(I originally started writing this in December of 2012 when Reily was in kindergarten.)
Empathy. Internalization. Compassion. A capacity to understand. Such a precious gift. A gift I know God has bestowed on my heart to utilize in connecting with others. But it's dangerous too. Dealing with your own feelings can be overwhelming, but dealing with 2, 10, 30 other people's emotions can be incapacitating.
It's a double-edged sword. It is one of the things that allows me to care so truly and deeply, but sometimes it's too much. Too much pain. Too much sorrow. Too much brokenness.
I've always had a need for information. A need to know what's going on. I was 15 when the Oklahoma City bombing happened, and I was glued to my TV. I was 21 when September 11 happened, and I was once again glued to my TV. I was 32 when the Newtown shooting happened...I refused to turn on the TV. It was too much.
I could only view it in the periphery of my mind, never head-on. It was just too close. I'm in school each day. I've gone through procedures and practices, but what if it was real? What if my kids were threatened? What if they had to face that terror? And then, worse, what about Reily? Just five years old. Why should that be something that should even cross her mind?
She's had practice lock drills, and though the teachers assured her they weren't real and just practice, my baby cried. She was scared. The idea of locking the door, huddling in a corner of the classroom with her classmates, waiting for the all-clear signal was a lot for a five-year-old to take in. She wanted her mommy.
She's just starting to glimpse the opportunities and the richness of life. To even imagine losing her or having her experience that trauma is almost too much. She's just now figuring out how death works. How do you not come back? And it makes her sad. In her head, she believes I will die before her because I am older...and I hope I do. A mother having to bury her child is a cruelty beyond measure, but looking into the eyes of your child and seeing nothing but terror reflected is almost worse. You are their entire world. As much as I can't imagine living without her, I know she can't imagine living without me because she never has. I've always been there, and I promise her that I always will be.
But how much control do I have over that? Who knows. I am not a daredevil. I don't go jumping off buildings attached only by a bungee or go deep-sea diving, but I live. I live in a world where devastatingly cruel things do happen, but she's not ready for that much honesty. She's not ready because it would become the point she fixated on and not just an outside possibility, a huge fear looming over her head.
And that's how I found myself after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. I felt like a child. It was all too much to handle. The idea of babies cowering in a corner as a gunman approached them to flippantly take their lives. Adults protectively sitting with them, virtually helpless. How? Why? There's no way to comprehend. There's no rationalization or other perspective that makes sense. Oklahoma City and September 11, while both horrible and tragic, could be traced to a way of thinking, a twisted path of logic, disturbing as they were. With the Sandy Hook case, there was nothing to be understood.
The most difficult part of the Oklahoma City bombing for me was the daycare that also experienced the fallout across the street. At the memorial, small chairs mark the life of each child who died that day. At 15, it was difficult to watch people search through the rubble, but I processed it as best as I could.
September 11 was different. There was just so much information. And, having watched the second tower get hit, I felt connected to the entire event. It was a moment in history like no other. A moment where an entire country experienced an immediate paradigm shift. The idea of an invincible America crumbled under the weight of those two towers, and we mourned as a country, unable to comprehend how someone would commit such an atrocity.
In both of those cases, I felt information was helping me, though others would disagree. I felt it was giving me data. It was letting me see the spirit of humanity fight back against something so wrong. It was, in all honesty, giving me something to do in that helpless moment. But with the school shooting...information wouldn't help...there wasn't this collective feeling of strength pouring from the country...instead it was a feeling of weakness and vulnerability. It wasn't giving me any data to process, other than the knowledge that family dinner tables would forever be set with one vacant spot.
I cannot claim to come close to internalizing the terror or sorrow of anyone who experienced those events firsthand, but I know my limits. I view my capacity to empathize as one of my greatest strengths, but I am forever cognizant of the fact that it can be my Achilles heel, and I must apply that to my daily life.
As I said, I'm in school every day. A place where the majority of people are scared, or confused, or lost, or all three on any given day. I know they need someone, and I believe with my entire heart that God placed me there for that exact reason - to be a listening ear, a shoulder to cry on. But over the years, I've also had to learn that I can only do so much and, though I wish I did, I have no magical powers.
So I listen. I internalize. I try to do what I can to help, but I'm learning to step back, just a little...just enough so there's room for me and my husband and the two children I gave birth to. I'm not always successful at distancing myself from the emotions of others, but I'm attempting to be alert to my tendencies and protect myself just a little bit. Above all else, I know I must continue to work on placing my own troubles on God's shoulders because He can carry the burdens and the pain I cannot. He will carry my fears, and I must learn to rest in that. And that's where I must find strength in dealing with all the other turmoil that swirls and blows around me. It's not mine to solve or fix, but instead I pray to allow God to use me as a tool where he sees fit, trusting that he will carry me when it all gets to be a bit too much.
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