Just 8 or 9 weeks prior to the shooting, they had found death threats on a wall in the basement of my firstborn's dorm. It was the week of finals. We were unsure if she should stay in the dorm, go to a hotel or come home. Ultimately she stayed and completed her finals. The threats were felt to just be graffiti and not grounded in any real threat to students. At that point I was so angry that people found it interesting to exact their power over other human beings by threatening violence. It was probably someone who wanted finals to be cancelled. I heard fear in my child's voice like I never had before. It was something different altogether. And I hated it. On the following Valentines Day, the unthinkable became a reality. I was at work in the Oncology Clinic...when "breaking news" interrupted the afternoon programming. I watched as frenzied, wide eyed students were pouring out of a building at Northern. Many were bloody. It was in the Science department. It was about 3 in the afternoon. People were being brought out on stretchers and students were crying hysterically. The media was interviewing students describing how they had crawled out of the room where the shooter was, over the tops of the dead and wounded. I remember grabbing my cell phone at the desk and repeatedly dialing my daughter's number for what seemed like an eternity. The circuits were busy. I could not even get through to my husband at the State Police District 21 Headquarters. It was indeed the longest 10 minutes of my life. I watched the TV, prayed and held my breath as I tried to find her. She was a Biology major. I had no idea whether she would be in that building or somewhere else. I felt suspended in the surreal wait to talk to her. And what I was watching on TV seemed like something completely foreign...something that would be happening somewhere else in the world instead of on my firstborn's college campus.
Relief came to me finally that February day in a phone call from husband. He said he talked to her and he was safe. She was helping out her friends who were freaking out and needed reassurance. He said that she would call me as soon as she could. I got in my car and started to get phone calls from people wanting to know if she was okay A friend prayed me home over the phone as I drove down Kennedy Drive.
Her account of the afternoon was this: she was late for class in that science building. Otherwise she would have been in the middle of the chaos of students being evacuated. She was upset because they locked the campus down and no one knew where to go. Library, gym and other large forums where locked. Bus system shut down. Students were running everywhere crying and not knowing what to do. She was angry at the chaos and the fear and her emotionally broken friends. The campus procedures were there to keep the loss of life to a minimum by making it harder for a shooter to find a group of students, but for her she said they felt like sitting ducks. She came home that night and we all sat stunned at what had taken place. And what had not.
I thought I would never "get over it". It felt wrong to have such a sense of relief, when other people had gotten the other phone call. The one that changes everything. The one that marks that moment in time when your world is never the same. I can't imagine how the parents of the those little Connecticut children felt. Rushing to get to the school to get relief from the thought they may never hold their baby again. It was so horrific considering the helplessness of the little ones to save themselves. The voices of grief and pain coming through the TV were so disturbing to my soul.
We are all like those little children. We have no ability to save ourselves. We all need to be saved from our eventual, impending death. Only Jesus can do that. He is the One who offers the ultimate relief from pain and fear and death... On that day..."He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away". Rev. 21:4 Someday our Good Shepherd will lead each one of His lambs home. He laid down His life for the sheep. And they will never follow another because they know His voice. (John 10). In times like these I spend my time studying His voice through His word. I need to feel His comfort and get relief from the sorrow of it all. I cannot imagine what it would be like not to know this voice; this great comfort in times like these. It gives me urgency to share it and help heal the pain that this world has to offer. I pray as you read this that you will seek to listen to His voice and find His sweet relief.
