It’s difficult to comprehend that we have stepped into a new decade. 2020 sounds so futuristic, and yet here we are. It’s a new year and a new decade. A new year always brings a desire for a fresh perspective, new goals, and to wipe the slate clean. But a new decade? There is a lot of introspection and review of what we have done with our lives over the last decade. A new decade brings goal setting and the need for achievement up a few notches. For me, especially with this new decade, this rings true.
It’s already January 8th, and I have yet to write a social media post about my reflections of the last year or for the last 10 years for that matter. Something feels so overwhelming about trying to summarize the life I have lived, the things that I have done and experienced, my joys, and my hurts into a short post. The last 10 years feels too sacred to put it into a comment box. But, I do feel as if I need to put my thoughts into a written format in order to fully process my experiences. I live at such a fast pace that I often don’t have time to think thoroughly through an experience before having to move on to the next one quickly. The slow, methodical process of writing gives me the chance to digest these memories that I have packed into a trunk and stuffed into the recesses of my mind. And to be honest, some of those memories have either been forgotten or are a bit dusty.
So, what have I done with myself over the last ten years? Well…
I have raised a child to the last year of her childhood. In 2020 Catherine will become a full-fledged teenager. Motherhood has only just become easier for me in the last 4 to 5 years. I had a very difficult time transitioning into the role of being a mother. Apparently, mothering isn’t something that comes naturally for me, and I have learned that I enjoy a tweenager more than I do a toddler. I struggled hard the first few years she was in my life. I didn’t enjoy her as I should have. She was a difficult baby and I was a difficult parent. We both brought the wounds and scars of adoption into our relationship and those were quite raw for several years. I have done a lot of work on myself to become the mother she needs and to be the one I envisioned in my head. There is much more work to be done and I hope I only get better at it in this next decade.
It feels as if John and I have settled into a groove. There is something about being married in your twenties and thirties than it does when you are in your forties. I appreciate my relationship with him more. We have lived through some very difficult circumstances that should have been the demise of our marriage, but instead, those things have refined us and made us better. Our relationship feels more like a partnership than it has in the past.
I have walked the journey of death, grief, trauma, and loss with over 100 people this last decade. Most of these losses and deaths have been a result of some type of horrific incident such as a line of duty death, suicide, accidents, mass shootings, explosions, fires, and hurricanes. Some of these losses are due to illnesses. All of these losses carry the heavyweight of grief and overwhelm. They all come with so many questions that can’t be answered. When I look back on the magnitude of the many emotional and spiritual miles I have walked while accompanying these individuals in their journey, it’s a wonder that I am not burned out and broken. Now, this is not to say that I haven’t suffered because of this kind of exposure. I have suffered deeply. I have wrestled with my own belief systems and battled my own psychological and spiritual demons because of the things that I have witnessed. I believe though that I am a better person now than I was ten years ago. My sharp edges have been worn down a bit.
My circle of relationships and friendships has grown much deeper and much wider. My small, tight circles of church friends and first responder friends broke open when I started saying yes to new opportunities. The scariest opportunities brought some of the most precious friendships in my life. Stepping into a new church, jumping back into the fire service as a chaplain, taking on a new job role in a completely new setting, walking another through their adoption journey, and homeschooling my daughter, to name a few. All of these opportunities brought in friendships that I never thought possible. I was also deeply broken by several people that I had trusted and cared for. The ending of these relationships was not clean nor were they easy. The wounds cut deeply, and the hurt is sometimes still palpable to this day. In the earlier and middle part of the decade, I carried feelings of betrayal, bitterness, and anger like a badge of honor. That nearly wrecked me but through intensive self-work, counseling, and spiritual direction, I was finally able to start forgiving and reframing some of the most painful aspects of those relationships.
I jumped out and then back into the fire department and my role as a fire chaplain. My first love has always been the fire department. To have lost that when I was injured, gained it back in a new role nearly a decade later, left it again to raise my daughter, and jump back in again has been a roller coaster of a ride. The fire service now is so much different than it was even 10 years ago. Learning how to provide psychological and spiritual care to a whole new generation of first responders has been an incredibly enlightening and humbling experience for me. In some ways, I still see myself as a peer but in so many ways, it feels like I am a parent. Guiding and caring for first responders with the years of experience that I have now is much different than when I was first getting my feet wet as a new chaplain.
And last, but not least, growing, molding, and shaping my organization, the Texas LODD Task Force, these last ten years has been a journey full of joy and pain. We are entering into our 20th year of service and not one year has gone by without lessons learned, trying and failing and then trying again. This organization is not where I imagined it be 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago. In many aspects, it’s so much better than I could have ever imagined but I also realize that I have missed opportunities, didn’t try as hard as I could have, and didn’t always make the best decisions. I do know that I have been graced with the presence of many volunteers that have poured their hearts and souls into serving families and agencies that have experienced injury and loss. They are some of the best people I have ever met and I am so incredibly honored that they have walked by my side for many years. The volunteers, those that we serve, the opportunities that have been given to us, has been the gift of a lifetime. I could never put a price-tag on the value of what the gift of running this organization has given to me. The last 10 years running this organization have been some of the best years of my life and I have some of the best friends I could ever hope or imagine.
I could add so much more to this post, but I wanted to keep it to the highlights and to some of my biggest lessons learned and deepest experiences. There are many times that I can’t believe that God has blessed me with the life that I have been given. When I was a teenager, I never could have even begun to imagine what my life would be like in 2020. I imagined I would be a firefighter, writing stories and poetry, raising a family, and living the American dream. What I got was even better. It came packaged in a lot of pain and sorrow but it also came with so much joy and happiness. I can’t wait to see what God has in store for me in these next 10 years.
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