There is always a risk in writing when you emotions are raw and unchecked. Sometimes it is a train wreck. Other times beauty arises from ash heaps. I’m trusting God with my words in this moment because as a writer, I think better when words are flying.

I grew up in the midwest. I’m a small town girl by birth. Nearly fourteen years ago we moved to the City Beautiful and made it our home. Three of our four babies were born here. We shop at Publix and we run and get frozen yogurt on hot summer nights just miles from where today, helicopters are circling. We saw them on the way home from church. “What is that all about one of my teenagers asked?” I reminded her of what our pastor said this morning and she said, “Oh right.” It wasn’t that she wasn’t paying attention. Maybe it is the gift of youth when you hear something in the news but don’t realize the seriousness of it all. I envied her a bit in that moment.

My heart is heavy. I can’t bring myself to  turn on the news. I have only been able to do a quick scan of social media channels because these streets, these people, this city is in fact my own. I know enough of reports to tell you that if I entered full into the details I would cry for days.

It probably won’t surprise you to hear that I don’t go to clubs. I wasn’t out at 10:30 pm at a concert on Friday night or at a bar early Sunday morning. I was home trying to get my girls to sleep and planning what we were going to wear to church. I am a mom. And this snapshot of a story wrecked me completely:

The look of a mom waiting for news of her son. Washed out. Wide-open stare. Do you know why? Because there are no words a mom can utter when she doesn’t know what is happing to her child. And it doesn’t matter one bit if he 30 or 5. He is her boy.

Hot tears fill my eyes because as a mama I have wrestled at the bedside of my child. I have asked God to intervene. I have sat washed out and wide-eyed myself. I’ve begged God to fix it, and had to make peace with the fact that sometimes he simply does not. 

I don’t have any deep theological answers. But I know this.

“When Jerusalem came into view, He looked intently at the city and began to weep.” Luke 19:41

This same Jesus weeps with us too. 

He not only weeps with us, he lingers with the broken.

So today, with raw emotions and words that really can’t seem to land too well, I’m going to do what my pastor called our congregation to do. I’m going to pray. I’m going to love my city and the people in it.

Because that is what Jesus is doing.

xo,

Stacey

#loveOrlando

#prayforOrlando