Author: Tess Enterline
Be Kind to, Give Grace to, Celebrate … Ourselves
Dear Friends — What you’re going to read is not the post I had originally planned for today. That topic will slide for a couple of weeks.
The reason is simple: There’s a different message I feel moved to share with all of you, one that I had first presented, a month ago, to an online writing community I’m a part of.
Although initially written for writers (and I know there are some writers among my newsletter readers as well), the message at the heart of my piece is one that I think will resonate with anyone, in any vocation:
- Let us be kind to ourselves in our lives and in our work.
- Let us give ourselves the same grace we extend to others.
- Let us celebrate our doggedness.
Be well my friends.
“Everybody I know who wades deep enough into memory’s waters drowns a little.” – Mary Karr, The Art of Memoir
I remember sitting at the desk in my hotel room in Philadelphia one Saturday afternoon a few years ago, putting some time into working on my memoir but making zero progress. I was trying to write a particular scene from one of my shifts as a hospital chaplain. The scene required my giving some description of the injuries suffered by a two-year-old girl from a beating at the hands of her mother’s boyfriend. I had been the chaplain on-call at the hospital the night the little girl was life-flighted to the hospital.
Each thought of what I had to describe sickened me; there weren’t many parts of the little girl’s body that had been spared the red, blue, and black marks of bruising.
After twenty minutes spent agonizing over the scene—unable to put myself back in that time and place, let alone find the right words—I got up and walked away from the desk. I couldn’t write the scene, I decided. Not then. Seven years had passed, and I still wasn’t ready to write the scene.
I castigated myself. What do you mean you’re not ready? It’s been seven years! How will you ever get this book written if you can’t write about the really tough stuff? “Time,” I told myself. “I just need more time.”
How easy it is to beat ourselves up as soon as we realize we’re not ready to write about a difficult event in our lives. Because we’re writers, right? That’s what we do. I may slobber on every page and have a breakdown in the process, but doggone it, I have to keep writing!
No. No you don’t.
That afternoon was a turning point for me. Not that all of a sudden I let up on myself and was copacetic with every occasion when I found it hard to write a difficult scene. But giving myself permission to step away from it became less and less of an internal struggle.
Listen to Yourself
What I’ve come to learn is this: Part of our obligation to ourselves when we write memoir, especially the kind that involves trauma, is to sometimes get up and walk away from it, at least for a little while. Sometimes we just need greater separation in time from what had happened to us. In the instance above, I was already seven years out; my mind and body were telling me that I still wasn’t quite ready.
The timing of when to open a wound is completely and always up to the writer. You get to say when you will write about the really tough stuff. You are the only arbiter. And choosing the right time is key if you’re going to stay emotionally healthy as you write and, ultimately, finish writing your book. Deciding when to step away is a personal decision; we have to look within and answer honestly.
In The Art of Memoir, Mary Karr poses the most important question that has to be addressed: “Can you be in that place without falling apart?” (p. 32) She then provides the following vivid description of someone who’s probably not ready to write:
“If you’re sobbing with shoulders shaking and big tusks of snot coming out of your face, the answer may be no. Call a pal, book a massage, go for a walk. You’re not ready to occupy this space for years on end. Yet.”
What I love most about this quote from Mary Karr (okay … besides “big tusks of snot”) is the final word: “Yet.”
I love that she gives writers this gift of hope. I’m sure it’s knowledge hewn from writing about her own life and traumatic experiences in the best-selling memoirs: The Liar’s Club, Cherry, and Lit. Doesn’t this one word—Yet—feel like encouragement you can rest your own doubt and fear on?
Be gentle with yourself
The scene I was trying to write while in the hotel room in Philadelphia—it occupied my mind for a piece of most every day for seven years, since April 7th, 2008. I was haunted by the sights and sounds from the beating of that little girl, at least the way I imagined it based on police reports and what I saw of her with my own eyes.
Many of you, my fellow writers, likewise have memories and images that can throw you into an emotional pit and bring your writing to a halt. And I’d like to encourage you, friends, when that happens, to be kind to yourself, have compassion for yourself, and give yourself permission to get up and walk away from it for as long as you need. This is not a sign of weakness. It takes emotional strength to acknowledge—not deny—what your heart and mind are telling you. It takes courage to honor that. You don’t have to languish in details that cannot—yet—be written.
Take the Time You Need to tell the Story Only You Can Tell
There’s much to be gained by coming back to a difficult passage in your story on another day. The story will wait for you; it’s going nowhere. Your story wants to be told … and only you can tell it!
You most likely won’t get up one day and feel that the entire weight of the traumatic event has been lifted. It may be a slow journey back to it. However, there will come a day when you decide to give it another try (already a victory!). Through some tears, perhaps, you’ll draft a few sentences … maybe even a paragraph. That may be enough for that day.
Each day forward … or every other day … or whenever you find you can … you will go back to your desk or to your favorite table at the coffee shop and you’ll write some more. You will slowly keep advancing the needle in your own healing. You will have arrived on the other side of Mary Karr’s “yet.”
I hope you will celebrate yourself!
And that scene — I now have it written.
(Photo by Alex Iby on Unsplash)
Thank you for reading my blog! Please feel free to share it with family and friends.
Tess
“Float Plan”
“That’s a great book,” said the male voice a few feet behind me. He had apparently noticed me taking the book off the top shelf, which was at eye level for me.
I turned around and saw the title “Manager” on the Barnes & Noble ID tag pinned to his polo shirt.
It was an overcast Friday afternoon, October 5, 2018, and my husband, Rick, and I had decided to take a day trip to the Inner Harbor in Baltimore, Maryland. Whenever we can, we try to include a visit to the large Barnes & Noble store, located near the National Aquarium. We hadn’t been there but five minutes when the book in my hands, Float Plan, was praised so highly.
“Do you know who that is?” the manager asked, referring to the author, Rob Hiaasen.
“Yes, I do,” I said, “What a horrible tragedy that was.”
I knew that Rob Hiaasen and four of his co-workers at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland, had been the victims of a mass shooting in the paper’s newsroom, on June 28, 2018. Hiassen had been the assistant editor.
The Barnes & Noble store manager, a friendly and gentle-voiced man in his fifties, was, by then, standing alongside me. He nodded as I acknowledged Rob Hiaasen and what had happened.
“Everyone here was very affected by it,” he said, “especially since Rob Hiaasen’s daughter works here at the store.”
It took a second for his statement to register
“HERE?” I said. My voice rose a couple of pitches and my eyes widened to the size of walnuts as I spoke. The reply that followed stunned me even more.
“Yes,” he said. “In fact, here she comes now.”
I looked to my left and saw a tall, lovely young woman, I guessed in her twenties, walking toward us. I imagine it was the sight of her manager that brought her our way. Did she have a question for him?
She was quickly standing in front of us, next to her boss. The mother in me wanted to give her a tight hug, but I held back. I was a complete stranger, holding a copy of her deceased father’s book in my hands. I didn’t want my hug to be perceived as pity. We expressed our sympathies, and I said that I was so happy to have come across her dad’s book.
Samantha Hiaasen (she goes by “Sam,” I later learned) didn’t owe us even one moment of courtesy—not after what she and her family had been through, not with grief they were still enduring. But she was gracious, sweet, and cheerful.
There we were, just over three months since the horrific mass shooting of her dad and his coworkers, days and days of coverage and publicity afterwards, and here was this young woman, with the strength and the courage to be at work, and the heart to be nice to strangers. I couldn’t help thinking—again it was the parent in me and some familiarity with the feeling: Rob Hiaasen would be very proud of the daughter he’d helped raise.
Rick and I excused ourselves and headed off on our individual strolls through the bookstore (he’s magazines, airplanes, and the Civil War; I’m creative nonfiction and the Starbucks café). Sam continued speaking with her boss, and I was soon riding the escalator to the second floor.
