While I know I’m not the only mom who has ever received texts like these in the 30 years since school shootings have become a regular part of our national existence, I imagine I’m among a smaller group who has received them twice, a year apart from each other. The first was when a Freshman shot a Senior in the middle of a crowded hallway at Ingraham High School in early November last year. The second came to me yesterday from UNLV where my daughter swims and studies.
Once the thought of “Oh God, not again” passes, the automatic emails and posts to FB go out so grandparents and extended family can know your kid is safe before they hear the news and start calling in a panic. It’s not much, but at least you feel like you’re doing something.
Both times, the texts start in the family group chat, where the five of us all get our chance send love, ask basic questions, and offer support while we start tuning into the news and following police scanners because now that you know your worst fear is assuaged, the next tier of fear for their friends, teachers, and coaches settles in, and you wait for word of how bad it’s going to get.
Both the shooting at Ingraham and UNLV were resolved in about 2 hours, meaning we got word that the danger was over. However it’s not at all over. Classrooms are cleared room by room, with traumatized students treated as both victims and possible suspects, so they are searched and marched with their hands raised until they are fully identified. Then they are taken to some second area where they can be tracked and parents called. This process takes HOURS. With my son, we got his first text before 10am, but he wasn’t home until close to 6pm and the school is two blocks from our house.
It’s those hours after where the full impact of what has happened hits you. You sit at your desk and cry because you know your baby is OK but another parent or family out there didn’t get those texts and your heart is devastated for them. For me, I offered up prayers of gratitude that our family had made it through this terror twice, but I couldn’t help wondering if the odds would catch up to us someday.
This time it was harder than last time. The biggest reason is that I haven’t been able to hug my daughter yet. There’s still a week left of the semester and a swim meet to attend, so she isn’t due home until a few days before Christmas. My brain knows she’s fine, but my Mama Heart can’t fully accept it yet because your baby isn’t safe until you’ve put your body between them and danger. It’s just instinct and instinct doesn’t care about the news or texts or police press conferences assuring you the killer is down. Instinct wants them at your side where you can stare down whatever in the universe has dared to threaten your baby.
That is the perverted helplessness that only happens with gun violence. The campus safety alert that went out to the students at UNLV yesterday had three words: Run. Hide. Fight. That’s the order. First run. If you can’t do that, hide. If the shooter finds you, fight, because you’ve got nothing left to lose at that point. There is supposedly research behind that advice but as I sit the day after, the horror of that truth is overwhelming.
This is the second Advent in a row where I have walked with my child, family, and school community through gun violence and death. Advent is the time of the Christian calendar where we meditate on our God of the Now and Not Yet. Of our God who is both Parent and Child. Of our God who stays with us in our times of trauma while whispering quiet reminders of the time Love defeated Death. As a pastor, I cherish this annual reminder that we wait on peace that has already come and I grieve how many of my fellow humans have failed to accept the gift of grace and reconciliation, preferring to follow the lure of evil. I know that is a loaded word in so many ways, but truly what other word describes someone who destroys someone else’s life and brings trauma to thousands of others?
There is no good here. No pithy words of wisdom I can offer. Even renewed (and necessary) calls for gun control feel like screams in the wind to me today. The only solid thing I can bear witness to is the profound comfort I’ve felt from family, friends, and other UNLV parents. God blesses us with community exactly for times like this. I’ve had people praying for me and my family. I’ve had texts and phone calls from so many folks who are thinking of Erika today. And I’m also thinking of all the high school students in Seattle, including my son, who marched to the school district offices two days after the shooting at Ingraham demanding more mental health providers from diverse backgrounds at every school to help students manage stress and conflict in non-violent ways, which the district is starting to provide.
It is watching how the kids respond in the time after these events that has given me the most hope. They strive to make their trauma count for something. Perhaps we need a second-round of key words texted out to all of us. Three words that also reflect what Jesus did when he walked among us: Pray. Talk. Act.
We pray. We pray in gratitude for lives not taken. We pray for comfort and strength for the families who were not so lucky. We pray for a better way. We pray for change.
We talk. We talk about our fears and our gratitude. We talk to help our children process their trauma. We talk to other parents, teachers, coaches, and friends whose hearts stayed clenched through the day. We talk to our government and its representatives as we plead for ways to end this madness.
We act. We march or write or call. We hug and cry and soothe. We hold hands in resolve that one day, with God’s help, we will learn to live without violence and cease, as a culture, to worship guns.
Run. Hide. Fight. That is nightmare. Pray. Talk. Act. That is the hope.
