For Mother’s Day this year, I wanted to reflect on a list of gifts that my mom has given to me through the years. These are the ones that didn’t always show up in the moment as glamorous or gratifying but they were sustainable. They are the ones that settle deep inside and subtly show themselves again and again. The list could go on, but I will narrow it down to 4:

LIMITS

This “gift of limits” that was given to me was pretty practical early on. Like, you know, don’t run out in the road or touch the hot stove top. What mom makes for supper, is what’s for supper. No you may not go there or watch that. Those kinds of pretty basic boundaries. The ones that were setting an underlying foundation of safety for me without me even knowing it.

In time, the limits still given became more nuanced and suggestive. They began to be attached with the “why” question more often. Not the shaming kind but the truly curious kind. The helping us thinking through our underlying motives and potential outcomes kind. At times more of the “I don’t think it’s the best idea, but I’m going to let you make your own decision on this one” kind.

Not only did my mom enforce and encourage practical limits, she also set an undertone of internal limits as well. A philosophy, of sorts, that said “you are special, you are not superior.” We weren’t, in fact, the best at everything. We wouldn’t, and shouldn’t, win every award. She did not constantly rise up in our defense because we were the exceptional ones that deserved all the exceptions.

It’s still there today. A life soundtrack. Like a familiar tune, soft and steady:

You are not superior but you are oh so special.
You are not going to be good at everything.
You don’t have to spiral, you just need some sleep.
You can take a no. You can give a no.
You can let your limits humanize you.
Even better, you can let them humble you.
Right into the arms of a limitless savior.

SUPPORT

If one of my moms hands lowered to draw limits, the other was sure to be lifted high to offer support. She didn’t hold out one without the other. They worked in tandem together.

Now thinking about it, it’s as if she wasn’t afraid to say when something wasn’t our strong suit because she never withheld telling us when something was. She cheered so loudly for us that our own internal voices of insecurity or doubt were more easily drown out. She cheered for us. The us that we were and not the us that she or anyone else thought we should be.

She majored on the good.

What a powerful gift. She saw the good and spoke the good. She called it up out of us and allowed us to walk into it. She never pitted one persons passion over another and equally cheered all of our pursuits.

It’s why she used to yell from the stands of the basketball court when I finally made a basket or why she would tell me that my C in math made her proud. It’s the same reason why today she reloads my Starbucks card and renews my blog payments. Because her support comes from a place of seeing. Of knowing. And of majoring on the good.

LOVING OUR DAD IN FRONT OF US

There is much that I do not distinctly or vividly remember from when I was younger. I carry with me many outlines of my upbringing but couldn’t draw up all of the detailed bones that created it. One of those broad categories of my life is the relationship I witnessed between my mom and dad.

I couldn’t tell you if they had many little spats in front of me or if they went on dates every weekend. I don’t remember them constantly holding hands or regularly working through things together. But to my core I know this: my mom honored my dad.

My mom is a woman of words. And women of words can use them to bite or to bless. They can use words as a weapon to inflict wounds. They can also use words as a melody(e), to sing life and love. I remember, truly remember, my mom using her words to do the latter. She has consistently spoken to, and of, my dad with honoring and uplifting words. I trust that the way she spoke to him behind their closed door at night was the same way she spoke about him in rooms that he was not in.

Of course my mom did not love my dad in a perfect way but she really did love him in a beautiful way. A way that prioritized him and praised him and partnered with him. A way that built a sense of security in us all. And it is a gift that has undergirded and surrounded and now followed me, each day of my life.

A BOND AS SIBLINGS

Last but not least, is the gift my mom gave us of cultivating a lifelong friendship as siblings.

I know the Ted Talk. I know we cannot force our kids relationships with one another to look a certain way. I know that there is no secret sauce to guarantee the outcome of them moving from a required love to a voluntary liking. But, I will not discount or downplay the environment that my mom set for friendship to be forged in childhood and to flourish into adulthood. One not ultimately of competition or comparison but cheering.

