It's 10 days before Christmas, the happiest time of the year. You bundle your little one and send them to school. There are presents already wrapped under the Christmas tree--or perhaps you've hidden them to keep your munchkin from sneaking a peek at their gifts.
It's almost holiday break. Maybe this year you'll be traveling to see family who live afar. Or perhaps Grandma is coming to spend a few days reveling in the carols, the candy canes, the trimmings of the season of giving. Everyone is excited. Everyone is a little nicer, a little more patient, a little more forgiving.
You kiss your precious child as they head off for a day, perhaps, of holiday celebrations--free of school work--expecting that when that final bell rings, you'll pick them up from the bus stop, at the school or maybe you'll greet them at the door after they walk home. Or maybe, you've got to work, and so your reunion with them will delayed until you clock out. But that's okay. It's the weekend. It's nearly Christmas. All is, for just a moment, right in the world.
Until it turns very, very wrong.
No one ever suspects that some unstable young man, a son of one of the school's former teacher's aides, would completely lose his mind that morning. No one would ever believe some crazed individual would walk into an elementary school and take out his rage on innocent children. No one would expect that when they sent their children to school that morning, they would never see them again.
Who could?
But this is the reality that the families of twenty young children (most of them kindergarteners) are facing today. Six more were injured, but have survived. And six adults have also lost their lives.
When I heard the news of the shooting in Connecticut, I couldn't breathe. This on the heels of the Clackamas Mall shooting in Portland, Oregon where two people who chose to go shopping that day never went home again.
I cannot begin to imagine the agony these families are suffering this holiday season. My heart aches as I look at my children, all safely home after their school holiday parties, and I realize that so many are weeping in homes that will no longer echo with the laughter of a beloved child, or hear the gentle footsteps of a husband, a wife, a father, a mother, a son, or a daughter. I think of the presents that will remain unopened, the songs that won't be sung, the joy that won't be shared. Tears are streaming down my cheeks as I type this post.
There are no words for a moment like this, but I believe that the rest of America--if not the world--weeps with these families.
We grieve with thee.
This is a very tragic circumstance and perhaps it will wake up Americas leaders to the overdue need to more tightly regulate gun laws and possession criteria, but all we can hope, is that afffected friends and relatives of the victims, can overcome this as much as is humanly possible and as quickly as is humanly possible.
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