Honestly
evaluate the way you respond to crisis situations. Are you happy with the way
you react?
Once again, the answer to this question
would be one that has evolved over the years. When I was younger (say in my
20’s), I would say, “No, I am not happy with the way I react in a crisis
situation,” but today, at almost 40 years old, I can say that for the most
part, I am satisfied with the way I react in a crisis.
For example, when my oldest son, Sweet Pea,
was still a baby (around 9 months if I remember correctly), I was visiting my
mom, and we went out to a buffet style pizza place called CeCe’s Pizza (haven’t
been back since by the way), and Sweet Pea and I had a cream style pasta. Not an hour after we arrived home, my mom was
rocking Sweet Pea to sleep, and he began violently throwing up over her
shoulder (and on her shoulders). I was
standing next to her, apparently in shock, because I just continued to stand
there until mom asked me to get her something. So, I went to the bathroom and
brought her a hand towel or wash cloth or some other such tiny, useless thing
for cleaning up such a large and nasty mess. Finally, mom had to take over and
help me (and herself unfortunately) as I simply could not pull myself together
and figure it out. Of course now it is a
story we tell about with lots of grins and giggles, but I think back at how
inexperienced I was with how to deal with a crisis at that time (even as small
as that crisis was). Now that I work
full time with children and have raised my own two boys for 13+ years, taken
lots of first aid, CPR, and other crisis management and safety type classes to
prepare me for any possible situation (including how to react if an active
shooter comes into a facility where I work), I feel much more comfortable in my
efforts to react well in a crisis.
To illustrate, this week I called my
youngest son, “Mr. Gant,” before he headed off to school as I do every morning
around 8 am, but this time the phone was busy. It was busy for another 10
minutes or so, and when I finally reached him, he was all tears as he told me
that he had cut his finger, it was bleeding a lot, and he didn’t know what to
do. Well, since I couldn’t see whether
or not he was overreacting to the situation, I told him I would come home to
check on him. I asked him to sit or lie
down on the couch, continue to hold something (I believe he had Kleenex over
the cut) on it, and just relax, and I would call him from the car. Once in the car, I called him (hands free, of
course) and talked with him off and on through the entire 28 minute commute to
the house. He remained calm the whole time, and once I arrived, I found
everything was okay, so we fixed up the cut, and I talked to him about what to
do next time and how to determine whether an injury was serious enough to
require stiches or a call to 911, etc….
When the boys were younger, I would not
have been able to handle even a small crisis calmly like this, but experience,
time, and hopefully a little more wisdom (and a lot of help from God) has
taught me that getting worked up in a crisis only makes things harder on
everyone and staying calm helps all involved.
There’s only so much I can do about these situations (going back to some
of my earlier posts on letting go), so why make it worse. I’m not saying I ALWAYS react calmly in a
crisis, but for the most part, I am able to handle myself much better now a
days than ever, and hopefully my reactions will only improve more over
time. I know it’s hard to get older (as
evidenced by my own growing physical aches and pains), but there are definitely
some pluses as well…crisis wisdom being one of them. J
“Is
not wisdom found among the aged? Does not long life bring understanding?” Job
12:12
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