A Light in the Darkness

My heart is broken, and I don’t have the words. But I can’t continue to dwell in my own thoughts. To sit in my own dark place. So I write.

On Sunday morning, an armed man – my age – walked into a nightclub and started shooting. And he didn’t stop. For more than 3 terrifying hours, he took lives and hostages, and he broke our nation, ripping at it’s core. This event was a direct assault against everything we believe in as a country - diversity, freedom, safety. It was a crime fueled by hate and inspired by evil.

It’s certainly not the first time, and sadly, we already know it won’t be the last.

And so, enraged, sad, and broken – we feel helpless, and confused, and scared. We prepare and we brace ourselves for next time.

It’s easy to point fingers. To blame this side or that. This race or religion or that. But while we are turning our heads and plugging our ears, our children, our mothers, our fathers, our grandparents, our friends, our neighbors– they are dying.

And as a parent, my heart is breaking. I try not to be afraid – but the problem, it is getting worse. More mass shootings and bombings – more people dead. The places where we take our children, they are no longer safe.

In the years since 9/11, I have grown from child to adult, from teen to wife, from the protected to the protector. And I made a choice to not be afraid. To continue to get on airplanes, and travel, and live my life as I would if this kind of cowardly evil didn’t exist. And as each mass shooting occurs, I must make this choice again. I must put my brave face on, and I must go into the world, and I must not let them win.

But it’s getting harder.

And now, I have under my protection, a helpless, innocent three-year-old boy with a really big heart. And he doesn’t yet know the horrors that we face. And another innocent life, it grows inside me. And my heart breaks. It breaks for them, and the world they may someday face. It breaks because someday, I’m going to have to find the words to explain and make sense of all of this to them. And it breaks, because I won’t always be able to keep them safely under my wing.

But I will teach them to fly. I will pray that they soar. They will be a part of the solution, they will be a light in the darkness. Together, we will not be afraid. Evil does not win, and I will remind them to look for the good people in every tragedy – because they are there. They show up in uniforms, they show up in t-shirts, they show up in scrubs. And they help. They stand in lines by the thousands to donate blood, they give up their time and their energy and their gifts however they can.

And they outnumber the evil by the millions. And we must be there. We must stand up and show up. 

Evil will not win. We will be a light in the darkness. We will not be afraid.