She laid fertile soil for the seeds of friendship to grow. She not only spread the soil for it but set the example with it. She showed us, with her own siblings, what it looked like to be each others biggest fans. To let them lift her up instead of fighting to lift herself up. She laughed until she cried with them. She invited them over. She went to visit them. All in front of us.

And it’s the same type fruit of friendship with my own siblings that is also still blossoming into something today. It is a gift that keeps growing and giving.

A gift of grace.
As all gifts really are.

Thank you, mom.

As most stories seem to go “it was a day like any other.”

A summer day. A warm day. The day we decided to pack up for a 30 minute excursion which would take us to a beautiful hike in the bottom of a canyon.

We were mindful of our surroundings- telling our kids to stay close- pointing out where the waters turn into undertows and which plants have sticker bushes and poison ivy. But it also had that now familiar and saught after wild and free Idaho feel. One of our daughter’s, who happened to have the smallest feet among us, eagerly took the dirt’s invitation to run barefoot for the remainder of the trail until reaching its end.

We breathed a sigh of relief when we made it to the final destination. We took in the beauty of the still, calm, clear body of water we finally made it to. We could relax a little more with no steep edges to fall off of or rushing waters to get swept up in. Our kids ran towards the shore of the water where a few other fellow-hikers stood that gave us that “we’re strangers but just bonded over conquering the same hike” head nod.

We passed by a group of guys, one of whom was waist deep in the ice cold water while his much warmer and dryer friends laughingly egged him on. We would come to find out that this group of friends were exchange students from varying countries who ended up at one small college and at the bottom of one beautiful canyon. We yelled out to the burly, towering, smiling man bobbing up and down in the water “warm in there?”

He laughed. All carefree together in that moment.

We found our own spot to settle in at, only long enough to dare one another to wade into the freezing waters, too. Kyle took his shirt off. He was up for the challenge. His son mimicked him. The kids squealing and laughing and splashing as the water began numbing each body part that would become submersed.

As most stories seem to go “next thing we knew” that same group of guys were asking us if we had seen the man who just a few minutes ago was bobbing cheerfully in the water. The freezing water that was still, calm, and clear. Where could he have gone?

The casual question turned into frantic searches.

A group of women on a bachelorette weekend away suddenly joined the search. Pacing quickly and silently trying to spot him turned into sprinting desperately while screaming out his name.

Then, Kyle and a few of the women interrupted their own silent safety assessment of the situation and knew what they needed to do. They jumped in after him. The screaming of his name turned into gasps as they would come up out of the crisp water for air. Suddenly the gasp for breath turned into an almost breathless “I felt him!” They all dove back under. 

At this point, our oldest daughter was wailing out for her dad, not wanting the same thing to happen to him that just happened to the man they were in a desperate search to find under water. Some of the other women who had not jumped in were pulling our kids to the side trying to distract them and keep them calm. I tried to help too. Or maybe they saw that I was anything but calm so they came to intervene. Or maybe I froze.

I think it was a mix of it all. Rubbing my forehead, pacing, praying, crying, pleading, hugging my kids, holding the hand of once strangers now unified search team.

One was off to the side, coaching herself and my daughter through deep breaths.

One, on the other side of me, pleading with her phone to conjure up enough service to make the emergency call.

Our friend who had come on the hike with us from out of town, pacing and praying.

Their heads all popped up in unisone. Gasping for breath. They worked together to pull his body out of the water and onto shore.

His friends faces showed relief as much as faces can when they’re holding both shock and terror. They had informed us that they were unable to swim. Unable to perform CPR. But they fought to keep a clear mind through it all enough to continue to answer the questions no one wants to answer in a time like this… his name is Simon. Yes Simon. He’s 26 year old. From Ghana. No. No family here. We just came on a hike to get away. We thought he knew how to swim. Oh yeah he does. He even said that he did. We thought he was messing around. I think it’s been at least 4 minutes. Maybe 8.

Somehow, a handful of women and my husband- I felt a little selfish for only searching for his face when so many faces were immersing out of the same water- laid his clammy and cold body onto the sand.

