part of our armor—something we use to protect ourselves from future hurt. But now we’re just armored against freedom too.

Sometimes the hardest thing to admit is that healing scares us more than hurting.

It’s easier to stay in the role of the victim. To say, “This is just how I am.” But baby, that’s not how you were meant to stay. Jesus didn’t die for you to decorate your prison cell. He came to break you out.

You can’t move forward if you’re still sleeping next to your past.

And let me be clear—this is not about pretending like it didn’t happen. Healing doesn’t mean denying what hurt you. It just means refusing to keep worshiping it.

There’s a difference between honoring your story and clinging to your suffering.

One testifies. The other torments.

So ask yourself honestly—what are you still displaying that God told you to bury?

What doors has God opened that you haven’t walked through because your hands are too full of what used to be?

That trauma may have shaped you, but it doesn’t get to name you. You’re not “the girl who got cheated on.” Not “the one with daddy issues.”

Not “the one who was never chosen.” Not “the one who always gets hurt.” Not anymore.

You are free.

You are healed.

You are redeemed.

You are chosen.

You are walking into a story that doesn’t need to make sense to anyone else—because it’s a redemption arc written by the Author Himself.

So go ahead.

Shatter the trophy.

Close the museum.

You’ve got a life to live and a God to glorify.