COMMUNITY
INSPIRATION
RESOURCES
PARTNERS
| ||
|
FAMILYCOMMUNITY
INSPIRATION
RESOURCES
PARTNERS |
|
 |
|
 |
 For the Week of May 10, 2010by Rubel Shelly The books written by former Presidents, Secretaries of State, Senators, and their mates tend to strike a common theme: settling old scores. With all the scars from wounds suffered in office still raw, their biographies and writings on world events tend to reminisce a little and to expose, indict, and scold a lot. In a book that has a decidedly different tone, Laura Bush exhibits far better communication skills than her husband ever did and reveals a very tender heart. The section of the book that has generated most of the public discussion I have seen is about an episode from her life at 17. She was driving her father’s Chevy Impala to the movies in 1963. With a girlfriend in the car with her, she was driving in the chattering, distracted manner that is common to teen-aged drivers. She was so distracted, in fact, that she ran a stop sign on a pitch-dark country road. The big Impala smashed into a tiny Corvair being driven by a popular student and star athlete from her high school. Mike Douglas died that night. Laura Welch was thrown from her car and suffered a broken ankle. But her greater anguish that night was for her friend, Mike Douglas. Still at the crash site, she was praying for him to live. “In my mind, I was calling ‘Please, God. Please, God. Please, God’ over and over and over again.” She recalls that in the emergency room she heard Douglas’ mother sobbing on the other side of a curtain. She didn’t attend the funeral or contact the boy’s parents afterward – a decision she regrets deeply now. Her parents believed it would be too hard on both her and them. So she wrestled with guilt. “In the aftermath, all I felt was guilty, very guilty,” she writes. “In fact I still do.” “I lost my faith that November, lost it for many, many years,” she says. “It was the first time I had prayed to God for something, begged him for something, not the simple childhood wishing on a star but humbly begging for another human life. And it was as if no one heard.” Not one of us is very far removed from tragedy, and there is certainly no one who is immune to it. Guilt, silence, more guilt, isolation, still more guilt – the hole for a human psyche just gets deeper over time. It took maturity, restoration of faith, and a sense of purpose to get Laura Welch Bush back on solid ground. Now she encourages young drivers who have been in serious accidents, people who have a crisis of faith, and even vice presidents who shoot hunting partners in accidents to talk openly about their pain. Find a counselor. Confide in a pastor or spiritual adviser. Get the pain and confusion out into the open. Openness allows this biblical ideal to become reality: “Share each other’s burdens, and in this way obey the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2 NLT).   |
|
FAMILYCOMMUNITYINSPIRATIONRESOURCESPARTNERS |