not about you

i saw that little boy’s hands grip around his dad’s neck, lethargic, pale, fear…and just like that grief struck me. this wasn’t my child. a stranger, in fact, but i recognized that grip. i recognized that chemo stricken body. i recognized that desperation. i am nearly a decade separated from that long season working in the children’s hospital where that grip became too familiar and in an instant i was emotionally right back there. and those instances leave me wondering why the impact was so forceful to bring me to my knees ten years later.

“if you are going to be used by God, He will take you through a multitude of experiences that are not meant for you at all, they are meant to make you useful in His hands, and to enable you to understand what transpires in other souls so that you will never be surprised at what you come across.” (oswald chambers)

a colleague, experiencing similar ptsd from his time as a police officer, told me the other day that in our line of work, we are conditioned to see the unthinkable and to stay strong in the face of such trauma. because we shove those emotions deep down in order to do our job, that becomes the way we approach life in general. i feel that now, i have such a hard time crying, even when i desperately want to release painful emotions. that doesn’t mean we don’t feel, but what it does mean is that those emotions can’t fully process, and in return, we are stuck. i wonder if that is why i flew back to devastation when i saw that little boy’s grip. my mind took me right back to those unprocessed feelings on high alert. but is it worth the price of grief? it is. and when that sinks in, the meaning and purpose of life makes sense.

anthropologist Margaret Mead suggests that the first indication of human civilization is evidenced through a fractured thigh bone that was healed. she points out that in order for a person to survive such an injury, others must have provided shelter, protection, food, drink over an extended period of time. did you catch that? the first indication of human civilization is care for others who are broken and in need. not tools for hunting, religious artifacts or forms of government. it’s the willingness to inject yourself into someone else’s life, even when it’s uncomfortable, to lift them up. again, the true purpose of life.

if that is the price of empathy, i accept it with gladness. if i can be useful in God’s hands because He takes me through these experiences, i rejoice thankfully. after all, that is all i have ever hoped for, to be an extension of Jesus in order to bring glory to God.