Don't Look Away

I was younger than nine, I know, but how old exactly, I’m not sure. Our house had a mostly finished basement where the black-and-white TV sat atop an ancient-even-then reel-to-reel tape player. I remember sitting on the brown couch watching an episode of something that had suddenly turned frightening. I screwed shut my eyes and ran for the stairs at the far end of the long narrow room. As I clambered up the steps, I could still somehow see the terrifying images of the screen behind clenched eyelids.

Fears were a constant companion growing up. I was afraid if my bare legs touched in my sleep, I might develop leprosy. I never knew from one day to the next whether Dad would be laughing with me or yelling at me. I suffered from allergies that left me struggling to breathe. Late at night, I was held on my mother’s lap in the steamy bathroom trying not to cry as I labored to pull heavy air into tired lungs. 

One recurring nightmare opened with my running across the backyard, chased by unimaginable evil. I’d make it as far as the lilac bush at the corner of the house, but suddenly stopped, trapped by my own inability to move any farther. I could smell the sweet purple flowers—in the dream, it was always spring, and the lilacs were always in bloom. Whatever was chasing me came closer, closer, until I could feel its hot breath on the back of my neck. I’d awake with a start, my pulse pounding. I knew I was safe in my bed in my room, but I couldn’t shake the oppressive sense of dread still clutching me in cold bony fingers. 

From the cradle, I’d been taught the world we lived in was a terrible place. Our hope was in Jesus, and the way we would one day follow him to heaven, away from the broken, cursed earth. Until then, I learned to mitigate my own agony by closing my eyes as best I could to the evidence of great suffering around me.

Last fall, I visited the Oklahoma City National Memorial on the site of the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. I had been a teenager, and I have vague memories of the event on the news. But it had felt far away and disturbing, so I thought about prettier, happier things. The 28th anniversary of the attack recently passed. The image came to mind last evening as I lay in bed. I imagined myself nearby, yet separated from the scene, watching the pictures I remembered from television reports and in newspapers and plastered to the walls of the Memorial Museum.

As the images returned to my mind, I recoiled from the familiar fear of horror and terror and pain. Yet, even as I wished to turn from the anguish, I heard myself saying, “Don’t look away.”

My youngest was born in a birthing pool in the bedroom. On my hands and knees, my back and shoulders were just above the water's surface. Adam was behind me, pouring cupfuls of hot water over my lower back. He told me sometime later that as labor wore on, his arms grew tired, and he thought about stopping. But he realized I had no option to stop. I was also tired. I was hurting and having trouble breathing in the humid air. Yet, I couldn’t stop.

Other people’s pain is oddly unbearable. Our instinct or perhaps early training is to do all we can to distract, to dispute, to deny what we cannot mend. Don’t look away. We can’t cure the devastation of our world, but we must validate the experience of the devastated. Show love, not by tugging on the arm of the one who sits in agony, enjoining them to get up, but sit down and join them where they are. Grieve with those who grieve. Offer a cup of water where it is needed. 

And when the time comes to stand back up, work against the injustice that causes injuries to so many precious people. Fight for your neighbors, rather than against them. Look for ways to reach across lines drawn in the sand as you show grace and compassion to all who are in need. Refuse to perpetuate the myth of the others, “them” who are so different from “us.” 

There is only us. 

Even though I know, in the end, love will always, always win over hate, the battle is long and the wounds are deep. And I am so very weary. 

Tonight, in the dark, with tears on my cheeks, I can only beg: Please, will you sit and stand and fight with me, for me, for us all? Please.

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