Children

Today:
20 kids in Connecticut

22 kids in China

34 kids in Cambodia

Can we talk about this for a moment?


I got wonderful warm welcomes from everyone in Hawaii.  I was able to go to The temple at 7am this morning to do baptisms.  It was absolutely wonderful.  I saw my dear friend Matt, whom I didn't expect to see.  I got baptized by Greg whom I hadn't caught up with the day before.  I got to eat breakfast with Liana and lament with her that her mission call wasn't there yet.
And then I went and did businessy things.  I worked.  I did paperwork.  I went to the Health Center. All that jazz.

It was while I was at work that I first heard about the shooting in Connecticut.  And we didn't really take it seriously.  It didn't bring an immediately somber attitude to us because it was so out there, we couldn't fathom that ever happening.
It wasn't until we looked it up and saw footage and articles and news stories-- the media blowing up-- that it sunk in.
Did you know that, on the same day as the shooting, there was a stabbing in China?  Well, technically it was the next day for them, but it happened around the same 24 hour period.  Some will argue that yes, gun control worked in China.  These 22 kids didn't die.  9 were taken to the hospital with sever conditions and 2 were taken to hospitals outside the country to receive better care.   Some will argue that people who are going to be violent will use whatever means available to them.  See, he damaged as many children with a knife as the man in Connecticut did with a gun.

And for me it was a little odd.  I worked- I don't even really remember what I did.  All I remember is that I went home and nobody was there.  I went to my neighbor's house and there was nobody there.  And so I sat down and opened this computer and started surfing facebook and blogger.  I looked at more information from the shooting and the stabbing and it drug me down into the mud.
*WAIT.
I don't have to do this.  Why am I doing this?  This is what I've been doing for the past few months.  I don't need to be on these stupid sites checking up on the lives of the people I love when I'm finally in the same general vicinity. 
It is ridiculous to be on my own right now.  I lived here before.  I'm going to go for a walk. I haven't done that in months.*
And so I called up a friend and left a message.  And then I did. I went for a walk.
I wandered around Laie for about an hour.
It was dead.  Finals were basically over.  The students were out of Laie celebrating, or already on their way home.
I wandered into the Haircut store and found Andrea working and she didn't get off until later.
I headed toward 'The Hawaiian House' in hopes of catching Kylie when I literally ran into her, her mom, and Lance before I'd even left the shopping center.  They were on a schedule, but promised that I'd see them at Commencement the next day.
So I wandered up to The Point.

   It was around here that I received a call from the friend I'd called earlier.  He had been in a final and had some responsibilities to fulfill before commencement, but he talked to me for a little bit.  I promised myself, when I started my wander, that I wouldn't dwell on grief, that I wouldn't cry, and that I'd be pleasant to be around for the remainder of the evening.  I broke every one of those.  Here I was, wandering around, searching for familiar faces because the faces that I had expected to be surrounded with were nowhere to be found.  At the time I didn't know why.  I was sad and that is all I knew.  I had not seen any children in 65 hours and that was something I wasn't accustomed to.  Having my main human interactions come from children and then go days without seeing any is a little hard on it's own.  But consider what had transpired that day. 

My heart hurts for the parents of Connecticut.  Cambodia is a very broken country, and it is healing remarkably well, but traumas on a large scale are part of their daily lives.  Newtown, CT will be a very broken city for a long time.  At least I hope they will be.  They need to struggle through this as a community or they will never get better.  We all do.  This is something that our whole nation needs to struggle with, not because we get any pleasure from tragedies but because it is okay to feel sad.  It is okay to be unsure and sad and overwhelmed and angry.  We need to learn how to deal with how we feel and rise above it.  I never want America to get to the point where we do not mourn and drag ourselves through pits of darkness to overcome it.  When we do not intensely value lives then we will find ourselves in situations like the bloodbath that was Cambodia in the late 1900s.   And my heart hurts for China.  There have been multiple outbursts of violence at their primary schools over the past few years.   China has some of the strictest policies on gun control.  For violence against the innocent to still exist is appalling but enlightening.  I don't want America to get so rigid on controlling weapons that they'll drive criminals to use cruder methods.  Those who choose to be violent, will be violent regardless of their tools.   Those who turn their violence towards children are in dire need of very professional help.  I believe that, unless you are trained to do so, killing anyone is a good indicator that you're mentally messed up.  But one's brain must be all kinds of scrambled for one to be able to kill such innocence.  And I know how innocent kids are.  Had I not just centered my life around specific kids for months on end?  I know what they are capable of.  I know how easily they are influenced for good and for bad.   I was in torment.  I kept thinking of all the terrible life situations that my kids had gone through to get to CICFO.  I dwelt on the joy that they live with because of the sadness that they have known.  In my mind's eye I could see people coming into the orphanage and hurting my kids.  My kids, with their smiles and their scars, and their voices and their little lips that stick out when they're confused. And the fact that America cannot adopt from Cambodia so there is no way for me to keep any of that.  I didn't want to be in there in Hawaii by myself.  I wanted to be back with my kids.  I still do.





I didn't have very many phone numbers anymore because I'd gotten a new phone before I left.  But I have friends that live up there at The Point and I hoped there would be cars in the driveway, when there were I sortof invited myself in.
I'm so grateful that I live in a place that I can just do that.  I can call on a friend unexpectedly (very very unexpectedly because they didn't even know I was back) and be welcomed into their home and become part of whatever it is they are doing.
Seth and Aaron were watching Aladdin.
And then more people came over and we played games.

And we talked a little.  Looking back, I wish we'd talked more, but I wasn't in much of a talkative mood.  We didn't discuss the violence that plagued the earth earlier that day.  We avoided the topic entirely because we don't understand it.
This post isn't going to have a happy ending.  But knowing that children are received directly into the arms of our ever present Heavenly Father can make it a peaceful one.