Somehow, this handful of women and my husband had various medical expertise. Even in my frantic state, I recalled that the “somehow’s” always really did have “how’s.” Divine how’s.

The bachelorette party (and a random man on a hike with his family- who happened to be our not-so-random man that we were terrified for and proud of) who had turned search team had now turned CPR crew. More strangers, having no idea what they were happening upon, started to gather around.

Our voices chanted his name together. The women… counting, pushing on his chest. Kyle… counting, breathing his own breath into another man’s lungs.

All crying, chanting, praying, pleading for him to pull through. “You got this, Simon!” We kept saying it. Wanting to believe it. But it seemed like maybe he did not really have it, after all.

His once strong and defined and capable body lay there. It was somehow now a different body altogether from what we had seen maybe 30 minutes ago. Or was that hours ago? Either way, I thought, his body looks so clammy and cold and pliable. From laughter in the water to lifeless on the shore. His belly bloaded with water. The water he started to leak out and cough up every few compressions.

“Is he breathing?”

“You got this, Simon!” “Come on Simon”

“Breathe. Breathe! Breathe!!”

“I think I feel a slight pulse”

“Okay, push… harder, breathe into him…more!”

“I lost the pulse. Wait, a cough!”

More water release.

After what seemed like hours we heard the signs of the long awaited ambulance. We were unsure of the exact path it might be able to take to reach us but knew that’s what it was here to do. To reach him. And somehow, someway, get him the further help he needed.

It wasn’t too late, was it?

This group, totally invested and immersed in every way possible, stepped out of the way as a new team came in to take over the critical situation. To perform what is once learned in a classroom setting that suddenly becomes a real life situation. The moments you prepare for but hope to never actually live through.

But as we were dispersed we were all left wondering the same thing- did he actually live through it or just us?

The honest, only seemingly possible prognosis, was no. The reality of 5-8 minutes under the water and 45 minutes of mostly unsuccessful resussustation did not seem promising. The men were not promised anything by the professionals as their friend’s once burly body now limp was lifted off into the air. We also, the forever impacted strangers, were made no promises nor given much hope for the possibility of survival at all.

They said thank you. They left. They had no idea what we had all just lived through. But they were here and that’s all that mattered. Taking over what felt like futile efforts to save this man’s life.

We did all we knew to do- put one foot in front of the other and walk back to the trail head. In shock that knows only to be silent, we traced the same steps back. Each step felt darastically different than the ones we took in the opposite direction to get here. My mind felt a lot like his body looked, numb and lifeless. But it was actually racing, unlike his heartbeat.

Why were we the ones who got to walk back while he was life flighted?

Why, if it was always going to be too late, were we even there at all?

Why did 8 minutes pass instead of 2?

How was it that 20 feet from our kids heads being above the water his was under the water? What was he thinking? Was he gurgling out cries for help? If only we knew. He was… right… THERE.

Why does providence sometimes feel cruel instead of comforting?

Why do meticulous details sometimes feel like a tease leading up to a tragedy? The specifics don’t feel carefully calculated to equate to a happy and digestible ending.

So why was anyone even there at all? How did it even happen? WHY did it happen?

Sometimes numbness turns to questions that we didn’t know we were asking and those questions turn to accusations we that didn’t know we were making.

We held our kids closer. We continued to pray. Putting one foot in front of the next.  Passing happy-hikers on their way to that once serene, now sad, spot. We tried to exchange a smile with them. Theirs seemed effortlessly carefree.

Not the end of the story

There weren’t many people we shared this story with initially. I think it didn’t really feel like ours to share. In some senses, it really did become ours. But we were also just a small piece of it all. Seemingly swept up into something that did not yet feel right to claim. It felt wrong to try and tell a story out of it or to somehow find a lesson from it. To talk about how it affected us when he was the one that it was really about.

However the ones we told for various reasons responded in ways that, unknowingly to them, gave us permission to make the experience our own and to feel the gravity of it all. They brought us pizza and prayers and listened and cried with us. But we still mostly kept it tucked inside.

