"Daddy, I Sorry"
Those words keep ringing in my ear.
To hear them come from my 2 1/2 year old in the midst of tears, screams, and fear may never leave me.
This was not how lunch was supposed to go.
A couple weeks ago, I presided over my grandmother-in-law's funeral. We grieved her death, celebrated her life, and reminded ourselves to gratefully seize the gift of the rest of our lives. I encouraged family and friends to consider God's love for them, and the opportunity to love others.
On the drive from the cemetery, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. It is intimidating to speak words about someone else's life and legacy. Especially someone your in-laws loved dearly. I was ready to rest up and finish our mini-vacay together as a family, and to eat some delicious Indian food together.
But then it happened
While zoning out and smelling the agarbatti incense in the air, I heard a woman's scream come from the kitchen. Soon after, a man with a face-mask burst through the kitchen doors into the dining room with a gun in hand. It happened too quickly to even comprehend.
My first thought was survival. To also grab my wife and our newborn. We got down under the table as we didn't really know what to do. As I looked up, my firstborn was still in her high chair. Kim and I realized and pulled her and her chair toppling to the ground. This terrified Miriam who immediately started to cry for fear and pain from her rough landing. My wife also burst into tears.
As chaos ensued, I quickly embraced my family to try and protect them somehow as if a table could hide us from potential bullets. In the chaotic refrain of fear billowing from our party of 20, Miriam's sweet voice blurted out:
..."Daddy, I sorry"...
Over the previous week, our daughters vocabulary had come bursting forth like a geiser. As if the words have been trapped in understanding beneath her lips and finally found their way out. We've been shocked to hear what she had conceptualized as she was now combining people and phrases and feelings and desires and details. Word after word. Short beautiful sentences, in her adorably innocent voice.
Her use of the common apology phrase "I'm sorry" had been particularly interesting. If you've met our sweet girl, you know she has one speed. Its a million miles per hour. Constantly moving. This also means Miri collides with, smashes into, and incidentally hurts herself and others with her full-contact disposition.
We love this about her.
However, it also means we've been asking her to say "I'm sorry" a lot. She hasn't started saying it until that past week. Yet, she still didn't quite get it. Instead of taking culpability for hurting someone or showing empathy, it was her way of saying "something isn't right" or "something's wrong and I'm somehow a part of it".
You are so right sweetheart. You are more than correct.
The person who pointed their gun in the direction of our family rushed in from the back of the restaurant he'd been casing. It was 11:45AM in the morning in a small restaurant in Tucson. Their wasn't much to take. At best, he would've walked away with a couple hundred dollars.
He pointed a gun at the teenage employee who worked for her parents, rushed forward to make her open the register, stole the cash drawer, and dropped the money box as he ran out.
He didn't get a dime, but he took things money can't buy.
That's how emotional trauma works. Like a glass dropped and shattered on the ground. Not unfixable but the broken pieces are of all sizes and seemingly impossible to put back together.
I know I will be processing this moment for a long time. While I can make sense of it cognitively, there are these latent feelings I can't shake. While I know I don't have anything new to fear as I can't control these events occurring in our life, I have found myself correlating things in odd ways. I stepped on plastic packing bubblewrap recently and my first thought was gun shots.
I've never thought Like this before
Can you relate from your own traumatic surprises?
My ultimate reflections, are feelings of gratitude for our safety. By the grace of God, we were not physically harmed. No one was shot.
My second is "these things happen fast", and nobody this side of the movies can think fast enough in their vulnerability.
Yet, the most prevailing emotion for me is a lingering lament that I can't fully describe. A pain at the shear possibility that my daughter Miriam would have taken this imprinting experience with her. That her feeling like she did something wrong, would be lasting.
That the cost of her innocence was not paid, but taken by someone else's moment of selfish self-preservation. That angers my soul and breaks my heart.
It's unlikely that she will take this with her, but its a reminder that we all face death eventually. It is an inevitable part of our lives. A brokenness I see the firstfruits of when she is confused by an older kid who doesn't just want to play with her at the park. The look of confusion on her whole-hearted face as someone doesn't want to share. The pain we all face. It is coming. As a great gospel writer once said: "the wage for sin is death".
Whether in pre-school, with mommy and daddy, or the outside world.
I hate that part of my role is breaking the news to her, that:
"daddy is sorry too."
And I want to share a few words that I hope will one day make sense of this story and broken world for her:
My sweet sweet Miri girl,
Our world is a broken place. It will try to rob you. Graciously, God built a survival mechanism in us. It gives us the beautiful ability to forage, find, and harness. Yet, something goes wrong in all of us. Many of us are born into situations where the climb is higher to find those resources. Not everyone has a mommy and daddy who love them, who will drop anything to help them thrive.
Instead of being fruitful and loving others, they are just trying to make it by taking it. For them, the fear of death is not a one-off in a restaurant. It's a broken space they live. A place where they feel as if they are in the grave, and Jesus hasn't opened the tomb. Where the life abundant is out there somewhere.
Have compassion on them, my daughter. Don't return evil for evil. Find a way to see who they are underneath their false self that is grasping at what is not theirs. Ask the Father, like Jesus did for the thief next to him on the cross:
"forgive them, for they don't know what they are doing".
I wonder about the person who tried to take from us that day at the restaurant.
Understanding begins with empathy. Compassion is its fruit. Know that the brokenness he projected on us is something you will also find in yourself on some level. At a point in time it will hurt too much when others are unloving to you and you will feel a void. You will want what you think you are missing. You will feel like you are dying and need to cling to something to survive. Like you aren't enough and need what other people have to be okay.
In your own ways, you will want to take. We all do.
Perhaps it will be a group of kids who don't accept you. Maybe it will be someone who puts a label on you because of their own insecurity. An advertisement may tell you that you aren't as beautiful as daddy says. You may believe its lies to the point that you feel better by looking down at others or seeking solace in other's admiration or loss. This will come and take root. These inevitabilities are heartbreaking.
...but please always remember they are not the end of the story.
You see, you already have everything you need in Jesus. Jesus told us that we "will have troubles in this world", but he also said "take heart, for I have overcome the world". The chaos may run rampant around you and within you, but remember as you face these tribulations that He also said that "In Him you may find peace". That death is not the end of the story, but that you are alive in the one who is everlasting.
This is my hope for you:
That Jesus' "perfect love will cast out your fears".
That your "sorrys" will be saved for the One who loves you unconditionally, and receives you always. That you will still be sorry that our world is broken, and will love the broken anyway. Take courage my daughter, for "love (always) covers over a multitude of sins", even those we may never understand.
Even those that burst in when you least expect them.
I love you,
Your Daddy