Down with Eyes Up

I wonder how the Newtown mothers and fathers are doing. I think of them constantly as I am sure you do.  I wonder how they are making it through the day without their precious children.  I wonder what happens to them in those first moments of waking up. If sleep during the night truly took them away from reality for just a bit, only to be jolted awake by those first thoughts of reality as they awaken from a still state. Do they go into their children’s room(s) and sit, as I think I would? Do they hold their children’s clothes up to their face to just take in their smell–to have some small bit of their presence if only in the form of a scent? Are they holding, with desperation, their son or daughter’s precious toy soldier, doll, blanket, or  stuffed animal(s) as to will their lives back through the touch of a meaningful object that represented something special to their child?  Oh, to just have one last touch, one last look, one last hug, one last I love you. Do they re-play their last morning, their last goodbye? Do they go back and hug them again and again in their memory bank so they can relive loving them, just one more time, even if only in their mind?  Even though they are strangers to me, they are people…parents, and moms just like us, and we replay and mourn alongside them.

Their loss is unimaginable and though I have the Lord in my life and a deep foundation, I wonder, how would I be doing if this were my child’s life that had been taken. A large part of me wonders if I would need to be medicated or put into a padded room for the endless screaming that would emerge from my being that might be worrisome for those around me.  Would falling to my knees in prayer truly be enough to survive the loss?  The floor is where I would have to start. God would have to carry me through, which He promises to do, every bit of the way, just like I know He will do for these hurting parents.  If only this were all just a terrible, terrible nightmare that they could wake up from. If only some Hollywood producer could undo what has been done like they can do in an edit bay.

I was attending Syracuse University when the devastating Pam Am Flight 103 bombing took place over Scotland. We all walked around campus in shock….how can you be here one minute and gone the next? Done, over. Just like that. Friends gone. Sons and daughters never coming home. Voices never to be heard. We are just not used to life ending so suddenly, so violently, so unnecessarily, especially when that life is a child’s. It throws us into shock among other hits we take.

So where do we go from here? Down to our knees in prayer but with eyes lifted and focused upward. There is still life to be lived and there is still purpose in our earthly lives for however long God ordains them. He is God, and we are not, and therefore, we must cling desperately to Him and to His promises. If we don’t, if we can’t, we may need to re-evaluate just what it is our lives are worth without Him, His purpose, His plan and His design. He is the author and creator of each of our lives and our heartbeats are in His hands. Our home is with Him. And these children who lost their earthly lives are now home with Him. And that piece, we don’t have to mourn.

Scripture Verses

2 Chronicles 30:27  “For their prayer reached heaven…”

Jas 5:13 “Is one of you in trouble? He should pray.”

Rev 21:4 “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

Psalm 121:1 “I lift up my eyes to the hills–where does my help come from? The maker of Heaven and earth.”