When I first heard about the attacks in Paris, I was home with my children. I looked at them, I cried, thinking of the families who wouldn’t have the opportunity to look at their loved ones faces again. I cried, thinking about the fear, the terror the victims must have experienced in their final moments here on this earth. And then, I shut it out. I played with my children, made lipstick with my lulu, played a board game with my mannie. I watched the kiddos fall asleep peacefully, and then I let it back in, and I fell asleep with a big pain in my chest and a puddle of tears on my pillow.
It’s incomprehensible, really. And affirms for me that there is a heaven, because there’s no way this is it. There’s no way that life just ends with a mass shooting and bullets and screams and tears and pain and terror. Sorry, I just won’t believe it.
Beauty for ashes. He promises it. And I know the victims are experiencing the beauty now. We don’t get it without the ashes although nobody wants the ashes, that’s part of the deal. It sucks. But not forever. The beauty comes, and I can only imagine what that that kind of beauty is like, all encompassing, healing, peaceful, serene.
I know the terrorists are being led by a “God” that is telling them to do these awful things, but I choose to cling to a loving God, and I picture Him as He weeps for us on earth. I think about His sermon on the mount. And I know the last thing we need to talk about is religion or politics or judgment or blame. But this isn’t religion or politics or judgment or blame. This is my hope. This is my anchor. This is how I can breathe through the sadness I feel when a tragedy strikes.
Above all else, love one another.
I think about how simple this command is, yet how we don’t always follow it, not just in the big ways like this big attack, but in the small ways, the everyday ways like at the supermarket when the cashier is a little slower or on the highway when the person forgets to signal or in our workplace when a coworker seems to ramble about the same thing. All kinds of small ways, when we think our way is better and in turn we {often unintentionally} hurt another human being.
And why I am even thinking about the small things? Why the small things when this so clearly was something evil, and big, putting a hole right though the heart of humanity causing pains in chests around the world and puddles of tears on pillows in every small town and city, I’m sure of it. I guess it’s that the small things ripple and create big things and the ripple of love is just so comforting, and I think it could be even more so…Lennon had it right, too – love really is all we need.
Why so hard? This is one command and everything else is dust. One command and if we all followed it, evil {big and small} is gone.
Maybe we need the pain and the puddles to appreciate the beauty and peace in the life to come? I have no idea if I’m even making sense, but it feels like such an easy command yet we don’t always follow it here on earth, and that also sucks.
We should be able to. After all, I think as different as we are, we are also all the same. We all just want to be loved. Deep down, we all want to matter, to contribute, to make a difference, to be a part of something. So while pictures of Paris-shaped peace signs flood my newsfeed, and hashtags about prayers are all over the Internet – I’m not judging, I posted them too – I realize by posting these things, it feels like something we can do to help in a moment where we also feel helpless.
But, in reality, what we can do is much, much deeper than posts and tags and pictures. We can love more. I can love more.
Not just the easy ones to love, the friends we’ve known forever, the people who are just like us, the kind people we meet on the street. We can love the difficult ones who don’t think like us, the people who are not as easy or familiar, the ones who really pick every nerve right out of our body, and we must love them without judgment because when we release judgment, it is so much easier to open our hearts to all of humanity, and see beneath the facade, look beyond the imperfections, feel the pain that creates the rudeness or anger, and heal in this beautiful, painful world together. I don’t know that it will prevent a tragedy like this from occurring, but for as simple as it is, I think it’s worth a try.
