It could have been my baby

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I’ve carefully avoided news coverage and discussions of the Sandy Hook tragedy. Tragedies of this magnitude are completely debilitating to me. Unfortunately, there’s really no avoiding it. Talking with a friend, she mentioned how sad she was when she looked in her closet and saw her kids gifts piled up, and her daughter’s little velvet Christmas dress. That made me think of how many little velvet Christmas dresses won’t get worn, or worse yet, will get worn in a casket. 

Nearly everyone is affected by this in one way or another, but those of us who have 6-year-olds may feel slightly more empathy and nausea. I imagine my teeny-tiny girl in her classroom with her friends and her teacher, laughing, smiling, learning…I can’t imagine what a bullet from a hunting rifle would do to her itty bitty body. I can’t imagine hearing on the news that a massacre occurred at her school. I can’t imagine trying to pick up my life and go on, and my heart breaks at the sadness, the helplessness that these families must feel.

I read the status updates, people calling for stricter gun legislation. People want to “fix” this. I listened to the message from our superintendent saying that we shouldn’t be afraid to send our kids to school on Monday because they had a plan in place to keep them safe. I’m guessing Sandy Hook had a plan too. But I doubt these events happen in the way schools practice and plan for them to occur. How do you plan for that kind of madness? “Lockdowns’ don’t stop bullets.

And what about the shooter? People are horrified at the thought of him and the heinous acts he’s committed. But really, what happened to him? I read he had some form of autism? He killed his mother. How messed up must your mind be if you kill your mother and then a bunch of babies? Maybe he’s in hell. Maybe he was all ready in hell. 

I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I have puffy eyes, a fatigued brain, and a horrible brain-numbing headache. My children and husband question why our God would let this happen. If it happened to these children in Connecticut, who’s to say it won’t happen to them? I can’t answer them. I try to offer reassurance, but right now, I need more than I have to give.

I don’t know what to pray for anymore. That some sort of good might come from so much heartbreak seems far-fetched. I pray that God heals these broken parents and fractured families. And I pray for the safety of my own children. I don’t ask why pray for understanding because I don’t want to understand why these things keep happening. I just pray that they stop happening.