“May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.” Nelson Mandela
I have been searching for the right words since 5am. 5am on Monday. Last Monday (well now 2 Monday’s ago).
Since the moment my husband yelled up-‘have you seen this?’-and I watched in horror as the news rolled across the screen. Immediately an enormous pit lodged in my stomach-the tears rolled down my face-my heart ached. A familiar (unfortunately) feeling since 12/14/12, each time I learn of a horrendous atrocity against innocent people. But today something was altogether different. I couldn't put my finger on it at first: The pit larger, the tears saltier-the heartache, palpable. And then I looked over to my daughter sleeping in her crib, inches from our bed, and it hit me-I was devastated in a whole new way…I was devastated for her.
They say everything changes when you have a baby and of course they are right-but today I learned about the depths of that change. I learned that it's not just life style, routines, sleep, relationships, work, personal time-it's also the emotional burden of not only worrying about them every second of the day-but worrying about the things that occur on a daily basis-that are supposedly unrelated to them-and how it will affect them.
This morning as I looked at her peaceful sleeping face a million thoughts raced through my mind. The biggest: how would I explain this to her if she were 5, 6, 7-what would I say? It hit me hard-I didn’t know the answer. My fear for her, our future and the horror I saw on TV consumed me.
I know all of the age old adages:
Love wins-
Light overcomes darkness-
We can always choose hope-
The good outweighs the bad-
And while I do believe in all of these sentiments. I wrote a book based on one. None of these seemed to answer the question I heard my daughter asking me, ‘Why Mama?’, they all seemed to pale in comparison to the enormity of this tragedy. They all seemed to pale in trying to explain why someone would try to hurt so many innocent people.
And so I got her ready, rushed out the door, and kept thinking. I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. I spent the remainder of the day searching for an answer, a sign...something. And...nothing.
Finally a week later, it hit me, there are no words, there is nothing to say, there is no explanation. There never will be. In moments like this all we can do is find solace in prayer (if that’s what you believe) or other soulful places, and hope-that senseless violence will end, that we won’t be faced again with such horror. That the good in our world does outweigh the bad, because it does. In the end I hope I can instill in my daughter, that it is her hopes for herself and for her future that should drive her, even on the darkest, scariest of days-not her fears.