Choosing Trust

This morning at 6:30 as I sat down to blog, my phone rang. It was Savana.

I talk to Savana every day, but yesterday? It was a crazy day and we didn't manage to touch base. Savana spent a great part of the afternoon holed up in the laundry room of the Southern apartment complex where she lives because there was a bomb threat on campus. A real live bomb threat. Squad cars, a SWAT team, and the FBI swarmed like bees on a hive. The suspect was assumably in the boys' dorm. Doors were busted down; boys thrown to the ground and handcuffed with guns pointed at their heads.

They were all innocent.

When I got the news, I was in my office entering names in a database so that I could print receipts. Savana sent me a text: Mom, there's a bomb threat on campus! They think he's in the boys' dorm!

Shortly after my dearest friend Tammy came in and I watched her go from happy to panic in 1.2 seconds as she realized that her baby was in the boys' dorm with a gunman. Hide in your closet! she told him.

Mom, I'm scared.

It was surreal. We watch these things on the news far too often. But when it happens on the campus where your child lives? That's a whole lot of crazy. That's a whole lot of This could happen to me...and it is.

Thankfully everyone is okay. Thankfully they have two suspects in custody and nobody was hurt. But yesterday was a reality check. It brings into focus how much we trust that those terrifying realities won't happen to us...and yet...

It almost did.

I am grateful this morning for the cold air outside and the heat in my home. I am grateful that my three kids are happy and well. I am grateful for sisters and nieces and parents and nephews and a brother-in-law who all have my heart. I am grateful for crisp fruit and highways that lead to home. I am grateful for books that take me away and technological advances that bring opportunity. I am grateful for my friend Tammy who huddled with me in an office when life came crashing down.

It's so easy to take life for granted--to forget how genuinely blessed we are to live in a free country that offers so many good things. But freedom means everyone is free...which means we have to trust that all those everyones will handle their freedom with respect to others. And sometimes? Well, sometimes they don't. And their lack of respect for themselves causes a whole lot of chaos for others. It's so utterly tragic.

Life is fragile.

So this morning when the phone rang? I was so thankful to hear my daughter's voice on the other end. I am thankful she is coming home today so that she is safe in our home and I don't have to wonder. It's a scary world out there. But regardless we have to choose to live our lives, to chase our dreams, to take it one day at a time...

We have to choose to trust.