What would you do if you woke up to find yourself being thrown out of an upstairs bedroom window?

We had the good (or bad) fortune to stay for four days at a beautiful condo right on Okanagan Lake at West Kelowna last week.  Unfortunately, there were three forest fires burning in the area at the time and many people around us were being evacuated.  We were not in any immediate danger but as we drove by one of the fires in the hills behind us, I looked up at the billowing mountain of smoke and had a memory flashback to an incident that had happened fifty-two years ago.

At the age of seven, I lived with my parents and five year old brother in an older two-story house in the small town of Kindersley, Saskatchewan.  My father was a train engineer and was away doing an overnight run one summer night.  I woke up to find  my mother had picked me up in her arms and was carrying me to the open bedroom window, where she tried to throw me out.  I kicked and screamed and held on for dear life, refusing to let go, even though she kept telling me too.  As a result of my frantic kicking, my bare feet hit the red-hot livingroom window and the sudden shock of the pain caused me to let go and I fell to the ground below.

Crying and standing there in my underwear, I walked from the front door to the back, expecting my mother and brother to come out the door.  Hearing a noise, I looked up and saw my brother falling to the ground.  Only he didn’t land on his feet.  He fell on his face, hitting a pipe with his nose and upper lip.  Then my mother, wearing only a slip, climbed out, holding onto the small box that held the electrical wires.  The box broke and she slid down the side of our stucco house.

By this time, I’d realized our house was on fire.  I could see the flickering red flames in the living room window and the smoke billowing out of both doors.

The neighbors quickly arrived with blankets.  While the firefighters chopped holes in the roof of our house, we were led away to have our wounds cared for.  Both of my feet were badly blistered, my brother’s face was so swollen he looked like a little boy pig and my mother’s side was badly scraped by the glass in the stucco wall.

For years, I used to tell people that it was my fault that my brother was so badly hurt.  I thought because I’d fought so hard to hang on to my mother’s arms, that she had thrown my brother head first so she wouldn’t have the same problem. 

 Many years later, the subject came up and my mother was there when I told my version of the story.  She snorted and asked: “Is that what you remember?”  She said she had done nothing of the kind.  She let my brother out of the window the same way she had me, but when he fell, he landed on the pipe and hurt his face.  I had always thought that I was responsible and felt guilty for the pain my brother experienced.

How many things do you believe that are not true?   How much guilt are you carrying needlessly?    Are there burdens that you are carrying that you don’t need to carry?