Awakening

Sometimes the timing of things just defies explanation. 

During the most recent module in my multi-year trauma healing course, the instructor was teaching on the emotional impacts and traumatization associated with physical injury. An experienced psychotherapist, he went into detail on his many interactions with clients suffering from all kinds of injuries, from burns to fractures to hospitalizations and on and on. It was a lot to take in.

In the middle of his lecture, we took a 15 minute break. When we returned from the break, a teaching assistant came onscreen to tell us that during the break, our instructor had fallen and was injured. He was now on the way to the hospital. 

The next morning we gathered, eager to hear of the wellbeing of our mentor. It was announced that our teacher, a young man probably in or near his early 40s, had fractured his femur during the fall. 

There was a collective gulp… Some jaws dropped. The silence was deafening.

What???

Wait… hold on. So after teaching all day long on the trauma associated with physical injury, he himself falls and fractures his femur (the largest bone in the body, by the way) at his home during a 15 minute break????

Yep. 

My brain and body went numb. How can this be? What does this mean? Tears filled my eyes - it was a lot. I had a good cry. I wasn’t so much worried about our leader’s wellbeing - I knew he was safe and well cared for. It wasn’t so much that as it was my own awakening. Awakening to a higher purpose… a bigger picture. How could this incident fit into the larger view?

Years ago, as a man sleep-walking his way through life, numbed out with addictive behavior, if you’d have told me this story and that this was your reaction, I’d have told you you’re making too much out of this. But I’m not that man anymore.

I’m convinced that there are unseen forces at work. Creating. Shaping. Molding. There’s something to this story that’s still being written. A higher purpose. I don’t have the first clue what it is. But the certainty of something bigger than me, bigger than my instructor, bigger than all of us, brings me to tears. 

There’s a softening that’s happening to me. Is it happening to you too?

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