By Amy Butler
Almost 50 years ago her world fell apart. Teenage angst plus serious, debilitating mental illness led her one biting winter day to the rail of a bridge, one leg over the side, ready to say goodbye to it all.
The despair was intense, but something made her pause in that moment. She decided finally not to jump, telling herself she needed to know why before she did. A caring police officer, attentive doctors and worried parents helped her think about a next step, which turned out to be boarding school and intensive, long-term treatment.
To her, it was a personal story of hope, of climbing down off the bridge that cold winter day and walking forward into her life.
But there was more to her story. There was simultaneously unfolding something divine and miraculous, even: a life coming full circle. This story of hope and life didn’t end there on the bridge. In some ways it was only just beginning.
After “bridge day,” as she calls it, she finally began to get the help she needed. But asking for help brought her private struggle out into the open, into a world where people didn’t understand and didn’t know what to say. In many parts of her life, and the life of her family, the pain of stigma and marginalization colored their world.
Perhaps most painful of all, public acknowledgement of her illness ended her relationship with the church community into which she’d been born: where she entered the waters of baptism and learned to sing “Jesus Loves Me;” where she and her brother and sister raced to be first for cookies and punch after Sunday school; where everyone gathered a church camp each summer to roast marshmallows and sing “Kumbaya.”
She’d returned to church once or twice after “bridge day,” but people she’d known her whole life passed by in the hallways, eyes averted. This place that had always been an extension of home, a soft place to land, became yet another place of pain-filled exclusion.
But here she was, nearly half a century later, telling her story. And here’s how the circle came back together.
Decades after “bridge day,” after years of illness and pain and healing, she tentatively set foot again in the church building of her youth. While the pain of exclusion lingered, the stronger memories of family and faith, years of spiritual practice, rose to prominence in her mind. She could remember the love she’d felt in this place.
So she sat toward the edge of the very last pew and opened her heart just a very little bit.
Weeks passed, then months, a few years. Little by little she, who had grieved for so long the possibility of relationship, healed and became gingerly grafted back into church family.
And while she kept her distance even then, slowly, a softness settled on her, and she could lean back in the pew and rest. Finally, this place was church again.
But nobody knew. People had come and gone over those years. Memories faded. Nobody knew the story of the bridge and the decades of pain and separation that had followed. Nobody knew until just a few weeks ago.
She had left, the pain too heavy to bear. One day, almost 50 years later, she stood in the same sanctuary she’d left in shame-filled exclusion, sharing her story with honesty and courage.
As she finished speaking and stepped down to her seat, she was met with hugs and tears, and comments like: “I didn’t know how hard it was!” “You are the bravest person I know.” “I struggle, too.” “Thank you for sharing your story.” It was a moment of healing and hope all around.
You could say hindsight is 20/20. Or you might even say that in that moment something came full circle: a lost daughter found again and a broken community healed.