When it rains, it seems like it pours --just not in the ways we need it to. My heart is heavy in Los Angeles these last few days.
It is the times of tragedy and chilling horror that you learn what a community can take, and how it can break. And how it comes back together again. There are words that cannot remedy a wound.
But in these times, look to the first-responders, the people who show up when everyone else stands down --these are our guardian angels.
In this time, I am reminded of the Biblical figure of Job. A man who God seemed to play constant target practice with. But a man who, regardless of his circumstances, and in the time of his mourning, was consistently loyal, faithful, and hopeful. He was a man who mourned his circumstances.
And that was perfectly acceptable. He took the time to feel what he felt --to feel the sorrow, to cry, to be torn down. To be rebuilt. He was a man of integrity and admitted his brokenness. He welcomed healing. Yes, it took time. It took knowing that he isn't supposed to know everything to get him there.
Tragedy teaches us a lesson about how we grieve and how we feel. Times of tragedy give us a second to reflect, and a second to be frustrated, and a lifetime to react. And in our reactions, we have a choice: to get bitter or better.
Regaining your strength, and these moral lessons, do not always ensure that tragedy strikes again, but they enable us to move forward when it does. To react, and make a change, so that we can become better. And safer.
There will be corners that we will be backed into, there will be times where we cannot see the sun in the dark of strife, and there will be times when we will make it out alive. I guarantee that we will always make it out alive.
We get to decide when the story ends, and who ends the narrative. We cannot control our circumstances, the strife, the conflicts, but we can control how we react. We can control what road we take to get there. As agents of change, we can decide when it ends and where it ends.
Click here to make a donation to the Ventura County Community Foundation's Urgent Needs Effort Fund.
Click here to find a list of organizations in the area that are in need of donations for relief.
Click here to donate to the Borderline Shooting Victims Fund.
