A Sad Day

I keep coming back to a small moment that I was a part of the afternoon of the Newtown shooting. During dismissal, I was monitoring the daycare children. A petite little kindergartner with porcelain skin looked up at me and pointed out a scraped place on her cheekbone, near her eye. She said, "Look, Miss Mimi, I fell down last night and got a carpet burn." I told her I was sorry and that I knew it must have hurt. She said, "My daddy put some medicine on it." I said, "Your daddy was using his hands for helping", which is one of the peacemaking rules I teach children. The little girl widened her huge, liquid blue eyes and said with deep sincerity, "Yeah, 'cause families love each other." Since I had just heard about the school shooting an hour earlier, this innocent, simple little comment struck me as so very poignant, and my eyes filled with tears. May God richly bless the people of Newtown with His presence and compassion and strength and comfort.