There are days in everyone's life that are forever cemented into their minds. Their wedding day, a child's birthday, even on a national scale like 9/11. Today will always be a day like that for me. You will never forget a day, when you get a phone call that there is a bomb squad and police at your child's school. Things change, they become bare, stripped down, primordal in nature. And yet, there is a physiological change that takes place too. All of your senses become heightened--there are moments when you can actually feel from one second to the next the "fight or flight" aderenaline kick in. You are instantaneously aware of how completely out of your control so many things are. How every day your children are thrust out into a world that is black and dangerous and ugly--yet they must learn to survive and thrive and be full of joy and hope in spite of all this. How you allow yourself to believe you have made choices to protect your children from harm and danger. That by sending them to a certain school, you have encapsulated them and helped to shelter them from harm...and then the fear that rather than sheltering them, you sent them unequipped into a lion's den.
Fortunately, today's story had a happy ending. What was sent were a series of emails. The school had a plan in place...it is sad that schools have to have a plan in place. That all those faculty meetings and training sessions where they discuss how to handle these type of situations actually had to be used. Isn't it ridiculous that we live in a world where these kinds of things happen to children. Again, and again, and again.
So, today I am thankful for so many things. I am thankful that the Lord protected my precious Jake from all the potential harms out there. I am glad that we had an extra day at home together. That Daddy came home for lunch. That we had a picnic in the yard. That we played outside until the sun went down.
I am thankful that Emmy Grace wore pigtails for the first time today.
I am thankful that this little smile will greet me in the morning.
My precious little babies, I love and adore you.
Forever and always,
No matter what!
xoxo
mommy