I had to force myself to pay attention to where I was going so that I wouldn’t trip at the top of the escalator. My mind was still on what had just happened on the first floor.
But … what had just happened?
Some would call it a coincidental meeting. And they might be right. My husband’s reaction was, “That was pretty wild,” and he moved on. There was no wrestling with it, no trying to find the deeper meaning. I’m sometimes jealous of his and others’ ability to move past such things quickly—not in a cold or insensitive way—but with an attitude of “that happened and now it’s over.”
Being the “there are no coincidences” type of person that I am, however, I’m always looking for the meaning behind these “chance” encounters (see https://tessenterline.com/its-a-mystery/). There’s a transcendent quality to what I feel on occasions such as meeting Sam … occasions that feel more “sacred mystery” than coincidence to me.
Afterwards, I want to linger in what fills me—feelings I can’t quite describe but are too powerful and meaningful to me to, such as on that day, simply slide into the next row of books. Such encounters aren’t upsetting. I guess I’d describe what I feel as a kind of bewildered joy
I’m not trying to sound woo-woo about all this or make too much of that afternoon in Barnes & Noble. It just feels right to me to rest in and acknowledge the times in our lives that intertwine with others in a special way.
But here’s where it goes beyond that.
Another reason why meeting someone like Sam is special is because she has suffered through what has increasingly become, for many of us, one of our worst fears … something we want to believe won’t ever happen to us.
Sam reminds me of my vulnerability, of my humanness, of the ties that bind us all. That in a split second I could be up against the same grief that Sam and so many others have had to face as a result of the violence and hate that are now so common. Seems a rare day when we don’t read or hear about a tragedy somewhere in the world.
However … it provides an opportunity.
And a place from which to grow.
And a reason for which to reach out.
And ways to show our love.
There are so many people out there (in our families, neighborhoods, churches, offices, book clubs, etc.) who are hurting. So many of us are hurting.
We can’t be there for everyone. But maybe we can each pick one extra person to call, visit, write to, or pray for in the coming week, and in the weeks thereafter. Maybe someone (reading this newsletter right now or not) will get in touch with youand say, “Hey, I know it’s a hard time for you right now. Just wanted to check-in and see how you’re doing.” Or, “Wanted to let you know that I’m praying for you.”
Personally, I’m not always eager to get on the phone. Just a quirk of mine. But I love sitting across from a friend in a café and listening. And I love writing notes to people. (see https://tessenterline.com/the-love-note-project/)
So here’s my plan: In this next week I’m going to write a note to Samantha Hiaasen. Get it to her somehow. Not that she’ll remember me … doesn’t matter. I just want to let her know that I’ve been thinking about her … that I’ve been praying for her and her family. That I’ve read her dad’s book … and it’s great!
(Note: Rob Hiaasen’s book Float Plan was published posthumously by Apprentice House Press, which is associated with the Communication Department at Loyola University Maryland. At the request of Maria Hiaasen, Rob’s wife, a contribution was made by AHP to the Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund. To learn more, go to www.everytown.org.)
(Photo by Paulo Resende on Unsplash)
God Never Calls U-Haul
God bless my poor neighbor Linda. She had picked the wrong time to do yard work.
It was earlier this year, about four in the afternoon on May 14th. I had just locked up our old house for the final time, taking with me the last couple of boxes of odds and ends accumulated during our thirty-two years of living there. Rick and I had already moved into our new house.
I walked just outside the garage and pressed the four-digit code into the keypad to lower the door. The creaking sound of the garage door panels sliding over the rails and slowly inching down toward the foundation only served to rub my heart in it … “it” being the fact that this house—our home for thirty-two years—was no longer ours.
The door hit the concrete with a thud. So much noisy rattling for ten seconds and in the very next instant, silence.
It was like the sting that comes after a after a slap.
I tried to hold back the tears, which was totally in keeping with my habit of wearing the face that says, “I’m fine.” But the garage door closing and the sudden quiet released the catch on my emotions. My tears broke free. My breaths shortened, and I started sucking air in shorter bursts, muscles contracting from deep within my diaphragm.
My car was parked along the curb and I aimed myself in its direction. As I walked, I forced myself to keep looking straight ahead and not turn around for another look. The last thing I needed was to give my mind another opportunity to remember. Thirty-two years gives you lots to remember. I just kept moving forward down the driveway.
That’s when I spotted Linda across the street in her front yard.
She was wearing gardening gloves, and a baseball cap to help protect her from an unusually hot mid-May day. She saw me, too, and we waved to one another.
It crossed my mind to keep walking to my car, accompanied by my tears and heaving breaths. I could have slipped into the driver’s seat and slinked away. But I couldn’t. I wouldn’t just allow myself to wave and make that my goodbye to such a good woman. So, I crossed the street, went up to Linda, and gave her the biggest, longest, and teariest—maybe even the only—hug I had given her in the thirty-plus years we had been neighbors. I couldn’t even talk, I was crying so much.
We had watched as each other’s kids grow up. As some families moved elsewhere, Linda and her husband and family, and Rick, me, and our family—along with other original homeowners on our street—remained. We were the Deer Path Woods old timers. Except now, we were leaving as well, to become the “new neighbors” somewhere else. And a new, young family would be moving in the next day and raising their family there just like we did.
And I was okay with that. Really, I was. Still, I couldn’t help but feel sad and wistful about bringing those chapters of our lives to a close.
Three months have passed …
… and although the move brought some changes to our lives—some big (a new church, a new bank, some new doctors) and some small (a new dry cleaner and ice cream stand)—I can honestly say that I’ve been very much at peace with it. So much so, in fact, that I’ve asked myself, “How is that? How could I live in one place for thirty-two years, move, and almost immediately feel comfortable in my new surroundings?”
I soon understood—no, felt—the reason why.
The reason goes beyond the fact that Rick and I feel very comfortable in our new home. There’s more to it than, once again, being blessed with wonderful neighbors. And, even though I’m thrilled for our dogs that there are many furry friends for them here in our new community, that doesn’t explain my contentment either.
As with most things that speak to our inner selves, the explanation goes deeper than anything I can lay my eyes or hands on. And yet, I feel it as strongly as having arms wrapped around me in a tight, loving embrace. Once the following thought came to me, I felt the sweet peace of surrendering to it:
We had moved, but God was where He’s always been, which is … right by my side.
The thought of these words, even now as I type and repeat them to myself, are such a comfort.
In no way do I want to dismiss the sadness that moving away from family, friends, and familiar surroundings can bring. Those feelings are powerful and only ease with time. In God, though, we have someone who will navigate it all with us; we need only to keep our hearts open to Him.
This same way of thinking can be applied to so many aspects of our lives where there is change:
- Has a family member or friend recently been admitted to the hospital … or passed away … thereby changing who is present in your life?
- Has a relationship in your life become strained or recently ended?
- Have you changed jobs?
- Are you sending a child off to college for the first time, thereby changing life as you’ve known it for the past eighteen years? (Been there, done that!)
Or something as seemingly innocuous as:
- Has your normal route to work been closed due to construction, thereby changing and lengthening your commute?
Through any change—large or small—remember: God never calls U-Haul. God does not move or change. He is, rather, the steadiest, most loving presence in our lives. God is wherever you are.
(Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash)
Writing is my breath
It was such an incidental, fleeting moment … one that didn’t warrant special notice. And yet, I noticed.
On the evening of May 30, 2017, my daughter, Nikky, and I attended one of the last performances by Sara Bareilles in the lead role of the musical, “Waitress,” on Broadway. Right before the curtain went up, the actors could be seen taking their places behind the somewhat sheer curtain, with an apron-wearing Bareilles front and center. The image of what I saw after she stood on her mark—in those last few seconds before the curtain would rise—captivated me. Bareilles breathed in deeply, held it for a moment … then let it go. The breath was done; she was ready. The breath was part of her preparation.
