When there are no words, but silence isn’t enough

Jesse was at a softball tournament last night, so the kids sat with me and we watched the live stream online from one of the news channels of what was happening in Paris.*

Every time the death toll number went up, we all would gasp.

Kathrynne kept saying, “I’m so upset. Think about what it would be like to be them! Think about how scared they must feel!”

We talked a lot about how they must feel, about how I felt when there were so many unknowns on 9/11, and how the children there must feel.

My kids kept pointing out the kids in the footage. How scary it must be to be them. How scared their parents must feel to be there and have their kids there with them.

I agreed. And I thought about what it would feel like to be those parents. Those men and women and teens and children. Who had no idea that last night, their lives would change forever.

I wanted to post something. But there were no words I could come up with.

So instead of posting and scheduling posts on my Facebook Page like I had planned last night, we turned off the live stream and I snuggled with my kids.

I still don’t have words today. But I felt so burdened and wanted to acknowledge the situation in some way.

And then I read Lysa’s post here and it echoed my heart. But in much more eloquent ways. Go read it here. 

*Just to clarify for those who may be concerned we’d allow our kids to watch this 1) I kept asking them if it was making them feel scared and they told me, “No. We want to know about what’s going on.” 2) Since it was a U.S. news channel, the footage wasn’t graphic.

{As parents, I think it’s very important to have discussions with our kids on current events — but only at a level that our kids are ready for. We don’t want to raise our kids in a bubble, but we also try to be very careful not to expose them to things that are going to cause them to be fearful, etc.}