Active Grief

Every other month it is my responsibility to produce the bulletin of information for my church. I collect the announcements and produce a booklet that tells the members and visitors what’s happening. It’s a fun job for someone like me who likes administrative tasks. I choose a cover first then get busy printing the rest of the bulletin.

One day I selected a cover that features a picture of Jesus hugging a young girl. His large, strong hands hold her firmly and her face hints that the troubles that afflicted her now melting into his robe. She seems to be clinging to him for her very existence. It’s a beautiful illustration.

I thought I had chosen it because the supply of that particular design was ample enough to complete the job. But that was Thursday, the day after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on February 14, 2018.

While sitting in church, I looked at the picture again. I thought about a social media post I had seen written by a mother in the wake of the shooting. Her children’s school had held an active shooter/intruder drill.

A wave of rage and disbelief hit home at that moment. This is the world my young nieces and nephews are growing up in. This is their reality—that at any time a stranger or a former student, maybe someone they know, could enter the school with malicious, deadly intent. They have to know how to hide at the sound of gunshots, keep quiet at a time of extreme terror, and follow directions with military precision. And they had to practice running for their lives.

The shooter at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was a former student. How long will it be before these “active shooters” can outwit the procedures because they’ve also done the drills?

As parents, we cannot protect our children from every dangerous situation.  We don’t always know from where the threat comes. Who can calm a student’s fears of a potential threat in an environment that is supposed to be safe? Who can console their broken, grieving hearts? Whose ‘fear not’ can resonate even deeper than the most loving parent’s?

“She was my best friend. My sister,” I imagine the little girl in the picture saying.

“I love her too,” perhaps was Jesus’ reply.

Perhaps she had told Jesus all about the way her sister had helped her with a science project. Or maybe her sister had taught her how to French braid her hair. Her view of the world changed on that day in a way she can’t understand. She’d cried until her chest hurt. Perhaps Jesus had wiped away her tears. While he feels her grief.