My Thoughts & A Little Prayer…

Over the past few days, I have been struggling with my world. This supposably amazing world that allows us to dream big, allows us to have the freedom of speech, to make our own choices, to raise our children to love thy neighbor. To go to school to learn and become doctors, engineers, lawyers...teachers. I am struggling because I (and I am sure I am no different than most mothers, fathers, grandmothers, friends, sisters, brothers) I am having a hard time comprehending what unfolded on Friday morning in Newtown, CT. I am struggling to find the right words to say, the right feelings to feel, the right time to cry. I am struggling to be okay with a god that can take 20 innocent children, who have only had BIG dreams and never got the chance to live them out. I am struggling. 

I can't seem to stay away from the news reports, the pictures of the sweet little children and the six adults who lost their lives that day. I keep going back, I read, I watch, I cry. I hug my two children tighter. I read the thoughts, prayers, and poems people are posting on facebook. Some give me comfort, others upset me. I wish I could give every single one of those mothers a hug, I wouldn't even say anything, just a hug. From one mother to another, because I can't begin to comprehend the words that would need to be said, I am not sure there are any. 

I don't live in Newtown, CT. I wasn't there. I didn't have a child that was in a school on lockdown on Friday. What I feel doesn't even come close to what those people of that town felt and are feeling. BUT I do have a kindergartner. A five year old who LOVES going to school, who loves her friends, who doesn't know anything of what happened on Friday. Because she hasn't asked, I haven't told. I can't bare to break her sweet little heart of the hate and evil in this world. I want her to still LOVE school, it's a safe place to her, it should be a safe place, Sandy Hook Elementary should have been a safe place. My five year old is what is going to help me not struggle so much with this, because for her my job as her mother is to make sure she does DREAM BIG! To make sure she is strong and sticks up for what SHE believes in, to make her own choices, and to love thy neighbor, to go to school, and one day become a doctor, an engineer, a lawyer or a teacher who would risk her life for her students, because that is how I raised her to be. I am blessed because I still have this right, this chance as her mother to be able to guide her to be all of those things. The mothers of those 20 beautiful children got that right taken from them on Friday morning. So I will continue to think of them, to prayer for them, to struggle with them, in hopes that someday it can hurt a little less, and regardless of what form of religion you believe in, they will see their darling little children one day once again. 

Avah age 5 - Derek age 2