There are calls that crack you wide open. The ones that you remember forever where you were standing, what you were wearing, and the feel of the coffee mug growing cold in your hand. When too many of those calls once came in a month—the last filling my stomach with dread, I answered in dismay. “How did you know? Have you heard?” came the voice. “No,” I murmured. “But in the early light of Sunday morning,why else would you be calling?” “I think you should sit down,” came the reply.

Years and phone calls since that day, and now I’m the one with bad news dialing. Unsurprisingly, it hasn’t gotten any easier on the other end of the line. Slipping into my second decade of crisis counseling, but now at the helm—of a department, of a company—I look back on the path that led me here, the heartache and carnage I’ve witnessed, the things I’ve learned, the lessons I now know in my bones.

When my phone rings at 9am on a Sunday morning, my heart stops. This is my witching hour and those calls are never good. Just late enough to be polite, but too early for idle chatter, the day still new, coffee still warm in the cup. Or a message sliding into my texts as I stand on the church patio on a perfect Fall day. The mistake of looking down is a gut punch, and I know it before I see it.

Today, my phone rings once more. I nod my reply as my mind begins to work out the details. There once was a time that these calls set my mind spinning, reaching frantically for that emergency folder in the back of my drawer. There is no frantic reaching now, I know these systems all too well, wrote the innards of the folder even, and need only pull them up in my memory. Whom to call, what to say, special circumstances to consider. There are always special circumstances.

In every tragedy there are details, little poignant pieces of humanity, that no one wants to know. But I know them. 

Those hidden layers of connection, of circumstance, that allow the knife to twist more cruelly, slicing right through the bone and marrow of a place.

I know that sometimes it’s my job to know and see too much, and that when people ask how my day was, they don’t really want to know. To ugly cry at the funeral of a child I never met, to sit vigil with their family and friends on their very worst of days, to hold leaders as they weep. They say in the midst of tragedy to look for the helpers, and I’ve learned to look for them too. Which ones are tuned in, which ones are holding up, and which ones are cracking.

Bringing coffee and understanding to the first responders whose task was worse than mine, and whose load is heavier with the memories they can’t escape, I listen. To hear in hushed tones those confessions of the things they wish they’d never seen and I wish I’d never heard. “I’m sorry that you had to hear and I’m sorry that you know,” one whispered. I gulp. I’m sorry too.

I know which coffee mugs work best—the ones I can set down on my desk at 8 a.m. and will still be warmish at 4. I know to keep a comfortable pair of shoes in my car. Which waterproof mascara works best, and when not to bother. And that carrying the collective grief of a community in the wake of awful tragedy is not the same as the quiet work of therapy in the privacy of my counseling office.

Oh no. It is a different beast entirely.

There is a rhythm to tragedy, to crisis and response, that I’ve come to know too well. But it’s the quiet of the aftermath, when I finally have time to reflect, that can be my undoing. I’ve learned not to be surprised by the shrieking silence of the mundane when I at last return to the office. Meetings, emails, agendas await, the taskmasters I resent for intruding on my grief, yet welcome as distraction. I’ve learned that most people forget to check on those of us leading the charge, assuming that we’re okay, and not to take it personally.

It’s a compliment of sorts. Like they think that I’m unbreakable.

But I’m breakable.

And as much as I’ve worked, as hard as I’ve tried, knowing I’m built for this, have trained for this, I don’t always have an answer for what’s wrong. Sometimes it’s just hard. Sometimes this all feels too heavy, and I feel too soft, and it’s not just the stories I hear and can’t forget. It’s the numbers on the screen shining blue light in the dark that are the unexpected gut punch. The statistics that remind us of this fight that we’re not winning. Suicide, violence, mental health numbers soar, the youth of our country bleeding out before our eyes. And me with my mop bucket and partners in crisis, outstretched hands try to hold back the tide. Of hurt. Of heartache. Of overwhelming loss.

It’s my job to show up for you mentally prepared, and I know if I don’t put my oxygen mask on first, I’ll crash and burn. I know what it feels like to crash and burn.

But I’ve also learned how to pick myself up, to lean in, take a breath, and keep going. That just because it’s hard, doesn’t mean I’m not called. To practice what I preach and perhaps heed my own tenured advice.

Deep breath. Steady now. There’s work to be done. Plans to make, tears to dry, hands to hold. But at the moment, clanking dishes on the other side of the door pull me from my reverie. Looking at the clock, I’m surprised at the time that’s passed. Wiping my eyes I move through the motions of getting our family ready for church and out the door. Hair fixed, teeth brushed, shoes dug out from under a not-so-little one’s bed. The childish arguing in the car is a lifeline of sorts, tossed from the backseat unwittingly, but I grasp it nonetheless.

My pastor, having heard the news, meets me at the door. I collide into him with no words at all, hot tears I’ve held back spilling fast. This suffering—what is the point of all this senseless pain? Walking amidst the broken leaves me limping. Can they see it, do they know that I bleed too?

Composing myself, I sneak in the back while the lights are down, people all around me singing. I open my mouth croaking out the tune, and my broken song becomes a prayer, a supplication as I close my eyes and am transported to another place and pace. It drives me to my knees, and I realize: the veil is thin here at the foot of the cross. Where splintered suffering meets cold ground. In bowing low, I find Him. And I remember my purpose.