Today is one of those days that you and I have all known; no matter that we should never have to. A day when a bad thing happened to a lot of people—nearby, close to home—and you didn’t know any of them. So you move through your day, because you’re still here, yet you find yourself a little broken. Because they were taken. Because there were so many of them. Because they were so young. Because.
Every email that comes in, every colleague who speaks to you, every stocking stuffer you buy, everything you see that doesn’t have to do with them, every move you make…it all seems small. Vacuous. Robotic. Not too far from you are twenty mothers who dropped their children off at school a few hours earlier. Doing things normally right now feels something like a betrayal. A pretense.
A status update might be a thing you should do to let the world know you’re thinking about it, but no words work. So you read what everyone else is thinking. You at once wish someone would say something with meaning, but no one knows how. You see some words that are vapid, everyday, irrelevant, and you wonder if the person writing them is ignoring everything on purpose. Whether you should too. Some people are rabid, some let their sentences trail off, others are just…ashamed. That this is the world we are in. That we’ve let it get this way.
You’ve heard it said: it’s a natural reaction to point fingers when tragedy strikes. If someone you love was killed, you think you’d want to kill their killer. If that killer did it for you, you might be lost. Without aim, without a receptacle for your rage. So you’d look to the ones who perhaps didn’t do it, but let it happen.
Action must be taken. Don’t just sit there. Do something. Make it worth something. Be productive. Seize the day.
All of this is true one moment. And in the next, there isn’t a single adult left on the planet. This thought makes you understand God better than in any other moment; He must be who grown-ups need to turn to when they all feel like children.
No words work. But these come close.
greengreengrass 
Thank you. For taking the time to think about the unthinkable and for giving us the words.