Writing is my breath. It is my sustenance … it prepares me to take on the rest of life. To inhale is to contemplate; to exhale is to relax the shoulders, put pen to paper or fingers on the keyboard, and let go of the thoughts that burden my soul or the emotions that light up my heart. Put simply, writing clears my head and makes me feel ready for whatever comes next.
Writing puts me in “the zone.” When I’m writing—often at Starbucks, always with instrumental music flowing through AirPods—I can tune out most anything or anyone around me, except for the occasional loud talker. I’m not a fast writer; in fact, sometimes I’m painfully slow.
The joy—I’d go as far as to say the exhilaration—for me (and I’m sure many other writers) comes from the crafting of each sentence. Choosing words, playing with the rhythm and structure of sentences, creating interesting (but hopefully never pretentious) phrasing. There are times when I can sit for hours and never tire of the craft of writing. There are days when I might produce only a few good sentences. Other days I may leave Starbucks feeling wholly disappointed and discouraged. But I live to write another day.
As you can tell, I’m passionate about writing, which doesn’t mean that I’m always very disciplined about it. Although I often tell myself that I should be more disciplined and have a schedule of what writing project I’m going to work on and when, I’ve yet to accomplish that. I’m pretty easily distracted and am as guilty as the next person when it comes to checking social media when I should be solely-focused on getting the writing done. I’ve started using the Freedom app on my laptop during writing sessions; it enables me to block the websites and other apps that usually tempt me when I’m online. You know the ones: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Amazon. I know many of us go down the same rabbit holes.
I get a notice on my iPhone each week telling me how much time I’ve spent using it over the previous seven days; this includes both calls and social media. I haven’t done an analysis, but I’m sure social media outnumbers my calls 3 or 4 to one.
When I received the notice for the first time, my jaw dropped. It had to be a mistake. There was no way I had spent 4 hours and 38 minutes on my phone in a week! Subsequent weeks, each with over four hours of usage, proved me wrong and my annoying phone right. I wish I could say that most of the 4+ hours I’m on my iPhone each week is spent on Google doing research, and the Merriam-Webster Dictionary & Thesaurus app. That would be a lie.
I’m not into following what the Kardashians are up to on the West coast, or if Justin and Hailey were spotted somewhere on the East Coast. But I am kind of sweet on following the news (despite how emotion-provoking it can be these days), and I like keeping up with family and friends on Facebook. And, being the stationery nerd that I am, there are always new pens and notebooks to check out. But my goodness … for 4 or 5 hours a week?!!!
Now, I realize that that amount of time may be a drop in the bucket when compared with the number of hours that high school and college students—and yes, plenty of adults—rack up on their phones. But here’s the thought that drives me just a little nuts when I consider my cell phone usage: In the amount of time I’ve stared at my iPhone over the past few years, I could have written the first draft of a decent length book, or at least gotten much further on the one I’m already writing. I won’t get that time back. All I can do moving forward is pick up my phone less and my pen more. And for a stationery nerd like me, that’s a challenge I willingly accept.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about why I feel so passionate about writing. Why has it become so important to me, especially over the past seven years as I’ve been fleshing out my memoir? Why has writing become my breath?
The answer comes down to one word: Stories.
Now, more than ever, we need to tell our stories. We need to find the common threads of our humanity. We need to share our stories in order to provide comfort to others and find it for ourselves. We need to tell our stories as a way of saying, “I understand” and “I’m with you.”
Each story I write breathes new life into my way of being in the world. It helps me to reflect on how I’ve made my way so far, perhaps what should change or stay the same going forward. Writing helps me get a better grasp on the “why” of things in life.
Writing stories is also what breathes life into my connection with each of you. I pray that you hear me saying, “I understand,” and “I’m with you.”
What is your breath?
What’s the thing that feeds you and keeps grounded? What prepares you to take on the rest of life? If you’d like to reply and share what that is, I’d love to hear from you.
(Photo Credit: by Unblock on Unsplash)
Thank you for reading my newsletter! Please feel free to share it with family and friends.
Tess
Dogs: A Love Story
March is a bad month for Enterline dogs.
Cases in point:
- March 5, 2010 — Passing of our twelve-and-a half-year-old black Labrador, Abbey.
- March 20, 2017 — Passing of our thirteen-year-old Schnauzer-Poodle, Charlie.
If dogs could read calendars, I’d understand if the hair on our dogs’ backs went up whenever we flipped the calendar from February to March. It probably explains why my pet emotions run high in March, and explains my need to write about them before the end of the month.
There are dogs owners who love their dogs, and then there are dog owners, like my family and me, who LOVE their dogs. Actually, most of the dog owners I know fall into the latter category. And there are lots of us out there.
125,000 of us have followed Pumpkin the dachshund on Instagram, and grieved along with his owner, a lovely young lady in California, when five-year-old Pumpy died from lymphoma earlier this year. Hundreds of messages of sympathy were posted. Likewise, we all recently rejoiced when Pumpy’s momma introduced us to Parker, an equally adorable, longer-haired “hot dog” puppy. (See “pumpkinandparker” on Instagram.)
There’s a two-minute video titled, “So God Made a Dog.” Over a hundred-thousand shares. (click here to view) Be prepared for a smile, a lump in your throat, and for your heart to swell.
Most of us have a favorite dog—or cat, ferret, rabbit, horse, fish, or parrot—story. Our pets get to us. Besides dogs, my family has had a cat, fish, and dwarf hamster. We’ve loved them all (not sure about my husband and the cat), but probably not all in the same way … a deep, deep down way … that we’ve loved our dogs. Dogs are just different. They return our love with such enthusiasm; they love us enthusiastically and unconditionally when we don’t even deserve it.
Which likely explains the tremendous grief we feel when they die. But more on that later. First, a little Enterline canine history … or a tribute of sorts to dogs gone by and to those currently offering us their unconditional love.
I should first explain that, prior to having dogs, and even upon first bringing them home, our two kids were terrified of them. I’m talking “run down the block away from them, hollering the whole time” afraid. (It was a fear that Matt and Nicole probably inherited from me. I can still remember the time, as a single-digit-year-old, I scaled a neighbor’s backyard fence into the arms of my Aunt Nora to get away from another neighbor’s charging, but I think otherwise friendly, German Shepherd.) Rick and I decided the best way to help our kids get over their fear was to actually get a dog. Exposure therapy of sorts, I guess you could say.
Abbey, a black Labrador, was our first family pet. We brought her home in August 1997, from a litter hatched on a farm located about forty-five minutes away from our suburban home in Harrisburg. She was an adorable five-week-old, five pound runt of the litter. The only one in her litter with a white patch on her chest; otherwise she was a fluffy jet black.
Nicole and Matt, ages six and four at the time, started crying a chorus of “No, no no!!!” when I proposed sitting between them with the puppy on the back seat of our Ford Taurus station wagon for the ride home. I considered the “tough love” approach (“Okay guys … get over it!”). Instead, I heeded their protest and rode home on the front passenger seat, with my husband driving, and our five-pound fur ball in a small cardboard box on my lap. She looked ferocious … when she wasn’t sleeping or licking me.
On a hot and sticky Saturday night a few days after Abbey’s homecoming, we heard reports of Princess Diana’s death in a car crash in a tunnel in Paris. I had taken up the task that evening of walking our new puppy up and down the block, trying to teach her to, “go potty.” Even when she did the deed and I made a fuss over her success, it was hard to find happiness in a dog, when the whole world was starting to mourn such a shocking loss.
