Here on the verge of me turning another year older, I look back on a year past.
It was a year worth naming.
Not many are.
But 2024 was a year like none other.
The first time I can remember naming a year was about 10 years ago––2016. I was forming a habit in that decade of doing “year-in-retrospect” journals each December. Most years don’t need a name, because they just weren’t that remarkable. But for awhile there, things were pretty tumultuous for us.
2016, The Year of Suffering.
2017 was The Year of the Lord’s Provision.
2018, The Year of Victory.
I recall “busy” (that’s certainly unremarkable) for 2019, but not a ton else.
Oddly, 2020, which left such a mark on so many, hardly registered for us. We’d been sheltering at home since The Year of Suffering.
2021, though, was only too painfully remarkable.
The Year of Trauma. Nothing to do with the virus, either. That story got documented in earlier entries here.
So. Four named years and a tie score. Two positive names and two negative.
A name for 2024 would break the deadlock.
Drum roll, please…
It’s positive! [Note: As of this writing I am in quarantine waiting for word on a medical test result. I find it so curious how one has to stay on one’s toes to remember how that ‘positive’/‘negative’ calculus gets flipped in the medical world. As in: “I’m waiting for my results” and everyone goes, “Praying for a negative result!”As in, a positive result. Derived from the negative result of the test.]
Back to 2024. It was nothing short of shock and awe––in all the good ways.
And personally, not professionally/occupationally.
It was The Year of Healing.
The few who had a front row seat for the journey––my wife, sometimes kids, a couple of Men’s Coffee friends, and one or two others––were my hope and stay, throughout. Others have played a crucial role at one juncture or another.
The year contained three seminal events, each more tumultuous than the last. As I look back on them, they stand out sort of like three mountaintops launching me into the next valley or plain of additional slogging, learning, working, repairing.
Healing Event #1 was already chronicled in this blog entry here. It would turn out to be just the beginning of the healing,
If I take my cues from 2016 and 2021, I can confirm that weeping from suffering is awful, and weeping from trauma is terrifying. But weeping due to healing can be just plain weird. Of course it can hurt, too, but it is deeply complex and certainly never always bad. Sometimes, you’re just mystified at why you’re even crying at all. All told, it’s a slam dunk that there were more tears in 2024 than in 2016+2021 together.
Along the way, I’ve gotten pretty invested in this feeling thing. I tell my counselor that a session where I haven’t at least teared up was probably sort of a failure? I’ve never gotten any refunds, though. I worked hard at the feelings thing for years, and over the years felt increasingly adept talking about them. But this year smacked me in the head with how enamored I am with my thoughts about feelings––and how little I know my actual feelings. Here all this time I’d thought those were my feelings. Ha!
But I’m convinced: feeling more is being alive more. And it’s more human. Who doesn’t want that?
Seismic Healing Event #2 took place alongside a group of less than twenty other occupational ministers. Strangers all, we dove right in and shared our deepest traumas so that we might bear witness to each others’ stories and see the good that comes from shining light on wickedness. And when some of those wicked things have been done in the name of Jesus by people claiming authority in the name of Jesus, well… there’s just no one you’d rather have around than others from the ministry world who know exactly what you’re talking about. People who have seen what you’ve seen. What you still see, and can never not see.
However, I’d signed up for this thing hoping (at the time) for help healing from 2021’s lies still messing with my mind. But now I was attending after having gotten that tremendous healing in February. So, in the end it was a good thing, because I was able to share far differently––more broadly, and about my whole life. And God used that caring audience to bring to the surface two very unexpected things. One, a deeply formative childhood event I had need of renaming––I’d never used the term “molestation” before––and two, a lifetime relationship with Shame I’d never, ever seen. The whole experience left me wide-eyed, a bit shell-shocked, but grateful.
And the timing was the most crucial part. For that very same day, I received an email invitation that surely any other week of my life I would have deleted, thinking, “That’s nice. For those who need that.” But that week––I saw that invitation as being for me.
A month later, courtesy of two generous donors, I was on a plane to a weeklong event led by Dan Allender’s Seattle School of Theology and Psychology. Little did I suspect I was hurtling towards one of the most disruptive experiences of my life. So much so that, afterwards, even a chronic over-sharer such as myself has been generally unwilling, if not unable, to formulate words to describe it most of the time. Let’s just call it “Healing Event #3.”
What really matters is the change effected afterwards.
And isn’t that the point of therapy and counseling? We don’t dig into our pasts for the sake of navel gazing; we dig into our past for the sake of recognizing where the harm we received or took on or believed affects us, still. We look into our past so we can love in our present. We gaze at what we received for the sake of stopping what we inflict. Doesn’t everyone wish to bring more blessing and less curse? That trajectory only becomes possible if we are open, not only to acknowledging the harm we received, but to delving back and finding that younger version of ourselves in such desperate need of our compassion.
I was open.
And so possible it became.
~
I returned from Seattle just in time for an epic summer road trip with my family. While packing, I sat some of them down and said, “List out your favorite snacks for me” and I wrote them in my shopping list.
“What are you doing, Dad?”
“Getting snacks. It’s a long drive.”
“Riiiight…but when have you ever sat us down and asked what kind of snacks we would want for a road trip?”
