Copycats...

There's a copycat trying to create a tragedy like the one that stole the beautiful baby faces up above.
Someone has threatened to shoot up the schools that our kids are in tomorrow.  Particularly the high school.  We've confirmed with the police and were told that the threats are "very, very real" and that they are looking into them and investigating. And there was a huge police presence in and around the school today, which, I suppose, is reassuring.  Tomorrow is supposed to be the big test, however.

This makes me so, so sad.  First of all, I cannot look at, or speak or anything to do with the Sandy Hook tragedy without breaking down in tears.  I mean, look at their little faces.  God love them!  They were so tiny and precious!  TWENTY BABIES!  BABIES!  That is unfathomable to me.  How can ANYONE be left unfazed by this?  Seriously?  Not just unfazed, but how can there now be COPYCATS?  People that want to be just like this evil monster???  People who want to scare others and want to threaten to commit evil or harm? Who want to instill fear???  I don't understand it, I don't understand it, I don't understand it. 

Today Maddie wrote this on her facebook status...

I really have no idea why, how, or what started all these rumors about the alleged shooting that is supposed to happen tomorrow, but if the person or people who are "planning" to shoot up Verrado, Desert Edge and or whatever other schools that are supposed to be involved in this is someone I know or can read this please don't do anything. It is almost Christmas. I'm pretty sure my mother and all other parents out there would MUCH rather have their precious babies opening up presents instead of picking out caskets for them. I am a 15 year old girl. I am a sophomore in high school. I can't even get my permit to drive for another month. I plan to go to college and have a family of my own someday and its a shame that I have to the have the fear in the back of my mind that going to school tomorrow to take my third and fourth hours finals might be a dangerous decision. Especially with everything that just happened in Connecticut! And on the other side of the spectrum where this is all just a bunch of rumors, HOW DARE ANYONE HAVE THE AUDACITY TO START A RUMOR THAT A SCHOOL IS GOING TO HAVE A SHOOTING. There must be something very wrong in the minds of people who would say that. In this day and age, not even a week after 20 first graders were killed, those things are not taken lightly. That is just something so wrong to joke about. So, tomorrow I am going to school, and praying that if anything does happen that God will protect me and all of the fellow students who have been having this threat, and also that the officers on scene do their job, and are safe as well.
THIS BROKE MY HEART!  NO FIFTEEN YEAR OLD CHILD SHOULD HAVE TO THINK ABOUT OR WRITE THESE WORDS!!!  My kids had to ask me what I would want them to do if the shooter was in their school.  Would I want them to run?  And they were serious.  Five sets of wide, innocent eyes, staring at Paul and I for answers, waiting with baited breath.  You could hear a pin drop.  I answered, "You do whatever keeps you safe at that moment.  If safe means running, then you run.  If safe means that you have to lay down and play dead, then you do that.  If there's a closet to hide in or something to hide under... whatever you need to do at that moment that keeps you safe and gets you out alive.  That's what you need to do."  They asked if they should help their friends.  "Yes, of course you can help others.  But only if it is safe for yourself to do so.  Don't help someone else at the expense of your own safety."  Most of all, you do whatever it takes to get yourself out safe and alive and get home.

I'm sad that I'm having to have that conversation with these kids.  I'm even sadder that twenty babies are having to be buried this week.  Lord, please go before our children tomorrow and every other day.  Please keep us all safe and healthy and bring us all back home together  Watch over us and protect us.  In Jesus' name I pray, Amen.  Thank you Lord.

lurve you, xoxo v.

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