But we did find happiness in Abbey for twelve and a half years, minus all the times when barking made her happy. Much to our ears’ dismay, Abbey found great joy in barking … at doorbells ringing, of course, and anything she saw from her vantage point at the front window: people, dogs, people walking dogs, cats, dogs chasing cats, deer, rabbits, leaves, and the errant plastic bag or food wrapper that flew by.
Abbey didn’t miss much, which is a good quality in a watch dog. But I suspect our version of one would have been more likely to roll over for a belly rub from an intruder than she would have been to scare them off Cujo-style, with jowls drawn back, frothy beads of saliva spewing, and fangs protruding. Fortunately, we never had to find out.
Abbey had a dislike for professional football, especially the Philadelphia Eagles. The Eagles weren’t very good at the time (recent success aside, I guess they weren’t very good for a long time), and Abbey fed off my husband’s high stress level whenever the team played. I’m not sure who irritated me more—Abbey for barking, Rick for yelling at her to stop barking, or the Eagles for playing lousy. I usually just left the room.
Despite the strength of her lungs and disdain for the NFL, we dearly loved that dog, including the kids. Abbey had long since dispelled their fears. By the time she passed in March 2010, Nicole was in college and Matt was a high school senior. This sweet creature who, at first, had so cowed them, had helped coax and comfort them through their teen years. The phrase “good and faithful servant” comes to mind. Abbey obviously wasn’t our servant. She was our companion, and in that role she served ever so faithfully.
Next up was Enzo, a black Lab mix, who I named after the main dog character in Garth Stein’s bestseller, The Art of Racing in the Rain.
Enzo was a rebound relationship. It was too quiet in the house after Abbey died. I lasted two months and then decided that we (okay, I) needed another dog. Why was that? What, exactly, was gone, that I needed again so desperately?
It was a presence. Dogs have a presence that our senses get used to and our hearts miss when it’s gone. We see them running after balls and sticks; we hear them barking; we rub their bellies and scratch behind their ears; we feel them snuggle up against us; they lick us; we smell their foul breath when they get too close. Dogs satisfy that part of us that needs to love and be loved; to forgive and be forgiven; to protect and be protected; and to laugh and play.
When I brought Enzo home from the shelter, we had that presence in the house once again. But it took a while to appreciate Enzo’s unique presence.
Enzo, a black Labrador mix, had had a rough start in life, just like all shelter dogs. He was about seven-months-old when the Harrisburg police picked him up while he was roaming the downtown streets and took him to the Humane Society. He spent his next five months there. The day I spotted him in May 2010, he was obviously underweight; his ribs were protruding. He would pace slowly and nervously in his pen, with his head lowered, and then, all of a sudden, he’d start running in a tight circle. After a while, I couldn’t take it anymore.
“I’ll take this one,” I said while pointing toward the spinning dog.
“Are you sure?” replied Lucy, one of the shelter employees.
I wasn’t. But I was sure the dog in front of me needed love and a home, and I had both to give.
The first twenty-four hours of Enzo’s new life in our home made it clear that he was a socially backward bundle of nerves and was still traumatized by his prior life on the streets.
He didn’t bark until day two, when he saw his reflection on the glass of the china cabinet door. He ran away from the sound of the garage door and was terrified at the sight and sound of the mailbox being opened. Enzo had no clue what steps were all about, so for the first few weeks he did a combination slide-tumble down steps and an awkward crawl back up them. And to this day, he recoils whenever we’re on a walk and a truck goes by, the memory of dodging vehicles on the city streets still fresh.
There were times after we brought Enzo home when loving him wasn’t easy. Once he learned how to navigate steps, he decided that it would be fun to nip at my feet whenever I climbed steps in front of him. I started carrying a spray bottle to fend him off.
Enzo made the backyard look like part of a golf course that had been attacked by weekend hackers. His idea of backyard fun (besides chewing it up) was to run across the yard full bore and take a flying leap at me. During one unprepared moment when I had my back to him, his flying leap up onto our back deck knocked me flat on my face and gifted me with bruised ribs to nurse for a few weeks.
For all of his early antics, Enzo has been an awesome dog, very sweet and loving. He went from being our furry Baby Huey to a gentle big brother.
Yes, I eventually decided that Enzo needed a pal.
When I first met Charlie, he, too, was behind bars at the Harrisburg Area Humane Society. He was cowering in the back, right-hand corner of his crate. His eyes were dark, moist, and pierced with fright. His black and silver fur was matted in enough places to conceal the curls we would later discover after his being groomed. (His loving groomer, Andrea, decided that Charlie was a schnoodle, a combination of schnauzer and poodle.)
There was nothing about him that said “special,” except for that look of what he could be with enough love and attention. But how would I ever explain choosing this gnarly-looking dog to the rest of the family. The explanation turned out to be that which explains every great love story: It was devotion and a bond and formed at first sight. Matted hair, rat tail, and bowed legs be damned … this little guy was going to be mine!
The shelter staff had named him Charlie, a name we decided to keep. But, to me, he was also my “Little Man,” a name I often called him. In her memoir,Let’s Take the Long Way Home, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Gail Caldwell describes her feelings the day she brought home her Samoyed puppy, Clementine. Wrote Caldwell: “I had had animals all my life, but never had my heart been seized with such unequivocal love.” That’s what I had found in Charlie
Charlie tolerated other people and dogs. He kind of adored me, though, and the feeling was mutual. There was just something about that dog. It was as if God had taken one of my ribs and created a furry little version of me. I saw some of my soul in him. Charlie’s groomer saw it too. Each time I took Charlie in for a haircut, she would say, “There’s something special between you two.” For some reason I would always reply with, “Really? You think so?” But I knew she was right.
For such a small thing (about 20 pounds), Charlie knew how to stand up for himself. He would growl and snap at ninety-five-pound Enzo whenever the big lug came within a foot of his bowl. Enzo was such a sweet-natured thing … he always backed off.
My Little Man wasn’t able to run very well … hardly ever did. Except when I came through the door. Then he couldn’t get from point A (wherever he was) to point B (me) fast enough. Outside, I never had to use a leash with him. From day one I could always trust that he wasn’t going anywhere. We both just knew—we were a team.
Why all the gushing about my relationship with Charlie? I use it as an example of the bond some of us have with our dogs. I know that I’m far from alone in this. For many of us, there’s “the one” who steals our heart and never lets go.
Until we have to let them go.
We never knew Charlie’s exact age. He looked old when I brought him home. Add the five years he had with us, and who knows … maybe he was around twelve or thirteen. Maybe even fourteen.
I was out of town the day he started having seizures. He died in my arms on our way to the vet the day after I arrived home. As Rick drove and I cradled Charlie, pressing him to my chest, I could feel his heartbeat get slower and slower and then stop. I drew him in tighter, breathed in … inhaled him … kissed the curls on top of his head. I said nothing to Rick. For those few seconds, I just wanted it to be Charlie and me, one last time. Finally, I choked out, “He’s gone.” And it was clear, though I already knew, that Rick dearly loved him too.
A few weeks later, I was back at the Harrisburg Area Humane Society with a friend who had also just lost a dog. “I’m only going, Denise, to help you find a dog!” We both knew that was BS, that I wouldn’t be able to resist adopting another if just the right one gave me “the look” and my heart latched on.
We walked up and down well-kept rows of one pen after another. Some dogs barked, some paced, others slept. There were signs saying, “Please Don’t Pet The Dogs!” But we did, at least the friendlier-looking ones … the little bit we could by reaching in a couple of inches (a common transgression, I’m sure, among shelter visitors).
Denise eyed a brindle Cane Corso (we’re talking BIG dog!). I felt some relief at not having found one. It was probably too soon anyway.
Then I came upon the very last pen, and a bright-eyed, short-legged, long-bodied, scruffy-looking thing. He was a four-year-old dachshund/Jack Russell terrier mix. He had “the look.” Even more, he had “the name.”
