Once again I sit here stunned at yet another shooting. The theater shooting yesterday in Colorado is hitting everyone hard today. Watching that mother talk about waking up and knowing something was wrong with her daughter, texting her, the daughter telling her she’s fine and to go back to sleep, and then waking to the call that her daughter was dead, broke my heart into pieces.
I have daughters like Jessica Ghawei. That happens to me all the time. I’ll wake up at 3 am and know something is not right with one of them. I’ll pray until I feel a sense of peace and then go back to sleep. Listening to Jessica’s mother recant her story of what happened between her and her daughter in her last hours of life, brought it all too close to home. I sat in tears when she said Jessica said, “I need my mama.” And she replied, “I need my babygirl.” And that was their last conversation.
We ask why, but of course we’ll never know. It just had to be for reasons unbeknownst to us. What makes a person so desperate that they have to take their own life or that of others in their search for a way out of their own dark, painful world? How is it that these people walk in such darkness and pain right amongst us everyday and no one notices until something like Aurora happens?
Today I pray fervently for Jessica’s mom, the other families that lost loved ones, and the survivors whose lives will be forever changed by scenes and memories they’ll never be able to forget. But most of all I pray for James Holmes and the dark pain and desperation that led him to do something like this. And lastly I pray for myself that God never let me walk away from a troubled soul, but to stay, as Jason Mraz says in his new song “I Won’t Give Up”, “I don’t wanna be someone who walks away so easily, I’m here to stay and make the difference that I can make.”
And so, as another day goes by, we sit in a moment of silent respect, we pray, but we can’t give up – there’s always someone else who needs a hand or an ear, and….I have written.
Get this song. It’s a heart-changer.
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