“I wanted to not just be healed; I wanted to be whole.”
Through World Impact’s Trauma Healing ministry, thousands of pastors, ministry leaders, and believers have been equipped to help others find healing through Christ. For many, that journey begins with healing of their own. Tracy and Delmar Johnson’s story is one example of how God uses restored lives to bring hope to others.
For years, Tracy and Delmar Johnson were building a life together in Antioch, California. Like many couples, they balanced careers, family responsibilities, church involvement, and the steady routines of everyday life.
Then 2019 arrived.
Neither one knew it at the time, but the hardest season of their lives would become the beginning of a new calling.
What began as a personal search for healing would eventually lead the Johnsons to World Impact’s Trauma Healing ministry. Along the way, God would restore their marriage, deepen their faith, and use their story to bring hope and healing to others in their family, church, and community. But in 2019, none of that was yet visible.
Tracy was undergoing chemotherapy treatments for Stage 3 colon cancer while, at nearly the same time, her husband, Delmar, was mourning the death of his father.
At home, they realized they had become, in Tracy’s words, “two ships passing in the night.” As Tracy battled cancer, Delmar wrestled with grief, health concerns of his own, and the approaching end of a 30-year career in law enforcement. Their church was also navigating the loss of a beloved leader to cancer. The stability they had counted on for years suddenly felt fragile, leaving them searching for something neither quite knew how to name.
For Tracy, the diagnosis sparked a question that reached far beyond physical recovery. She wanted to know what it meant to truly be well.
“When I got my diagnosis, I went on a journey of just becoming,” she said. “I wanted to not just be healed; I wanted to be whole.”
That search led her inward. She began examining old hurts, unresolved wounds, and relationships that needed forgiveness. As she spent time in prayer and Scripture, she became increasingly convinced that healing involved more than the body. It touched the heart, the mind, and the soul.
“I was searching for what does wholeness look like,” she said. “It looks like peace. It looks like health. It looks like getting your mind good and your body good.”
The journey was changing Delmar, too.
For decades, law enforcement had shaped the way he approached life. The work required vigilance, control, and emotional toughness. Those qualities helped him survive difficult situations, but over time they became part of who he was.
“The environment and the nature of the job; it teaches you control,” Delmar said. “It made me very controlling, and I didn’t even know it.”
Looking back, he could see the toll it had taken.
“It hardened the heart.”
A Different Kind of Healing
Neither Tracy nor Delmar could have predicted where their search for healing would eventually lead. The answer arrived through an unexpected conversation with an old friend who couldn’t stop talking about a World Impact ministry called Trauma Healing.
At first, Tracy was simply curious. She had missed a local Trauma Healing group and wanted to know when another one would be offered. Then she attended a World Impact event and heard others speak enthusiastically about the program. The message was consistent: if she was serious about healing, she needed to experience it for herself.
What she found was not what she expected.
Though both Tracy and Delmar had grown up in church and considered themselves lifelong believers, Trauma Healing opened doors they had never walked through before. It gave language to wounds they had carried for years and introduced spiritual practices that helped them experience God in a deeper way.
For Tracy, one of the most transformative discoveries was spiritual practice of lament.
“I didn’t know I could come to Him and pour out my heart and actually list complaints and that He actually cares,” she said. “For me the transformative part was lamenting.”
The experience also changed the way she viewed her relationship with God.
“I was searching for His hand and not His presence,” she said. “It was His presence that I was missing.”
For Delmar, the process uncovered wounds he had carried since childhood. Through Trauma Healing, he began to recognize how old beliefs and past experiences were still influencing his emotions and relationships. One revelation centered on his relationship with his father.
Growing up, Delmar believed his father favored his younger brother. Although he knew his father loved him, the feeling lingered for years and shaped the way he interpreted situations long into adulthood. Trauma Healing helped him recognize that wound and begin viewing it through a different lens.
“Sometimes we turn that into anger,” he said. “We don’t know what it is. I’m angry. Why? I don’t know. Because you’ve been wounded.”
Also read: Stella’s Story: Healed Hearts Heal Others
Restoring What Was Broken
As God brought healing to individual wounds, He was also restoring their marriage.
Several years earlier, the couple had begun receiving mentorship from another married couple. Through that process, they learned the value of vulnerability, accountability, and honest conversation. Trauma Healing deepened those lessons.
