Dear ones,

It’s over a year since the Parkland school shooting. It seems little has changed except the precious young people who survived, forever living with the memory of their trauma. Some are now activists against gun violence and easy accessibility to weapons designed for war. I feel the message of this piece from last February still speaks to their heartbreak and the lack of action regarding a deep, ongoing national tragedy – Jan

February 24, 2018

Dear Children of Florida,

I can’t begin to grasp your agony nor could I ever erase from your minds what you saw and heard in school that terrifying day, but please know I ache for you, your friends, your loss.

How ironic that the trillion dollar health industry helped this old lady beat breast cancer, yet we’re too impoverished spiritually and morally as a country to save your classmates from murder.

It’s heartbreaking that so many invest everything to find healing, while a teenager sits in a dark room and plots death, oblivious that each life–even his own–is precious and irreplaceable.

It’s gut wrenching that my generation moves to Florida–the Sunshine State–for happy endings, the same place where kids were gunned down in classrooms.

I can’t tell you why our leaders let this happen, again and again. Or how they sleep at night. One disturbed boy with evil intentions and a semi-automatic weapon destroyed so many lives in minutes with a weapon designed to kill in war, a gun he legally purchased. It’s outrageous warning signs that could have saved lives were reported and dismissed by authorities. Beyond outrageous. All of it.

Forgive us. We failed you; we failed your friends who died.

They will never grow up to fight for what is good and true.

But you can, and you are.

As a survivor of a different battle, I pray you survive and recover from the horror you’ve faced. I pray God strengthens you for all the days you’ll live without the 17 people who died that Wednesday in Florida.

Freshly wounded, you’re already on the streets, demanding this can’t happen in another school. I see your brave spirits and hear your strong voices: “This must stop!” I hope our leaders, from the President on down, hear you, too.

I don’t know how you cope, but when despair threatens, faith is my anchor.

As a high school senior, I bought a New Testament at a Young Life summer camp in Colorado. Its pages are yellowed and fragile now, its spine is taped together, but words I underlined at 17 still comfort me:

. . . his Spirit within us is actually praying for us in those agonizing longings which never find words. And God, who knows the heart’s secrets understands, of course, the Spirit’s intention as he prays for those who love God. (Romans 8:16, J. B. Phillips)

Another translation says the Spirit intercedes for us with groans too deep for words. America groans for you and with you. If I were near, I’d wrap you in my arms and weep with you. Our courage grows to do the right things grows when we talk and listen to one another, across the generations.

“Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely.” (Clarissa Pinkola Estes, recovery specialist, awakin.org 2.19.18)

Take heart. Love is your birthright. Love as fiercely as you fight.

Jan Woodard,
Indiana, PA
All will be well

Indiana Gazette