Scary

I just followed a link from Dale's blog to this story about the massacre at Virginia Tech.

I guess one of the drawbacks of having satellite radio is that you don't have any news bulletins interrupting your '70s flashbacks during "Mom's Taxi" runs. And one of the benefits of having satellite radio is that you don't have any news bulletins interrupting your '70s flashbacks during "Mom's Taxi" runs.

So I didn't know about this until now. Not that it would have done me any good to know about it earlier.

My Big Kids are in school. Big Brother goes to high school. In my family, we are way past the point of being able to insulate our children from all possible disasters. Big Brother is out there in the scary world, riding school buses, attending track meets, riding in other students' cars to a local diner after stage crew, running several miles on his own, walking around the corner to Target, Taco Hell and 7-11. Middle Sister is approaching that scary world faster than I'd like to think about.

I can't be with my kids all the time and I can't protect them from everything. Most of the time I can just roll with that knowledge and move along. And then news stories of shootings at schools or universities stop me in my tracks for a little while. They make me want to keep my kids sequestered in the house until they turn 30. I know that's irrational and that I cannot do that--but sometimes I want to!

It's times like this that I must turn to the words Jesus spoke to his apostles when he first appeared to them after the Resurrection: "Peace be with you....do not let your hearts be troubled." I have to let them go out into the scary world. I have to let them grow up. I have to trust that when they can't be with their family, that they can still be OK. I have to place them in God's hands when they can't be in my arms.