The needle pierces my skin. A slight pinch. Then, pressure, burning.

Suddenly, I feel hot. Sweat is pooling on my forehead as my glasses fog up. My hands feel clammy.

“Are you ok?” the doctor asks.

“Give me a minute,” I say. The room starts to spin, “This has never happened before.”

The doctor holds two fingers in front of my face. “How many fingers?” he asks, then, moves his index finger side to side as I follow it closely with my eyes, trying to prove I’m not delirious.

I’ve received local anesthesia many times, but this time, my body reacted in a way I’d never experienced in that setting.

“We’re going to stop. We’ll reschedule this under general anesthesia.” the doctor says, concerned I might lose consciousness. “Let’s knock you out on purpose next time.”

This was not something I had ever experienced while receiving a local anesthetic.

However, this was a feeling I understood.

Deaths Number One and Two

Twelve days earlier, I was sitting on my couch, watching an Indiana Fever game, when I received a text message from a local TV journalist.

“Hey Joe, have you heard of a shooting at Planet Fitness at 75th and Shadeland?”

“No, I haven’t heard anything,” I replied.

“Apparently, two shot. Possible one juvenile.” he responded.

Ugh.

The following day, I woke up to learn the juvenile was a three-year-old boy who was shot in the chest. Collateral damage after the man whose car he was in (his mother’s boyfriend) was targeted, shot, and killed. The boy turned three that day.

It was his birthday.

The rest of that week was spent getting updates from local police and elected officials while helping plan a prayer vigil, which we would hold surrounded by dozens of police for protection.

You can read more about that incident and our prayer vigil here.

Death Number Three

Exactly one week after we held that prayer vigil, I was getting ready to shower when I looked at my phone. There was an unread Facebook message.

“Joe, my daughter just told me about Aaron’s untimely death.”

Immediately, I felt my chest get tight. What!? How? Why? No.

He was a former student of mine. I was his youth pastor more than ten years ago.

I knew he struggled with mental health most of his life. Later that day, his mom confirmed his passing in a post on Facebook, along with one of his sisters.

We weren’t close after he graduated high school, but I maintained a relationship with his family and officiated his little sister’s wedding a few years back. She married another one of my students.

Occasionally, we’d talk music on Facebook. We share some favorite rock bands; Alter Bridge being one. I’m pretty sure I introduced him to Alter Bridge when he was in high school. He would often comment when I shared something about the band on Facebook.

My youth ministry partner and I are the kind of former youth pastors who never stop loving our kids. A decade later, we’re still connected to many and still cheer for the rest, even if from a distance.

Losing a former student is a deep loss, even if we weren’t that close, personally, as adults.

The last few days have been an emotional rollercoaster as I remember him, listening to the songs we both loved and feeling some sense of regret that I didn’t keep up with him as I could have.

Emotional overload

I’m not a crier. I don’t get emotional. It’s a blessing and a curse.

It gives me the ability to jump into action in a tragedy.

In college, after a friend attempted suicide by running his car off the interstate at high speed, I was the only one of my friends willing to go to the junkyard, crawl through the shattered back window of his smashed car, and dig out his personal belongings (he asked us to do this).

I was voted to be the one to tell his fiancé and parents it was a suicide attempt and not an accident.

I can do things in bad situations that many other people aren’t able to because the emotions are too much to bear.

On the flip side, it’s not like the emotions don’t exist. They are there. They just don’t come out until later, when I’m least expecting it.

Lying on the table in the doctor’s office, as the needle poked through my skin, my body said, “It’s time to feel.”