I was teaching at a community college when I was pregnant with my oldest. I taught a couple of classes in the same room in the same building. It was right on the edge of campus, and it was very bright. It was lined with windows.
Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning I would go in there a few minutes before class would begin, and I would sit at my desk. As the computer was starting up, I would look around, and I would look for an escape route.
From the moment I learned I was pregnant, I had this terrible fear that a shooter would run through campus. He would open the door, look at me, and shoot me in my belly, taking my baby’s life and leaving my own.
I used to have nightmares about this. I would wake up in a cold sweat. I had figured many escape routes in those early morning hours.
And then she was born, and she began preschool four years later. A couple of months after her first day, a shooter entered Sandy Hook elementary school. Prior to the moment when that man entered that building, I had my heart protected by a shield of naiveté. Surely no one would take aim at babies. Without question, evil like that could not exist.
But it did.
And it does.
And now I, and every other parent in this broken world, spend my days in this space knowing that the most precious pieces of our world are out there living their lives occasionally away from our protective arms. And the feeling of vulnerability that brings can be crippling.
And so when my phone keeps sending me alerts all day about another shooter, at another school, in this country…
Well it makes me angry.
It makes me angry because we shake our heads and wring our hands and say, “but what can we do?” We argue about gun control. (And yes I do believe that would make a difference.) And we mutter about mental health and safety precautions.
But don’t any of us get it?
We live in a society that has no regard for youth. We have subpar childcare, subpar and overcrowded schools, kids not receiving medical care which includes mental healthcare. We make their parents work too much, we convince everyone that money and career success are more important that nurturing, we idolize violence and desensitize children to it from their earliest days, we create movies and video games that make kids feel powerful through simulated violence, we fail to nurture children’s emotional development in schools favoring STEM over everything else…
And then we wonder how some people fall through the cracks and end up homicidal.
I was in the car driving home with my seven year old tonight. She was telling me about school and her friends and about all she learns and all she is, and I choked up. I was overcome with the purity and faith and innocence and earnestness seeping forth from her. And this is her gift, and it’s a gift given to children upon their entrance into this world. But it’s a fragile gift, and it’s quiet gift, and it’s a gift that if not protected won’t ever make it to their third birthday.
Children aren’t just our future. They are our present. They are the good in the world and our reminder that tomorrow can be brighter and that better does exist.
But if we don’t protect it, if we don’t honor it, if we don’t afford it the dignity it deserves, then we might as well keep wringing our hands and uttering tsk tsk because events like today will just continue to happen.
Are tragedies inevitbly going to happen? Of course. Is the frequency with which they happen in this culture absolutely indicitive of an evil that has crept into our society. Well, you can answer that one.
In the meantime, I will pray for our children, and I will pray for all those who we lost today and for their loved ones. And I will try to learn how to be the kind of person who knows also how to pray for the shooter.
And I hope maybe we all can talk and lament and debate a little less and pray and nurture our kids a little bit more. It’s the only answer I’ve got.