It was 2-27-12.
At the beginning of this week it was a typical morning for me. I was up at 5:30am, got the boy up a short time later and sent him off to school, checked Facebook and my email. Then, I settled into my recliner with my 3rd cup of coffee to watch the local morning news. A breaking story came on – a gunman had opened fire in a high school near our area.
I was glued to the television and a flood of emotions hit me like a horrible, choking wave. I remembered Columbine, Virginia Tech, and every other school shooting was present in the recesses of my mind. The news came in in spurts and we soon learned a 17 year old student was in custody and he had shot 5 other students. Three of them have since passed away from their injuries. I started thinking of my own children: one in a different high school at that very moment; two away at college. My heart was breaking, heavy, and sobbing.
Over the last 3 days since this tragedy I have come to realize a few things… or maybe I have had a reinforcement of sorts. I was watching the mother of one of the young victims describing how, just two days before what would be her child’s 17th birthday, she donated his organs. He saved eight lives. EIGHT. LIVES.
I witnessed this small Ohio town of Chardon do something incredible. Something that happens in towns and cities all over the world in times of crisis. I watched them pray, grieve, comfort each other, and band together. I saw them turn a tragic, incomprehensible event into something positive. I began to think how many lives this has touched all over the world. I thought about the children in that community and how this single day in their life would forever change them. I imagine that career paths will form based on how they process this internally, and new friendships will be forged because however different they saw each other before – they now all have a single commonality. Leaders will be born, and a profound appreciation of life will develop earlier than expected.
Today, three days later, I watched over 1000 students together with their parents make a long walk from the center of their quaint little town – back to their high school. In a somber and orderly line which stretched quite far (through intersections, around buildings, past street after small-town-street) they walked – together as one force to face a new day. They heard the sounds of people clapping as they moved along. Business owners, friends, neighbors, strangers, and loved ones lined the route. Small children from a local day care held up signs of encouragement, clapped their tiny hands together, and cheered as the group walked past them and entered onto the grounds of the high school.
Out of an incredibly horrible and devastating morning comes hope and love. One senseless instant turned into an outpouring of humanity. Heavy hearts will some day heal, replacing sorrow with strength, courage, and hope. People may ask what is wrong with the world… I ask you to see what is right with the world. Humanity isn’t broken… we just have to open our eyes and see all the good rather than fixating on the bad.
