The Day the World Broke

"Wait! Hand hugs!!"

I reach back and grab his thin, small hand. We squeeze our hands together several times in rapid succession while he unbuckles himself with his other hand just before the patrol kid opens his door. It's been over a week since we've gone through the drop off line at school so we almost forgot.

Our hand hugs.

He had the flu and missed the entire week of school. Dropping him off today from the car line I watched him as he waved to me through the window then turned and walked/bounced his way through the breeze way, stopping to chat with his beloved PE teacher. I just watched him in awe, forgetting for a few seconds that I needed to move up. Keep traffic moving.

But there he went. Seven years old. Into his other world of elementary school. First grade.

He exits the car and goes through his day without me. He knows nothing of the Connecticut shootings. Nothing of the twenty children his age who died in their classrooms just on Friday.

Twenty. Such a huge number. Unfathomable.

I often worry about him, wondering if he'll somehow struggle. He's afraid of the fire alarm during drills. I just tell him to be brave and do exactly as his teacher says.

It's never entered my mind to tell him what to do if a gunman ever enters his classroom and starts shooting kids. That's craziness.

But now it's happened. In a small town very far north and east of here.

But now it's happened...



The little one....Sunshine. Her hair beginning its transition from baby fine to soft sweeps of light golden brown. Soft curls forming at the nape of her baby neck.

She sat down on the floor and talked to me this weekend. The first time she's actually seemed to be telling me a story. Something mournful in her own language a year in the making.

A language that will disappear just as quickly. Replaced by words and common phrases. I won't remember her garbled little words. I try real hard but within a minute they're already gone.

A minute.


Help me hold on to my kids, Lord. Let me never take even a minute with them for granted. Let me never know the pain of laying a child to sleep under a blanket of earth. Let the strain of evil that entered Sandy Hook Elementary never visit us here.

One poster on a blog I read mentioned wondering about their socks. The little socks that held the feet of the children who died. Might seem an odd thing to wonder....but not really. To think of the details. A ponytail. A pair of beloved boots. A journal left behind. "I love you, Mama" in crayon.

Crayon.

A little boy who rode on his daddy's shoulders every day to the bus stop....

Twenty little lives ended. Twenty little hearts stilled. Twenty little voices silenced. Twenty little caskets readied.


Come, Lord Jesus. Come quickly.