life continues

I'm ok.  I'm hanging in there.  I didn't eat much or sleep much this past weekend.  The helicoptors were flying right over my house while they were providing 24 hr live arial coverage of the crime scene.  It was hard to sleep.  I had been struggling to eat anyway.

I realized that for several days I hadn't eaten or had barely eaten.  Yesterday I realized my head hurt and I was just so hungry.  It was hard to eat.  Eating felt so trivial, so normal.  And in the face of the evil that has happened, normal every day things didn't seem to matter.

My kids have been asking me questions.  They need me to help them process their feelings.  My oldest is angry.  REALLY. REALLY. ANGRY.  My middle doesn't realize that he is both relieved and scared.  He keeps mentioning that he was there just a few hours before the shooting. 

Yesterday I just didn't want to go home after church.  Home felt stifling at that moment.  My oldest suggested Toys R Us and I thought it sounded like a great idea.  It was refreshing to see some innocence.  It was healing to see my children playing with toys and making birthday and Christmas wish lists.  It was wonderful to see them with their innocence in tact even though I know the weekend stole some of their innocence.  It was a joy to watch them being little.

And today we get up, dust ourselves off and keep going.  Today I, like everyone else here in Aurora, put one foot in front of the other and continue doing the normal every day things.  It is hard.  For some of them, their worlds are completely shattered and it is devestating to think of life continuing when their lives have stopped.

But if we all let life stop, then the shooter will have won.  He will have done what he came to, he will have broken us.  I'm not going to be broken.  I'm going to come alongside of those who I love and we are going to grow stronger.  Once again, we are not going to let the evil of one man, the darkness of one put out the light of many.