I tend to keep this blog light, literary, and more writing focused. I have shied away from being too personal, and posting sporadically has made that possible. However, when writing a post everyday, real life tends to creep in.

Today was going to be about voting. Life happened.

I woke up to a phone call and voicemail at 6am. Phone calls outside the polite timeframe are always cause for alarm. The call was to inform me that my jr. higher’s bus was on a two hour delay due to safety concerns. My first response was to look out the window for frost and ice. Nothing. Of course, anything weather related would have been disclosed. The next step is to log onto social media to see if anyone else knows anything.

Within an hour we all learned that an online threat was made against the school. Law enforcement was brought in, the threat investigated thoroughly, and the perpetrator taken into custody. Law enforcement and administrators deemed the school “safe” and school resumed on a two-hour delay schedule.

To get really personal, we live thirty minutes from the most recent school shooting. Four years ago, my whole family huddled under bleachers watching the swat team move in and listening to gunfire while a gunman ran loose in our town and headed toward the football stadium.

I do not feel “safe”. I do not feel that my kids are “safe”.

I believe they are as safe as law enforcement and our wonderful school district can make them, but ultimately none of us knows the day or the hour. Ultimately tragedies are deemed tragedies because they are sudden and unpredictable. There will be no end to tragedy on this earth. There are no laws we can vote into place that will keep a madman from opening fire on innocent people.

I sent my daughter to school today. I didn’t want to at first, but living in fear empowers evil people.

There is only one way to live in this world: not in fear, but in faith…and with hope. Hope in the one who breathed this world into existence. Hope in the one who saw that it was good. Hope in the one who redeemed me for His own. Hope in the one who loves me as His child, and loves my children even more than I do. He is in control. He is my peace. He is my hope.

John 16:33 “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”

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