Given to him by the staff and typed on a sheet hanging in a page protector on the pen … his name—Little Man.
It was as if I had him back … in a different body … in a different color.
A few days later, Rick and I brought Little Man home. We renamed him Toby … because, well … he’s his own little man. He settled right in. Felt like Toby had already lived with us for years. In many ways, Toby picked up right where Charlie left off. The baton had been passed.
The week before Christmas 2017, I brought home a little sister for Enzo and Toby. A thirteen-year-old Chihuahua mix named Contessa. Blind in one eye, almost deaf (you could slam a door shut and most times she wouldn’t even lift her sweet little head off her bed), massive hernia hanging from her belly. Oh, and she wears diapers. Contessa rules the roost and doesn’t put up with any of the boys’ sh … enanigans. She’s been the perfect addition to our merry little band of misfit dogs.
It’s hard to describe the love that fills me whenever I’m surrounded by my dogs. But other dog lovers—probably animal lovers of any kind—you know what I’m talking about. Is it a kind of love that’s different than human love? Yes, of course. But in a truly lovely way.
Perhaps our love for our dogs—our pets—is more pure. It can’t be based on anything they say, or do, or give to us. And let’s face it, we could say the absolute worst things to our dogs, and they would still come charging at us with tails wagging the next time we come through the door, and lick us from head to toe if we let them.
My love for my dogs is based on no conditions at all. Except maybe one—we need each other.
Christmas 2017 with Toby, Contessa, and Enzo
Thinking about adopting a dog? Consider adopting a senior. You won’t find a dog more grateful to have a happy, loving home.
(Top Photo Credit: Jennifer Regnier on Unsplash)
When anger and God collide
It humbled me to be angry at God.
I used to be one of those people who thought she could never be angry at God. When others told me they felt that way, including bereaved parents I had supported through their grief (who may have had more right than anyone else to question God’s faithfulness), I always had a ready answer.
A parent would say, “I’m so angry at God for letting my son die. How could He let that happen?”
And I would reply, “It’s okay to be angry at God. He can take it.” I didn’t say it in a dismissive way, because … my God, I can’t even imagine the pain. Yet, I still wondered how anyone could possibly, ever, for any reason, blame God or be angry with Him. “He is the one,” I’d say to myself, “who loves you more than any other will ever love you.” I guess it all made me feel a bit superior in the “who loves God more” category.
Then, I experienced my own devastation, and a conversion … to someone who questioned why God allows certain things to unfold the way they do. And yes, to someone who was angry with God.
It made me understand the anger of those over whom I had felt so superior. I no longer felt special in the “who loves God more” category (as if I had any right to feel it in the first place).
Simply feeling anger toward God shook me. I had become the one I thought I’d never be. My adult life to that point had been one of, perhaps not always unquestioning faith, but always unquestioning contentment with God. To be angry at Him felt like my own deception. But for a while, it felt justified. Why? Because God had called me to the Promised Land, and then He disappeared. At least that’s how I started to feel during the late summer of 2008, after I realized that my days as a hospital chaplain were probably over.
So many of us spend years searching for that one true, meaningful purpose in life. You know the euphoria you feel when you think you’ve found it? That’s how I felt about hospital chaplaincy. When I walked into Hershey Medical Center on September 25, 2006 to begin training as a chaplain, I was convinced that God had finally delivered me to the doorstep of the fulfillment and purpose that I had craved for so long. The start to my journey there was serendipitous.
During a phone call with my friend Cecilia in early 2006, she mentioned that she was considering a training program in hospital chaplaincy—Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE)—at Hershey Med. I was intrigued, so learned what I could about the program online. Clinical Pastoral Education combined pedagogy, discussion, reflection, clinical time in patient units, and overnight on-call shifts. It sounded rewarding and exciting. And it seemed to have my name written all over it.
I ended up applying to the program; Cecilia did not. If not for the phone call with my friend, would I still have been a chaplain? Possibly not. But it’s also possible that things unfolded exactly the way God had planned. Maybe that phone call with Ceil happened right when God thought I was ready for chaplaincy, at age forty-seven.
It all made perfect sense. Everything I had been doing over the years—nurturing, caring, comforting—seemed like the ideal precursor to hospital chaplaincy. I felt like God had been grooming me for this all along. It was a relief to have finally found my true calling. I was to be a Hospital Chaplain.
And, oh the joy and contentment I felt in the role at times. There were moments I hold as close to my heart now as then: Sitting with an aged patient as he recalled a trip to India with his wife, and their meeting Mother Teresa (now Saint Teresa of Calcutta); being in the emergency room with an Amish family and seeing their relief when they were told that their daughter—run over by a truck on their farm earlier in the day—would survive; glancing out a window and seeing the sun rise over the mountains while paying an early morning visit to a double amputee; and the somber privilege of praying the Twenty-third Psalm in the early morning hours of another overnight on-call shift, at the bedside of a sixty-something-year-old woman who had just died, her gay partner standing across from me on the other side of the bed, holding the hand of the person with whom she had expected to spend many more years.
To be allowed onto the altar of sacredness and intimacy on occasions such as these, filled me with such peace of heart … the kind of peace that flows from a true union between the soul and God.
During the truly heartbreaking cases when, because of disease, an accident or violence, lives—sometimes very young—were lost … even those cases could make me feel that I was exactly where I should be, that I was exactly where God intended. In the midst of tears, fears, and anxious questions from patients’ loved ones, I remained calm, even as I often struggled to find words that would comfort. Composed on the outside; unsure and questioning of myself on the inside. It was as if I had grown an extra layer of skin to separate the two. My questioning hadn’t been about actually being at Hershey Med as a chaplain. That felt right; it felt almost ordained. I couldn’t stop myself, however, from constantly questioning my reactions, non-reactions, and responses to people and situations.
And the thing is, there’s no reason I should have expected myself to know how to respond all time; I had never been a chaplain before. But I lacked the ability to be vulnerable to what I didn’t know, while, at the same time, I expected perfection in myself. And, most of all, I expected God to protect me from the bad stuff.
Month by month, trauma after trauma, my certainty about chaplaincy became diluted … first by doubt, and then by fear. When even getting out of my car in the med center parking garage became a long, drawn-out pep talk (“Come on, Tess, I know you can do this!”), I knew chaplaincy was over for me. At that point, even the thought that hospital chaplaincy might have been God’s plan for me—a thought that had once been so comforting and inspiring to me—wasn’t enough to keep me there. I finished the training program, then left the hospital. In the months that followed, I started to battle the demons that eventually come after anyone who experiences trauma. Memories of the sights and sounds of suffering … things the mind holds onto for a very long time.
I also felt confused.
I felt deceived by The One who I believed would never desert me.
I was angry at God, who had called me tantalizingly close to the contentment and sense of purpose I had longed for over so many years. And I grieved, because hospital chaplaincy—to that point the closest I had come to finding my spiritual and professional home—had become something I could no longer touch. That’s what hospital chaplaincy becomes, in its most sacred sense—a world you gently touch and love, one patient at a time. Instead, that world had become toxic to me.
For a long time after I left Hershey Med, all I could associate with hospital chaplaincy was emotional pain, anger, and a sense of betrayal. The backdrop for all of that emotion were the questions I endlessly put to God: “How could my trying to do something good end in so much pain? How could you let this happen, Lord? Why didn’t you protect me?”
At the same time, I felt that I had failed God. He had called me to chaplaincy, and I couldn’t cut it.
I came away from hospital chaplaincy feeling depressed and traumatized.
I carried on with life and functioned pretty well. Most days, and in front of most people, I could keep up the façade that everything in my world was peachy. There were some days, though, when I had to will myself to get out of bed, take a shower, and leave the house. I’m thankful that, through the worst of it, my two kids were away at college and then off starting their own lives, but I suspect they could sense, at times, that something was wrong.
