Perspective

Like so many, I have been thinking a lot about what a crazy week this has been on the news. What a lot of tragedy in so short a time. On Tuesday we had a text study with local clergy (a sermon prep opportunity), and Boston was on our minds (this was before everything else happened!). Several people pointed out that while this is sad and terrible and not to be minimized, in our own grief we may lose sight of the fact that for people in other parts of the world, this sort of daily tragedy - and much worse - is the norm, not the exception. As one friend put it, for a little girl in Palestine, every day could be a bomb-riddled marathon. My hope is that such tragedy so close to home causes us not to gaze more deeply into our own belly buttons, but rather that it helps us remember and pray for those who do deal with this sort of thing daily.

But whether or not that happens, the fact is: while their story is important, so is mine. It is important to me because it is my story. A bombing at a beloved sporting event does make me realize my own fragility and vulnerability. It makes me sad for those directly affected, and it makes me appreciate my many blessings.

I have thought about this especially in relation to my own personal trauma (which now seems so much less bad). In a lot of ways, my situation sucks, plain and simple. It's not fair. It's maddening, it's sad, it's frustrating, it's discouraging. But I find myself thinking: at the end of the day, it's not so bad. I don't have stage IV aggressive breast cancer, and what I do have will be gone soon and my life will be spared and I will go on, breast cancer free. I hear about other people deciding whether or not to go off treatments because their quality of life is so bad that life isn't worth living like this.... while I'm trying to decide which form of breast reconstruction I will have my good health insurance cover. There are people who have been on disability for years trying to fight this dreadful disease, and with a family at home to care for... while I am stressing about taking six weeks off from work to recover from surgery, while my dear husband-to-be and loving parents drop everything to dote on me, and two congregations and wonderful colleagues and friends surround me with love and casseroles. Woe is me, huh?!

But just as it is tempting but not altogether appropriate to minimize what has happened in this country in this past week simply because someone else has it worse, it is also not appropriate to minimize my own story. Because it, too, is important, and it is my story. It is a struggle for me, in its own ways. It is a struggle for my loved ones. It makes me cry. It makes them cry. It makes me hurt. It makes them hurt. And so it is an important story, that elicits important feelings, and no less so than anyone else.

I remember in CPE (clinical pastoral education - a.k.a. chaplaincy internship), one thing we learned was not to give a tissue to someone who is crying. As soon as you hand over the Kleenex, you are saying, "Wipe up those tears. No need to cry." No, there IS a need to cry! Feel what you need to feel! There is no illegitimate feeling. Cry about nothing if you have to. But get out whatever emotion needs to get out. So if I want to cry over an unsightly scar, I will, even as someone else cries over a decision to go off treatment. And if I want to cry over losing my breasts before I've had a chance to breast-feed my children, while someone else cries that an IV kind of hurts, then great. All of those tears are exactly where and how they should be.

(As a side note, the song I'm listening to just had the lyric, "Do you realize that happiness makes you cry?" Yes, I do! I cry then, too!)