Yesterday, just less than 20 minutes outside my community, there was a stabbing at a high school. 21 teenage victims were scarred forever, literally. Hundreds of others now live in fear that it might happen to them someday.

As parents, during the early years, we spend so much time instructing our children to avoid strangers that teaching them to beware of their fellow classmates never occurred to us.

Until now. Until yesterday.

We’ve always focused on teaching kindness and inclusion. We shout the golden rule in hopes our children will display it. Who knows? Maybe it will prove beneficial to them during their lean times in life. You know, sort of, “What comes around goes around” type thinking.

It seems to me that kindness begetting kindness went out in the 1950s.

And then with coffee cups in hand we turned on the news and saw our own kids fighting for their lives from wounds inflicted by someone who looked a lot like them. Someone who walked the same halls, sat in the same classes, and fought with the same adolescent issues. Innocence is stolen and fear becomes one with pure souls. The future is now tainted for everyone. We no longer sit on the sidelines feeling awful for the parents and students somewhere else far, far away. Now we cry for our own.

Today we awoke and the world looked different. Darker somehow.

This morning, parents everywhere in the small suburbs outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania kissed their children goodbye while tears pooled in their eyes. While the big, yellow, buses drove further and further in the opposite direction, each mother, father, and grandparent silently prayed to God their babies would return unscathed. And school-aged children everywhere looked around suspiciously at their peers walking next to them down the halls.

Hate creates hate and silence is the loudest and worst noise of all…

So, what now? How do we teach balance between love and skepticism of our fellow neighbors and still manage to cover it all under the blanket of Christianity? I read my Bible this morning, and I didn’t see anything about what to do in the 21^st century when kids walk down the corridors of their schools stabbing other kids. My earthly eyes can’t find where Jesus spelled it out in black and white, and I’m confounded over it all.

For me, there is only one thing to do:

I will keep teaching my children to love while trusting God will give me the wisdom to impart discernment to their little souls. I will teach them, by example, to pray for everyone, good and evil alike. I will keep preaching hope to their souls via the only One who can give it to them.

His name is Jesus.

We need Him and even when He seems absent, like in the hallway of a high school in Murrysville, Pennsylvania, He is not. I don’t understand it, and never will this side of heaven, but I know He is real and no matter what, I will continue to teach my kids to scream love towards the high walls of hatred. How else can the walls fall down?

And trust me; I’m not saying they ever will. I’m just saying we have to maintain hope.

Hope is the only light in the midst of all that is dark. (Tweet that.)

We must continue to teach love.

My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.

-John 15:12

I proclaim your saving acts in the great assembly; I do not seal my lips, Lord, as you know. ¹⁰ I do not hide your righteousness in my heart; I speak of your faithfulness and your saving help. I do not conceal your love and your faithfulness from the great assembly. ¹¹ Do not withhold your mercy from me, Lord; may your love and faithfulness always protect me.

-Psalm 40:9-11

Somewhere beyond the darkness there is Light and in that Light lives love. It is there I rest my hope. And something tells me that “somewhere” isn’t as far away as it seems…

Please continue to pray healing, as well as freedom from fear, over the victims of Franklin Regional High school.

Love,

Jennifer