Today is the first official day of summer break for the girls. We all got to sleep in a little and still had time for crafts and smoothie-making before I had to leave for work. It is always hard to leave, but this morning was something more. I felt almost paralyzed as I went to kiss them goodbye. I had to fight back tears and try not to squeeze them too tight or too long, which would give away my heart-gripping fear of letting them go at all.
After the events of the weekend, the last few weeks, the last few years, I have finally had to come to terms with the fact that I am raising my beautiful girls in a world where they are not safe. They are not safe at school, not safe at sleepovers, just simply not safe. I have always counted myself so fortunate to have been born, merely by chance, in this country. But now, now my heart aches much like I imagine mothers' hearts in third world nations have ached for years. I have to acknowledge that my country allows children to be killed and does nothing to stop it. We are no better or different than the war-ravaged countries around the world where mothers have had to bury their babies; in fact, we are worse, because we have let politics and money become more important than the lives of innocent children.
I vacillate between wanting to take action and wanting to lock myself in my house with my girls and never let them out of my sight. My heart is literally seized with a nearly-debilitating fear that I may lose one of my precious children. My heart is broken at the thought of those who have lost their children. I swing from fits of rage at our leaders who will do nothing to stop this - who refuse to take a stand - to wanting to bury my head in the proverbial sand and pretend it isn't the way it is.
But it keeps getting closer to home. It keeps getting glossed over. It's become so common for children in this country to die from gun violence that we hardly even hear about it anymore.
This is sickening. This is not common. This cannot be our reality and the future we are giving our children. I should not have to talk to my 5 year old about people shooting children. This should not be real.
But it is all too real.
What is a mother to do? I will not be able to live with myself if I do nothing, yet the problem seems so overwhelming and hopeless that it is hard to know where to begin.
This week's lectionary reading from Isaiah had the Lord ask, "whom shall I send?" The answer now as it was then, is simple - here I am. The details of what I am to do, I do not know, but I know I have to do something. If I won't, who will. I have the ability to do something, so I must, though I am not yet sure what. We all must - or the blood is on our complacent hands as well.
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