If you live in America, you know that recently Virginia Tech was assaulted terribly.  For the past two days I can't turn on my TV without seeing wall to wall coverage, talking about the same things over and over.  The only real good news I saw come so far is that the school is sending kids home for a week to be with family.  This is what makes the most sense.  This is where the healing will really begin.

Most of these kids will have family to go home to, and I can tell you as a parent when you see these things you have this uncontrollable urge to hug your children.  To be near them and your appreciation for them being a part of your life is sky high.  I remember September 11th 2001. I remember wanting to get to my son as fast as I could so I could kiss him.  I felt similarly the day of Virginia Tech's rampage.  

Despite reports now exposing the young man that did this was truly disturbed; it doesn't bring back the innocent people that were merely living their lives.  There is a special place in my heart for people that are lost to death when they did nothing to earn it.   And of course that is a lot of people.  I recall once, about 6 years ago, I think it was the summer before 911, I was watching ABC Evening News and saw a father and son caught in a cross fire between Israeli and Palestinian fighters on a long city street.  It may have been the single most horrifying thing I ever witnessed.  I cried quietly on my couch, thinking of my own son and myself.   I thought sadly for the father, and then for his son.  They were huddled along a long high walled sidewalk.  On it there were built in block pillars where the father covered his son with his body and took as many bullets as possible.  There was only a foot of cover, not nearly enough to avoid being shot.  I thought to myself, "Why are they shooting at them?"  Why?  A father and son.  They slowly both slumped to the ground.  My heart was breaking among other emotions. 

I tell this story because you and I could not be a Virginia Tech.  All we know is the body count.  How sad.  If we could all just see how terrible the loss of one life is, we may all then understand just how precious life is.  There were people that died at the hands of some broken and warped soul.  The died violently.  They died horrified, hoping they could be spared, yet were not. The lied slumped over each other, life leaving their body’s slowly and that is something we have to understand.  When you see this, you then can make the right decisions to STOP THIS IN THE FUTURE.  They were not numbers, they were people with lives that meant so much to others.

There were so many innocent people that died. Imagine my story of the father and son, 32 times.   When I saw the speech of President Bush speaking to the Virginia Tech students at their school, I saw a lot of young people profoundly crying. I reacted with my own tears.  I think I understood what they felt.  In my life I've felt the feeling of paying a price for losing something when you did nothing to deserve that loss.  The looks I saw were clearly, "why?" with no hope of any reason bringing back these 32 people. 

I guess what I'm hoping to accomplish here is this.  If you are someone that is that desperate for help, you can't think more hurt is the answer.  It's not.  It's not worth it.  If you want love so badly and you are not getting it, is taking it away from others a way of proving you are worth loving?  You would only prove to the world they were right and you were wrong.  So what is the answer?   I'm not a professional, so I can't give you hard advice.  But I can say this.  Live.  Just be good, reach out being good and it will come back to you.  I know that works.  Volunteer.  Be a part of something bigger than yourself.  It's OK not to be the center of attention, because you still get a lot of attention by being a part of something bigger.  And I can say first hand, by my volunteering to be my son's little league manager I've made great new friends.  Parents have offered me help in return in my life for being a part of their children's. Being good in my life brought good back to me, and I never planned it that way.  I just learned how great it is.  

If you are so sad that you can't feel, you MUST reach out.  I know if you help others, then the person you really are is the person people will finally see.  And you know something else; I think that people in the business of helping others, volunteers make better friends, husbands or wives, now that I've become a volunteer myself.  I've learned that they are a community within our community.  They are the best among us.  You can be part of that.

I suppose on both sides of this I'm saying a way to heal here is to reach out.  And keep at it.  Caring is not something you do just in times of need.  And sadly for some of us, we may never feel it.  I don't have the answer for those people without a moral compass.  You can't give everyone a moral compass.  They either have one or do not.  Again I think I speak from witnessing it. Worse yet, it seems this young man that took the lives of 32 innocent people, did not have a moral compass.  Sadly, here is where I’m with you, asking. ...”why?”  How did his moral compass never kick in?  How does this happen to a person? 

The saddest thing I take from this news out of Virginia is that we can't bring back these people.  I get angry when I see how great the lives they had and now they don't get to finish them.  The professor with a wife and three children.  God my heart breaks for them.  A father that won't play in the yard with his kids, or take them to the beach.  The kids won't have those moments EVER.  His wife will forever have a void where her friend once cared for her.  There entire existence is now and forever something scarred by the loss of a father and husband.  And this is only one story. 

I used to think I could just move to the country and live away from society to protect me and my family from this nonsense.  A friend once taught me in a roundabout way that we idealist are crushed by reality.  You have to be a compromisationalist.   You have to compromise your values to survive in today's world.

But here I think we all need to be idealist.  If we could all just act on the one thing we all know to be true.... there is room to love.  There is room to care.  There is room for the would be bad guy that doesn't WANT to be the bad guy to be good ... to care. There is room for we innocent people to reach right back to those we may not fully understand and give a little more. 

We must all have a mutual surrender in our hearts and reach out. If we heal this way now, we can stop things like this from happening again.