Dan Liljenquist
Summary
The tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary has shaken all of us. We are mourning for the little ones who were murdered. we are mourning for the courageous women who ran into danger and sacrificed their bodies and lives to shield the children they loved. We are mourning with the parent, grandparents, and siblings and families of those slain, comprehending to a small degree the terror and despair they must be suffering. The grieving process is just the beginning...
Tragedies happen all of the time — every family I know has lost loved ones. But for some reason, this tragedy seems crueler than almost any other. In addition to the horror and unimaginable loss (of innocence, of potential, of peace), it seems all the more devastating coming this close to Christmas. How can these families possibly feel joy again? How will they go on?
These questions are in essence the questions I once asked myself as a little boy on a Christmas night 30 years ago. I was eight years old that Christmas morning in 1982, playing with the gifts I had received when I heard my mother's screams. I ran towards the commotion and found my mother and sisters administering CPR to my baby brother Stephen. He was six months old and the joy of our family. Stephen drowned in the bathtub in just a few inches of water. His death seemed to stop time. That Christmas night, I sat by myself in our playroom, staring at my new toys. I remember thinking "what a waste." Looking back, my childhood ended that day.
Despite their overwhelming grief, my parents refused to allow our tragedy to tear our family apart. Instead, our suffering united us and bound us together. My parents taught us the true meaning of Christmas, and in our despair, we turned our hearts heavenward. Looking back, while we could not see the Lord's hand in Stephen's death, we were not left comfortless.
The first anniversary of Stephen's death was very difficult. On that Christmas day, we chose to spend the day searching for the Christmas spirit. We turned Christmas day into a day of service — visiting the sick and the lonely, delivering homemade bread or rice-crispy treats to dear friends and loved ones. Santa Claus visited our home the day after Christmas. A new tradition was born, and for the last 28 years, we have celebrated Christmas this way.
It took a long, long time for joy to return to our home, but gradually, imperceptibly, it came. I learned at an early age that while the sun sets, the sun also rises. Sorrow and pain have their season, but hope comes with the morning. My mother never fully recovered from the sadness of that day, but she never gave up hope. She passed away in February of this year. We miss her but smile to think that she will get to celebrate this Christmas with her baby boy.
Last Friday, I came home to children stunned and stoic about the shootings. I held my own kindergartener close to me. He looked up at me and said with a soft voice "somebody came into a kindergarten class and killed all the kids." His voice wavered as he spoke, and a look of sadness, fear and puzzlement was etched in his face. I did not know what to say. So I reminded him of why we celebrate Christmas. May God bless the broken hearted this Christmas season.
Dan Liljenquist is a former state senator and U.S. Senate candidate.
JUSTAPERTURE
I love this article. Something all of us would be better to remember. Is how we can choose to allow adversity to control us or rebuild us. Our ability to make choices is a monumental force and essential to our existence. So important is this, for we also cannot allow these things to control or manipulate our thinking, resulting in a loss of one's power.
Sometimes life seems so complicated, and unsure beyond the measure we think possible to withstand. We are beyond our self and simply cannot wait for the sun to set in a particular season of difficulty. Absolutely!
However, with our experience of good and bad, life's regrowth does eventually bring our perspective to where we can better see and acknowledge, with time, the beautiful sunrise again; even if not perfectly. As we step back and look at things objectively, our eyes and hearts learn to appreciate new & simple things, in a way we did not once before. Of course. that doesn't mean we become devoid of challenges or tragedy, that is part of LIFES experience so that we can know the good from the bad and sorrow from the joy. It has been so since the beginning of time. But in that experience, our strength, love, compassion, our ability to forgive, accept and move forward stretches us to a beautiful & greater common bond of love. That is a gift to all mankind. As we surrender to the ache, we are also surrendering to the love, and something within us is changed. It manifests itself in the form of a newer, better, understanding of that Love within ourselves first; and ultimately, the greatest blessing as you would know. If anyone has uplifted or held your own broken heart for a time, you know this. And it's Love's capacity to buoy up another. Which is the most tender and precious thing to the giver, and the receiver.
This awareness is sooo essential.I cannot say this enough! Without it, we can be swayed with the wind, manipulated by our emotions, destroyed, rendering ourselves dead inside, our thinking and reactions to things around us control what is within us. Sometimes, resulting in becoming so numb, that we become the problem ourselves. We become creatures of reaction instead of action. What would be different in the lives of so many, had an offender been loved before breaking, lost in insanity and drowning in their hurt or anger? (Something Capitol Hill seems to overlook). We have a set of rules and to those that would agree, A LAW, that suggests LOVE ONE ANOTHER. Maybe they should pass it as a Bill? Until that day comes however, we must be true to the feelings we have and learn to share them with others. We must also learn to listen without judgment and allow others to make their journey in their struggles and arrive to the same yet personal understanding in their own way. An other's perspective helps and guides but isn't always the ticket to assure an other's destination/arrival. Sometime this process requires us to forgive, without expectation.
It isn't easy for me, to see how easy some people can float through this time and time again, only to find sorrow, blame and hardship.
It is amazing to realize how much we need one another. Our culture, and society employs our lifestyles to think we are alone, entitled and a nothing/nobody, without someone Else's stamp of approval or accreditation. Were our ancestors nobodies because they didn't have an organization to validate their studies or establishment, or sign a cute little certificate and say well done to someone Else's standard of what's what? This culture I speak of also has incorporated the American lifestyle and communities to such: We love the fast paced, over scheduled, over worked electronic advanced age. Everything of little value, but shiny or cute, with it's monetary price & worse, obtainable with no effort what so ever. Virtues, morals, and common sense principles, short changed as over rated. We ride in a box, go to work in a box, shop in a box, return to our box and sit down in front of the box and then we are told who we are, who our neighbor is, what they have done, what's popular, what we need, where to get it, how we are dying, what we need to to do or look like to be pretty, stay alive and enjoy life. Through these resources it is overwhelmingly accomplished, we are programmed, conditioned and thus manipulated.
Unfortunately, the most powerful resource, "our power" is also then left in a box, subjugated to our blind state. The most powerful resource, "our power" rendered untapped, unused, dormant. Let me end by saying as I did in the beginning, "Our ability to make choices is a monumental force in and to this life, as hard as it may be at times, it is essential to our existence." Let us choose wisely and commit to opening our minds and hearts to this regrowth as the sun rises and sets, each day through out our years in this experience we call LIFE and commit to using "our power" to help others and in such a way, that makes ourselves proud.
