This week was rough. I am sure so many parents held on and snuggled their children just a little bit longer. That is, except for the parents who couldn’t because their babies were taken by unfathomable means.
I don’t get it. I don’t understand. Why are we losing our precious children to gunfire in schools? How do we stop it? When will it end? What do we need to do? Who will be next?
I am sure those parents who sent their sweet kids off to school that morning had no idea that they would never see them alive again. It was just another busy day with all of life’s responsibilities thrown at them, just trying to make it through. I bet that they replay those last moments that they got to spend with their babies over and over in their heads forever.
My heart is broken for them. The thought of what they are going through not only brings me to tears but makes me want to be physically sick. I can’t imagine their pain – and selfishly, I don’t want to imagine it. But if I am being honest, I have to imagine it. Because what are we doing to keep it from happening again? What if the next time it is not in Texas, it is here in our town?
My heart breaks for this world we live in. It is broken for all the teachers scared to go to work and all the parents scared to send their babies to school. Why do we have to fear sending our kids to school?
I don’t know the answer. Truly I don’t. Maybe it is to take all the guns. Maybe it is to have all the teachers go through gun lessons and have them all carry.
But teachers, they didn’t sign up to be cops. They want to teach and grow our babies, not stand on the front line when someone loses his mind. And yet, they still do – every time this tragedy happens. Every teacher does.
Because as teachers, they don’t just teach, they fall in love with the little children that we send to them every day. They are these kids’ parents away from home. They form bonds and want to protect every single one from all the harmful things in this world.
Which is great — keep our babies from being put down by other students, keep our babies from doing dumb tricks that will hurt them, keep our babies from being mean kids themselves — but why do they have to jump into the line of fire for our kids? Why are we living like this and accepting it?
We have to do better.
This week, I saw two things, a list of how many school shootings there have been in the USA and a comparison of the number of school shootings in the USA vs. other countries. It was breathtaking, to say the least. We are the land of the free and the home of the brave, and yet we cannot figure out how to stop our babies from being shot down at a place we send them to learn, flourish and grow.
We are failing our kids. We are failing our teachers. We are failing our future.
I am not OK with it. You should not be OK with it. In fact, I am sick over it. And you should be too. We have to do better – we, as a country, have to be better.
It is not OK to mourn the loss of children for a few days as a country and then move on, while these parents of the babies taken too soon mourn forever. It is not OK to have to worry about whether or not we will become those parents. It is not OK to fear sending our children to school.
I will continue to pray for those families who lost their innocent babies. And I will continue praying for this world that we are raising our children in, for a change to come. At this point, the problem has become so bad that we definitely need a whole lot more of God in it to help.
And every single school day before I put my kids on the bus, I will continue to hug them and kiss them and remind them how much I love them. And as they drive off, I will continue to ask God to put His armor around them, keep them safe and bring them back home to me.
And I am praying for the day when we have made enough changes that parents no longer have to worry about whether their child will make it home from school that day.
We have to do better. Our children’s lives actually depend on it.
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