I bet they’re still hearing gunshots in their ears.
I bet some of them feel guilty that they survived.
I bet they’ll never want to step foot in a classroom again.
Amber Gonzales, whose 8 year old daughter Aubree hid under her desk while the shooting at Robb Elementary occurred this week, says this about the trauma her daughter is experiencing-
“She’s terrified to go anywhere without me and her dad. She can’t sleep by herself. She’s scared to take a shower by herself. She’s scared to even watch a movie in the living room by herself.”
When Monique Hernandez picked up her 8 year old son after being evacuated on Tuesday afternoon, they ran to meet each other and he wouldn’t stop clinging to her.
“He just wanted to go home. He said, ‘Mama, take me home.’”
“Sure, baby,” she said. That was all she could say.
“There’s no words to make it OK,” she said, “to make it better.”
19 children and 2 teachers. 21 lives tragically lost, and horiffically taken on May 24, just days after 10 others had been shot and killed at a local grocery store in Buffalo, New York.
The news and social media has been abuzz this week with the outrage of angry parents and frustrated citizens. As we should be.
These things should not happen.
But how quickly we move from grieving to groaning.
How quickly we jump from sympathy to solutions.
I have been avoiding the news all week because seeing the happy little faces of the children who got murdered on Tuesday being used for propaganda is too much for my heart to handle, especially after the recent birth of my new baby niece, and the immense love I feel for her.
So many parents and grandparents and sisters and brothers held that same love for the 19 little children who were lost this week.
I can’t imagine the grief they’re experiencing.
I never want to have to.
But our country is too hardened if we, can’t for a moment, silence our protests, hold back our debates, put down our pointed fingers,
and just. weep.
Just stay silent.
Just mourn.
The great poet, King Solomon,
once wrote these words In Ecclesiastes 3-
“For everything there is a season,
and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.”
Now is the time to keep silent, and to mourn.
Now is the time to build up, not break down.
Now is the time for love- not for hate.
As one of my favorite authors Ann Voskamp wrote this week-
“If we deeply care about justice, justice in our streets, in our churches, in our schools, in our communities, in our world, we will keep making spaces for deep lament, because when our hearts are moved to lament, the very heart of God is moved toward all of us. In God we trust, and we trust that our grief moves God. Moves God’s heart and moves God’s long arm. Our grief has the very ear of God. And our God is not a God of apathy, but a God of empathy, a God who is not caught off guard but a God who catches every tear, a God who is not silent in the face of all kinds of violence, but turned his face towards ours and acted, opening wide His arms on the Cross to bear it all.
Lament is not passive. To lament means one is moved.
Lament moves us- moves us to action.“
Justice is mine, says the Lord.
He will repay.
For now let us love, by lamenting.
For now, let us show mercy, by mourning.
There is a time for every purpose under heaven-
can’t you feel it in your soul?
Now is the time to weep.
