~ Barack Obama
Quote by the President yesterday after the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut.
I (along with many of you) am very shaken by what happened yesterday. How can it be that children as young as five and only as old as ten were targets of such violence. How is this another persons reality.
I heard about it soon after it happened while I was at an appointment. I was scrolling online news sites to get information. I was a deer in headlights. I stopped at a grocery store and met Craig for lunch. We talked about it a bit but neither of us really knew much and had very limited information. At this point, we had no idea how many people had died.
As I was driving home, I had an overwhelming urge to pick Piper up from school. From her little school in our small and quiet town. Already pretty sure I would, I called Craig. I thought he would tell me that she should stay in school and that things were fine.
“I think you should.”
So I did.
I didn’t tell her why, although she kept asking. I just told her it was for nothing except that I missed her. And I really did. I am thankful, lucky, blessed that it wasn’t my town, my daughter’s school. It could have been. Those parents in Newtown waved goodbye to their children yesterday morning and sent them off to school. Without a second thought. And why would there be any second thought. Our schools are safe aren’t they?
Perhaps not.
Facebook lit up with status and conversations about this tragic shooting and I learned that children as young as 5 in our surrounding communities practise plans to deal with this very thing! Naive of me to have believed otherwise… maybe.
Sending our children off to Kindergarten is already steep with emotion. Our babies are growing up and becoming independent of us. For many of us it is the first time that our children are away from us, being influenced by others that we have not handpicked. We trust that when we send them to school they will be safe. Sure, I worry. About how they are doing. Are they happy? Having fun? Making friends?
But never have I, until yesterday, worried that someone would arrive at their school armed with guns and shoot them.
Things like children being randomly shot makes no sense to me. The world does not make sense today. Until these random acts of violence and terror end, I’m not sure that it ever will. I’ve cried a lot about this and yesterday I was racked with emotion because as a mother, my heart walks around outside of my body in the shape of 3 little girls. I cannot imagine the devastation that I would feel if something happened to them.
They are my life.
So I pray, “Dear God, keep them safe. I love them so.”
