Since I became aware on Friday that there was a Sandy Hook Elementary School, it has been nearly impossible to focus.. on anything. For me it was the sickening words "an entire kindergarten class is unaccounted for." One person after another passed on pieces of what had happened and then I read via social media those horrible words about a missing kindergarten class. It was Newtown, CT. but I instantly knew, and I think we all did, that it could have been our town, our school and our kids. We all felt just a tiny measure of what it would be like had the names of the school and town been interchanged with our own.
Friday night our small Christian School presented it's Christmas program. Macy(2nd grade) was excited to be one of the angels in the nativity scene and Sam(also 2nd grade) was happy to just sing all the Christmas songs he had been singing sun up to sun down leading up to concert night. They sang beautifully wearing their black gloves with stars and carrying out all the practiced hand motions, not knowing about Connecticut. But I knew. The singing seemed a little distant as the heartbreak and all the swirling emotions that families from another small school must be experiencing flooded my spirit. I tried but couldn't follow the storyline of my children's Christmas program. A part of Macy's purple dress was caught in her leggings and I wished someone would see it and fix it for her, but in the next second I didn't care. She was singing and moving and safe. Sam kept peering over the edge of the bleachers he was standing on as if he'd lost something. Later he told us the stars on his mittens had fallen off. I was thankful that he could have that small concern, unlike the unfathomable memories and concerns some other children now had after performing their own Christmas program just the evening before.
While listening to a mom of one of my daughter's skating friends this afternoon, I finally gave up trying to concentrate enough to be part of a conversation and found an excuse to leave the warmth of the room we were in and to go near the ice so I could watch Macy and think in quiet. It's going to be hard to process this extent of evil even though we've seen evil before. I held a five-month old Ariel while watching another mom's lifeless baby being carried by a fireman from the smoke of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Not too many years later, Katarina, a preschooler, sat in our mini-van with me as she held her new kitten wrapped in a baby blanket as a radio announcer reported news of planes crashing into the twin towers and the pentagon.
I guess evil has always been near and that first sin invited it to stay. Thankfully we have a God who says, "I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come.." Isaiah 46:10 "He has also set eternity in the human heart." Ecc. 3:11 There is hope for this very troubled world. Our God planned ahead for the hope he knew we would need and sent his son to earth at the perfect time, allowed him to be a sacrifice for our sin and to rise again all according to plan. The rest of his plan will unfold perfectly, as well, and his justice will rule.
This weekend, though, I can't help but wonder how dark our world will get before all things are made right. The shadows seem to be lengthening. But tomorrow I will continue to pray for the unimaginable suffering in Newtown, CT. I will pray for God's protection over our own school, something I have not been praying for often enough. I will continue to do as much good as I can in my own little corner of the world knowing that evil can only be overcome by good(Romans 12:12.) And as we search for ways to make our children safer, as we should, I will be careful to let others decide for themselves what safety for their own children should look like. Moses mother made some decisions concerning her son because of the evil of that day and so will we in light of how evil is appearing in our own culture.
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Peering into the Fog
(I love to write and want to be a better writer. I am working on some assignments that will hopefully help me be more disciplined and focused so I can grow in this area. Writing is one of my passions, but it is also "work" and perfectionist tendencies can get in the way of progress.)
Assignment #4 is to write something.. anything.. and then make it public. That means no slipping it into a drawer or leaving it in a private email to go back to later on and "perfect!" That's the purpose of this blog post. So after a brief vacation and a little dose of history (which I LOVE,) this is what is on my mind...
There is a kind of mystery surrounding the passing of time, an intrigue that tugs my curiosity. I feel the inertia of fascination pulling me toward the people and places of times past, like a child on tiptoes peeking through a window, pressing in close and looking hard beyond the glass-- what I see is untouchable but irresistible. What would it have been like to have been a part of that "other" world, a world distant and blurry to me but so "real" to those living in it? I feel the warmth of a summer day, shaded by a porch roof, a breeze so light it could have been imagined, and through the screen door, laughter, as my children dip watercolor brushes into paint. And even as I take all these things in, another part of me is pressing into the glass of another time and trying to conjure up images of people I have never met, straining to "experience" what it must have been like for "them."
This early summer, it is the same story that swept away my imagination, as a girl, that is coming to life again in the breezes and blue skies. The story of a young Indian girl who found herself part of an adventure she had not looked for. By some strange twist of fate, or more likely by God's creative hand, she was floating down the Missouri River, a key player in an exploratory venture that would open up the west and carve her name and the names of those who traveled with her deep into American History. And deep into the imagination of those, like myself, who know they can never look into her eyes but can't stop peering into the fog of the past to "see" what it must have been like, what she must have felt and thought. It isn't enough for me to learn general facts. I want to know what emotions swirled around in her when she was chosen for this treacherous journey into the unknown, and expecting a baby at the same time. I want to know what she saw on any particular morning when she opened her eyes to begin a new day. Did light on the horizon draw anticipation for what might be ahead or was there anxiety about her responsibilities and all that was involved, physically and otherwise, as part of this unprecedented venture? What did Sacagawea think about when night fell and the fire became only embers, when conversation died down and there were only night sounds or silence?
Assignment #4 is to write something.. anything.. and then make it public. That means no slipping it into a drawer or leaving it in a private email to go back to later on and "perfect!" That's the purpose of this blog post. So after a brief vacation and a little dose of history (which I LOVE,) this is what is on my mind...
There is a kind of mystery surrounding the passing of time, an intrigue that tugs my curiosity. I feel the inertia of fascination pulling me toward the people and places of times past, like a child on tiptoes peeking through a window, pressing in close and looking hard beyond the glass-- what I see is untouchable but irresistible. What would it have been like to have been a part of that "other" world, a world distant and blurry to me but so "real" to those living in it? I feel the warmth of a summer day, shaded by a porch roof, a breeze so light it could have been imagined, and through the screen door, laughter, as my children dip watercolor brushes into paint. And even as I take all these things in, another part of me is pressing into the glass of another time and trying to conjure up images of people I have never met, straining to "experience" what it must have been like for "them."
This early summer, it is the same story that swept away my imagination, as a girl, that is coming to life again in the breezes and blue skies. The story of a young Indian girl who found herself part of an adventure she had not looked for. By some strange twist of fate, or more likely by God's creative hand, she was floating down the Missouri River, a key player in an exploratory venture that would open up the west and carve her name and the names of those who traveled with her deep into American History. And deep into the imagination of those, like myself, who know they can never look into her eyes but can't stop peering into the fog of the past to "see" what it must have been like, what she must have felt and thought. It isn't enough for me to learn general facts. I want to know what emotions swirled around in her when she was chosen for this treacherous journey into the unknown, and expecting a baby at the same time. I want to know what she saw on any particular morning when she opened her eyes to begin a new day. Did light on the horizon draw anticipation for what might be ahead or was there anxiety about her responsibilities and all that was involved, physically and otherwise, as part of this unprecedented venture? What did Sacagawea think about when night fell and the fire became only embers, when conversation died down and there were only night sounds or silence?
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