I Don't Want to Be Numb

But what happens when it has all just become too much?

In Embracing Curiosity, I step away from writing about travel to comment on the bigger journey of life, exploring my faith and politics with curiosity and nuance.

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I saw it come across my news feed and I just kept scrolling.

I didn’t want to know how old they were. I didn’t want to know if the adult killed was their teacher. I didn’t want to know the age and identity of the shooter. For just one moment, I wanted to believe that it was a nothing news story that was going to go away in a couple of hours. I didn’t want to believe the worst. I wanted to hope for the best.

The truth? Lately, I’ve opted to just stay numb.

Because I don’t want to know that the United States has surpassed a million deaths from COVID. Because I don’t want to know where Russia is successfully committing atrocities. Because I don’t want to read another church scandal headline and keep wondering when it will be my church body. Because, as a teacher, I don’t want to keep wondering if today will be the day I have to choose between protecting my students and coming home to my own babies.

And that last one came back to haunt me on the afternoon of May 24 as I read about the murder of elementary children by the hands of a young man who very well could have been one of my own students.

I didn’t want to open any of my news apps. I didn’t want to see what was on Twitter. The first notification I got was one dead and an elementary school. When the headline number hit fourteen, I couldn’t ignore it anymore. It was time to open my heart up to the ache of parents and grandparents and siblings 1400 miles away from my home in Indiana. It was time to join in the collective grief of parents across the country who have feared for our children’s lives since Sandy Hook showed us that not even the smallest of our school-aged babies were safe from a seriously troubled human being with access to firearms designed to hunt humans.

By the time I went to bed, it was abundantly clear to me why I had been avoiding details of so many recent tragedies. Trying to explain to my kids why this would happen while I tightly hugged them to my body, glancing the reports of the teacher who died trying to save her students and the parents waiting for news about their fourth-grade children while my fourth grader was safely asleep in his bed, reading the lament of a college classmate who watched her high school—Columbine—become a national news story while we were idealistic sophomore Education majors, it was all just too much.

For months, the grief of the last two years had made me numb to a lot of the news of the day. New variant? I might start wearing my mask again. New revelations from the January 6 commission? Nothing surprising there. Anti-trans laws passed? Saw that one coming. Educational and literary censorship? Nothing new. End of Roe? That’s been coming for a long time. Hottest year on record, again? Good thing we moved back to Indiana. White supremacist attack? Sad, but not unexpected.

I numbed myself to fear and anger and frustration and sadness because at some point I decided that I just couldn’t take in any more.

Last night I cracked the door open and got swept away in the flood.

I don’t want to be numb. Numb dulls us to all the ways we can be hurt. Numb dulls us to the pain of others. Numb prevents us from taking action.

The truth is that today I’ve been trying to avoid feeling like Anne Helen Peterson in her latest newsletter, helpless as a member of the majority under the heels of the minority.

But my 13 and 11-year-old babies expect better. They both looked at me and asked what could be done. They both wanted me to promise them that change is possible. Active shooter and lockdown drills are the price they have to pay for going to school. I am their voice because their vote doesn’t matter, not yet.

I just can’t afford to be numb.

I once wrote a piece in which I claimed I didn’t have it in me to not care. I meant it, but that was also before two full years of navigating a global pandemic. That was before an insurrection nearly toppled our government. That was before a war on the other side of the globe renewed childhood fears of nuclear war. That was before all of that and so much more.

I don’t want to be numb.

I care about public health beyond COVID and taking care of women and babies so that abortion is both unthinkable and unnecessary. I care about living in a healthy democracy with (at least) two fully functioning political parties focused on debate related to what is best for citizens and not for reelection. I care about my LGTBQ friends and family feeling safe and thriving in the country they call home. I care about the Christian Church in America preaching the Gospel of Jesus instead of the false teachings of power and supremacy. I care about the fate of Creation and the only home that God has given us to take care of on this side of heaven. I care about my children and me coming home from our respective school buildings in one piece.

And so today I am left to consider what it means to care while upholding boundaries that protect my heart and mind from a complete downward spiral. I’m left to grapple with the realities of a sinful world while heeding the call to never stop trying to leave it better than I found it. I’m left to prayer and action, even if I don’t quite know what that action is.

Because numbness is not an option.

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