Respects

I was driving home to Ogden from SLC listening to Christmas music when the radio buzzed, and an announcer came on with breaking news. There was a shooting. Not just a shooting. A shooting in an elementary school. And so many people were dead.

No.

No.

No.

I reached for my phone and started calling people, and no one answered, but I'm not sure of what I'd say if they did. Maybe I just wanted someone to cry with.

I arrived in Ogden and sat in front of the computer, with breaking news filing in every few minutes. I don't know why I was glued to the screen, I think I was just holding onto the hope that a miracle would happen, maybe time would reverse or something, and none of that had happened.

I don't know what it was about this tragedy that hit me so hard. Maybe it was because I work in child care and it makes me sick to think of anything happening to the children in my class. Maybe it's because I'm finally old enough to understand the reality of this.

In situations like this, I scramble to sympathize with the villain of the story, simply because it's incredibly difficult for me to think that there is pure evil in the world. I scramble to find some part of them that was good, but I couldn't do it in this situation. It's hard for me to imagine that even the devil himself could be capable of this much evil.

Those were children.

And I realized that yeah. There is evil in the world.

And the world got a whole lot colder and a whole lot darker yesterday.

But at the same time, hope was restored in humanity.

I realized how important it is not to look at the wrong actions of one person and base the goodness of everyone off of those one actions.

It's important to look for the heroes.

There's a lot of people who are crying to God asking why this happened. But I think there's a whole lot more people crying to God saying "Now, I may not know why this happened, but please, just comfort those families."

And people are called to action to do good things, and they're reminded that there is a NEED for people to do good things.

My thoughts and prayers go out to all those whose hearts were broken yesterday. Try to remember the heroes. The little boy who grabbed his friends and ran. Who waited for his friends so he'd know they were ok. The teacher who gave her life to hide the children. The janitor who ran down the hallway warning people.

Don't give up, people. The actions of one may devastate you. But the actions of so many more show you that people are not bad. People are good.