What Can Be Said?

We’re home from spending a week at the beach, and as we made the drive back to Tennessee that we’ve made so many times recently, my heart was aching for the parents and families of the 4th graders who were murdered just the day before.

I am sipping my coffee as the rain clouds start gathering above our house. It’s been a warm, rainy spring day here. Our boys are taking baths right now, and our oldest asked me to start it for him. At first I told him to start it himself, since he knows how and we’re trying to let them be more independent lately (they love to make their own food and get things for themselves without our help). But then a minute later my mind went to a place where it’s gone a lot the last few days.

I thought about the parents in Texas who will never be able to run a bath for their child again; who won’t get to fulfill all the summer plans they had for them that would start in just a few more days; who won’t make their favorite dinner tonight or snuggle with them on Saturday mornings. My heart hurts for these people and the countless others who have lost their children to senseless gun violence.

I can’t help but wonder how we as a country got to this point, when so many other countries around the world have stricter gun laws and approximately zero mass shootings. I’m not a politician and I don’t know a lot about certain laws, or very many laws for that matter, but I know that I would do anything to keep our children safe. Anything.

A deadly virus that we don’t know much about is extremely contagious and killing people at an alarming rate? Okay, we’ll quarantine for a year and a half and not let people come within six feet of them. They’re sick and are throwing up? Okay, we’ll give them medicine and nourishing food to comfort their bellies. They fell down and scraped their knee? Okay, we’ll hug them, tell them it’s going to be okay, and give them a bandaid.

There are things we can all do, and more importantly, should do in order to protect our children and keep them safe. It’s not always easy and it’s not always…I don’t know, convenient? (social distancing for a year and a half took a toll on us, but if I had to do it again, you better believe I would in order to keep them safe), but I can honestly say there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do to protect our children. Nothing. No matter what. I would sacrifice my “freedoms” and whatever else I had to to keep them safe for as long as I can.

I would like to think any parent would, but I know the world is a big place with a lot of different ideals and sometimes those don’t align with how you as a family operate. And that’s when it gets hard and that’s when it gets personal and frustrating because how could something that is so clear to you as a person and as a parent be so foreign and off-limits to someone else? Especially when it comes to kids and their well-being? How do we as a society come to agree on such a life or death subject?

I am calling our senator tomorrow and demanding that things need to change. I will also be emailing them. I feel powerless 99% of the time, but I know our country can’t keep operating like this. Something has to change.

What can be said that hasn’t already been said about the thousands of other mass shootings? A lot. And we’ll keep saying it, louder and louder and louder until our children (yes, our children, because we are all human beings in this country, in this world) don’t have to worry about not coming home from school.

Sending so much love to you and hugging our babies extra close tonight as we tuck them into bed.