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Kelley Mathews

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Family, Parenting and Religion
Reflections of a School Crisis Counselor

Reflections of a School Crisis Counselor

Last updated on: February 6, 2021 at 11:57 am by Kelley Mathews

Reflections of a School Crisis Counselor 2021-02-06T11:57:09-06:00 Kelley Mathews

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The Weight and the Honor of the Space We Hold

A fiery bus crash. A young life lost. The hollowed stares and still-bandaged limbs of survivors. Siblings speaking of her in the present tense. A parent too lost in grief to receive the comfort of the comforters just outside her door. One officer lying in a hospital bed wracked with guilt that he couldn’t save them all, and another recounting in a daze the trauma of a wreck he worked and a door he knocked on in the middle of the night twenty years ago.

A call on a Sunday morning. The second of its kind in seven days. A troubled teen made a foolish choice at the wrong end of a gun, but he was ours.

Another did nothing wrong at all, but excessive use of force ended his beautiful, promising life, and a whole community bled out.

A stray bullet at a party.

A five dollar dice game turned deadly.

An accidental overdose.

A pact between friends that ended with the loss of life.

A game of Russian Roulette that isn’t a game at all, but instead, exactly that. A losing bet with the highest stakes and no take backs.

A permanent solution to a temporary problem that is every parent’s worst nightmare.

And again.

And again.

And again.

The details are horrendous and have seeped into my soul. Broken into the dark places we don’t talk about in the light. The ones that wake you up in the middle of the night, that send you to check that your children are safe in their beds just one more time before you drift off to sleep and again at 4 am.

Counselors standing amidst the sea of survivors, applying band-aids where heart surgery is needed. Emotional CPR, breathing life into life after life, only to find ourselves breathless and those around us gasping for air. Comforting the grieving only to become the grieving ourselves, we look to each other in a loss. A long line of needless, heedless loss, and too many close calls to count. In the span of a year a suspected active shooter, and six lost to gun violence in as many months a heartbeat before that. Now yet another precious life cut short by his own hands.

How did we end up here? Where does it stop? I fear that it doesn’t stop at all, but around and around we go.

I’ve seen my share of trauma and had the rare honor to meet others in their dark and broken places. Stepping into the light after laboring in the dark startles the senses and often smacks of sacrilege. Frivolous coffee runs. Rushes to meet deadlines that no longer seem to matter. Laughter trickling down the hall from those that neither know nor want to know the sharp cut from the shards of their neighbor’s brokenness.

We slip quietly back into our places, return to our desks, and lay down our capes for another day. Grateful that this mantle is ours to wear, and that giving the gift of our presence is often our most important work. But make no mistake: there is a price that is paid for the honor of holding space, and the vicarious trauma of the weight of it all takes its toll. As the world marches on and the demands of job and family continue to call, there are those of us still bleeding out while we try to juggle all the pieces.

Usually I don’t carry these things home, but sometimes it’s different. I close my eyes and see my child’s face, instantly recoiling from the thought, as a mother’s raw pain sears my heart. Those days are the hardest—moving through the hours like molasses, heaviness in the simplest of tasks.

Why do I do it? There’s no doubt that I am called to this—that walking this road with the wounded is my way through the pain. It’s what I do. It’s how I’m built. But every once in a while, it seems that something comes along that reminds me that I’m not bulletproof.

I’ve learned that sometimes the beauty is in the breaking, and it’s okay—healthy even—if I break a little too. I’ve found that it’s true that the light shines best through our broken places, better equipping us to light the way.

It makes me a better counselor too. But God, what a price to pay.

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