Yet another reflection

Well, here's another internet post about the Newtown shootings.

I feel terrible. So many people I know are very angry and very vocal about this, understandably. Parents, teachers, even kids my own age. But I have been generally quiet about all of this. And even when I consider it happening to me or to the people I care about, I have an odd sense of peace. And I feel terrible about that. By all means, I should be enraged at the very thought. I should be horrified and fearful of the very prospect. I should be screaming injustice to the winds and crying out for better laws, better humanity. But no. Here I sit, with a reflective but quiet spirit, and drink my tea as though the shooting never occurred at all.

Maybe it's just my inability to relate. I, thank God, am not a mother at my tender young age and don't plan on becoming one soon. I do not understand the irrevocable attachment and protective instincts that result from birthing and raising a child. I simply don't. I can try to imagine it, but it's not the same. Having a somewhat motherly nature doesn't count, either. I have a natural disconnect because of this.

But I also have an elementary-aged sister, so it's not like there's no attachment at all. She could have been one of those kids shot down, or worse, one of those kids to see it. She could have lost a best friend to a tiny ball of metal blasted through her underdeveloped chest at point-blank range and had to learn to cope. I can see the quiet anger building up inside of her young eyes with no outlet for it to go.

But I also know that whether the event would have ended her life or changed it permanently, both she and I would learn to cope. Our parents, our community, our society, would in time accept the atrocity and learn how to keep functioning. Because,

"Things change. And friends leave. And time doesn't stop for anybody."

That's from Perks, one of the best books I read this year. And it's true. Whether we want it to or not, life will do what it always has and go on until the day He declares it to slow to a stop, then restart as life the way we were meant to live it. And whether we allow ourselves to move with it or not, we are dragged along by its current, sometimes to a rocky sandbar where we freeze until we allow joy back inside and leap into the current once again. And after beaching myself on one of those uncomfortable islands and pushing myself away from it, I vowed to myself to never end up there again. I will keep on being content, and try to have rest in the fact that I am being cared for and loved no matter what happens to me or what stupid choices my species and I make.

I will always have my words. If I lose my voice, I have keyboards and instruments and pens and papers to exude my fleeting human emotions and enduring beliefs onto. My words are my solace. And when I run out of words to say, there are billions more to breathe in and pick new words from. This is my comfort, my strength. The story being written as we live and die will continue on and undulate, rising and falling into the valleys of darkness and doubt, but always coming back out into the stark sunlight. And the people that I pity, more than those grieving the lost, are the people who find no comfort in the promise that the Author scratching out their story is doing everything in His power to write them a happy ending.

So yes, I will keep being a child and dreaming about boys and forgetting to read my textbook assignments while even more innocent children are snatched from us. Because no matter how many times I may beg for a more just world, I can't fix what is already broken. Right now, we are all just doing the best we can to keep our heads up as the world fades out, and we are but mere players in the story we did not write.

My deepest regards to the families of Newtown.