I was sitting in a dark room Friday morning when my phone buzzed. I looked at the alert and CNN informed me that there had been a shooter at a school in Connecticut. Closing my phone, I looked up to heaven and said a prayer in my heart for those in harms way. I had no idea of the scale of this tragedy at that moment. I was at Seattle Children's Hospital watching the brain waves of my youngest child as they moved across the monitor during her EEG. She was sleeping peacefully, all wrapped up in white gauze with wires protruding out of bandages. I gave a sigh and silently thanked my Father in Heaven that I knew where my child was and that she was safe.
As the day progressed, more of the tragedy came to light. I wept for the families, the children, the first responders who would have to process this unimaginable horror. Openly crying in front of my children and hugging them each time they came near me. I work in our school district. This hits close to home.
What happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School is something that should never have happened. Like me, everyone wants to know if there were signs this young man was troubled. Was there something that someone near him could have done to stop this? How and why were there so many guns available to him? Did no one see?
My husband has gently asked me to not watch the news, because he comes into the room and sees that I have been crying. I'm filled with nearly unbearable sorrow for these families, their friends, everyone connected to this tragedy. And yet...I can get up in the morning and go into my daughter's bedroom and they are there. There isn't an empty bed with toys strewn around the floor and tiny clothes that will never be worn again. Tonight I will take my four children to dinner. We will get Santa pictures taken, just as we have for the past 23 years. We will buy each of them a Christmas ornament and we will love each other. We are whole.
And yet....there is a hollow place inside of me, my heart is a mother's heart and it weeps in anguish for 20 mothers thousands of miles away. They don't know me, I don't know them, so all I can do is pray for God's mercy to rest upon them. For angels to be their companions and hope that one day they will be able to find peace.
As the day progressed, more of the tragedy came to light. I wept for the families, the children, the first responders who would have to process this unimaginable horror. Openly crying in front of my children and hugging them each time they came near me. I work in our school district. This hits close to home.
What happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School is something that should never have happened. Like me, everyone wants to know if there were signs this young man was troubled. Was there something that someone near him could have done to stop this? How and why were there so many guns available to him? Did no one see?
My husband has gently asked me to not watch the news, because he comes into the room and sees that I have been crying. I'm filled with nearly unbearable sorrow for these families, their friends, everyone connected to this tragedy. And yet...I can get up in the morning and go into my daughter's bedroom and they are there. There isn't an empty bed with toys strewn around the floor and tiny clothes that will never be worn again. Tonight I will take my four children to dinner. We will get Santa pictures taken, just as we have for the past 23 years. We will buy each of them a Christmas ornament and we will love each other. We are whole.
And yet....there is a hollow place inside of me, my heart is a mother's heart and it weeps in anguish for 20 mothers thousands of miles away. They don't know me, I don't know them, so all I can do is pray for God's mercy to rest upon them. For angels to be their companions and hope that one day they will be able to find peace.
I have felt the same way. So many of us feel it. I thought I was done crying but today I saw the front page of the SL Tribune when I was in the library. It has a half page photo of one of Emilie -- a little girl whose family is from Ogden, burying her there this weekend, and so I am crying again.
ReplyDeleteI continue to tear up, each time I run across a montage of their sweet faces, or hear another news story on the burial of another tiny casket. My heart aches for these families. There are so very many good people out there---they far out weigh the numbers of bad and psychologically unbalanced---yet the latter impacts the former in much more publicized and known ways. Wicked and evil ways. My heart continues to ache for these families. And will for a very long time.
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