Somehow, through it all, I was never without the hope that things would get better. I always envisioned a return to a happy life, and that belief was a blessing. I just didn’t know how long it would take.
It ended up taking the better part of eight years. I’m so very grateful to the loving, caring people in my life, especially my husband and therapist, who saw me through.
I hate to think of all of the hours and days of my life that I lost to depression and PTSD. Hours creating, caring, holding my husband’s hand, calling the kids, playing with our dogs, reading … hours just being happy. I can’t get it back. But I have turned it around. Some memories will never go away, but I can now peacefully coexist with them.
The past few years have given me the time and distance I’ve needed to think of many of my past experiences as lessons learned, and acknowledge the graces they’ve bestowed on my life.
Explaining past pain as a means of finding grace sounds convenient, doesn’t it? From about 2008 to 2016, I never could have done it; I hurt too much. Honestly, though, sometimes you have to push yourself to find grace in a painful experience in order to start healing. The grace you find that way isn’t a lie, and it doesn’t suddenly make everything all better. In my case, as grace slowly revealed itself, it lifted such a burden from my heart and helped to dispel my anger.
One grace for me was in realizing and accepting that I didn’t have to fully heal from trauma. I wrote about that more fully in my February 1, 2019 Newsletter.
Another grace is the belief that, despite the resulting emotional pain, there were good reasons for me to have been at Hershey Medical Center as a chaplain … that it was still God’s plan for me. Not that He wanted me to suffer. No, not at all.
Without trying to infer that I have any idea what God is thinking, I’ll just offer that perhaps God thought that my experiences—good or bad—as a chaplain would take me to an even better place in my life.
What if God intended hospital chaplaincy to be the path, rather than the destination? (If you’re going through a difficult time right now, could you maybe think of it as a path to something better that God has planned for you?)
What if writing about my experiences as a hospital chaplain—what I’m now doing—is what God intended all along? Writing about those experiences in a way that has meaning for others … maybe that has always been God’s plan for me.
Far from making me angry, this thought only deepens my love for Him.
And I am humbled by the mystery of it all.
(I’ll have more to say about everything here in the memoir I’m currently writing.)
Photo Credit: Paola Chaaya on Unsplash.
“Home is where story begins”
Early last week, as I started gathering my thoughts about today’s newsletter, I found myself stressing over today’s topic, or, actually, topics. The reason boils down to one word: Identity.
I’ve referred to my previous four newsletters as “storyletters”; I’ve shared personal stories rather than news or updates. For today’s newsletter, however, I decided that I wanted to change it up a bit … make it more news than story. But I had a concern. Would “changing it up” also change its identity, even though the “storyletter” identity has only been in place since January 4, 2019?
I posed this question to Dan Blank. Dan is someone whose voice on this and other creativity-related subjects is one I’ve come to listen to and respect. Besides being an author (the terrific Be The Gateway), running his own business (We Grow Media), consulting with clients each day, teaching online courses, and devoting time to his family, Dan has his own weekly newsletter. He is all about connecting with your audience in a personal and genuine way, no matter what your creative outlet is … writing, art, performance, etc.
Dan’s response to my question allayed all of my concerns. He said: “The identity is you … you as a human being. The newsletter is a product of that.” (Thanks, Dan!)
Sooooo … with that in mind, today’s newsletter will be “newsy,” although I guess it’s all just part of “the story of my life.” This chapter can be filed under, “It’s kind of nuts to launch both a newsletter and website during the same month you close on a new house.” It all certainly makes life exciting!
My husband, Rick, and I did, indeed, recently purchase a new home. We’re not moving far, but the new place is closer to family and away from the traffic that delays our trips to see them. It’s not easy to leave our current home, proximity to neighbors & friends, and the community we’ve lived in for thirty-two years. It’s the home where we raised our two children; celebrated birthdays and holidays; mourned loved ones; yelled a little and laughed a lot. We’ve lived thirty-two years of our lives here, with all of the moments and shades of emotion you’d expect over three decades. And pets! Over those years, our home has been made all the more loving by one cat (thanks for putting up with Peanut, Rick), one hamster, and six dogs. So yes, we’ve also cleaned up plenty of “accidents” here too. It has all made our house a home, and we’ll so miss living among our dear friends on Laurel Ridge Drive after we depart sometime this spring.
We’ve been blessed, however, to find another wonderful house, which feels more and more like home to us each time we drop off a few boxes or meet with our contractor to discuss tile, carpet, and paint.
Rick and I looked at one house before deciding to make an offer. Why look at others when you find the one that feels just right … that checks off all your boxes? We didn’t just find another house; we found another home. From our very first visit, we sensed warmth, love, and joy within its walls, all of which, we later learned, were generously extended by the previous owner. We’ll carry it all forward with the family and friends—dogs, too—who will share time and break bread with us there. And we look forward to the sound of little feet running through our new home in the future (but no pressure, kids).
Over these next two months—as we throw things away (Rick) or box them up (me) … as we sell, pack, and move—I hope there will be a family who walks into our current house and says, “This feels like home.” And I can only hope they’ll be as happy here as we have.
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I hope you’ll forgive a complete change in tone.
Incredibly, it’s been a year. A year and a day since seventeen students and staff were shot and killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida. About the same number were injured; countless others carry emotional scars from that day.
A television news broadcast the day after the shooting provided what has been the most enduring image of that tragedy for me. I watched as one of the first responders talked about what he encountered at the high school.
Coral Gables Fire Department Lieutenant Laz Ojeda described how he twice rubbed the sternum of wounded and semi-conscious student Madeleine “Maddy” Wofford. Twice he asked Maddy, “Hey, how old are you,” sounding like he was pleading with her for a reply as he told the story. Finally, Maddie answered him. “Seventeen,” she said. Lt. Ojeda’s voice cracked and he wiped away tears as he described the scene to the camera crew.
For the community of Parkland, Florida, it will be long time until February 14th is again synonymous with Valentine’s Day. It’s sadly ironic that, for many, a date meant to celebrate love now commemorates an act of evil. But slowly, in small steps, the pall will gradually lift on February 14th, in Parkland, just as it will on June 12th, in Orlando, Florida; on October 1st, in Las Vegas, Nevada; on November 5th, in Sutherland Springs, Texas; and on December 14th, in Sandy Hook, Connecticut.
That doesn’t mean that any of the lives lost on those dates, or on other dates which memorialize the victims of our nation’s tragedies, will ever be forgotten. Nor does it mean that, for victims’ families, there won’t always be one day out of the year that is especially heavy and heartbreaking.
But, in a nod to faith, hope, and the enduring, fighting human spirit … we heal, albeit imperfectly. And we live on, the best we can.
(Photo Credit: Lea Böhm on Unsplash)
It’s a Mystery
A slight movement, off in the distance, caught my eye, thank God. A sudden shift of something near the end of my line of sight made me squint and strain for a better look. Is that a child?
It was … a little girl. She looked to be the size of a three- or four-year-old, and she was alone in an empty Gulf gas station parking lot, several hundred yards in front of me. It was a summer evening … lots of people would normally be outside. Surely someone else—an older child or an adult—would appear alongside her at any moment. No one came.
I had driven away from my house just a few minutes earlier, a quick errand to pick up a few things for the next day at the grocery store—bananas, milk, perhaps. As I approached the corner of Laurel Glen Drive and Crooked Hill Road, I gently applied the brake and gradually rolled to a stop (which my husband would have appreciated as he has never liked my habit of hard stops). It had been an ordinary evening, until that moment as I sat at the STOP sign, when I looked up ahead and saw her.
After a few seconds, I released the brake, and slowly drove the short distance to the next intersection, keeping an eye on her the whole time. I still had to get through a traffic light before I would reach her.
