We Don't Worry About The Same Things

Do you ever think about who you know now that won’t be alive by the end of next year? I do. There’s no real way of knowing who, when, or how. All I know is that heartbreak has proven to be inevitable, and the weight of those heartbreaks, laid like bricks, build something inside of you that you didn’t expect.

Sometimes I wish I could be someone who’s settled into a life that feels whole because it is what was expected. I know my very introspective younger self would be incredibly pleased with where and who I am now, faults and all. But there are parts to getting to where I am and some results from how I’ve gotten here that no matter how introspective I was, I could never have accurately accounted for.

“It’s called first degree murder.”

As much as I’ve imagined many nightmares, I truly never imagined having to explain to a 12-year old what his brother’s killer was charged with. I never imagined hearing him and his cousins scream “long live” to his brother’s name, their voices carrying out into the unsuspecting world through the rolled down windows in the backseat of my car.

I never imagined the same field I spent five years of Saturdays running kids programming on I’d later use to hold a candlelight vigil for one of the kids who used to regularly attend, helping his younger peers win candy by whispering the answers to our Bible lesson questions.

And I surely never imagined I would have to hope and pray his mom, serving her six-year prison sentence, received my letter confirming my plans to help her son get a better job before and not after she got the news that he’d been shot and killed at work. As if either would be better.

How many people do you know that have been murdered? How many have overdosed? How many just didn’t wake up? How old where they? Who did they leave behind? Was it expected? How many days beforehand had you seen them? Had you made plans with them for the next day? Are their numbers still in your phone? Do you have photos of them when they were young(er)? Do you still see them in the spaces they used to take?

Have you ever bought a hotel room for a mom and her two boys the night her son’s friend was shot in the head through the window of their home? Have you ever calmed the threats of an abused and betrayed woman wanting to burn someone’s house down? And then spent nearly two years trying to convince her she’s not crazy but has actually lived her entire life being manipulated and abused in unimaginable ways? How many middle of the night drunken voicemails giving up their reasons for living have you received? How many kids do you know that have been beaten or raped? Have you picked up a mom and her four kids on the side of the road as they each carried the last of their belongings in a small and weathered suitcase? Have you comforted siblings as they grappled with the sudden abandonment of their only parent a week before the new school year? Have you witnessed domestic violence? Have you helped anyone run from it? What about kids - have yours run away? Joined gangs? Been shot at? Been killed?

These aren’t confessions. I don’t want pity or sympathetic words. Nothing I write is with the intention or desire to be known by those who read. It’s not about me, but about what my experiences tell me.

I live in two worlds.

In one world, I am speaking in front of 60 people at a five star resort. They love me because they think I’m a cute twenty-something year old kid who does the things that scare them. I smile. I reassure them people are not nearly as scary as they think. I laugh off their dated warnings about handsome suitors because somehow there are still people who think romance is the main objective of a woman’s life. I go back to my room and cry. I pack up my things and I leave as planned.

Thirty-six hours later I am in another world, speaking in front of the same number of people. Only this time, we’re in the poorly lit backyard of small brick church, and those listening to me are not looking to be impressed but to find healing and hope as together we mourn the sudden loss of our 19-year old brother and friend.

Thirty-six hours. Two worlds. And I am so angry.

I am not angry at anyone in particular. I am just angry. Angry that any of these things have happened, proximity being the key component to their effect on me. It’s one thing to read the headline “One Dead In Tragic Shooting.” It’s a completely different thing when that “one” belongs to you.

I operate normally but on the inside I am raging. I cannot imagine being a child and carrying this kind of anger. I cannot imagine being an adult who has spent an entire lifetime with this anger. One way or another that anger spills out and we are no longer surprised to hear why people do the things they do.

As Desmond Tutu writes: “Without forgiveness to break the cycle of injury and vengeance...we create patterns of violence and hurt that get repeated in neighborhoods and cities and between countries for decades and even centuries.”

We can blame and we can fight but the truth is again defined by Tutu: “There can be no sides when you are standing in the middle of wreckage.”

There are not two worlds. We are all standing in the wreckage of one single world. It only feels like two because of the distance we are either born into, maintain, or create. I am less concerned with blame and more concerned with smashing that distance into a million pieces by doing what Tutu submits and what I hope will become our daily consideration: “We take care of our world by taking care of each other. It’s as simple and as difficult as that.”

It doesn’t take a special person. It takes a willing one.

“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter-when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?...If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday.” – Isaiah 58:6-10