It’s Saturday and it’s still early.

I get up and make some coffee, and lay out my still-sleeping daughter’s clothes for her Christmas program. Everything is fine, until I go online to check my e-mail, and that’s when I see the pictures. The heartbreaking pictures of yesterday’s shooting. We don’t watch the news at our house, and barely any tv, so this is the first time I see any details about the tragedy that happened in Connecticut.

I instinctively click on the stories. I want to know what happened. I probably shouldn’t have. I don’t make it past the first picture of one of the little victims, before my vision is blurred by tears. She was six years old, and her eyes were bright, just like my little girl’s are.

I can’t read anymore. Tears keep coming as I scroll through the frantic faces of parents and the eyes of the innocent, that are now frozen in the headlines of this nations worst moment.

“Twenty Children Die in Elementary School Shooting…”

“Teacher Huddles into Closet with her Fifteen Students…”

I sob through them all.

Eventually I realize what time it is and that I need to get ready for my little one’s program.

But not before she catches me, with tears. “Why are you crying, Mama?”

Normally, I would say something like, “oh, I just read a sad story” or “I just thought of something that made me a little sad.”

But today, I can’t speak.

Today I realize that what is making me sad is way too deep, to try to explain to my innocent four-year-old. So I quickly dry off the evidence of my anguish, and move on with my day, but the question remains.

“Why do you cry, Mama?”

Well, my dear.

I cry because no six-year-old should ever have to hide in a cabinet at his school while someone shoots his friends and his teacher. 

I cry because there are at least twenty parents that don’t have a child to give their gifts to, this Christmas.

I cry because of what could have possibly turned an innocent little boy into such a distressed man, that he would shoot help-less children.

I cry because he must not have known love, as I know it. He must not have known a safe place for his pain. And so he resorted to violence.

I cry because I live in a nation that so quickly turns to gun laws and legislation, for help, and yet ignores the true source of wisdom and love: God. 

I cry because the earth is missing twenty little angels, whose calling and purpose was snuffed out by another human being.

I cry because there is so much love in my heart for the world, and yet it seems like that is not enough. It is not enough to heal the wound. To fill the void that is left in the face of this evil.

And so, I do the only thing I know to do.

I reach down and pick up my daughter. I kiss her matted morning hair and pray, pray that she never has to know the real reasons why I cry, today.