As I drove, I prayed. Prayed that this small child would move slowly, that her little legs would keep her from getting very far, or that maybe she would stop moving altogether. I prayed that another car wouldn’t hit her, or that another driver wouldn’t stop and snatch her.
What a relief when I pulled into gas station parking lot, not far from where she was standing. Taking my time, without any sudden movements, and with a smile on my face, I walked up to her, all the while checking in all directions for someone to go along with this young child. I saw no one.
“Hi sweetie, “What’s your name? Is anyone with you?”
I can’t remember her name, or if she even provided one. I just knew that I wasn’t going to leave her there alone, nor was I going to be able to resolve the situation on my own. And just as I was about to tap “9-1-1” into my cell phone, a young teenage boy, walking with frazzled speed, came around a row of tall shrubs which separated the parking lot from one end of a large cluster of homes.
“Oh my God, there you are!” he said.
And with that, there was finally someone—a very relieved older brother—to pair with this little girl who, I soon learned, had wandered off from their home.
Okay, we all know this happens. A parent (I’m one, too), sibling, grandparent, anyone who’s babysitting, looks in the other direction or gets distracted for a second or two and … gone. The child in their care has slipped away. And if you have a child who can cover a lot of ground quickly (like my little friend), it can create a very scary situation. The brother’s fear had just about escalated to the panic stage by the time he reached the parking lot.
I wanted to say something constructive and instructive to him. He seemed genuinely upset by what had happened, so I didn’t want to pile on.
“You can’t let this happen again. You can’t take your eyes off your sister if it’s your responsibility to watch her,” I said in a stern, but motherly, tone.
And then, because I guess I did want to instill just a little bit of fear, I added, “It’s a good thing you got here when you did, because I was just about to call the police.”
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”
The young man took his little sister by the hand, and they walked off toward home. I headed to the grocery store, feeling thankful for a happy ending, and feeling thankful to have been at the right place at the right time. And therein lies the rub: the coincidental, enigmatic timing of the events of that evening.
When you can be any number of places in a given moment, but you end up exactly where you are needed, is it the grace of God’s timing that has put you there?
About the summer’s night I just described:
How many other things could I have chosen to do at that exact time of day? How many distractions could have kept me from leaving my house when I did? How many other cars could have slowed me, how many rabbits, dogs, squirrels, or even other children, could have darted into the street to stop me, how many reasons could I have thought of to not leave the house that night?
So many things could have unfolded in such a way so as to prevent me from being at exactly the right spot, at exactly the right time, to spot that little girl, alone, in an empty parking lot.
Just about any adult who had come upon such a scene would have gone to that little girl. It didn’t have to be me; yet, it was.
Why me? Why then? Why there? And most of all—for what purpose? Because with God there is always a purpose.
I sometimes feel like a broken record.
“Why, God?” … “Why, God?” … “Why, God?”
I can just imagine God wanting to toss a question right back at me: “Does it really matter, Tess?”
To which I’d reply: “Yes, Lord! Yes … it really does matter to me!”
In His patient, loving way, perhaps God would then say, “Just trust me,” knowing the whole time how difficult that is for me, (I suppose for many of us). God’s awareness of my trust issue doesn’t let me off the hook. He understands my shortcomings, just as, I imagine, He understands my need to know “why.” But still … God wants us to trust Him. It’s one of the hardest thing He asks of us.
God, cars, unusual sights, and me are apparently a thing, because it happened again, late one afternoon in September 2010. While out on another quick errand, this time to AAA to wrap up final preparations for a twenty-fifth anniversary trip for my husband, Rick, and me to Jamaica, I came upon a sight that was even more unusual than the first. This time it was a long-, dark-haired woman, roughly my age (late forties at the time), shoulders slumped, and clumsily walking down the center of the road between two lanes of opposing traffic, blankly staring ahead the whole time, as if in a trance.
I spotted her within seconds of turning left out of our development, and onto Linglestown Road, which, because of urban sprawl, has become busy and congested and lined with shopping centers, office buildings, banks, dry cleaners, drug stores, and gas stations. Walking along the side of Linglestown Road is a bad idea; walking down the center of it is a death wish. Could that have been what the dark-haired woman had in mind?
As if the sight of this woman wasn’t strange enough, what I noticed next shocked me: Although traffic had slowed, not one car had stopped … not one person had gone over to help her.
To be honest, I really didn’t want that good Samaritan to be me, either. I wanted to keep driving like everyone else so that I could take care of my business at AAA. I just wanted to get my “stuff” done and head back home.
My conscience, however, would have no part in driving right past this dazed-looking woman. I tried, but with each second I drove past her, the voice inside of me grew louder. “What the heck are you doing, Tess? How can you not stop? You’ll be filled with regret if you don’t. Just turn around and go back.” And I did. At the first opportunity, I turned around. I knew that my conscience was right. It’s always right, isn’t it?
It would be wasted time anyway, I told myself. Surely, by the time I had completed my turn-around maneuver and drove back to whatever point the woman had reached by then, someone else would have stopped. I was wrong. She was still walking—undisturbed, still staring ahead, and, miraculously, without having been struck.
I was relieved that she was still walking and not lying injured on the ground. But I also had this, “Crap, I’m really going to have to this,” feeling inside. And then I thought back to my sighting of the little girl and thought, Lord, if there’s a point you’re trying to make with me, could we please take it off-road next time?
I pulled into the gas station parking lot (yes, the very same gas station parking lot mentioned above), quickly parked, and then carefully waded into traffic. Fortunately, I didn’t have to go far; by then the woman had just about reached the gas station.
As I approached this obviously troubled individual, a driver who had slowed to almost a stop, put down his window and felt it necessary to share. “That lady shouldn’t be out here in the middle of the road,” he said. A real genius.
I should have been a smartass and hit him with, “You don’t say. And you feel so strongly about that that you’re driving right by.” Instead, I brushed him with a benign “I know … that’s why I stopped.”
The long-haired woman let me come to her. She didn’t seem alarmed. She didn’t seem much of anything, with a flat affect and slightly-stooped posture as she walked. When I said, “We have to get off the road,” she allowed me to place a hand on her shoulder and guide her into the parking lot, toward my car. It was a hot day, so I opened the back door, and, with arm and hand extended, offered her a seat.
“It’s hot, and you must be exhausted. Why don’t you sit down in my car.”
She accepted without a word.
I handed money to a teenage boy who was standing nearby, taking it all in.
“Would you please go buy two bottles of water?”
After a moment’s hesitation, he headed for the convenience store located on the other side of the gas pumps.
A police car arrived; someone had at least notified them. Two officers came up to my car and one politely addressed me.
“Hello, ma’am. Do you know this woman?”
“No. I just saw her walking down the middle of the road.”
To this point, I had not heard one word from her. She had walked and stared ahead and that was it. One of the officers tried to get a name.
“Ma’am,” he said to her, “can you tell us your name?”
Nothing. He tried again.
“Ma’am, what’s your name? Can you tell us your name?”
Finally, a speck of engagement with the world outside of her world.
“Teresa,” she said. Her voice was barely audible.
Wait … what’s her name? Did she say …”
“Your name is Teresa? Where do you live, Teresa?” asked one of the officers.
No reply. Her engagement with the world lasted three syllables.
By then, word had been relayed to the officers that a woman matching Teresa’s description had recently been observed in another part of town.
“Mrs. Enterline” (the police had also, apparently, run my license plate through their system), “we appreciate your help. We’ll take care things here.”
It felt wrong to leave the long-haired woman, to abandon her like that. But, there was nothing more I could do, and, certainly, nothing more I was being asked to do except, in a polite way, to leave.
And I was relieved by that. It had all become a bit much.