“When you are able to be vulnerable, you can lay it all out and then you can be healed,” Tracy said. “But most people are holding it all in because of shame and judgment.”
The changes were significant enough that the Johnsons chose to renew their vows after 30 years of marriage. They had never had a traditional wedding ceremony, and the renewal became a public recommitment not only to one another but also to the work God was doing in their lives.
Today, both Tracy and Delmar describe their marriage as fundamentally different than it was before.
“The last five years of our marriage is nothing compared to our first 25,” Delmar said. “It’s like night and day.”
When People Started Showing Up
What happened next surprised them.
As healing took root in their own lives, people began seeking them out. Not because the Johnsons were advertising a ministry, but because others could see something different in them.
A nephew asked Delmar to officiate his wedding. Family members began reaching out for guidance. Couples started asking for help with their marriages. Even people they barely knew would approach them and say they felt God had directed them to the Johnsons.
“We just say, okay,” Tracy said with a laugh.
The requests kept coming.
One woman from church approached them after attending their vow renewal ceremony and asked if they would meet with her daughter and son-in-law, who were struggling in their marriage. Other couples followed. Again and again, the Johnsons discovered that the issues people brought to them were rarely limited to communication problems or marital conflict.
Underneath the surface were deeper wounds.
After walking with one couple for several months, Tracy and Delmar realized the husband and wife weren’t ready to work on their marriage because both were carrying pain of their own.
“They actually need discipleship before they can even get to the marriage portion,” Tracy explained, “because both of them are injured and they’re injuring one another.”
The realization reshaped the way the Johnsons approached ministry. Marriage mentoring became discipleship. Discipleship became an opportunity for healing. And healing created space for transformation.
Today, the Johnsons serve as Trauma Healing facilitators, helping others experience the same freedom they found. They have completed multiple Trauma Healing trainings, facilitated groups, and are helping equip others to bring biblical healing into their communities.
Also read: Trauma Healing: How A Church in L.A. Addresses Community Grief
The Circle Keeps Widening
For Tracy, the ministry is about liberation.
“You don’t have to be your circumstances,” she said. “It’s something that has happened to us, but it’s not who we are.”
Each morning begins with a simple conversation.
“Holy Spirit, who do you want to talk to today?”
The question reflects a shift that began during Tracy’s cancer journey. What started as a search for personal healing became a desire to be available for whatever God wanted to do through her. The focus is no longer on what God can do for her, but on how He might use her to serve someone else.
“I understand this is so much bigger,” she said. “It’s not about me. It’s about what He wants to do through me.”
Delmar sees the same pattern. The healing that transformed their marriage is now touching extended family members, young couples, church members, and fellow Trauma Healing participants. He sees God widening the circle of influence one relationship at a time.
For Delmar, the ministry is about helping people see a side of God they may have missed.
“We have a lot of churches and a lot of hurt people who get preached to every Sunday and nothing changes,” he said. “It’s time to see God for who He is. The God who wants to heal people.”
He even sees opportunities in places many people might overlook.
When Delmar shared Trauma Healing with leaders in his former sheriff’s department, their response was immediate.
“We need this.”
One supervisor spoke about an officer-involved shooting and the trauma affecting the family involved. Another encouraged Delmar to return once his training was complete. For a man who spent three decades in law enforcement, it was another reminder that wounded people are everywhere. And that God often opens doors where we least expect them.
Looking back, Tracy and Delmar can see that cancer, grief, retirement, and disappointment were not interruptions to God’s plan. They were invitations into it.
The journey that began with a search for healing now extends far beyond the Johnson household. It lives in the couples they mentor, the families they encourage, the Trauma Healing participants they facilitate, and the communities they serve.
Or, as Tracy puts it, “God does love us. He does want to heal us. He doesn’t want us to stay in that broken place.”
What began as healing for Tracy and Delmar has rippled outward to others around them. Through World Impact’s Trauma Healing ministry, leaders like Tracy and Delmar are equipped to help that same healing spread through families, churches, and communities.
To learn more about Trauma Healing and other ministries of World Impact, visit worldimpact.org.
If you’d like to help equip more leaders to bring Christ-centered healing to their communities, please consider making a gift today.
