I’m stunned. I first saw the news reports a few hours ago. Then, it was vague, and there was hope – if there can be such a thing with a horrific tragedy like this – that the final reports would tally ‘wounded’ and not ‘dead’.
I want to rewind the clock. I want to go back to the moments before this happened… when I was writing about the ‘magic’ of the holiday season.
Before the news updates started to roll in. Before my stomach began to tighten one knot at a time and the pressure in my brain began to build. As I sit now on my couch, the numbers keep rising.
And I cry.
And cry.
Good GOD, for the sweet babies.
Oh my heart….for the parents, the families that stood outside waiting for children that didn’t come…receiving the very worst news of their lives.
For the pure loss of the innocence: The children at the school, lost. All of the families who will forever have a gaping hole where the love of their children once lived. The teachers and staff – gone and their families who can’t be the same. The surviving children. The community of Sandy Hook School.
The city of Newtown, Connecticut.
And once again, all of the rest of us who watch from near and far wishing so deep in our souls that our tears, our anger could change the course of this tragedy.
For all of it – my prayers, my love, the aches in my heart.
I fought the urge to run to my children’s school to pick them up, comforted by the knowledge that they are (I say as I take the deepest of grateful breaths) safe and don’t need to be exposed to my horror and sadness. I need this time to collect myself, to process the hurt in my soul and to prepare in case they have heard and have questions.
If they don’t know, I won’t be sharing.
I will spend the next hour pulling myself together so I don’t frighten my small people with the extra tight hugs they will receive when they walk in.
And praying.
Mother to mother…. I can’t fathom their pain, and I don’t have the words to make it even an ounce better…. but I can hurt with you.
And I can pray.
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