Struggling with Today’s Tragedy

A friend of mine posted this on Facebook earlier: “First school shooting since I became a parent. It’s scarier.”

Yes, yes it is.  And yet it’s just one more scary event to add to the list – movie theaters, malls, schools.  There are no limits.  Apparently.

When I first heard about the shootings, I was in a store buying the girls’ pajamas to wear on Christmas morning.  As I read through the headline on my phone, I held my breath…and my kids aren’t anywhere near Connecticut.  Since the story was still developing, the article was pretty bare-bones  but the little I read made me tear up.  I just stood there, totally choked up and dazed.  I just sent my little girls off to daycare that morning and had forgotten to give them hugs.

And as the story unfolded, virtually before my eyes thanks to Facebook and Twitter, the facts just kept getting worse.  An entire kindergarten class?  How in the world could someone do that?  Kindergartners are full of energy, laughter, and are the best givers of unsolicited hugs.  They have nothing but hope and faith in the world around them.  Who in the world would want to hurt one, let alone 20?  Twenty…  My heart hurts just writing that.

People on various media outlets stated that this was a wake up call – this can happen anywhere, even a seemingly safe, small Connecticut town with only one murder in the past 10 years.  But here’s the thing, I never thought the world was safe.  And I don’t think that most of the people in the world thinks it’s completely safe either.  Fact is, these scary events are happening everywhere.

In my house we’re working on “stranger danger” and I’m slowly breaking it to my 3 year old that not everyone in the world is “nice”, but none of that really matters when someone goes to their school and opens fire.  There’s just no way to prepare for that.  The bottom line is, if someone is going to do something of this magnitude there’s not a whole lot I can do about it.  That’s a scary thing.  It’s a helpless feeling.  And as much as we want to believe that schools are a safe place, that’s been proven wrong so many times over the past 13 years.

But we must live our lives to the fullest, despite all of that.  I don’t want to keep my kids in a bubble.  I don’t want to live in fear and I don’t want my kids to be raised that way.  So as a parent, I teach my kids everything I can to keep them safe, send them out into the world (or school in this case), and pray.  Really hard.  But, whatever you do, please don’t mistake that for me thinking the world is safe.  And please don’t tell me that I need a wake up call.  Because I don’t.  But none of that makes today’s news any less horrifying.  Today’s events weigh heavily on me as a person, but more importantly, as a mother.

All day I’ve struggled in a sea of emotions – sadness, anger, denial, helplessness.  I’ve struggled to wrap my mind around the unimaginable  And then it happened.

With the story still unfolding, people started posting on Facebook about gun control laws, the lack of appropriate/available mental health care here in our country, and safety in our schools.   And in some of the cases I agreed.  Today’s events might very well signal a failure on all of those fronts, but this isn’t the day for that.  Instead, I shed tears, grieving for the 20 parents that couldn’t pick up their kindergartners this afternoon.  Moms & Dads who will go without nighttime kisses this evening.  Families who will not have the cheerful laughter of a child in their homes this weekend…or maybe ever again.  And for anyone who saw the hope and promise in one of those 20 children who were so mercilessly torn from this Earth today.  They are the ones I’m focusing on right now.

My thoughts and prayers are with them.