Worries
Yesterday morning as I pulled into her school to drop her off, Hannah told me that her stomach hurt. That doesn’t always mean anything, but there was enough discomfort on her face that I decided that we would park the car and sit for a little while to see if she got better or worse. If there were going to be any vomiting, I wanted it to happen while I was around and not 25 miles away at work.
Hannah perked up after fifteen minutes or so, and so I walked her into school. While it’s possible she had some kind of stomach bug, it’s more likely that this was another case of her anxieties getting to her. Third grade can be a tough place, with fickle friends, teasing boys, and high-pressure tests. Hannah’s dealing with all of these things, and sometimes her worries bother her digestive system. I’m doing what I can to equip her to deal with these stresses, and I try to make our home a safe, relaxing space for her.
But I’m worried about how much she worries.
All this was on my mind when the news broke yesterday about the elementary school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut. As I saw stories go by on Twitter and Facebook, I kept hoping that the initial reports were wrong, that it wasn’t true that 20 children had been killed. But those early numbers were correct, and I was horrified. We’ve seen too many shootings in our country in recent years. All such incidents are tragic, but to know that some person walked into an elementary school and started shooting at kids? That disturbs me on a deep level.
My heart aches for the parents and siblings and other family and friends who lost loved ones yesterday.
It’s natural to worry about one’s own children when one hears news like this. I kept checking my email all afternoon, hoping to see a reassuring message from Hannah’s principal. The rational side of my mind knew that Hannah was safe, that the danger yesterday was far away from here. But I breathed a little easier when that email finally appeared in my inbox.
I’m not worried that something like the Connecticut shootings will happen here. I know that it could and that it would be awful if it did, but I also know the chances are very, very low. I don’t worry about school shootings in the same sense that I don’t hope that I’ll win the lottery when I buy a PowerBall ticket. The probability of either event happening is vanishingly small, and there’s nothing I can do to affect either outcome anyway.
Someone once told me that worrying is like an old lady in a rocking chair… It gives her something to do, but it doesn’t get her anywhere.
Although there’s little I can do personally to prevent such a tragedy, there are certainly steps that can be taken at the community level. Better gun regulation, for instance. There was an attack at a school in China yesterday, too, with 22 children injured. No one died, however, since the attacker used a knife and not a rifle. Might tighter gun regulation in the US prevent future shootings? Probably, although the incident in China also shows that disturbed people will do disturbing things, regardless of what kinds of weapons they can access. That speaks to the importance of support for mental health in our country.
We don’t know enough about the Connecticut shooter to say whether better gun laws or better mental health resources would have made a difference, but both strategies seem sensible to me. We can’t prevent all tragedies like this one from occurring, but we can work to make them less likely to happen. And that means addressing the weapons used, along with the people using them.
Even so, terrible things are still going to happen. We live in a fallen world, a world where humans do awful things to each other. I may not worry about such things, since I know there’s little I can do personally to prevent them, but I still have to grapple with their reality. That’s where my faith comes in.
God lets bad things happen to people. From cancer to divorce to school shootings, we suffer in this world. But that doesn’t make God less good or less powerful. We live in a world that He created that we messed up. Our choice, in the face of tragedy but also in the face of joy, is to believe in Him and trust Him.
How can I deal with the fact that such horrible things happen? Especially when I know I have no control over them, over whether they happen to me and my loved ones? I put my faith in God’s sovereignty and goodness. All I can do is trust Him. That trust doesn’t always make rational sense, but that’s how faith works. I just trust Him.
I was thankful yesterday afternoon when I picked up my girls and found that neither of them had heard about the shootings in Connecticut. I’m glad their teachers decided that they’re too young to hear about such things, because they are. I can take my worry about their safety and beat it back with statistics, but they can’t do the same.
Hannah has enough to worry about in her life. Fickle friends. Teasing boys. High-pressure tests. These are things she can deal with, problems she can actually solve, with a little help from those who love her.
I’ll try not to worry about how much she worries. That rocking chair won’t help me or her. Instead, I’ll do what I can to help her deal with the challenges in her life, and point her to the One who can help her through challenges greater than these.
And I’ll be grateful that I was able to pick my little girl up from school Friday, safe and sound. And sorrowful for parents who weren’t.
Image: “Rocking Chair in Field,” Jennifer Riefenberg, Flickr (CC)