A few days after the shooting in Newtown, I was at the Heartworks
House, preparing for a candlelight vigil we were holding that night. My sister
Maryanne was hanging up photos of the 26 people whose lives were taken on December
14th. I watched her cutting out the photos, carefully positioning
them on poster board. The world seemed very small as I realized that some of these
very same families had probably done a similar act for Maryanne, 11 years ago,
without ever knowing her. Years before their first graders were even born,
before the principal, school psychiatrist and teachers could have had a glimpse
of the children they would inevitably die trying to protect, chances are these
same families in Newtown, CT were watching the news and praying for my sister
on Tuesday September 11, 2001.
They could not have known that in 2012, one of the widows they
were praying for would be on her knees, a week before Christmas, taping a
picture of someone they love on a poster board. I was struck by the image of
Maryanne doing for them, what was once done for her. It was gestures like this
one, the prayers said by strangers starting on September 11, 2001, that encouraged
my sister to get out of bed every morning for 11 years to raise her children without
the man she had been in love with since she was 16 years old.
As Maryanne worked on
the posters, women began to fill our Heartworks office. We started to pray for
the Newtown families. I recalled a conversation I had with my BFF on Maryanne’s
front steps a week after the September 11th attacks. It is a
conversation I reflect on often, especially on mornings like this one, when I
have sat in front of the television watching people’s lives fall apart right
before my eyes. Women gather at Heartworks House on mornings like this, asking
me “What can we do? What can we possibly do?” Often times I tell them about Amy
and I sitting in front of Maryanne’s house when the crisp Autumn air seemed too
heavy for my lungs to take in. I remember how challenging it was to breathe and
talk at the same time. I remember asking whether I should focus on breathing or
talking.
In those first few days
after the attacks, all conversations felt thick, slow and muffled.
I kept swallowing,
hoping the extra saliva would help make my thoughts become audible to the
outside world.
I had something I needed
to tell Amy, someone who depended on and loved God in a similar way that I did.
I could only share my struggle with someone who had known me most of my life
and who I did not have to explain any background or religious beliefs to. Amy
knew my faith, she knew that I was someone people looked to when they were in
crisis: when a trauma was causing them to doubt their belief in God. She knew that
this is why I had become a social worker and grief therapist. Mostly, she knew
how I believed in the power of prayer. She knew that when my brother had called
the week before and said, “Turn the television on Megan, that’s John’s
building on the news,” that the first thing I did was pray.
As we sat on the front
steps, Amy asked me how I was. I told her what I had not been able to tell
anybody yet:
“I feel terrified.
Terror…that is the only word I can think of to describe it. I feel terrified,
all the time.”
I was not terrified because there had been a national security
incident. I was not terrified that we were a country on the brink of war. Those
realities had not yet sunk in. We were still grappling with the unfathomable
reality of John not coming home and how to explain what had happened to his 4
young children.
“I am terrified because
I know that everyone is praying for my family...Not just a small circle of
people who knew John…not just our friends and my parents’ friends and John’s
parents’ friends…but people all over the world are praying for “the families of
9/11.”
and this means that
every time someone prays, we get a part of it…
Maryanne gets a part,
the kids get a part, Johns’siblings, my siblings, his parents and my parents
too…we all get a part of the prayer.”
I had seen the news…the images
of people in all parts of the country, all parts of the world, standing at
vigils, setting up prayer shrines, lighting candles and placing flags across
their towns…and even with all this…
“I am terrified because
even with the whole world praying, this still feels like the worst… of the
worst… of the worst…
Even with the whole
world praying, we can barely breathe,
Even with the whole
world praying we can barely get dressed,
Even with the whole
world praying we can barely eat, drink or sleep,
Even with the whole
world praying I watch my sister struggle to move her body from one chair to
another.
I’m terrified that this
is what it feels like, even with the whole world praying.”
Instead of looking at me, Amy’s eyes wandered across the yard and
settled on my 10-year-old niece. After watching Kaitlin give a good, hard kick
the soccer ball she had been moving around under her foot, Amy responded to me
with as profound a truth as I have ever heard.
“Maybe Kaitlin finding
that soccer ball to distract her for a few minutes is an answer to a prayer.
Maybe the call Maryanne
got yesterday about the widow support group is an answer to a prayer.
Maybe the cartoon that
made Molly laugh last night was an answer to a prayer.
Maybe Patrick and Colin
being invited to friends’ houses this week is an answer to a prayer.
Maybe the coffee the
neighbor brought this morning and the lunch delivered by that deli owner and
the dinners being made tonight are all answers to prayers.
Maybe…every small effort
that is sustaining your family is an answer to one of those prayers.”
I knew Amy was right,
and from that moment on, I began to see everything differently. Any moment of
distraction, any glimpse of relief or faint smile I knew was an answer to
someone’s prayer. When Maryanne had the energy to make lunches for school or
the focus to hold a conversation or the moments when the people I loved weren’t
crying. All of these were answers to the world’s prayers.
I tell you this story because I know with a hundred percent
certainty that the prayers and the seemingly small acts of kindness done for my
family in the weeks, months and years following the events of September 11,
2001, is what got John’s family and my family through the darkest of days. So
as we begin 2013, please don’t think of Newtown, CT and just shake your head.
You can do something - you can pray…
It does not matter how you pray, or what your name for God is.
Pray as often as you can, wherever you are and whatever you are doing. Don’t
just THINK about the families in Newtown. PRAY for the families in Newtown.
Your prayers carried our families through that first Christmas without John:
that first New Year’s Eve, 11 years worth of birthdays, anniversaries,
graduations and ordinary weekdays and weekends. The prayers 11 years ago were
intangible intentions that played themselves out daily in thousands of much
needed and tangible ways. They did not mystically lift the pain, but they
surely played a role in Maryanne and her children moving through seemingly
impossible days.
Pray for the families of
Newtown.
Pray for every person
living with unfathomable loss because Newtown is not alone in their suffering.
There are other families too – like there were on that September morning – who
are struggling with grief, just in a much more private way.
Pray, pray, pray.
Then pray again and again and again.
Don’t ever stop, make
these prayers a part of your errands, job and workout routine. These prayers
for Newtown and our world are desperately needed, especially when the news
cameras have stopped rolling.
Know that it could be your
prayer that helps a child find a soccer ball to kick around or a Mom to pick up
the phone at just the right time or open the door to a baked lasagna being
handed to her by a neighbor.
You never know…It could
be your prayer that creates a moment of connection, or helps someone
catch their next breath.
You never know when it
could be your prayer that keeps someone going, when the darkness of life feels
too much to bare. You may not know how the world’s prayers find their way to a
grieving household in a small East Coast town, but I do.
So please keep praying.
Please forward this on
to your friends who pray and your friend who don’t.