“What! It’s a long drive!”
I chewed on their question on my drive to the store. Never had I?
Later, after buying their stuff, and multiples of many, I added a variety of drinks and grabbed a bag of ice.
When a daughter next saw me, she asked which of their snacks I’d gotten.
“Well, all of them.”
“Seriously?! You bought all of them?”
“Yesss?”
Her brother walked in later.
“Hey. Remember our snack list? Dad bought everything.”
“No way. Wait, what?! You’re serious? You bought everything?” He had to go through the bags and check for himself.
He looked at me with a grin, “What kind of dad is this!?”
“And get this…” my daughter added, “He’s got a cooler. Filled with drinks and ice. Ready drinks on the road.”
“What?!?” He laughed incredulously.
I made laughing noises, too.
What was the big deal?
But part of me was certainly not laughing.
I didn’t do this to go out of my way to try to be “a good dad.” I was just thinking of the trip. What they might like. After all, it was a long way. Snacks and drinks would be fun for them.
It was huge for them.
But what about the rest of their lives? Hadn’t I been there? What could have possibly so preoccupied me down through the years that buying them road-trip snacks was so unheard of?
How could this be such strange behavior from me?
I imagine I was often preoccupied? That cheap? Worried? Anal? Paralyzed?
Absent, somehow.
The reason for the sudden, unconscious, unpremeditated difference hit me: I’m healed.
I’m simply… free. Free to be myself.
Be present.
Be fun.
Free to love.
It is no big deal.
But it’s a huge deal.
I wanted more.
~
On that trip, we had a unique fight.
The “What kind of dad is this?” son, who had possibly never yelled at us, yelled at us.
That’s odd, I thought. I guess he’s feeling free, too!
I made the wise decision (sure haven’t always, over the years) to let him let it fly.
It got uglier before it got prettier.
And (eventually), it was a tremendous learning opportunity for me.
I named, owned, and apologized for the harm I was inflicting on him that day. And saw: it hadn’t just been that day.
The most noteworthy thing he said was a suggestion that I have a similar conversation with his older brother.
“Really? You think so?”
“I know so.”
“Huh,” I said, “I’ll look for that opportunity.”
He countered, “I think it’d be better sooner.”
So I reached out. Extended this invitation:
“Son, would you be willing to make a list for me of all the times in your life that I harmed you? I’d like to fly you home the week before your wedding and have you read it to me.”
“So, fly me there, fly me back, only for me to turn around three days later and fly there again?”
“Yes.”
Just before his coming, I could tell his main issue was dread he’d just have to listen to me defend myself.
Hearing that this was his fear revealed a lot to me about myself. I skipped pointless assertions: “No, really, you have nothing to worry about!”
We “wasted” the first evening and the next day just doing regular stuff with the family. Nearing the evening of the second and final night, I said, “Well, it’s now or never,” so we sat down in the basement about 6:00 and got to the list. He read. Some of it was familiar and some of it he had to jog my memory. I spoke little. Listened mostly. Asked him to repeat or to clarify, or sometimes what he was feeling in this moment, sharing a particular thing.
By some point he came to realize that I truly never was going to defend myself or even proffer my point of view. So he began to back off, having compassion on younger me by making qualifying statements or gracious assumptions about why it was understandable I’d done or said something.
“No, son. Not tonight. There will be time enough later for me to have compassion on myself, and I will. But you must name the harm, for there will be healing in the naming. Name it because that’s what it was. I harmed you. And I don’t need you to soften the blow. Nor does it matter right now if blame rightfully goes back to someone else––my dad, his dad before him, or anyone else. What matters is the harm I did you. Tell the truth.”
It was such a strange conversation.
We didn’t have any emotional breakdowns or even breakthroughs.
It came with zero swelling orchestral crescendos in the background.
It was a list.
Sometimes ugly, other times petty, once in awhile slightly funny. Much of it pained and chagrined me.
Like I said, it was strange.
Around 2am, we petered out, six hours in. We hugged and went to bed.
~
The following week, our family was traveling again, this time to the home town of his fiancé to join them in celebrating their wedding. The night before, we had a crowd and limited time for setting up the venue. It was a bit chaotic, never my strong suit, but exponentially exacerbated when the Wedding Coordinator was lost to a slip and fall. I had to step in and run something resembling a rehearsal. The next day, I was the officiant.
Throughout the weekend, opportunities for any number of the usual sparks, tension, or family snafus abounded. But never, not once, was it anything other than peaceful and enjoyable (plus exhausting, sure). Not once did I have any of my customary perturbation at my son’s lack of judgment, poor choices, or anything else. Never did I feel annoyed or frustrated. It was his (and her!) day, and I was content being myself and happy with him being himself. It was simply the most beautiful day, ever.
I wondered how many of our difficult past moments––where I’d assumed it was only my son who still needed to grow up––also owed their tension to my lack of healed-ness? I’m sure plenty.
It’s good to be free. (Or free-er. Long ways to go, yet.) And good to enjoy people for the gifts that they are, just as they are.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got more healing to get to. And doubtlessly more kids to sit and listen to!
More looking back, so I can better move forward.
May 2025 be a year in which you, too, find––and offer to those you’ve harmed––healing.