When my son Lucas’ legs were kicked out from under him, he was running very fast. His body catapulted forward in an odd-duck sort of wingless flight. The airborne status was broken when his skull hit the drought-hard soccer field. They gave the child who tripped him a “card” – the sign of a bad foul and the game continued. Lucas sat out for a minute and then continued to play, failing to mention to his coach that the white ball and the green grass had turned, in his fuzzy head, to the color red.
Later the pain started, or he started to notice the pain. It built and would not subside. After hours in the emergency room, after a CAT scan, notes from a radiologist, an interpretation from our trusted pediatrician, some pain medication, and two vending machine pop-tarts – he told us when he hit his head, he was so mad he wanted to hurt the kid who tripped him.
He said it like a secret.
He said it like it was very bad.
He watched me, ready to measure my reaction as it materialized, ready to sidestep and reword.
I said, “I know that feeling well.”
“You do?” he responded, incredulous.
“Sure. If someone hurts me, or especially if someone tries to hurt you, I feel like that. One example: If a car almost hits us and I slam on my brakes and swerve – I’m furious. My whole body tightens up, I want to stop breathing, or start yelling, or cry. I’m so upset I want to hit something.
I explain that I am helpless. Or scared. Or embarrassed or shamed or riding the adrenalin jolt of sudden-miss or shock. And then it is fury.
This admission left him momentarily silent.
In a world of problems, we all have our share of emotional responses. Sometimes we get it right, sometimes we get it wrong.
There is a place for fury. It can spur action and dissent and change. There is a place for anger – it can spur movement, reckoning, atonement, forgiveness. There is a place for rebellion and taking-a-stand and having voice enough to speak up and speak out.
Fury and rage are not confined to the “bad” people. But, “good” people are defined by how they measure and ultimately harness these emotions into productive behaviors.
If you are in a check-out line, and the man in front of you falters, or leans too far over, or tips toward a slow crash to the ground, you reach out and help steady him. “Whoa”, you say and what you mean is steady, get your balance, stand firm.
Steady me is a good refrain.
Steady me when I most need my voice unfaltering because my actions are flying from emotions deep and anchored.
And to that song bit, I’d add the prayer of gentle me.
Gentle meand steady me when I’m ka-putt and at-wits-end and moving toward losing it, breaking down, or snapping at anyone like a mean turtle.
Gentle me when what approximates hate encroaches and threatens to grab me.
Steady me when fear looms and lashing out or striking back seems a viable course of action.
Gentle me these days when even the small newspapers are full of bombs busting storefronts and widespread trepidation on any number of topics and every manner of living a life.
Gentle me this day in a country most of us love honestly enough to note its stuttering gait, its roiling, its unease as anniversaries approach, recede, burn in our heads. Battles are to come – political and otherwise. Steady me. Gentle me.
We drove home from the hospital that night, our son safely belted in the back seat, his head still for the moments we could watch him, hover over him, circle around him. We will all go back to life-as-normal in a day or two.
If each child could grow up to be gentler than his parents, would our world be stronger for it?
Picture it for a moment, across continents, each generation grown to be gentler than the generation before it.
The refrain sounding in my head is gentle me, steady me. Gentle and steady all of us. And though it rings as if a Beatles song, still,imagine.
