I stayed glued to my computer screen on Friday, as so many did, trying to find updates on the shooting and hoping beyond hope that it wasn’t as bad as everyone feared. It was.
I received a phone call early Sunday morning from my mom with the news that my 17 year old cousin was in a serious car crash and is now in a coma.
Josh turned to me as I cried and said “If we have kids, they will not drive. We will keep them locked in the basement and home school them.”
While this is obviously not what we’d do, it’s what part of me will want to do. We live in a big scary world. A beautiful world, but a scary one.
When Josh took me to China to meet his dad before we got engaged, I knew several people who warned me to be careful because it’s so “dangerous” in China.
I tell Josh to be careful every day because it’s dangerous here.
We can’t live in fear, no matter how much of a struggle it is to choose to hope. I know that the only thing that I can do is try to be better and love more.
This prayer of St. Francis is one to live by, especially in times like this:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Our hearts and prayers are with all the lives touched by the tragedy at Sandy Hook, and with my cousin and his family.