It didn’t really feel accurate to label it “second hand trauma.” But somehow, that’s exactly how the aftermath felt. Or maybe “third hand trauma.” It affected us all, but especially Kyle in a way that included all of his senses. He saw, felt, heard, tasted. It was a full body experience for him and had some lingering full body affects.

We continued to process as a family. To delete most the videos and pictures from that day that were chilling reminders of what had happened only feet away from us. To plead for the life of 26 year old Simon to be saved. To ask hard and honest questions while simultaneously seeking to cling to unchanging truths.

We kept in contact with those at the scene who were hoping for best in the miraculous sense but had come to expect the worst in the medical one. Especially as the hours turned into days and the days did not bring much for news. In theory, we all knew what no news meant. It was no longer just theory to us. Without really saying and without really asking, we settled into no news being bad news this time. But we did keep waiting.

While I hesitate to wrap this tragedy up in some sort of a bow, I can now say, two years later that the life of this man was saved. He was revived. His mother flew from Africa to Idaho. It was not, to our sheer amazement, to stand at the graveside of her son but rather to hug that big burly body of his that was now in recovery.

He was relearning to walk and talk.

Rehabbing and recalling.

We received pictures and videos of his progress.

Until we knew of his release.

Months later, we turned on the news to see that bright smile and burly body. The story we were somehow swept into was now on our television. We watched as this Ghanaian man who’s life was revived and preserved stared into our screen. He was grateful to those who had saved his life and grateful to the one who stood in front of him who had heard of his miraculous story and was gifting him with money to help with hospital expenses and school funds.

Simon was alive.

He didn’t know who we were, but oh how we knew who he was. He was in so many of our vivid dreams and desperate prayers and tear filled pleas. And now in a very real way we got to see him again. Alive. Smiling. Laughing. Talking. Expressing gratefulness and awe. The end of this story, by Gods abundant grace, was a good one.

To be completely honest I don’t know how I expected to end this story in blog form.

I just knew I could now tell it. If for no other reason than for my own cathartic purposes.

I remember Kyle and I firmly agreeing without need for many clarifying words “we will never go back there again. Ever.”

I remember the first few times being around water again and having flashes and feelings that instantly brought me back to what we thought tragically went down as “the day of the drowning.” I would frantically scan the water as if to ensure that any saving would actually be in time, this time.

It left us wondering how his family was doing. How the group of women were dealing with it. Did it seem to keep haunting them, too?

This one was, actually, a happy ending. Many tears of grief and confusion turned tears of joy and thanksgiving. The very best kind of disbelief.

But they don’t all end this way, do they?

Redemptive purposes aren’t always wrapped up and handed to us this side of heaven, are they?

Maybe I can now tell this story because of the ending.

Maybe this summer we’ll finally be able to go back, because of that same ending.

Maybe sometimes wisdom post trauma and tragedy and suffering, looks like refraining. Saying no. After all we’re only human.

Maybe sometimes courage post trauma and tragedy and suffering, looks like going back. Saying yes. After all we’re fully human.

Maybe we should have gone back even if the happy ending never came.

Maybe we should have never planned to go back even if some of the redemptive realities started to be revealed.

These sorts of things have no straight timelines or textbook answers or lessons wrapped and delivered in a story or blog post.

Sometimes we go and maybe we should have stayed back and sometimes we stay back and maybe we should have gone.

Maybe there was a different and needed kind of healing, or pain, in both.

Maybe we needed to reopen the pain in order for some healing or maybe we needed to open ourselves to the healing to relieve some more of the pain.

Jamie Ivey recently said “our pain is not worth it but it is not wasted.” And maybe that’s all I really have to abruptly close with.

What if pain, suffering, trauma, and tragedy aren’t redemptive because they are humanly “worth it” but because they are somehow (the how is always sovereignly) “not wasted.” Who said that for it to be ordained by a good God it had to be deemed worthy, by us?

No, not worth it.

But yes, never ever wasted.

Even when the (earthly) happy endings never come.