Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Psalm 23:4 (KJV)

I will never forget waking up at Lawrence and Memorial Hospital

I was disoriented, distressed, and in pain from the top of my head to the bottoms of my feet. It took a while for me to even know where I was. I had stepped off the sidewalk on Roosevelt Avenue in Mystic, CT. The next thing I really remember is waking up…in the hospital.

I was lucky. Over the next couple days, I learned exactly how lucky I was. Though concussed, I had managed to avoid any broken bones. I’d lost some skin in places but needed no stitches. For weeks after the accident, I’d feel an itch in my scalp and find small pieces of safety glass had finally come loose and fallen out. Apparently when the Volvo hit me, I went up on the hood and broke the windshield with my head.

As you do.

It was an accident.

The woman who hit me never saw me, on that dark, rainy summer night. I had just performed in a Lantern Light Tour at the Seaport, and I was walking to my car. I looked left, I looked right, then stepped into the street at the crosswalk. It’s true I had absolutely no idea the car was coming. When I was hit, I was completely relaxed. A witness who saw our fight (the Volvo won) said I looked like a rag doll getting thrown from the hood and into oncoming traffic.

Fortunately, everybody stopped.

Fortunately, I survived.

But I would never be the same.

I have never been at ease near cars as a pedestrian. I wait a long time to cross, which you might think is a healthy thing. It is! But the moment of panic that comes every time someone drives near me as I’m waiting in a crosswalk…less so. I hate watching others cross the street. I shiver often, and I have had waking dreams where I suddenly jolt into a body memory of the impact of the crash. I’ve woken up hundreds of nights feeling it again.

After the accident, I started to get back aches that linger until today.

It was only an accident.

As I watch the violence splash across our screens lately, I feel for the victims. All of them.

I feel for the ones that die, and the ones that live. One of the tolls of our rampant gun violence in the United States is that of the survivors. Are they blessed to have survived? Sure. But have they come away unscathed? I doubt it.

They are victims, just as those who are killed are victims. Many will live with the effects of what they live through for the rest of their lives. They are casualties, deeply affected by the things they live through. Our responsibility extends to them every bit as much as to the dead. Perhaps even more. Our job is to do better, and to demand more of a society that claims, “an ethic of life.”

As hard as it is to live with the consequence of an unintended accident, I can’t imagine living with the consequences of intentional mayhem. I pray for a solution to our national crisis, and I pray to God to forgive us for not doing more sooner. I pray for the peace and healing of all survivors.

The impacts of this crisis reach father than you might realize. I’m still feeling the effects of an accident I survived 31 years ago. How long will we force these victims to carry their pain and anguish?

Prayer

God, help us to be honest about the actual cost of gun violence. Help us to care for one another better in whatever ways we can. Lord, walk with us through the valley of the shadow. Help us to find real and lasting solutions, rather than just throwing our hands up and admitting defeat. For the dead, for the living, for us all, Amen.