The officers helped Teresa into the back seat of their cruiser, and I sat down in the driver’s seat of my car. I got back onto Linglestown Road, drove ten minutes to the AAA office, and took care of business, just as I had set out to do half an hour before. Emotionally, though, I hadn’t moved an inch away from the long-haired woman, Teresa. Emotionally, I was still hanging in that moment’s pause after she had said her name.
I carried on with the things I had to do—dinner, clean-up, nighttime routine—and made my way into the next day. But my thoughts kept going back—to this day my thoughts still drift back—to my encounter with the long-haired woman.
I had stopped to help her, and, even though her name could have been any one of thousands of names, it was the same as mine. Maybe I’d be better off if I could take a situation like that and say, “So what.” Unfortunately (depending on how you look at it), I’m a “need to know why” kind of person.
So once again, my questions: Why, God? What does it all mean? For what purpose?
I so wanted answers, just like after I had spotted the little girl. But just like then, I knew there would be none. It would be yet another divine moment of, “What the heck just happened, Lord?”
It’s a mystery, I tell myself, in the hope that it will quiet my wild speculation and my desire to understand what it all means. If only “it’s a mystery” could ever be a satisfying answer. But it’s never enough to truly assuage my need to know why. Which makes we wonder, what answer would satisfy me? What do I want to hear?
What answer do I so want to hear from God that I can almost taste the vanity-coated words I allow myself to imagine?
I’m ashamed to say it.
I want to hear God say, “Teresa, you are special.”
I want God to tell me that yes, He could have chosen any number of people to pause at the STOP sign and see the little girl, or turn onto Linglestown Road and come upon the long-haired woman. But, God would go on to say in my imagined conversation, He specifically chose me in both cases, because He knew that I would listen to my conscience and do something.
In that last assumption—that I would listen to my conscience—God would be correct. The fear of regret and self-recrimination probably drives at least half of the actions I take in life.
It is the other declaration—that I am special—that I cannot lay claim to.
I cannot allow myself to believe such a lofty thing. My conscience shoots down the notion every time it dares to enter my mind, because there have been too many times when I have failed to heed God’s call to love, feed, clothe, forgive, comfort, pray, share, be slow to anger, put myself out, pull someone close, or risk something for Him. I wish I could be more of all that is good … be more of all that I’m called to be.
On so many occasions, though, I fall short. I fail. I show you the imperfect me. It is my humanness that makes perfection impossible.
It is my humanness that will, at times, make being more special than someone else, more important to me than being special to God, which requires nothing of me except to exist in this human condition.
I am special to God … no more, no less than anyone else. That is enough. That is a gift.
I am loved by God simply because I exist … because I am here, with all of my imperfections.
That God could so love me … that I am special to Him, despite my many infidelities … that is a mystery, and a grace God gives to each of us.
And what if I hadn’t helped the little girl or the long-haired woman—would God love me any less, would I be any less special to him? No, and no. But I know the regret of it would be with me to this day.
(Photo Credit: Aleyna Rentz on Unsplash)
The Way of My Healing from PTSD
As a hospital chaplain I often saw trauma; as a writer I’m healing from it.
I was surrounded by a magnificent fall afternoon that day in November. The air was fresh, like it had just settled after a breeze. There was a restrained chill in the air, too — the kind you dread the thought of in July, but recall fondly in January.
I had just stepped out of my Prius in the Superfresh parking lot and was walking toward the store, enjoying shades of the season in the maple and birch trees circling the lot, and hoping the post-work grocery store lines wouldn’t be too long.
Suddenly, a familiar, dreaded sound filled the air. I felt betrayed by the clear, blue sky that allowed me such a perfect view of the source — a royal blue helicopter with a white stripe down the side. I know the markings well. The blades from the LifeFlight helicopter sliced through the air as it made its way east along the flight path to Hershey Medical Center.
My reaction to the sight and sound of a medevac suddenly bursting into view has become programmed. My eyes fix on it, longer than anyone around me who hears the whirring sound and raises their chin skyward. I look the helicopter … wishing it would disappear from view and, at the same time, wondering who’s on board. An accident victim? Maybe someone who had a heart attack? A child?
I close my eyes. Then, as if the swirling air from the blades sucks me in, I’m transported back to the Hershey Medical Center Emergency Room, to April 6, 2008, where, as the on-call chaplain, I stood and waited with the medical team for the LifeFlight helicopter, which was en route with a two-year-old girl who had been severely-beaten by her mother’s boyfriend.
As doctors and nurses prepared the trauma room, I stood just outside in the hallway with more nurses and a social worker. I thought about offering a prayer. It seemed, to me, what an experienced, confident chaplain would do.
I was not that chaplain. Only seven months into training, and, even more of a hindrance, I lacked the self-assurance to suggest a prayer in that moment. I wanted to be thatchaplain … the kind who would try to bring a sense of peace and calm to an air of anxious anticipation. Who better than the chaplain?
I felt it right there within me. If I had moved an inch or said a word in that direction it would have been done. But I couldn’t bring myself to it. So I pressed my back up against the wall and waited and tried to imagine what a two-year-old who’s been beaten looks like. As if I could. I tried to prepare myself. As if I could. And I thought back five months prior, to November 2007, and another on-call shift, when I kept vigil with a family in the final hours of their baby’s life. I was present when eight-month-old Nino took his final breath. That night in April 2008, with the helicopter about to land, I thought, Oh God … not another child.
Then I heard it. We all did. The growing sound of rotors. I felt a very slight vibration and pictured the helicopter approaching an “X” on the landing pad. From inside the hospital the sound of the blades was muffled. It was two sounds really — an intermittent whirring, along with a steady, low-pitched hum.
Closer. Louder. Landing. Louder still. Engine’s cut. The blades whir and stop. Moments later, a gurney, flanked on each side by a doctor, nurse, and flight medic, is whisked in. The rest of us quickly flow into Trauma B behind it.
A trunk lid is slammed shut in the Superfresh lot; the loud thud jerks me out of my flashback.
My eyes follow the helicopter as it disappears into the eastern sky. I feel a bit done in by the sight of it, and by memories of a time and place and work and tragedies and regrets that had chewed at my soul and spit out bits of my spirit.
I want to turn around and run to the safe, locked-in isolation of my car. But then my memories would claim victory, wouldn’t they?
I had been working too hard at fighting those emotional battles with my own psyche … at beating back the triggers that hammered me.
Fuck the memories. I keep moving forward.
Even as I walk toward the store, my gait slower than when I had first arrived, I’m not sure I have it in me to go inside and deal with picking bananas, deciding which tomatoes look plumper, and asking if the tilapia is fresh. Still, I keep walking.
I pick up the pace. The store gets closer. The shoppers get louder. The flashback fades.
That day, I have won.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is the way of my healing from PTSD. The memories haven’t disappeared, but when they do come, they gradually fade back into the normal course of my day, my life. And it’s a good life, made richer by family, friends, faith, writing, books, my dogs, and often-failed attempts at exercise.
Not long ago, in the course of reflecting and writing, I made a decision: to accept that, for me, being healed isn’t going to mean being all healed (and, in my mind, being all healed meant being free of every horrible memory from the hospital trauma cases I had been involved in).
I had never before considered that anything less than complete healing could be a triumph. But once I made that decision—that I didn’t have to be “all healed”—I felt the repose of a weight being lifted from my shoulders. That decision meant I could stop fighting and struggling to wipe every bad memory from my mind, an impossible goal in the first place.
Ridding myself of those memories wasn’t going to happen, and I was suddenly okay with that. In an instant, I made a deal with my memory … to coexist.
Ironically, my acceptance of less healing let me feel more healed than ever before. I felt renewed. I felt energized. I felt able to go on with my life … and to write about the experiences that started me on this healing journey.
(Photo Credit: Lex Sirikiat on Unsplash