I sat on the small bench across the classroom while a second grader patted my arm.
“It’s okay, Mrs. B.” Emma said. The concern in her eyes only made me cry harder.
I was student teaching in a general education setting that semester, and I loved those second graders from West Godwin Elementary. There were two more weeks until the end of the school year, and Emma’s best friend Cynthia was leaving that day to move across the country with her family.
I had witnessed the sweet friendship between these two girls for months: giggling together in class, always sitting next to each other at circle time, inseparable at lunch and recess. The pure and uncomplicated friendship of childhood.
When it had come time for dismissal, the two friends were to say their goodbyes as Cynthia followed her mom home and Emma headed to the after-school program. The other students had filed out of the classroom already, but the two girls were still clutching each other in a hug neither of them wanted to end.
Something bubbled up in me then, something I couldn’t tamp down. I turned my back so they wouldn’t see my tears. Even as I was crying, I was confused at my outburst. I wiped my eyes and told myself: You’re not the one who’s moving—get it together.
When I turned around, Cynthia had left and Emma was putting on her backpack. One look at her downcast face and I erupted into sobs once again.
I had always counted myself as lucky. As a child of career missionaries in France, I had been to many places people only dream of seeing, collecting stamps in my passport as a point of pride. Whether we were traveling to conferences or visiting other missionaries, we had family picture albums filled with famous landmarks and snapshots of us eating delicious food.
Had you asked me what it was like to grow up as a missionary kid, I would have told you I was fluent in French and got to go Euro-railing with my friend as a high school graduation gift.
I would not have told you about moving eight times in eleven years.
I would not have told you how tiring it was to always be the new kid.
I would not have told you how difficult it was to be suspended between two cultures, never able to call either of them my own.
I would not have told you how broken I felt from all the goodbyes.
In those days, I had done the hard work of adjusting to life as a college student in Michigan. The cold and the snow and the giant stores and roomy roads had begun to feel familiar. Although I still flew across the ocean to visit my family, the days of making new friends only to leave them were mostly over. I cherished my story, even when I could never give a straight answer when asked where I was from.
It wasn’t until that day with Emma and Cynthia that I was forced to recognize the hard, painful, and sad parts of my journey. Maybe if the word “trigger” had been a part of our collective vocabulary back in those days, my tears wouldn’t have been so bewildering. But now I understand I had some grief to confront.
We live in an age when trigger warnings abound, and while some may roll their eyes and others may call it coddling, I prefer to think of it as a form of hospitality. Trigger warnings give others a chance to process through their pain and sorrow on their own timetable. They are a way to acknowledge that some people carry emotional burdens of which we know nothing, and that they, too, deserve our warmest welcome.
If hospitality is a way of “receiving each other, our struggles, our newborn ideas with openness and care” as Parker Palmer writes*, then being mindful about what might trigger others is a way we can embody God’s loving welcome.
Of course, we don’t always know how our words and actions might bring painful feelings to the surface in others. We can’t see all the bruised and tender spots in another’s soul. We can lean towards others with patience and curiosity when something about their actions seems “off.” We can choose listening and kindness when others seem distressed.
We are called to be a safe place to land for others, whether that means we take care not to trigger painful feelings or we take care to listen well when those feelings are shared. In doing so, we can incarnate God’s compassion as we become God’s mouth and ears.
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*From To Know As We Are Known, by Parker Palmer
**Feature Photo by Tabea Grabowska on Unsplash
Sarah K. Butterfield 