Perspective

Morning sky over Skyview... I was speechless.

It was hard to go to work on Monday morning.  Most Mondays are a bit on the rough side, but this Monday was worse than normal.  It was of course, the first day back at school since the Newtown massacre and I have been taking it a bit rough.  To top it off, our school lost a student over the weekend, not one I knew, but it is always hard on the students.  I felt it was silly to try and hide the reality of what happened from the students, I explained that I was feeling pretty sad about the kids in CT and that it was OK and even "normal" if they were feeling the same way.  In the midst of finals and the end of the grading period, as well as the excitement of Christmas break coming, the students were bound to be feeling a bit confused about how they should go about their lives with so much negative things going on.  

Each class I taught received the same speech; that is, in the midst of sadness and negative situations, we can only worry about what we can control.  That in the middle of a negative week, they cannot dwell on the negative things, but acknowledging them is good for the mind, and then letting them go is the only way forward.  There are a lot of bad things going on around, but they should keep their eyes fixed on the good, and fixed on what they need to do so that one negative action from a person does not become more negative by their allowing it to dwell inside them for too long.  Finals are important and one of the things you can control, so focus on doing your best and remember that while we see and hear about the negative things a lot, there are far more good things going on around us that we can see if we are looking at the world in the right way.

I compared this weekend to the attack on 9-11-01 and recalled that our country was facing a difficult time then.  Most of my students were too young to remember much about that event, but I recalled for them the feelings I had that day.  It seemed like there was so much evil, and I kept asking, "WHY!?" but the reality is there is often no satisfaction in knowing why, because actions such as these are so senseless that we cannot be comforted by knowing why.  There was a great deal of questions that followed 9-11 and the overall feeling was that if we let the terrorists control our lives through fear we are letting them win.  In the same way, if we allow the murders of the 20 children and 6 adults to continue to stay in the front of our mind and allow the murderer's actions to effect our actions negatively, we are giving him another small victory.  The goal is not to ignore the negative action, but to acknowledge it, sympathize with the victims, help if we can, and move forward in life taking care of our needs and lives without surrendering to the evil.  

Satan is lurking, waiting for his ploys to bring him another broken heart or lost soul.  God is reaching out to us, to comfort us, pull us up, and cry with us.  He also is still in control, although mourning the attack on the innocent, He can restore us and uplift our hearts if we only reach out to Him during these rough times.