Just One Person's Reflection on February 14, 2018
*Update: This was post was published the day before I lived through a school shooting as a student teacher. On March 20, 2018, a student killed his ex girlfriend with a handgun in the halls of the school, and then took his own life as a resource officer fired. The shooter walked by my open classroom door, gun in hand. I did not see him. My co-teacher did. We were able to escape through connecting doors to an outside exit, into the parking lot, with a handful of students. There is more I could say. I found it sickening to think I had thought through this all before living it first-hand, but now I find it awe inspiring that God allowed me preparation in this way. With time, trauma therapy, and healing, I am able to reflect again. I can feel my mental capacity increasing again, and it is a breathtaking thing to experience. Expect more encouragement and reflections from me on this blog in the coming days and years, especially in this season of global pandemic. What extraordinary times I am living in, WE are living in, Thanks for reading. Glory to God. May 2, 2020.
I have devoted this blog to posting encouragement for others rather than for my own journaling or processing. When God lays something on my heart, here is where I flesh it out. Today, however, I am going to bend the rules as I have too much to say for a Facebook post and not too much uplifting content on my mind. Forgive my jumbled thoughts and feeble attempt to organize them coherently.
A word on tragedy and empathy--
Let me begin by saying that I handle tragedy oddly. I always have, and the past five years of life have refined my processing-process more sharply. I run to solutions or answers, to logistics and practicality. Emotion comes later, and reflection along with it. Last week, I had to teach two more days of content to more than 130 thirteen-year-old ninth graders and therefore the task at hand outweighed my desire to pause and soak in the tragedy of Stoneman Douglas. Now, over this long weekend, I have indulged myself in empathy.
Many of you may know that I study empathy intensely in this season of my life. I have always had a knack for it, possibly to a fault, but this year in particular empathy takes a forefront in my mind and academic focus at the center of my graduate research. I am struggling to put into words some of the experiences that have come my way since July of 2017... some of those stories are not mine to tell and arguably not my pain to feel. However, I feel anyways, and felt so deeply in the moment for others that I shut down in shakes and sweats. Some of these things seem to be out of my control...blame it on the psychological effects of a traumatic sports injury and recovery of all things.
Therefore, I have kept one eye on my empathetic response to this tragedy and locked it up behind closed doors until this weekend. I cannot allow myself to be consumed by panic, fear, pain, and traumatic response for others, or even myself.
My experiences--
I have to ask myself a career and life defining question normally associated with law enforcement officers, fire-fighters, first responders, and military service men and women. Am I willing to die for the people under my care? I am willing to stand in front of a group of other people's children to shield them with my body in hopes a bullet takes my life and not theirs?
As a Christian, this isn't a new question to me. I have, since my childhood, pondered the words of Jesus that to show greatest love is to lay one's life down for one's friends. I am not afraid of death. I know where I am going. I know what this life is for and what the next holds for me. Would I be willing to die so others could live? I have always come to the conclusion of a simple "yes". However, would things be different if I were actually faced with such a scenario? I do not know. I would like to think that in the moment, my morality would trump my mortality.
I shouldn't have to ask that question about my career, given as my career is to instruct children and help shape the next generation of our society to be well-equipped active citizens, and most importantly, to be good people. There is a gravity to that that is hard to shake. My friends and family are teachers or work in schools. I am not even fully a teacher yet... I am not even being paid for the work I am doing. In fact, I am paying to lay my life down for these little ones.
This past fall, a close friend of mine lost a family member suddenly. As it is not my story to tell, and in order to protect this person, I will keep the details out. The family member was shot, after a fender bender, in front of their own family and the shooter's family. Children of both witnessed it. I felt I had no real right to grieve or be traumatized. It was not my family. That pressure was all internal and none of it external, but none the less real. How could I process, how could I empathize, how could I function, how could I help, how could I fix it? The answer, to all of those things, is I couldn't. I chalked it up to a result of living in a fallen world. I went to a therapist. I spent countless hours with friends and professors processing and receiving both insight and care. I decided to care for my friend as best as I could, and let other close people in their life do the same. I learned how to not place things on my shoulders that don't belong there. But, in the back of my mind, I have had these lingering thoughts about guns. Would this situation have ended up the same for them, and by much smaller extension, me without a gun in the scenario? I am a supporter of the second amendment, and small government. However, what kinds of evil could have been and could be prevented with better regulations and restrictions? Are lives worth semi-automatic weapons? Are lives worth fighting background checks? How and why and what the heck is goin on here...
