Where words don’t reach

When Sandy Hook happened, we had just gotten married. No kids then. But we didn’t need to have kids to understand what had happened. We understood, as the news reports had written: the statistics, the names, and that they were mostly little kids. From the words, we understood that it was tragic and horrible.

Almost ten years later, we have kids of our own, a toddler and a first grader. We thought we understood back then, when we read the words. We thought we understood back then, when we paused and thought about the gravity of the situation. But imagining now, our first grader going to school and never coming home, understanding feels very far away.

The more we understand, the less it all makes sense. That’s the mind trying to do the heart’s work.