Book Review
By The Rev’d. Joseph K. Acton
“After the Trauma, The Battle Begins. Post Trauma Healing.”
Fr. Nigel Mumford has managed to provide a very helpful and unique kind of book called After the Trauma the Battle Begins: Post Trauma Healing. It is both a study and spiritual reflection on PTSD, providing both clinical and historical understanding of this condition. His book is timely in the wake of the Iraqi and Afghan war veterans returning home and our becoming more aware of the level of trauma with which they are dealing. After the Trauma is also a very personal reflection on Mumford’s own experience of trauma and subsequent healing. But perhaps what was most meaningful, was the way he has woven these themes together into a spiritual odyssey, providing insight into God’s wonderfully mysterious work of healing for all of us. It is a book not only for PTSD survivors and their loved ones, but for anyone who has experienced trauma, adversity, loss, fear and desires healing.
There is so much practical help in this book. He provides compassionate encouragement, not only to PTSD sufferers, but to over eaters, the depressed, the anxious, and the doubter. He speaks eloquently of the way words can become “grenades” and illustrates various kinds of interpersonal “terrorism.” While the book speaks a great deal about war, it continues to apply spiritual principles to our own very personal everyday battles.
I am moved by the generosity of this book, as Mumford shares with us the discord and chaos of his personal life as a traumatized Marine, his many near death experiences, and his own “Dark Night” of the soul. Issues of guilt, fear, regret, obsession, are all lifted up into the transforming presence of Christ. Each strand of story telling, each confessed failing, each practical answer, leads to what in the end could be called a Litany of Gratitude, for here is a man who has felt the pain of wounds and the joy of healing. His words clearly focuss the reader on the wounds of Christ, “by which we are healed.”
Finally the book speaks with the authority of a man who had been so close to death he had received last rites three times! Mumford has overcome death most recently by coming out of a coma and what was the final stage of the H1N1 virus. I, along with thousands of others, prayed for Mumford as we heard his condition was going from bad to worse. It is an incredible witness to all of us that today that Nigel Mumford lives and writes, speaks and heals in the name of Jesus. And so with the authority of a modern Lazarus, and the gentle compassion of a lover of Jesus and servant of the Gospel, Mumford has provided a must read for all of us who seek to overcome trauma and adversity, and live in the victory and power of Jesus Christ. Thank you, Fr. Nigel Mumford, for this wonderful book!
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The Rev’d. Joseph K. Acton
Executive Director
Desert Call Ministries, Inc.
Pastor, ACTS Church Hemet, CA
The book is available at www.nigelmumford.com
Or www.amazon.com
Tag Archives: Book review
After the Trauma, the Battle Begins, Post Trauma Healing.
Book review.
Welcome Home!, December 16, 2011
By Jason Twombly (New York) – See all my reviews
This review is from: After the Trauma the Battle Begins (Paperback)
“After the Trauma the Battle Begins” by Nigel Mumford is written primarily to soldiers who have suffered the shock and awe of combat. Additionally, serving as an address to caregivers, this book breathes a message of healing and hope to all those haunted by post traumatic stress.
Longing to be understood, longing to be free, longing to be whole and longing to be home are cries of every human heart. There remains for all of us a sense of homesickness and heartache for all things to be put to right. Once cast east of Eden, we achingly wander far from home.
“We live in a world shattered, each step reechoes the cracking of broken glass, shards removed at first from aching feet but then…finally…tolerated. Longing to recover the tranquil garden of gentle grass.” -unknown
This world is both broken and beautiful. Known by the heroes fighting for our liberty, the shards of broken glass are often lodged in the deepest most hidden recesses of their hearts and minds. ‘Welcome Home’ as spoken to soldiers returning from tours of duty is the greeting the reader himself hears from within the bosom of God’s healing embrace. ‘Welcome Home’ is the sweet drink from the stream of serenity that soaks the scars unseen.
Written from the empathy of one who candidly walked the vale of combat and suffering, the author does not avoid describing the jagged edges of life, but offers beauty for brutality and hope for helplessness in the person of Christ The Healer.
If you’ve ever wanted to read a book by a man thrilled and filled with thankfulness from not a few escapes from death then read this book. If you have been desperate for an Anne Sullivan to come along and put words to the inarticulate groanings of your soul that cannot be uttered, Nigel Mumford is the minster of healing that will trace your wounds in the Hands of The Pierced One. Therapy with a theological telos is the kind that is real. Therapy that throbs with compassion is the kind that counts.
Therapists, counselors, chaplains, captains, pastors and those afflicted by trauma, I urge you, read this book. Post traumatic stress affects not only soldiers, but the rank and file of everyday people who have been dealt the blow of unspeakable horror. Take up and read. Unlace your combat boots, rest your aching feet and be led to pastures of the “tranquil garden of gentle grass.”