A Blog post and don't forget ZOOM and facebook live Mtm this Thursday at 645pm, the 9th

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630 chatting time and 645 start - fyi we willl have to stop and restart 1/2 thru

3/31/20

Loss

April 19, 1995 - a day that will forever be burned into my memory. At 9:02 am, I was in class – a 2nd year med student does a lot of that – we were about 1 mile away. 

There were murmurs among my class mates, we were told we were not to leave the building. Within minutes, every screen in the building came on w pictures of our city, smoking. News reports droned on… 

A giant crater had been torn from the earth in my downtown. 

Literally right across the street from the YMCA where I commonly played basketball, 168 people lost their lives.

And our city stopped.

In our basement is a box with every newspaper from that day til the day Tim McVeigh was executed.

We watched TV hour after hour, sleeping only when our eyes couldn’t do it anymore. We prayed and we cried. Nothing else was in our minds, nothing on our hearts.

Going back to school, the morgue was in the parking lot where the med students parked – and each day we walked by the makeshift semi-trailer outside it where our people were being identified. We all knew. We all felt it. There was not even an attempt to “move on.”

We tried to make sense of it – applied our brains to it – felt like a smile would never come again. But there were no answers. There was only pain.

The entire city was quiet. No one honked their horns. No one raised their voices. Everyone drove w their lights on – a symbol of our unity and shared grief – we posted “We will never forget” everywhere.

Over months, we healed, kinda. Life resumed. We found our smiles and saw the people around us. We appreciated our breaths and every day.

Recently, I went w my oldest daughter, Emily, to the Bombing Memorial. Notice how above, I said we healed, kinda. Walking through the memorial was a wonderful thing. But, I wept. I wept for the loss of life and I wept for the loss of my innocence. I wept for my city and my people and I wept for my world, where violence and hurt are still far too common.

Loss.

Grief.

Can I confess something?

Over my lifetime, I have faced loss from an early age. Starting at age 7, loss and its inevitability, how it can come into a life and crush and destroy and wreck it, started wreaking havoc on me.

And

I have not had a healthy response. There was no one to teach me. There was only pain. 

This produced in me an overwhelming fear of loss and a desire to avoid it and its pain, at all cost. I would rather run away from it, numb it out, hide from it, pretend it wasn’t there,
Or if I couldn’t ignore it, then I would insist upon protecting myself from it – figure it out, analyze it, solve it, til I felt safe.

In effect, I tried to run from grief and loss. To hide. Tried to solve it, explain it, protect from it.

It has taken me many years to realize the toll that that was taking on me. 
My survival and safety stole my life. And the pain of my past was like a massive chain on my present and my future.
You see, after a while, avoiding loss and hurt became more important than truth. Internal safety overruled real life. 

I woke up one day and realized I was not at all who I wanted to be. I was not thinking, acting, feeling, or behaving what I believed was really important in my brain.

My broken heart was ruling my life.

Can I give you a piece of advice?

In times like this – COVID 19 times – your safety will feel threatened, your finances, your health, your relationships, your emotions, your time, your space, your sleep, your thoughts.

Your coping mechanisms, your avoidances, your habits will be pushed – many will be removed or at least shoved into areas you haven’t been in a long time. You will find yourself face to face with you. 

In times like these we have a choice. 

Be honest or hide.

My advice?
Be honest about your pain. Own your fear, we all feel it. Be real w your loss. Be human. Don’t run to a substance, a binge, an escape, don’t just cave to the craving to solve, analyze and protect. Don’t just numb out – be a person.

When normal is stripped away is sometimes the best chance we have to really see.

As you move to honest, find someone to talk to. A good counselor, virtual is best right now. They are out there. A good friend (6 feet away at least) who wants what is best for you, not just to help you escape. Talk to your doctor, they are ready to help. A good pastor can help. A kind neighbor can help.

You do not have to be lived by your escape, your busyness, your brokenness. Messed up times like these can guide us to refocus our lives and allow us to live true to who we really want to be.

I would love to go on a journey with you to rediscover you. I would love for us to find ourselves, to become ourselves.
It will not be easy. Easy is to continue the path you have been on.
It will not be quick – this is not a sitcom episode, this is your life.
It will take time, but it is so worth it.
In my next post, I plan to talk about where we find ourselves when the broken gets peeled off.