Deep Dive With Dr. Carrie

Hey, Cadre family doctor Kerry here, going live on my Wednesday deep dive. I'm going to share a story with you today back in. Gosh, it was 2007. Now, there is a. I'll just, I'll give you the background. First. There is a bridge in the Minneapolis, Minnesota area that goes over a large body of water. It's actually the Mississippi river. And we refer to this bridge as the 35 w bridge because it's a really long bridge. It's very wide, and, and it connects you from the suburbs to downtown Minneapolis.

Now, this portion of the Mississippi is fairly wide. So this bridge is long. And on a very fateful day in 2007, in August of 2007, that bridge collapsed. And if you are a minnesotan or you lived in Minnesota during that time, you will remember this as the day the 35 w bridge collapsed. And it was a really horrific event because if you imagine this very large concrete structure with cars, buses, all sorts of things over it collapsing into a body of water, the destruction was horrible. Thankfully, there wasn't anything underneath it, but there was water.

And it was a river, so there were casualties. It was, it was just a horrific day. Nobody knew, you know, if your loved one was safe because you didn't know where they were, if they were on the road that day, if they were on that bridge. And there just happens to be next to this bridge, a, like, factory kind of company. And two guys were outside at that moment having a smoke break, and they saw the bridge collapse, like, right in front of them. They're, like, almost like, on the lower level next to where the river is.

And they just both looked at each other and just ran and ran to respond to this horrific casualty event. Before the first responders got there, these two guys were on the scene pulling bodies out of the water, rescuing people in a river. And they were obviously interviewed by the news and were just seen as heroes that day because they just ran to the scene of chaos. And interestingly enough, two years prior to this, in 2005, one of those guys also was a hero in my life. And he rescued me on a very, very difficult day of my life when I was stranger, raped, stabbed and kidnapped.

My abductor eventually let me go, and it just so happened it was right outside that location of the factory where he was working. And he is forever in the history of my life gonna be referred to as my guardian angel because he rescued me that day. And so I just wanted to share those stories just to paint the picture of this incredible, incredible good Samaritan, this hero in my life to, named John and yesterday was his birthday. He has now since passed. But I just wanted to shed this story because as I continue, you'll understand why I think so highly of John.

Obviously, I had such a great relationship with him. He saved my life. He saved those people's lives on that day. But when I went to John's celebration of life, I expected this to be a, like, hero's homecoming kind of thing. Like, oh, my gosh, it's so sad that he's passed, but like, wow, let's share all the incredible stories about this man and just what he's done on this earth and all the people's lives that he's impacted. It was actually quite the opposite. At John's celebration of life, there were a lot of people that were happy he was dead.

There were people that were, like, dealing with a lot of grief and, like, unforgiveness emotions. I spent a lot of time talking to his son, whom I'd gotten to know, and he was, he was really feeling conflicted in that moment because he didn't have a good relationship with his dad. And he heard me talk about how incredible this man was, right? That was like a, this unseen hero, this good Samaritan that I just couldn't stop talking about. And the fact that he'd, like, not only done this once in his lifetime, like, he'd rescued people more than once in his lifetime.

And the son just was staring at me like, why are you singing his praises? He was a horrible dad. He was horrible. He never showed up to my stuff. When he did show up, he was drunk, all this stuff. And he just went on and on about how horrible his dad was. And I just was in complete shock at John's celebration of life because I had such a different perspective of this man than those who knew him. And I was reminded of this yesterday when I was posting saying happy birthday to my guardian angel in heaven, because I remember him every year on his birthday and just remembered, you know what?

That message might be hard for some people to see because I still think he's this incredible hero, but there's so many people out there who didn't see him that way. And I just want to encourage you to think about that because we perceive people differently in life, right? Like, you might see the best version of someone and somebody else might see the worst version of them, and you can have a conversation about what that looks like of, like, oh, my gosh, you experienced that with them. Oh, wow. This is what I experienced with them.

And both experiences are valid. Okay. I just wanted to say that not one is right or wrong, but we can experience people differently because people show up differently in our lives. As consistent as I want to say that I am, and just being authentic and showing up the same in every interaction with every group of people, I guarantee I show up differently with different groups of people. I probably put my best foot forward when I'm meeting people new for the first time, or I'm around maybe church friends, things like that.

And then when I'm around my significant other, when I'm around my family, they might not see the best side of Carrie come out, right. We have those moments when we sometimes forget that we have that goodness inside of us. And so somebody doesn't see our best version of ourselves. So, first of all, I just wanted to shed light on the topic that we show up differently depending on the circumstance. And that's normal. That is normal. And even if you try really, really hard not to, it's normal. And secondly, I wanted to just give you an opportunity to think about maybe somebody in your life that doesn't show up.

Well, they don't show up as their best version when it comes to interacting with you. And just pause for a second and give them some grace, because I guarantee someone else out there in the world experiences them differently. And if you could try for just even a glimpse of a second to put yourself in someone else's shoes, to see that person in a different light, to see them as maybe a broken human being who has a lot going on in their life, or maybe you need to see them as the struggling parent that they are.

Or maybe you need to see them as somebody who's struggling with a serious addiction that has a grip on them in some way, because that's what's causing them to not show up as their best self, whatever it is, do me a favor and think about someone that you have not had a great interaction with in your life and just pause and say, I wonder if I'm seeing the whole picture. I wonder if I'm seeing the whole version of them. And I'm not saying this is permission for that person to treat you like crap. I'm not saying this is permission for somebody to be a serial killer because there's still good inside them.

That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is people. I believe. I believe people at the core are fundamentally lovable. And we just oftentimes don't see that version of them, which makes them really difficult to love sometimes. So that's what I wanted to share with you guys today. I hope this was inspiring. I would love to hear about what this process is like for you. If this is hard, I'm gonna be the first to raise my hand and say this is hard for me to do sometimes, to put aside my judgments, put aside my hurt from someone and say I want to love on them as another human being.

And it can be really hard to do that. But it is something I challenge myself to do. And so I'm curious to hear how your process goes. If this is easy for you, if this is hard for you. So comment to the community feed and stay tuned for the rest of our livestreams this week. We have some incredible people showing up tomorrow, Luke is going to be talking about leadership. We've got Dan on Sunday. We just got the lineup. We've got meditation coming up, so just stay tuned. Check out the calendar and love to see you guys on the live streams commenting.

Take care and God bless.