A bit of my logic--
Ok...here is where it is really about to get messy but let me just lay some stuff down on the table here.
"It's not a gun issue, it is a mental health issue! Leave guns alone.""It's not a mental health issue, it's a gun issue! You never cared about funding mental health before, you hypocrites."
Is it not both?
Should there not be better emotional education in schools, more awareness and programs for mental illness education and support? Should it not be harder for people to get their hands on guns that will assist them in mass shootings, especially if they have documented record of mental instability? How about numerous police calls? How about pleas to the FBI to watch said person? Documentation of a school psychologist fearing this kind of behavior? Should it not be regulated... should it not be harder... should Americans not be willing to sacrifice their hobby for the sake keeping these kinds of weapons out of the hands of people who will misuse them? What use is a semi-automatic or fully automatic gun in the hands of a civilian?
Onto "guns don't kill people". This was an argument I used to fully agree with. In fact, I still fully agree with, just not the rhetoric behind it. Yes, guns rarely kill people on their own. The occasional misfire or mistake may lead to a gun firing, but that is rare in comparison to the amounts of time someone pulls the trigger on another human being. Guns are, in fact, inanimate objects incapable of decision making. Imagine that. People kill people. True. But people with automatic and semi-automatic guns kill people quicker. They kill people easier. I, for one, would like to make it harder. much, much harder. Civilian owned weapons designed for mass murder should not allowed in American streets, concert venues, churches, or schools. I understand the black market weapons trade is a thing. I understand there is only so much federal regulation can accomplish. But we dang well better try, because if we do not start enacting change and enforcing change, we may find more body bags in school halls than book bags. We may have more names of the next generation on headstones than graduation programs.
According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, students cannot learn unless their basic physiological needs are met, followed by needs of safety and sense of belonging. I repeat, students need to be safe to learn. I cannot do my job, and students cannot learn, if they feel unsafe. Tell me, how productive is a classroom environment going to be when we have armed guards walking up and down the hallways searching for suspicious behavior because of what happened on Valentine's day? When students get news updates through Twitter and Snapchat on their phones during class and are scared to step foot in a school?
There are many schools that don't have money for art supplies and pencils, yet a proposed solution to school shootings is arming teachers. Teachers, who are barely allowed to break up fights in the school hallways using physical force, who are not allowed to fight back if attacked by a student, are going to be armed with guns...? What kind of sense does that make? Will students feel safer knowing their teacher has a glock in the dresser drawer? Will they know how to access the weapon..how to use it...if the teacher dies trying to defend them before the teacher is able to get to the gun? Should the teacher who promised to defend student lives be willing to kill? Is that in the teacher application underneath on-the-job training and requirements? A willingness to lose life, and take life? Is that what I am signing up for?
Last week, in class we covered WWII era dictators. One quote in particular that we focused on came from Stalin, one of the most evil men in world history who was responsible for over three times the amount of deaths as Hitler. The quote was as follows, "One death is a tragedy, one million is a statistic." Following Wednesday's events, this seems to be largely the mindset of our society. One death is a tragedy. But God help us, it seems we have become societaly used to mass shootings. It is a norm in our American experience. Another day, another crisis. Thoughts and prayers, Facebook posts, tweets, profile pictures, click bait posts, Snapchat stories, and an Onion article emerge. The nation forgets. Congress holds it's breath, buying time until the cycle repeats.
