It's All So Beyond Me

My 5th Grader pulled me aside this morning as we were getting ready for school. "Mom, I don't want to go today. Mom, it's Monday. That day happened on Monday. I can't go to school today." She was looking at me with desperation, tears welling, fingers fidgeting, so I sat on the floor and asked her to join me. 

It's been one month since the shooting. Such a raw milestone, everything feeling so fresh with some normalcy creeping in. And we are very tossed, tossed by feelings and triggers and longings for what was; even so, yesterday felt like the first normal day I had had, my body, heart, and reality allowed to align. But I knew today was coming. This month-since day. 

I slowed myself with my girl, something I rarely have the capacity to do on any morning while trying to get the family out the door. In the face of her deep fear and sadness, I searched for the words and presence to give her. I said to her that we weren't meant to live in fear and I squeezed my hands into fists, shaking hard angry fists. I said, "God doesn't want us to live in fear and control, he wants us to live with our hands open." Then I opened my hands and I said, "this is living a life of love and trust and this is how we face the hard, babe, we have to keep opening our hands." She said, "But mom, it's so hard. It's so hard to do that." I agreed, so hard, so vulnerable. "I know, it is so hard, but we have to try, we have to keep showing up one step at a time."

Then she whispered, "But mom, God didn't protect everyone that day. How can I trust when everyone wasn't ok?" I looked at her, choked up, heart broken, unsure, and I said, "God protected them and us because God is with us in life and in death. Hallie, Will, Evelyn, Katherine, Mike, and Cindy are right next to God in death and He is right next to us in life." We sat a moment longer, mirroring each others tears, questions, and lingering hope.

She went to school, God bless her sweet soul. After my husband left with the kids, I started to tidy our house that keeps exploding with clutter, like an erupting volcano. In my cleaning frenzy, I found myself asking God, begging really, for what I said to calm my girl's tossed heart to be true. You never leave us right? You are bigger than the fear and questions that plague us, right? I believe what I told her, don't I? I cried and paced around our home, the questions accompanying me. 

And just now, I read:

"Teach us to number our days carefully so that we may develop wisdom in our hearts. Lord - how long? Turn and have compassion on Your servants. Satisfy us in the morning with Your faithful love so that we may shout with joy and be glad all our days. Make us rejoice for as many days as You have humbled us, for as many years as we have seen adversity. Let Your work be seen by Your servants, and Your splendor by their children. Let the favor or the Lord our God be on us; establish for us the work of our hands - establish the work of our hands!" Psalm 90:12-17

"You have encircled me; You have placed Your hand on me. This extraordinary knowledge is beyond me. It is lofty; I am unable to reach it." Psalm 139:5&6

What I am to do, but to rest in what is above and below and beyond me? As I am able to be near and present to those in my life, God is near and present with me. As I am unable to be present for anyone, God is near and present to me. I do believe this. I really do.