Dear Readers,
As a nation, as a people, as a world,
we mourn for what happened in Sandy Hook Elementary on Friday. There
are no words that can satisfy my heart or help me to wrap my head
around what has transpired. I read the stories of the beautiful
children, gone before they even had a chance to live, and of the
brave adults who dedicated their lives to the kids in that school. A
principal and psychologist making a desperate charge to take down the
shooter. A teacher dying as she shielded her children. A music
teacher holding a closet door shut as the shooter tried to get in.
Sparks of hope in a dark tragedy. There are no words that I can say
that are deep enough, comforting enough, wise enough to make the pain
go away.
I am a substitute teacher who spends
her time with kids of all ages. My favorite days have to be my days
when I am with the young ones, the precious boys and girls who are
just learning how to live, who are relatively free of the pain and
scars living in a sinful world leaves. They live in a world where
best friends are made in an instant, where boo-boos can be kissed
away, and everything can be created in beautiful bright colors. They
don't all color in the lines. They occasionally throw tantrums.
Sometimes they don't listen to the directions you've given them 500
times but they're learning. Have you ever been hugged by a line of
fifteen six year olds? I have. It's pretty awesome. I struggle
with imagining someone who could want to hurt them.
I have spent the last three weeks
teaching high school art which often feels like an exercise in
futility. Yesterday, however, I started my new long term (meaning a few
weeks) position teaching middle school chorus. Middle school kids
are a kind unto themselves. They are testing their wings, often
thrashing against authority. Their hormones are going crazy. They
often talk too much. They can be cruel to each other and to adults.
But they are also funny (sometimes without intending to be so) and
sometimes sweet and vulnerable. They drive me crazy more than half
the time, but man do I love them.
I read through my code blue drills in
my new classroom today and spent several minutes looking around the
room wondering, “How will I protect them? How will I keep them
calm?” And still worse, in a classroom where the positioning of
the windows and door is the worst for trying to keep kids out of
harms way, how do I shield them all if the worst happens? I don't
know.
Many of my friends know that I don't
especially enjoy my job some days. Being a sub is hard because I am
usually in a different classroom every day. These two long term jobs
have had there own difficulty. As an educator, their safety is my
number one priority. They come first. All of them. And I hope that
I am one of those teachers who stands up and protects my kids over
myself because that is my duty. If that is not something you are
willing to do, this is the wrong profession.
I am going to tell a story from about
ten days ago while I was teaching high school art. I had assigned my
kids the task of creating origami projects and some were very
creative and made beautiful projects while others did the bare
minimum or skipped it all together in favor of a zero. One student
however decided that in lieu of making origami, he was going to take
the black construction paper and make a gun. Many of the students
thought it was cool. Even before recent events, I completely flipped
out on him. I informed him he had 30 seconds destroy it unless he
wanted a referral.
I wasn't very old when the Columbine
shooting occurred but I do remember it on some level. I was in
elementary school at the time. The VT shootings happened when I was
in high school so this young man was pretty young when it happened.
They don't understand the horror of even seeing the events on TV.
They don't understand the fear of it happening in your town. I am
willing to bet that if the creator of said paper gun pulled it out
today, it would be seen as a threat because we are so scared.
I'm not writing this post to make a
point about gun control or the school systems or even mental health
awareness. I'm writing to address a few issues near and dear to my
heart, issues about faith in times of crisis and the problem of
suffering in the world. I hate that we are so cynical that we assume
that just because bad things happen in the world, God can't exist. I
assure you that he does.
The question many people ask is how
God can allow bad things to happen, how he allowed that man (I do not
wish to remember his name) was allowed into an elementary school and
was allowed to take the lives of innocent children, shattering our
hearts. I think God allowed it because he had to.
When God created man kind, he created
mankind with free will. With free will, unfortunately, comes sin,
the root of all our problems. God does not force us to obey his
laws, as much as he desperately wants us to. I like to think of God
as the parent of an adult child. No matter how well you raise your
kids, they are going to make mistakes, probably lots of them, and
probably bigger mistakes as they get older.
We are addicted to sin like some
people are addicted to heroin. We know it's bad for us but we can't
stop. We are like adult children. No matter how much our loving
parents beg us to stop, they cannot make us do so. They cannot
shield us from the consequences of our own actions, just like God
cannot shield us from the results of our own sin. If he gave us our
free will, he can't selectively take it away to save us from the
consequences. For those of you who are parents, have you ever let
your child make a mistake so they would understand the consequences,
even though it hurt your heart? It's like that.
I have no doubt that God mourns for
what happened in Connecticut even more than we do. He is able to
love more completely than us; and he knows each of them more
completely than anyone else. He knows who each of those beautiful
children could have become and His heart is broken that they never
got a chance to be those people. But those children are now with
God, safe in his arms, and we are the ones we ought to feel sorry
for. We must continue to live our lives in a world of sin.
I said the following on facebook on
Monday:
"People
ask where God was on Friday when all those children died. I can tell
you where. God was in Sandy Hook School on Friday. He was there
escorting each of the little children to heaven, and he was there
with the teachers who kept their children calm in the chaos. He was
there with the parents that learned that their child would never come
home. He was in Sandy Hook, invited or not, as he is in every school."
I hold tightly to every word of that
statement. On Friday, when the world was busy asking where he was,
God was with the children of Sandy Hook, those who lost their lives
and those who have to live in the aftermath. He held each tiny hand,
calmed fluttering hearts, and whispered calming words in the ears of
terrified children. Do you know how hard it is to keep a first
grader quiet, even when there isn't anything going on? God was with
those children.
God was with the principal and the
school counselor making a desperate attempted to take the shooter
out. They gave up their lives for those kids. He was also there
with the teachers that had to protect their kids and keep a level
head in chaos.
God was there in the aftermath, with
the first responders. He was with the husbands and children who
learned that their wife or mother had given up their lives. He was
with the parents who learned that their child would never come home
from school. I cannot even imagine.
As a country, we have decided that God
is not invited into our public schools. I think God is kind of like
that friend of a friend who always comes along when you make plans,
invited or no. He doesn't particularly care that he isn't invited;
he's coming in anyway. I believe that God is with us always.
Always. God doesn't escort us into a school building and wait at the
door.
We have seen a lot of tragedy through
the years and a lot of difficulty this year. Hurricane Sandy rocked
our country. But the difference was that we felt like there was
something we could do. There was a cause to donate to, there were
tangible needs to fill, and physical damage to repair. There is none
of that in this case. We can only pray. While many think it's like
putting a band-aid on a gaping wound but it's not. Gaping wounds
take time to heal and they often have to be healed from the inside
out. Prayer is like a salve. Applied daily, it helps heal the wound
but it takes time.
I hope my words, inadequate as they
are, might bring comfort to you. Comment, if you would like, but any
posts meant to inspire arguments will be deleted.
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