“Into Your Hands, I Commend My Spirit” (Luke 23:46)

A Somatic Reflection on Surrender and the Unseen Presence of God Through the Lens of Spiritual Trauma

By Ashley E. Schumacher, MS, LAPC

Music Suggestion: ‘Kyrie Eleison’ by Salt of the Sound

youtu.be/NJMqWfs0zQ4?si=Q-SCsmHfSnfIfJzW 

Breathe.

(Do it now. Let your lungs stretch, just a little. Does it feel safe? Does it feel terrifying? Does your chest resist? Stay.)

Let your shoulders drop, your jaw loosen, your heart slow just enough to notice:

You are here.

Now.

Still breathing.

Even if it hurts.

(Where does it hurt? Put your hand there. Stay with it. Don’t run just yet.)

Even if part of you wishes you weren’t.

(If there is shame in that truth, let it rise. It belongs too.)

Let that be okay.

(Whisper it like a mantra to the child in you who was never allowed to admit it: “It’s okay to feel this.”)

There is room here for what feels impossible to name.

For the part of you that stopped believing, the part that feels too splintered to be held, the part that’s been waiting far too long for God to answer.

There is room here for the part of you that loved and lost, and loved again and was met with silence.

(Feel the silence. Let it ring in your ears. Let it stretch like a cathedral echo. Let it break you.)

Pause.

(Notice: Are you clenching? Are you floating above yourself? Anchor. Feel your feet. Feel your spine.)

Let your breath meet your body.

Gently.

The way you wish God had met you.

(Can you imagine that? Even now? A God who would approach slowly, softly, with reverent hands?)

Feel the heaviness in your chest, the ache behind your eyes, the tension in your stomach that you didn’t even notice until now.

(There it is. Your truth has a location. Stay. Don’t look away.)

Now... come with me to Golgotha.

We’re not rushing.

We’re not romanticizing.

We’re staying.

At the edge of agony.

Where blood and breath grow scarce, and the last thread of hope feels like it’s unraveling in your hands.

(Grip your hands. Loosen. Grip again. That’s the tension, isn’t it? To hold and to release?)

Look.

There He is.

Lifted up in unspeakable humiliation, nailed down by the cruelty of men, and the consent of a silent crowd.

(Do you know that silence? The betrayal of people you trusted? The ones who said nothing?)

Look closer.

This is not just a man dying.

This is God, bleeding out, body trembling, lungs straining for breath—and still, He whispers:

“Father, into Your hands, I commend My Spirit.”

Read that again.

Feel the burn of those words.

(Let them brand your ribcage. Let them ache in the marrow of your survival.)

Do you know what kind of pain it takes to say that?

What kind of spiritual trauma must be carried in the body to arrive at such a surrender?

This is not the soft sigh of a saint with peaceful confidence in the arms of heaven.

This is a groan torn from the gut of someone who knows what it is to feel abandoned.

(Let the word abandoned thud through you like a dropped stone. Name where it lives in your body. Chest? Gut? Spine?)

He cries out “My God, why have You forsaken Me?” and then— He still hands Himself over.

This is not naiveté.

This is what it means to entrust your spirit even when your spirit is shattered.

To surrender—not because it feels safe— but because there’s nothing left to hold on to.

This is holy dissociation.

Where the soul staggers on the edge of silence, suspended between “Why have You forsaken me?” and “Into Your hands, I commend my spirit.”

Where the body shuts down, but the heart dares a whisper of trust.

Where God does not bypass the wound but bleeds into it.

And even the numb becomes sacred ground.

The moment when trauma and trust collide.

(Feel that collision. It may come as tears. As numbness. As heat. As stillness. All are welcome.)

He doesn’t pretend.

He doesn’t spiritualize.

He gives His spirit, wounded and exhausted, into Hands He can no longer feel.

And maybe—maybe that’s where you are too.

Maybe you’ve reached the end of what you can fix, explain, endure, or believe.

Maybe your spirit feels more like a battlefield than a temple.

Maybe your last prayer sounded like “Where were You?”

or

“Why didn’t You stop it?!”

And yet— Here you are.

Still breathing.

Still listening.

Still reaching toward a God you’re not even sure you trust anymore.

(Pause. Let that settle. It’s not betrayal. It’s survival.)

That’s what this moment is.

This isn’t about answers.

This isn’t about resurrection— not yet.

This is about handing over your bruised, broken spirit into the hands of a Father you cannot see, cannot feel, but somehow still call out to.

This is not strength.

This is surrender.

Raw.

Unfiltered.

Terrifying.

Because spiritual trauma doesn’t just fracture your sense of self— it fractures your sense of safety in God.

(Yes. Breathe. Say it again: “It fractured my safety in God.” That truth is sacred too.)

And yet Christ says—

even here—

“Into Your hands.”

Even after betrayal.

Even after silence.

Even after it all went dark.

He still chooses the Father.

Not because it makes sense.

But because Love still whispers beneath the grief.

(What if you listened for that whisper? Right now? Just listened?)

So now...

Let yourself feel it.

The ache in your ribs.

The tear that won’t fall.

The rage you buried beneath theology and duty.

The numbness that protected you when God didn’t come.

(Let it come. All of it. You’re not alone this time.)

Let it all be here.

And then—

in your own time—

you can whisper it too:

“Into Your hands, I commend my spirit.”

Even if your voice shakes, barely a whisper...

Even if your trust feels like dust.

Say it for the child in you who didn’t feel protected.

Say it for the version of you who begged and got no answer.

Say it not because it’s resolved— but because something in you still hopes to be held.

(Maybe hope is just the part of you that refuses to stay numb forever.)

And maybe that’s the miracle of it.

That even here, in the haunting stillness of Holy Friday, when God seems gone, and grief is all that remains—

You can still say:

Take this broken spirit.

Even now.

Even like this.

And He does.

He takes it.

And He holds it.

And He will not let go.