Do you ever think about the most pivotal, life-changing week of your life? I’ve had more than one of these like I’m sure is true for you also. There are so many entire weeks that prove to be turning points in our lives. None of these types of weeks do we see coming.
One of my most pivotal weeks started seven years ago today, a Thursday.
I’d had a meeting with someone influential in my life and I’d been blindsided. In retrospect, I’d been naïve. I just didn’t expect information that had been gathered about me to be used against me. I felt betrayed and devastated. It was a moment when my life plan was immediately called into question, and I quickly regaled in crisis. I’m sure the other person felt they were justified, but I’d acted in good faith with integrity, and I felt it had been used against me. Such, however, is life.
But this was only the first day—a bookend with another event five days later, that between them would be prophetic in the story of the following six months of our lives.
The second day was, from memory, pretty non-descript, and as is the case with a lot of traumas, there are holes in the memory for what this day contained. The following day (Saturday) contained a meeting with a person connected to the meeting I’d had on the Thursday; I needed to check that what I was sensing and feeling was true, because it seemed beyond the pale—it was true.
The Sunday was a blur.
So was the Monday.
And when I describe Tuesday, you’ll know why.
Tuesday July 1, 2014, changed our entire life in an instant. It’s the kind of event that represents one of those sliding door moments in life where loss immediately shakes you away from one life and you’re shimmied into another life, completely without your consent.
I’ve written about July First a few times—mostly to make sense of an experience that still feels surreal. Moments before the maelstrom broke was one attempt, and so was When a Routine Ultrasound Makes Ultrasounds Routine No More. And the first attempt was Remembering How Nathanael Changed Our Lives 1 Year On. I know there are several others.
This article is not another attempt to redo that. I’m beyond it.
But what brings me enormous comfort is the validation of a community I’ve been part of now for over a year called Safe Harbour. It’s a global community of less than 100 people who are advocates against abuse in Christian settings—some are still very much healing, while others are very much supporting others’ healing. Some are world leaders and world beaters. Others are poor innocents that find themselves triggered still so very often.
Safe Harbour have honoured Sarah and I with an annual Forget Me Not event that calls awareness to loss and July 1st is the allocated day to come together as a community to remember our loved ones lost.
Back to that time, that week. Leaving the ultrasound rooms that day with our toddler with us sent us into a spin that continued quite honestly into a four-month journey of such incredible proportions it really didn’t feel like we were living our normal lives at all.
And that four-month journey preceded our actual loss, so there were months of grieving and adjusting after, at the same time I was starting a brand-new role in a brand new community.
The main point is that the bookends of June 26 and July 1 revealed massive seismic movement in the tectonic structures of our lives—a blindsiding that started a process that ran in parallel with an entirely different devastation, the loss of our son.
Yes, not one devastation in this tortuous period but two.
BUT...
As I look back on that week, I’m thankful that I experienced it. I’m thankful that I responded the best way I could. I’m thankful for what I still did not know was about to occur. I’m thankful for the support we received from those who genuinely loved us. I’m even thankful to have experienced a complete lack of support from persons who should have supported us—because we got to see humanity in action; we’re all capable of deciding not to care.
The days and weeks of our lives are our experience.
Beyond the trauma of events that push us to and beyond the brink, there is a grace available to heal it all. We’ve experienced that healing in terms of both devastations that we suffered at the time. Both in some ways have been recent epiphanies.
For this, we’re thankful.
Image: poster and video of the private Forget Me Not event being run on July 1, 2021.
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