I Forgot About the Axe

I was telling a friend about how one of the moms I know was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon. “Was it the axe?” she asked. I paused, confused, then, “Oh no, it wasn’t the axe. I forgot about the axe,” I said shaking my head in disbelief. How had I forgotten about the axe?

Two years earlier this same mom had gone through one of the most prolonged states of emergency I’ve ever witnessed, to the point of labeling it as its own season. You know – Fall, Winter, Spring, That-Time-Mom-Kept-An-Axe-By-Her-Bed-For-Self-Protection, Summer. It was a season I experienced firsthand and one I thought I would never forget.

But I did.

I wish I could say the axe was the most dramatic part of it all but it wasn’t. It is, however, an accurate symbol of the level of trauma and depth of desperation people live in for days, seasons, and entire lifetimes – to the point where they forget that it isn’t supposed to be that way.

Impossible!

Possible. I know because that’s me. I’m desensitized to things that used to shake me when simply considering their existence much less experiencing them. Now it’s not only normal, but forgettable.

Okay okay, I know it’s not actually supposed to be normal, which is why I was so shocked when I realized I’d forgotten about the whole axe thing. But my forgetting caused me to self-examine and in doing so, I considered another story.

One Wednesday morning, I picked up a teen to collect her check from work. I’ve known her for a few years now and let me tell you, this girl is a piece of work. I love her but dang would she have bullied me if we had gone to high school together. Even now if you see us in the same room you would never believe she likes me...but she does, I promise. She just only shows it when no one else is around to catch her in the act of being kind.

Anyway, we’re on the way to her job when she starts explaining why she needs her check. Two nights earlier she was holding on to some weed for a friend when her mom walked in and saw her with it (please bear with me and assume the benefit of the doubt). Her mom gets mad and locks away the only food in the house so she can’t eat. Then later that night her dad comes in drunk and upset and tries to fight her. All this to say she needed money to buy her and her brother some food and oh yea did she mention that earlier that week she blacked out in a fit of rage and woke up later to find out she had attacked her boyfriend?

Now, after reading that, how many times did you pause and think, “I’m sorry, what?” Because I’ll go ahead and tell you that thought ran through my mind between every sentence she spoke. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s to not react. So I kept driving and listened.

As she continued to speak I caught onto what she really wanted to talk about – her anxiety. We’d talked about it before, including her bouts of depression and refusal to be on medicine. Sadness was not new. A year before we met she had suddenly lost her older brother to heart disease. She held sadness within her before I’d even known her name.

So this anxiety/depression/sadness, whatever you wish to call it, is what I focused on. I relayed my own experience with it and how I’ve worked through it, specifically highlighting how writing has been a therapeutic tool for me. She said she used to write. I made a mental note.

The next week I dropped off a pack of blank paper with a few inspirational quotes about writing and facing emotions head on in light of living fully and freely. Small smile and a soft thank you (people were watching).

The following week I picked her up for round two of collecting her check. We’d barely made it out of the neighborhood when she broke the silence with “I started writing.” “That’s great,” I said trying not to be too excited and kill the moment by being uncool. “Yea, and me and my mama ain’t been fighting as much since then.”

Win.

Am I sure it was a win? Um yes I’m sure. Was she openly possessing weed? Yes. Did her dad still fight her? Yes. Did her mom hide food from her? Yes. Did she still black out from rage? Yes. But none of that was the point.

We’re attracted to stories with tragedy. I’m not entirely certain as to why but I believe a part of it is the emotional pull and maybe even thrill of dramatic events. Quite frankly, it makes for good entertainment. A good story usually requires struggle and the juicier the better.

But I wonder if the most dramatic parts of these types of stories are distractions from the root issues. We can get caught up in the weed, the fights, the blackout rage or...the axe, making these things the focal point of our efforts and rightfully so. But I think if we did, we’d miss it.

Mom didn’t need me to get rid of the axe, she needed me to help her feel safe and in control. My 18-year-old quietly kind teenage drama queen didn’t need me to intervene in her relationships, she needed to be seen and known and guided in working through a sadness that underlined her every breath.

Bingo.

This is why I forgot about the axe. Not because it wasn’t concerning, but because it was a symptom of what really required tending to. My current environment has me surrounded by chaos and ruin just begging for my attention. And if not my attention then at least my revulsion because maybe if things get too outside of my normal I’d run from the people I was meant to walk with and these root issues could persist without resistance.

But that’s not how it was meant to be.

I don’t expect anyone else to do what I do or be where I am. We’re all called to different things. However, while we are all called to different things, we are all called to each other.

It is incredibly easy to pin judgement upon stories written outside of what we’ve defined as normal or okay. Should we take the time to stay, listen, and see our own humanity in the eyes of those telling these stories, we might just find ourselves standing in the midst of the revolution we’ve been praying for.