I was kind of surprised by how strongly the news from Connecticut affected me. Of course it was sad, horrifying, and shattering...but I'm usually pretty good at compartmentalizing my feelings, putting school murders in a quiet kind of "sympathy and gentle sadness without much demonstration" box.
Not this time.
I openly wept for these children, these families, and this school. Perhaps it's my own connection to children and school (and the sheer reality that this could have easily happened at my own elementary school). Perhaps it's the other overwhelming griefs that attended my life over the course of this year. Perhaps it's the otherwise stressful place in which I currently find myself.
At any rate, I found myself weeping deep, heaving sobs for these small ones. Kindergarteners. The most delightfully heartwarming age, when everything is new and fascinating and bad is a Big Wolf and nothing more.
There are no easy answers for this; gun control, support for the mentally ill, school preparedness...nothing adequately covers or solves the magnitude of this situation. Religion, atheism, the innocence of children or the evil of mankind...nothing answers why this happened.
A very smart man wrote this, and I think it's the best thing I've read so far. I'm trying to keep myself away from most of the media hubbub because it does no good, but when someone as wise and humble as Jared faces the topic of the Sandy Hook murders, I read it. It's worth the time.
There is a way to make this grief beautiful, and for me, that is simply to not despair at the hopelessness of humanity, but to make a concentrated effort to be a vessel of peace, grace and love for my God.
There's no denying that this sucks. Plain and simple. And the trite answers suck, and a part of me cringes at writing that "we can make beauty out of this tragedy." The truth is, we can't really make beauty out of this. We are too far gone. But we can try, with every ounce of our being, to carry on the work of someone who can.
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