Lent Day 12: Bridge Building

Bridges are interesting. I think they are one of the most impressive innovations that mankind ever generated. At some point, someone stood at the edge of their land and looked across an impassable expanse at another tract of land and said,“I think I can get over there.” I’m sure it started simply, like laying a board across a stream or something to keep from getting wet. But then they got bigger and more impressive. They covered larger and larger gaps. They morphed into architectural marvels. They became the staging point for spine-tingling movie scenes. Spider-Man wouldn’t be as exciting without bridges.

I have always been enthralled by looking at their construction. There are so many different styles and designs. Growing up in Florida, I had lots of experiences with bridges. With all the water, bridges are essential. We lived in West Palm Beach, which was separated by Palm Beach and the ocean by the Intercoastal Waterway. How did we get over to the beach? Bridges. The sprawling interstates there needed bridges for their Twister inspired layouts. Years later, I got to experience the mammoth bridges connecting the Keys, crossing over from Tampa to St Petersburg, and soaring over the St John’s River in Jacksonville. I made the awful drive through the endless bridges in the bayous of Louisiana. I rode over and under the legendary Sydney Harbor Bridge. I took a boat under the bridges in Chicago and New York. And I drove through the triple-decker flyovers in Houston. Bridges are pretty awesome. 

Some people hate bridges, though. They are terrifying. There is just something about trusting the hulking mass of concrete and metal to not fall down. Sometimes the winds get more intense on bridges, triggering another level of fear. Plus, the edge is RIGHT. THERE. It feels like one bad move and SPLASH. Especially when everyone is driving like a maniac on the bridge, weaving back and forth. Stalled cars taking up the tiny shoulder. Maybe people are playing those Hollywood scenes in their minds. Although, there are scary real life bridge experiences to contribute to gephyrophobia. I remember watching the 1989 World Series, when a powerful earthquake struck. The pictures of the bridge damage was horrifying. If you really want to get the willies, go look up Galloping Gertie - the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. The wind made it whip around so much they had to tear it down. Getting trapped on a bridge is awful. One time when I was driving back from St Petersburg, I found myself completely stopped on the bridge. I had already gotten onto the bridge, so it was impossible to turn around. I just had to sit there. But if I thought MY day was bad, it was nothing compared to the guy who owned the van that was ON FIRE at the top of the bridge, causing the backup. 

Bridges? Really? This is what his big Lent writing project has been reduced to? I’m starting to hope he gets sick again and has to stop posting.

I ended my post yesterday on a cliffhanger. Do I want to throw rocks or build bridges? There was a reason I worded it that way. Over the past ten years, I’ve been seeing therapists pretty regularly. And the times I wasn’t seeing one, I should have been seeing one. I’m a big fan of therapy. Things weren't always that way; I was quite hesitant to start going. I mean, I was raised with a negative view of therapy - well, really all mental health treatments. “Therapy is a bunch of mumbo jumbo. Mental health isn’t a thing. Pray your way out of everything. Brain pills mess with your brain. You just need more Vitamin D.” After actually going for years, I can say this: therapy saved my life, it saved my marriage, it saved my kids. So I’m a big fan of it, and I encourage people to go whenever I can. The therapist I see now is brilliant. Truly gifted.

We have made some amazing progress over the years. I certainly would not be doing this writing project without her. We have been talking about what my next phase of life will be, which is something I’m mentioned in a few of these posts. The reason that question keeps coming up is because I am about to see my life drastically change. I turn 50 in 13 months, which is a major age milestone. My oldest son is finishing his junior year of college. My daughter is graduated from high school. And my baby boy is currently a freshman in high school. For the last 14 years, I have been the at-home parent for our family. I have worked from home and built my schedule around the kids and all of the demands of having children. So what happens to me when the kids don’t need me? It is already happening. They are old enough to function on their own: make (order) their own meals, get places on their own, entertain themselves. I have very little interaction with the kids because they all have their own lives. So for a while, we have been working through the questions of what my purpose will be. 

