MOUNT VERNON — On Dec. 20, 2015, Mount Vernon Mayor Matt Starr was lying in an intensive care unit at Knox Community Hospital, battling a “showering” of blood clots in his lungs.
Starr had emergency surgery to catch the clots that would be dislodged. In those moments, laying still, he didn’t really know what to think.
“But I thought I had hit rock bottom only to discover that I was standing on a trap door,” Starr said.
Just before midnight, Starr dozed off only to wake up with people standing around him with concern in their eyes. All were telling him to wake up and breathe.
“What felt to me like a 15-minute nap was really 15 minutes of my life where I was being artificially sustained,” he said. “I was gone.”
While laying there, Starr’s skin began to burn and itch. His ribs hurt and he felt pain every time he took a shallow breath. It was the longest, most painful and worst night of his life.
Noting the five different machines attached to him, Starr had a dreadful thought.
“I kept wondering, is it my time? Was this it?” Starr said. “Just then I felt something transcend the pain and the uncertainty.”
This was the prologue to Starr’s message at Wednesday’s Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast at Mount Vernon Nazarene University.
“I share that experience about myself because it was a moment when I needed to face my own fears and find the meaning and purpose in my own life,” Starr said. “Even though I couldn’t move I had to search for meaning and purpose, I could barely breathe, but I had a choice. I could be a victim. I could shake my fist at God and say, ‘This is not fair.’
“Or I could trust in God and face the fact that I could die at any moment. And I’ll tell you a secret, knowing that trust has been liberating.”
To symbolize this point, Starr mentioned the book turned Disney animated movie Pinocchio, where the wooden puppet gains consciousness and self-realization after having several battles of self-doubt, lying and finding one’s true self though faced with fear.
For Pinocchio and Geppeto when they’re swallowed into the belly of the whale Monstro, they realize they need each other to survive.
“Pinocchio admitted his inadequacies rather than trying to hide them, or worse,” Starr said.
“So upon Pinocchio’s admission of his inadequacies, he finds his purpose in life and devises a plan to rescue his father. He stopped worrying about his own problems and focused on something else, something bigger.”
There was the rebirth — the hero’s journey.
Afterward, Starr pointed to crucifixion of Jesus, showing “our own frailties, inadequacies, unworthiness being projected onto that cross.”
“What do you see? Is it someone you betrayed or deny and can’t forgive yourself? Do you see tyranny, malevolence, hatred?”
Starr’s message emphasized finding meaning and purpose in our lives can be very powerful in overcoming our fears.
“It’s easy to have faith when things are going well, but it’s in those moments of our own suffering and pain, uncertainty and fear that leaning into faith can see us through those tough times, even though it can be hard to see,” he said.