Prayer and action--
My worldview, my religion, my relationship with God define me first and foremost. They drive who I am and what I do. They establish my calling and my vision for my life. As a Christian, or maybe better stated, as a person who knows the power of the living God and has seen firsthand the power of prayer in my own life and other's lives, I believe prayer is not worthless. When I pray, I am not wasting my breath. My words don't float to the sky like little lost balloons into the great unknown with hopes of someone one day receiving my message. Prayer is a direct line to the Father. I am plugged in. I speak, he listens. He speaks, I listen. In light of all of this, it is disheartening to me to see how many people are saying that prayer is pointless in situations like this. Prayer is not powerless or useless or trivial. It is direly needed in these situations. I understand the frustration in the fact that so many people "send thoughts and prayers" without ever rolling up their sleeves and getting their hands dirty. People who use prayer to sooth their own consciences are to blame, not the act of prayer itself. In that blame, they should be shown truth in kindness.
While prayer has power to change things wholly and completely, the bible is clear about the Christina call to action. We are to be the hands and feet of Christ. We are to have faith, and works. James 2:14-26 says,
What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.
But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder! Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless?... For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead. (ESV)
Your prayers are important. So are your actions. Do not feed one and neglect the other.
I have more thoughts on all of this. On the history behind the 2nd Amendment and type of firearms present at that point in history. On the fact that citizens can get their hands on such a weapon as was used on Wednesday while still being too young to drink a beer legally. On greed. On the relationship of money and political power. On big government and small government and where the heck I even fall on the political spectrum anymore.... but honestly I have exhausted my brain power and will to flesh anymore of this out. I feel my anxiety building and my body getting more twitchy so it is time to bring this to a close.
A final thought: go easy on one another.
We are all learning. We are all flawed. I do not mean back down or be weak. Be strong, and be kind. Be empathetic, and be practical. Be humble, teachable, and listen to understand before listening to speak. TALK about these issues. ACT UPON these issues. Cry over them, weep if need be. Pray over them, fervently. God hears you, and the brokenness of our world breaks his heart too. Check on your friends. Speak truth to your friends, and to all those who your life impacts. Be real, be honest, and be ready for your part to play. History is unfolding every day of your life, and you have a chance to be an active participant in the story before all of us. What side of history will you be on? When is enough enough? We may not have power to change everything, but everyone has power to change something.
For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father's house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” Esther 4:14
For such a time as this, my friends. This is our time. This is the time you have been born into, for a purpose. What legacy will you leave?
---------------------------
For an awesome spoken word reflecting a lot of the content of this post:
https://www.facebook.com/NowThisPolitics/videos/1773679265996889/
I have devoted this blog to posting encouragement for others rather than for my own journaling or processing. When God lays something on my heart, here is where I flesh it out. Today, however, I am going to bend the rules as I have too much to say for a Facebook post and not too much uplifting content on my mind. Forgive my jumbled thoughts and feeble attempt to organize them coherently.
A word on tragedy and empathy--
Let me begin by saying that I handle tragedy oddly. I always have, and the past five years of life have refined my processing-process more sharply. I run to solutions or answers, to logistics and practicality. Emotion comes later, and reflection along with it. Last week, I had to teach two more days of content to more than 130 thirteen-year-old ninth graders and therefore the task at hand outweighed my desire to pause and soak in the tragedy of Stoneman Douglas. Now, over this long weekend, I have indulged myself in empathy.
Many of you may know that I study empathy intensely in this season of my life. I have always had a knack for it, possibly to a fault, but this year in particular empathy takes a forefront in my mind and academic focus at the center of my graduate research. I am struggling to put into words some of the experiences that have come my way since July of 2017... some of those stories are not mine to tell and arguably not my pain to feel. However, I feel anyways, and felt so deeply in the moment for others that I shut down in shakes and sweats. Some of these things seem to be out of my control...blame it on the psychological effects of a traumatic sports injury and recovery of all things.
Therefore, I have kept one eye on my empathetic response to this tragedy and locked it up behind closed doors until this weekend. I cannot allow myself to be consumed by panic, fear, pain, and traumatic response for others, or even myself.