We had a pretty big breakthrough the other day. As we have talked, it all swirled around and popped out with this statement: I’m a bridge builder. Over the years, I’ve taken more self-assessment tests that I can count. I know my Enneagram numbers (2), my personality type (INFJ), my spiritual gifts (teaching), my CliftonStrengths (belief, communication), my Hogwart’s House (Hufflepuff), my patronus animal (falcon), my spirit animal (walrus), my similar Biblical character (Moses), my Winnie the Pooh character (Eeyore), my Marvel character (Black Widow), my Disney princess (Mulan). I know who I am and what I’m good at. I’m a communicator: writing, teaching, storytelling. But there always seems to be a driving purpose to the communication, and that is to bring people together. I thought back to jobs that I have had. I frequently was positioned in the gap between groups. Ministers and administrative staff. Managers and employees. Teachers and students. Over the years at Kaplan, I would frequently meet a new teacher and try to help them bridge the gap with the veteran teachers. I always tried to make them feel welcome and included. I would talk them up to management to help them get further into their career. In my role as a trainer, I would see where the teacher was and how to get them to the next level. And over the last few years, as my vision has expanded beyond my normal sphere of influence, I have begun to see unreached, under-reached, and underserved people groups and tried to figure out how to pull them closer. Even when I made the effort to go to Law School, it was with an eye on helping heal racial rifts. (I’ve come to realize that decision was made because I was trying to figure out what I was meant to do, but didn’t know how to do it. That seemed like an option. It just wasn’t a fit for our family. And I’m grateful I didn’t go. My kids needed me here, not pulled in another direction.)

We also made an interesting discovery. Over the years, I have been the target of a disproportionate number of … let’s say … explosions (attacks?) by people. There will be a person who just … unloads on me. Completely goes off. Even if I had done something that deserved a conversation, the response was so massively out of scope for what caused it. My wife has watched this happen over and over, and she can’t explain why it happens as frequently as it does. No matter what the reason is, the end result is complete destruction. I am flattened by it. The comments are always vicious and personal, they wound deeply and poke at the very areas that I am the most sensitive about. And then they join the never-ending loop of hateful comments that run through my head. I’ve talked to my therapist about these incidents and how to handle them - more like how to recover from them. But on the day of the bridge builder discovery, something hit me. In a war, the bridges are always one of the first things to be targeted. I recalled these encounters, and many of them were part of a much bigger conflict that was raging. There may have been a schism between factions of the staff, and I just happened to be the one who made the wrong comment at the wrong time. Or there was a very stressful situation going on in the person’s life, and I happened to step onto a land mine. It doesn’t justify the incident, but it does show that it maybe wasn’t as isolated as it felt. In the work cases, they were all generated due to a pre-existing conflict. And they often were when the final break between cliques happened. You know how when you have a painful thing happen, and you want to know WHY? Not that knowing why is going to make it hurt less, but at least it gives some perspective to the issue. That is what I gained that day: perspective. I was able to maybe understand why I was victimized so many times by experiences of that type. It’s because I was the one standing there, trying to keep the two groups from pulling apart. So, naturally, I would be the one the most damaged by the split.

A lot of these experiences generated those stones I wrote about yesterday, also. Those people - they are hard to forgive. No matter how much I may like them or love them, it isn’t easy to get over that level of pain and damage. So I held tightly onto those rocks. I didn’t plan on using them; I’m not the kind of person who actually takes revenge. But I wanted to have the ability to. I wanted to still have the right to throw that stone, maybe someday. As all of this coalesces into a clear picture in my mind, I realize that I can’t hold onto those rocks if I plan on being a bridge builder. You can’t build anything when your hands are full of rocks. I can’t move on to the next phase of life, the one that I’m truly excited to enter, if I keep holding onto those stones. As much as I don’t want to, as much as it bothers me that those people will get away with it - because, trust me, most of them did. Very few times did the person come back to me and apologize for what they did. Most of the people went on their merry way, continuing upward while I was a shattered mess on the ground. And I hate that they got away with it, that they never saw or cared what they did. And I so badly want justice. I cry out for it. But so do all of those people standing on the other side of the impassable gap. They all have been wronged, and so much worse than I ever could have been. They have been abused and traumatized and beaten and marginalized and robbed. They want justice. But they need someone to help them even get to the place where they can find it. They need a bridge builder. So that leaves me with the choice. Do I use those stones to exact my vengeance? Or do I use those very stones that I held to hurt and use them to build the bridge? Do I use my pain and trauma as building materials? I have a small taste of what they experienced, so I know how badly they are in need. I can see them when so many others can’t or won't. Do I build the bridge? Am I willing to put myself out there again? To make myself a target again? Do I give up the fear and begin construction, being open to whatever that looks like? 

<the cursor keeps blinking, waiting for the answer>