When the wolrd gets shakey below my feet I wonder what to do. I want to find my way back to the place where it all felt okay. And then I remember that it is likely true that the events that occured that shook the ground below my feet have likely shifted something inside of me. Which means there is no going back! The place that was safe and familiar behind me has disappeared just has the moment it existed with in. The options are one and one only keep on moving. And not keep on moving in a numbed out  sort of way. But in a replant your feet in this moment and keep on doing those things you love sort of way.

Yesterdays events shocked me to the core. I never imagined myself living in a place where the phone could ring to alert me to a armed man on  a shooting spree. Those words in and of themselves conjure up a whole lot of images that leave everyone afraid. The call could have looked a lot different if it went like this ..” a man frightened of loosing everything he has desperately clung to as a measure of success as a human being worthy of living in this great nation is roaming lost in your neighborhood. And due to the fact that we here in this country cling to our right to bear arms he is also carrying a weapon.”

This sort of warning illicites with in me compassion. I can see the human being tragically and desperately lost.  But that is not how the day plays out. It plays out that some monster let loose on a room full of folks and is now running through the streets armed looking to kill. So much of the media is based on fear. I was afraid for sure. But I was also grateful. I was grateful that I was with my children.

I thought of those mothers receiving the same call I did along with a call telling them their childs school was on lock down. There were parents in the world yesterday who could not get to their children. They were not permitted access to their children. They were not there during a very very scary time to console and explain. They had to trust someone outside of the famiy, who barely knows their child, to be the one who instilled a sense of safety when the world around them was so very unsure.

I was home with my children. I was wrapping my arms around them. I was reminding them that they were 100 percent safe. They were in their home. They did not know the scared man and he was not going to knock on our door and ask to be invited in. We were in the safest place possible, each others arms. We could be vulnerable purley authentically vulnerable with our fear and concern. And release it in to the hearts of those who have committed to love us with in that authentic place. With this we were also able to move. We didn’t have to stifle our fear, our shove it aside, we got to feel it in the safe place. And I have to believe that feeling our fear is what allows us to let it go. To thank it for the lessons it came share and then send it on its way. Opening our hearts to the next moment of emotion that floats in.

We were also able to question. My boys had a lot of questions and I did what I could to answer. They were not the sorts of questions that pertained to any kind of details but more they were wonderings about how a person gets to such a place that they harm innocent folks. We talked about just those sorts of things. About how the world is made up of many different events and stories and sometimes people don’t get the sorts of messages that  help them be all loved up. I tried to show that even in the darkest and scariest of times compassion can be born. The person whom the police were hunting can be seen as something much larger then a gun man. Seeing the world for all its ugliness isn’t what makes it easier to walk out the door in to the uncertain. Knowing we are all humanly capable of compassion in devastating moments and that there are folks who see and adore our authentic self is what build that sort of courage required to walk out that door.