My Heart is Broken

My heart is heavy as I write this post.

On Friday, 20 children and some of their teachers died at the hand of a crazed gunman in their elementary school.

This one came too close to home for me.

As my class was praising Jesus at our Christmas service on Friday morning, these young children most only 6 or 7 years old were dying.

 

As a teacher one of my jobs is to ensure the safety of my students,

as a parent, I should be able to feel confident that my kids will return to me safely after their day at school.

 

How sad for these families.

Their precious little ones will never return.

 

At our school we regularly practice fire and tornado drills as well as lockdowns.

The fire and tornado drills are easy to explain to the kids.  We want to be safe should one of these disasters happen at our school.

It is not so easy to practice the lockdowns.

We sit in the pitch darkness of our classroom bathroom, huddled together in complete silence.

We hold tight to one another and I whisper softly to help the little Preschoolers feel safe.

This is only a practice, but we treat it as if it really were happening.

 

I pray it never, ever happens in any other school (or anywhere) again, but this is a sinful world we live in and it will happen again, so we practice.

It is hard to try and explain to the kids what we are doing in the darkness of our bathroom.  I don't want to scare them unnecessarily so we just do it without much explanation.  Perhaps to some of them it is an adventure, after all, they are little.

 

I know that I would do anything in my power for these little ones.

I love them and I have promised their parents that I will keep them safe.

 

The teachers in the school in CT were heroes.

I hope I never have to be a hero, but if I do, I will not hesitate.

I know what I have to do.

 

Today in church, my children again sang and told the Christmas story as part of their program.

The familiar songs were even sweeter than usual as I watched those innocent children praising their Jesus.

I know they would all go to heaven if they were called home, there is comfort in that.

 We all joined together to sing a version of the Lord's prayer to the tune of Away in a Manger.  One line was particularity hard for me,

"In times of temptation, dear Savior be near,

Deliver from evil your children most dear."

 

I did spend a wonderful weekend with Tizita and Soliana.

I will post about that later this week.