Thread by @therweck

Tomorrow will mark 20 years since the mass shooting at Wedgwood Baptist Church. I remember the night and the events so vividly. I remember walking back up the aisle after the gunman turned the gun on himself, not sure if this was reality or not, but knowing it was bad.

As I ran, I yelled at kids to stay down and then the police came in the back of the sanctuary and yelled for everyone to get out. I remember faces of kids and friends that I follow on fb to this day as they looked over at me while everything was happening..

.none of us knew if this was real. I remember how my wife, who was at our apartment, flew up to the church and the first thing she heard was “all I know is that a few seminary students were shot.” I remember spending most of the night at the FWPD station,

hearing different stories and who had been shot and who was hurt and who might have been killed. I remember getting home and immediately turning on the tv and watching the news, because that was a position I had been in before.

Then I remember seeing a video of me in the grass on the news and it taking my breath away and putting me right back in that reality...I was really there. I remember walking into every store or building for the next 3 years, at least, scouting out places to hide,

potential objects that could be used as weapons “just in case.” I still do that on occasion. I remember so many of the students who I’ve watched grow up on social media. I was the first “Shawn Brown Memorial Youth Intern” at Wedgwood. His death actually helped shape my life.

I remember so many times with the students where we cried, wondered, prayed, talked and how so many things “triggered” us before we knew that being “triggered” was a thing.

I remember hearing a radio interview 6 or so months afterward where a police officer was sharing about coming into the sanctuary from the stage and saw a guy running up the aisle and took aim...then realizing it was “one of the youth workers.”

I was pulling into class at the seminary when I heard that and had to sit in the car for awhile comprehending that this was an account I hadn’t heard, but that that was, in fact, me running up the aisle that he was aiming at.

I graduated from Southwestern, left Ft Worth and moved back to St. Charles, but “once a Wedgie, always a Wedgie.” I’ve read stories of beautiful redemption and healing along with stories of continued emotional hurts and wounds.

Every time I see the news of a mass shooting on tv (way way WAY too often), I always think: “I wonder what it was like in that moment,” and then I remember “oh that’s right, I know some of what it is like in that moment.”
I don’t talk about it very often.

In fact, I don’t think about that event as often any more. We went to therapy, we grieved a lot, we asked a lot of hard questions of God and of followers of Jesus and what all of this means. In some ways, it feels like a different lifetime.

In other ways, these memories are still vivid and fresh in my mind. This has sadly become a much larger community of people who share this type of experience.
I have some strong thoughts on laws and policies and rhetoric that emerges after every shooting.

There was plenty of that 20 years ago, though the bane of social media wasn’t a thing yet. But there was also an outpouring of love and sympathy and “thoughts and prayers” that were more comforting and healing and helpful than you might ever know.

I leave my house every day. I send my kids to public schools and outside to play. I am fully aware of the risks of living in a very broken world with a lot of angry and medicated people who have fairly easy access to dangerous and destructive weapons.

I want to walk with wisdom and also with trust. I put my life in God’s hands, when it’s my time, I’m seriously ready for that. I also have to trust God with my kids, while living day by day and using a measure of wisdom, we all have to leave our houses every day.

We go, we live, we do what we can. I have to put my ultimate hope and trust in God’s mercy and providence. Nothing in my life has pressed this home as much as sitting in the front row of that sanctuary 20 years ago.

I wrote this, mostly to continue processing a 20 year old traumatic memory. I shared it on fb earlier today and some of the comments & interactions were helpful and healing, for me and some others that were involved. I thought I would take the risk and also share it on twitter.