It's been over a week....

I keep thinking... it’s been a week. Just let it go. On the other hand, I can’t.

The images of innocent little children still scroll in my mind. For the last four months I have been volunteering one day a week at a local elementary school and I can think of are my little 1^st graders that I’ve come to know and love. The difference is that my first graders are not from the upscale neighborhood that the Sandy Hook Elementary kids came from.

I try and make sense of what could have happened on December 14^th in the mind of the shooter, and I’ve come to realize that we’ll never really know. It doesn’t really matter if he was bullied, it doesn’t really matter if he had Asperger’s Syndrome and I guess it doesn’t really matter what was going on through his mind last Friday.

Instead, families and neighbors and siblings are trying to figure out why their loved ones were taken so early and for what seems as no apparent reason. I feel sorry for the families who have to say goodbye and for a whole town that is heartbroken. One doesn’t have to have kids to feel heartbreak, I think heartbreak has touched the entire United States over the last week.

I’m not sure about you, but I know over the last week I have wondered why God would want 20 little kids and 6 adults to die last week?  What lesson are we supposed to learn from this?

I know that many politicians have tried to bring to light the gun laws and changes that need to be made. I agree … in part. I don’t agree that the average Joe should have access to assault rifles. But I also believe that this guy who opened fire last week would have done so regardless of gun laws. Following the Columbine shooting, a lot of schools installed metal detectors in the schools thinking this would save many instances in schools.

So following this tragedy, will all schools be required to have bullet proof glass? What about playgrounds, there is a chance that someone can open fire on kids during recess, so should recess be taken away? I don’t have the answer. There are so many questions left unanswered. There are so many stories that have been told, yet so many other stories that haven’t.

My heart goes out to every family who has lost someone and to the families of the children who were in the school that day. No child should have to endure the pain and realization of life that happened on the 14^th.

I not only grieve for the residents of Newtown, but I also grieve those who lost loved ones during Columbine. Can you imagine the wounds that were just starting to heal that have been opened once again? Can you imagine the Mommies and Daddies who have already bought Christmas presents for their children for Christmas? It gives me chills.

I’m not sure why the events of December 14^th happened… and I probably never will. I just know that I can’t get it out of my head. Maybe that’s the reason. Do we need to be reminded that life isn’t guaranteed? That life is so innocent and that even the innocent can be taken away so easily?

I haven’t blogged for awhile and maybe this topic isn’t appropriate, because I don’t want to give “glory” to the pilot. Instead I want people to pay attention to their surroundings. Nothing is guaranteed.

Enough tangents for now…