My experiences--
I have to ask myself a career and life defining question normally associated with law enforcement officers, fire-fighters, first responders, and military service men and women. Am I willing to die for the people under my care? I am willing to stand in front of a group of other people's children to shield them with my body in hopes a bullet takes my life and not theirs?
As a Christian, this isn't a new question to me. I have, since my childhood, pondered the words of Jesus that to show greatest love is to lay one's life down for one's friends. I am not afraid of death. I know where I am going. I know what this life is for and what the next holds for me. Would I be willing to die so others could live? I have always come to the conclusion of a simple "yes". However, would things be different if I were actually faced with such a scenario? I do not know. I would like to think that in the moment, my morality would trump my mortality.
I shouldn't have to ask that question about my career, given as my career is to instruct children and help shape the next generation of our society to be well-equipped active citizens, and most importantly, to be good people. There is a gravity to that that is hard to shake. My friends and family are teachers or work in schools. I am not even fully a teacher yet... I am not even being paid for the work I am doing. In fact, I am paying to lay my life down for these little ones.
This past fall, a close friend of mine lost a family member suddenly. As it is not my story to tell, and in order to protect this person, I will keep the details out. The family member was shot, after a fender bender, in front of their own family and the shooter's family. Children of both witnessed it. I felt I had no real right to grieve or be traumatized. It was not my family. That pressure was all internal and none of it external, but none the less real. How could I process, how could I empathize, how could I function, how could I help, how could I fix it? The answer, to all of those things, is I couldn't. I chalked it up to a result of living in a fallen world. I went to a therapist. I spent countless hours with friends and professors processing and receiving both insight and care. I decided to care for my friend as best as I could, and let other close people in their life do the same. I learned how to not place things on my shoulders that don't belong there. But, in the back of my mind, I have had these lingering thoughts about guns. Would this situation have ended up the same for them, and by much smaller extension, me without a gun in the scenario? I am a supporter of the second amendment, and small government. However, what kinds of evil could have been and could be prevented with better regulations and restrictions? Are lives worth semi-automatic weapons? Are lives worth fighting background checks? How and why and what the heck is goin on here...
A bit of my logic--
Ok...here is where it is really about to get messy but let me just lay some stuff down on the table here.
"It's not a gun issue, it is a mental health issue! Leave guns alone.""It's not a mental health issue, it's a gun issue! You never cared about funding mental health before, you hypocrites."
Is it not both?
Should there not be better emotional education in schools, more awareness and programs for mental illness education and support? Should it not be harder for people to get their hands on guns that will assist them in mass shootings, especially if they have documented record of mental instability? How about numerous police calls? How about pleas to the FBI to watch said person? Documentation of a school psychologist fearing this kind of behavior? Should it not be regulated... should it not be harder... should Americans not be willing to sacrifice their hobby for the sake keeping these kinds of weapons out of the hands of people who will misuse them? What use is a semi-automatic or fully automatic gun in the hands of a civilian?
Onto "guns don't kill people". This was an argument I used to fully agree with. In fact, I still fully agree with, just not the rhetoric behind it. Yes, guns rarely kill people on their own. The occasional misfire or mistake may lead to a gun firing, but that is rare in comparison to the amounts of time someone pulls the trigger on another human being. Guns are, in fact, inanimate objects incapable of decision making. Imagine that. People kill people. True. But people with automatic and semi-automatic guns kill people quicker. They kill people easier. I, for one, would like to make it harder. much, much harder. Civilian owned weapons designed for mass murder should not allowed in American streets, concert venues, churches, or schools. I understand the black market weapons trade is a thing. I understand there is only so much federal regulation can accomplish. But we dang well better try, because if we do not start enacting change and enforcing change, we may find more body bags in school halls than book bags. We may have more names of the next generation on headstones than graduation programs.
According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, students cannot learn unless their basic physiological needs are met, followed by needs of safety and sense of belonging. I repeat, students need to be safe to learn. I cannot do my job, and students cannot learn, if they feel unsafe. Tell me, how productive is a classroom environment going to be when we have armed guards walking up and down the hallways searching for suspicious behavior because of what happened on Valentine's day? When students get news updates through Twitter and Snapchat on their phones during class and are scared to step foot in a school?
