I remember my first lie. Whew, that’s a powerful statement and makes me sound like some kind of serial liar. I’m definitely not ;-)  Honestly I feel like I can count a lifetime of lies on one hand. Maybe that’s why I remember them so vividly.

I was laying in a hospital bed at 12 years old. My parents were in the hallway and I could hear them arguing. Although I don’t remember the words, the tone was clear. Blame was being tossed back and forth. They had gone through a pretty ugly divorce a few years prior and communication was not their strong suit.

It was the 80’s. It was, at least from my nervous little adolescent brain, an era with very little focus on safety. It was the summer I broke both my nose and my ankle. Okay, so maybe it was lack of safety, or maybe it was me trying to be “cool” and failing miserably. Either way, this particular hospital stay was ankle related.. not much they could do about that broken nose. 

My memory of the actual accident is foggy, one minute I was bopping through the forest on the back of a 3 wheeler with my younger cousin driving, the next I was on the ground with my leg in a strange position, pain shooting through me. I couldn’t move and despite how much my dad told me I was fine and could “walk on it”, no amount of positive thinking was going to make that happen. After a long and bumpy.. have you been on the back roads of Upper Michigan… ride later we got the hospital.

I had to have surgery. I had to spend the night. I had to be brave, but I was so so scared. 

The next day when the “hallway conversation” was happening, I was laying in bed unable to move. To this day I’ve never told my parents about this.. I laid there listening to them fight as tears streamed down my face, convinced it was “all my fault” they were fighting. 

The nurse came in, saw my tear soaked face and asked if I was in pain. I knew what she meant. I knew she was talking about physical pain from the broken ankle and surgery, and to be honest, thinking back to that moment, maybe when your heart breaks it actually is physical pain. It feels like it, doesn’t it? So I lied. I nodded yes. Call it a 6th sense but she closed the door, so I couldn’t hear what was happening in the hallway and she sat with me. I remember, in that moment, feeling deeply seen and understood by a total stranger. 

I haven’t thought about that in decades. It was actually finding an old picture of me in a cast that brought it all flooding back. 

So here I sit (well actually I have a standing desk, so I guess, here I stand haha)… so incredibly grateful for my childhood despite any pain that was felt. Grateful for the house that built me. For the people that loved me. For the strangers who truly saw me. 

I wonder now… (only a few decades late) if maybe I was meant to be a nurse. 

One thing I know for sure is that I am called to quietly see the pain and loudly celebrate the light in every single person I meet.