Gun Control, Mental Illness & Evil

Since Friday, I've not been able to wrap my head around what happened in Newtown.  My husband lived not far from there when he was a boy.  Over the past month, we've heard of tragedy after tragedy involving small children and I've hardly digested one story when another pops up.  I was overwhelmed by them before Friday. 

I've heard knee jerk reactions run the gamut as we try to find the one thing that will stop this from ever happening again.  Some people are opportunists and will use it to further whatever their agenda is.  I'm just sad.... and sickened.

All I can do is pray, and yet... prayer is a big thing.  Only God can bring any amount of comfort to these people, and I long for them to be comforted.

Between our government and the media, and ridiculous bloggers that believe the government was behind this, fear is spread on a daily basis.  Some people choose to arm themselves in response to that fear.  Some choose to protest arms in response to that fear.  Some are calling for a return of state hospitals and commitment of the unmedicated mentally ill that have lost touch with reality.

We're securing the weapons we own.  Making certain that they never end up in the hands of someone capable of using them against innocent people.   We're evaluating reasonable points of view that prohibit this sort of mass attack, while still keeping people secure in their homes.

I don't believe criminals care which laws they violate before they shoot their family or community members.  I don't think we can make the laws about the criminals.  I think we need to make laws for those of us who possess weapons and are law abiding people.  That's why gun control doesn't work.  The people who obey the laws aren't going to shoot anyone.

But we can operate our own sort of gun control.  We can control our own guns.  We can support requirements that gun owners guarantee a secure place for their weapons.  We can support responsible gun ownership and possession.

We can insist that if our government is taxing us, the minimum they should provide is safety to the best of their ability.  These people never attack police barracks - where they expect some resistance.  They attack our defenseless babies.  In truth, they don't need automatic weapons to commit a massacre - once the adult is taken out of the picture, no one will interrupt him while he changes clips or even weapons.

Our local courthouse has an armed guard, but the schools didn't.... until Monday. Our schools now have an armed retired state police officer at every building.  It was like that 30 years ago when I was in school.  We need a last line of defense to let people know  - Schools are not an option for the cowardly.  If you're going to end with suicide, perhaps you should just start there, because we're not letting you near our kids.

This may not be the most spiritually sound post I'll ever write.  Part is venting, part is a little ranting, part is just fighting the feeling of defeat against evil that would hurt our beautiful children.

Some days I want to enjoy the blessings of my life for years and years.  Some days I don't know if I can bear however many years I have left, seeing the horror people can inflict on one another.  Sad day, today.

I Don't Live in a Billboard Picture of a Beach Vacation

I read a story this morning, in a magazine called The Sun. It was about a young woman just before and years after her older sister disappeared at the age of 16. The sister was found, years later, murdered. 

The author expressed the emptiness, regret, horror, fear, suspicion, danger, loss, fragility of relationships – so perfectly to my own imagination it made me cry. This had been my greatest fear. I didn't want to feel this.  

More than 3/4s of my life I lived in that fear – what happened in this fictional story could truly happen to anyone. My mother was taken from me in my fearful, terrorized imagination many times as a child. But not in reality. My life has been filled with fear of the tragic taking someone from me. My mother, my dad, my husband, my little children, my teenaged children, my adult children, my grandchildren, my pets. 

Writing requires honesty, if you desire to share something meaningful. In the past, however, I haven't handled visits to my painful memories very well.  I thought perhaps I should avoid all thoughts of them. But, it isn't honest to share a picture of joy and spiritual freedom with no context. So, those painful fears are relevant. They are part of the story, the “before” picture, truth. If I refuse to “go there”, to recall what I've been delivered from... what I share will be as superficial and shallow as a billboard picture of a beach vacation. 

For many years, I believed that my fears and pain had to be someone's “fault.” Someone was responsible, if not for a direct action then for failing to take preventative measures. Blame was a close friend to me for decades. It was assigned to whoever was deemed the “root” of the pain I was experiencing. But, no one was truly able to insulate me from every discomfort. 

Most times, the people I held accountable were doing the best they could, with no desire to harm.  They had no control of the neuroses that could grow from nursing a tiny injury that I didn't seek to heal. Sometimes the smallest event can spread like a crazed fracture in a plate of glass tapped not so very hard but under just the right set of circumstances. 

Blame pours its inky black stain all over your images of that person. You cover them so thoroughly that their image no longer bears the truth. Nothing is able to shine through the opaque covering of a handful of actions or decisions amidst millions of intentions, actions and decisions that reveal the true character and identity of the ones you blame. 

So, while I must “go there” and remember where I began, that pot of ink is a boundary. I have no business opening it and no right to pour it over another. Yes, it hurt. But mine is not a life of stagnant victimization. It's a life of movement and growth, gaining strength and wisdom... which one cannot do if she covers every flawed human being in her history with the opaque black ink of blame. We are all flawed. Our decisions and actions may tap on another's pane of glass. Some of these are our children. If we teach them to blame, we help them to spill the ink, grow their fears, hide from wisdom and live at the mercy of the brokenness. 

We aren't whitewashing anything, just recognizing that the painful truths aren't the entire truth. Don't let your story end with ink stained hands, ink covered relatives, and bitterness and injury haunting you like wraiths. It isn't what God intended for you.