There are many schools that don't have money for art supplies and pencils, yet a proposed solution to school shootings is arming teachers. Teachers, who are barely allowed to break up fights in the school hallways using physical force, who are not allowed to fight back if attacked by a student, are going to be armed with guns...? What kind of sense does that make? Will students feel safer knowing their teacher has a glock in the dresser drawer? Will they know how to access the weapon..how to use it...if the teacher dies trying to defend them before the teacher is able to get to the gun? Should the teacher who promised to defend student lives be willing to kill? Is that in the teacher application underneath on-the-job training and requirements? A willingness to lose life, and take life? Is that what I am signing up for?
Last week, in class we covered WWII era dictators. One quote in particular that we focused on came from Stalin, one of the most evil men in world history who was responsible for over three times the amount of deaths as Hitler. The quote was as follows, "One death is a tragedy, one million is a statistic." Following Wednesday's events, this seems to be largely the mindset of our society. One death is a tragedy. But God help us, it seems we have become societaly used to mass shootings. It is a norm in our American experience. Another day, another crisis. Thoughts and prayers, Facebook posts, tweets, profile pictures, click bait posts, Snapchat stories, and an Onion article emerge. The nation forgets. Congress holds it's breath, buying time until the cycle repeats.
Prayer and action--
My worldview, my religion, my relationship with God define me first and foremost. They drive who I am and what I do. They establish my calling and my vision for my life. As a Christian, or maybe better stated, as a person who knows the power of the living God and has seen firsthand the power of prayer in my own life and other's lives, I believe prayer is not worthless. When I pray, I am not wasting my breath. My words don't float to the sky like little lost balloons into the great unknown with hopes of someone one day receiving my message. Prayer is a direct line to the Father. I am plugged in. I speak, he listens. He speaks, I listen. In light of all of this, it is disheartening to me to see how many people are saying that prayer is pointless in situations like this. Prayer is not powerless or useless or trivial. It is direly needed in these situations. I understand the frustration in the fact that so many people "send thoughts and prayers" without ever rolling up their sleeves and getting their hands dirty. People who use prayer to sooth their own consciences are to blame, not the act of prayer itself. In that blame, they should be shown truth in kindness.
While prayer has power to change things wholly and completely, the bible is clear about the Christina call to action. We are to be the hands and feet of Christ. We are to have faith, and works. James 2:14-26 says,
What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.
But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder! Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless?... For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead. (ESV)
Your prayers are important. So are your actions. Do not feed one and neglect the other.
I have more thoughts on all of this. On the history behind the 2nd Amendment and type of firearms present at that point in history. On the fact that citizens can get their hands on such a weapon as was used on Wednesday while still being too young to drink a beer legally. On greed. On the relationship of money and political power. On big government and small government and where the heck I even fall on the political spectrum anymore.... but honestly I have exhausted my brain power and will to flesh anymore of this out. I feel my anxiety building and my body getting more twitchy so it is time to bring this to a close.
A final thought: go easy on one another.
We are all learning. We are all flawed. I do not mean back down or be weak. Be strong, and be kind. Be empathetic, and be practical. Be humble, teachable, and listen to understand before listening to speak. TALK about these issues. ACT UPON these issues. Cry over them, weep if need be. Pray over them, fervently. God hears you, and the brokenness of our world breaks his heart too. Check on your friends. Speak truth to your friends, and to all those who your life impacts. Be real, be honest, and be ready for your part to play. History is unfolding every day of your life, and you have a chance to be an active participant in the story before all of us. What side of history will you be on? When is enough enough? We may not have power to change everything, but everyone has power to change something.
For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father's house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” Esther 4:14
For such a time as this, my friends. This is our time. This is the time you have been born into, for a purpose. What legacy will you leave?
---------------------------
For an awesome spoken word reflecting a lot of the content of this post:
https://www.facebook.com/NowThisPolitics/videos/1773679265996889/
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