How would you respond?

 

I was asked to write a human interest piece so here goes my attempt at something like that. This is not part of the Exodus 16 Series. 

How would you respond?

My first day at the center I had the honor of listening to a story about the Tsunami and its effect on the people in this region. The story was a second hand account about a gentleman and his family. This man who the story is about, I do not know his name, had been working at one of the hotels here in Kesennuma at the time of the earthquake. The hotel was built far up on a hill looking over the entire city.

The earthquake came that day as he was working as a chef. The earthquake was beyond frightening. But the earthquake came and went and this gentleman remained at his job to deal with the damage that had happened there at the hotel. Twenty minutes passed. That is when the Pacific Ocean unleashed all of its horror and strength on the north east coast cities of Japan. Kesennuma was one of those cities. Thirty percent of the city was destroyed by water. When the tsunami came the gentleman was safe because he was high enough. Unfortunately though his home was not. But not just his home, his wife, his children and his parents were also not high enough because they were in his home. The home and family that he was going to work every day to provide for. His home was swept away by that terrifying water we were talking about. And so was his family. According to the gentleman who told the story the family has not been found and the husband has no one but himself.

Last week during one of my English classes we had a very small earthquake. It hit quick and it left just as so. But the look in my student’s eyes did not. I had seen this look many times in my past career as a social worker. It was a look that people exhibit when they have flashbacks. We had to stop class for a bit because I could tell that my student had just been re-traumatized. I shifted my focus quickly off of English and on to him. We talked about his experience and we talked about the things he had seen back at the time of the Tsunami. No he was not the man from the hotel. But he was a man and he had endured a significant amount of trauma. He also had been re-traumatized numerous times since March of 2011.

The last couple of days I have had plenty of time to think about every thing I had seen and heard here in my first two weeks in Kesennuma. One of the things I tend to do is try to put myself in someone’s shoes and try to see if I can experience what thoughts may occur in some ones head if this were to happen. Here is what started to come up in my head when I did that:

20 Minutes. I could have done something.  Did I fail as a father? A husband? A son? I should have done more. I should have chosen them instead of work…but I didn’t have a choice…or did I? Why did this happen to me? Why couldn’t I have been taken instead of them? It’s my fault. I hate God. I hate life. Maybe they are still alive and I just haven’t found them. They can’t be gone. They were all I had.

I know I will never be able to put myself in his shoes but even trying to if you really try hard enough you will be overcome by so much sadness that you realize you need some way to pick yourself up out of the mood you just got yourself in. The sorrow of loosing a loved one is indescribable. But loosing your whole family with out ever getting to say good-bye is hopefully something you and I will never have to endure.

I thought about what I would do if I were to meet this man and to be honest I hope I don’t. I don’t know what I would do. In fact I don’t know if I could handle hearing his story. If I did meet him though I would give him a hug and I would ask him if he wanted to tell his story and then I would cry with him for as long as he wanted. Then when we were finished crying I would ask him if he wanted to plan to meet again so that we could cry some more. I would keep doing this until he was ready to continue on through the grieving process. And hopefully in that process I would have the opportunity to share the gospel with him.

My English student is only one of tens of thousands who have to deal with flash backs of the March 11^th Tsunami, every day. In the United States we flood a school with counselors when a fellow student dies. Here, in Japan, that doesn’t happen even when cities are wiped out. That’s partly a culture thing. But even with cultural barriers we are all humans. We all suffer and we all sin. Most of all we all need Christ because when we have begun that grieving process of loosing a loved one or a friend Christ is there to give us comfort. Christ is there to give us eternal life. Christ is the one there with open arms saying, “I love you! You are not alone”. How could you make it if you didn’t have that?

Japan has always been notorious for being a difficult mission field. It is not easy to talk about Christ here. In fact it’s freaking hard. This northern part of Japan I remember was considered to be especially difficult. This was “old country” which meant that new ideas and new religions were “out”. But since this tremendous disaster occurred nearly one year ago this area has become an opportunity. God gave you and I a gift. Maybe not exactly the way most would like it but he gave us a gift. He gave us an opportunity to spread his love and grace to a region that would have been passed over because of the lack of opportunity. There is a lot of clean up to do here…but there is even more church work to do. God gave us a pretty clear wake up call with this disaster. God might have well said “These people need me too, don’t pass them over, share my love with them too”. So that’s what we are going to do!