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It Takes a Tragedy

Written by

Michelle Dickerson

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After yet another tragic event, the massacre of over 30 people at Virginia Tech, we are left with many questions.  What would motivate someone to cold-heartedly pull the trigger dozens of times and take the lives of so many people?  How could something so awful happen, and what can we do prevent it from occurring again?  Where can our children go and be safe?  Why did God allow this to happen?  Where was He?  During the aftermath, psychiatrists, law enforcement officials, clergymen, and a slew of others will try to answer these questions.

I also have some of these same questions, but there is one that troubles me every time a Virginia Tech or Columbine or tsunami or 9-11 knocks me off my seat of complacency.  "Why does it take a tragedy for people to realize who and what is really important in life?" Why must people die senselessly for us to stop our busy lives, to embrace those we love a little bit longer, to tell someone from the depths of our hearts we love them, or to realize when it is all said and done, love will be all that really matters?

In the midst of the turmoil we embrace what matters and hold on as tight as we can.  Clinging to our loved ones, we vow never to let go.  We make promises that we will never take our loved ones and life for granted ever again.  But, we do.  As the dust settles, violent waters recede, airlines fly once again, and classes resume, we move on and let our busy schedules and daily to-do lists take top priority in our lives.  What about love?  Yes, we still love, but only when we have time or when it is an item to be checked off on our schedule.

A tragedy strikes.

We love deeply.

Life moves onward, or should I say backward, toward the chaotic schedules we try to maintain.  Our senses are awakened, but as quickly they are deadened to the pain in the world around us.  Yes, one could go crazy focusing on all the evil and injustices in this world.  With so much starvation, suffering, and senseless death, it is much easier to live in a cocoon of complacency than to break free from the comfortable chaos we call life.

"What could I possibly do," we ask, "to make a difference in a world that seems to be going to hell in the proverbial hand basket?" (Actually I believe the basket has grown considerably since this saying came about.) Life will offer us an endless cycle of tragic events, and no, most of them we cannot do anything about.  Tsunami warning systems will save some but not all.  Metal detectors in schools keep some violence from within the buildings, but they do not erase it from beyond the confines of the walls of the classroom.

In the aftermath of tragedy lies our answer.  Love. Not just from being caught up in the emotions of the moment, but love at all times.  We treat love as a feeling, but ultimately it is a choice, a decision we make.  We can choose to love or not to love.  The decision is ours to make.  It is in our hands.  No one can force us to love.  To love only when it is convenient is not love.

Love will not keep all the disasters of this world at bay.  Love will, however, keep us from fearing what we ultimately fear: death.  When all is said and done, when death rears its ugly head, nothing about life will be regretted if we have lived a life of self-sacrificing love.  We will not live in the "what ifs," and "if onlys." Jesus commanded, and did not merely suggest, we "love one another as I have loved you." This is a love that takes its last breath loving.  We waste so much of our time not loving, but when we look back upon our lives all that will have mattered is, "did we love with an inexhaustible love?" Love never counts the cost but always says, "no greater love is there than this, than for a man to give up his life for his friends."

Love is Liviu Librescu.  A Jewish holocaust survivor, he blocked his classroom door and told his students to jump out the windows while the gunman at Virginia Tech tried to enter and continue his murderous rampage.  He took his last breath loving.

There will be many "who, what, when, where, why, and how" questions that can never be answered whenever any tragic event takes place.  But only you can answer for yourself the question: "Why does it take a tragedy for us to realize who and what is really important in life?" Why do we "wait" to love?

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  1. Guest Avatar
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    I and my husband are VA Tech graduates.  We have many children, the oldest of whom is in college.  I can hardly believe A) that I am old enough to have a kid in college and B) that my friends HAVE children at Tech! 

    I am filled with grief as I look at my children, who with their age span represent a cross section of human growth and development.  Very dramatically I am reliving the raising of my 18 year old.  Each one of those murdered professors and students was loved and noursished and cherished.                     And now they are gone.

    But their lives were not in vain.  The love given to them and given by them lingers as a fragrant peace offering on Earth rising to Heaven.  Love endures for eternity.  Our Loving Father keeps a "Creative Memories" Scrapbook of Love on our behalf.  He perfects it and returns it to us.  Sometimes we get glimpses of a page on Earth as in Prof Livbrescu's Heroic Act of laying down his life.  How many times had he witnessed the same whether during the Holocaust or in Communist Romania.  The love incarnated 60 years ago was no more than the Word made flesh.  And that love lived on in the martyrdom of Prof Livbrescu.

    And so how might one respond to barbaric acts and natural disasters alike.  I choose to actually LIVE each moment.  Mothering many children for over two decades has taught me to embrace humanity in its various stages.  I rejoice at my three year old who peacefully catches raindrops on his tongue.  I accept his crayon wall "art". Both are unique to his age.  I cannot have one without the other.  So I cherish this fading moment in time.  Examples abound for all stages of parenting.  Even a teenager must rebel, within bounds, and that stage must be embraced too as necessary.

    Pope John Paul II wrote in a poem  that "the greater the anger, the greater the explosion of love".  I try to live as an ACTOR in my life and contemplate my behavior as I act.  I think this is central to living a consistant life.  (Of course surges of love during crises is natural and appropriate.  The nascent Church drew close for mutual support after the resurrection.)

    I will always remember my reaction to 9/11.  About 2 weeks after the event, I sat in the car listening to a radio story about the victims.  For the first time since the terrorist act, I started to bawl.  Since I was about 10 weeks pregnant with my 8th child, I said to God, "Why are we bringing more children into this god-forsaken world?"  His answer was very clear:  "They are a sign of Hope that the victory has been won!"   Easter!  My husband and I feel a very clear calling to respond to the Culture of Death with Life. 

    My child ,who was kept safe from the horrors of 9/11 in my womb, was given the middle name "Hope".  Her very life reminds me to cherish each moment and to bring love to all situations in a purposeful way.

    May the souls of the dead, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

    Rejoice in the Hope that is yours through Christ Jesus!

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    Our daughter is a sophomore at Virginia Tech, and we have a senior at VCU in Richmond. Our family is working through this tragedy together; our VT student came home on 4/17 and we returned her to campus Sunday. Except for the memorials on the VT drillfield at Tech, little was different, either there or VCU, since the day of the VT murders. However, for a time, this dreadful event will have drawn our family closer to one another and closer to God, mourning the deaths of the students and professors, pondering the great losses their families and communities are suffering, and wrestling with the issues and questions that they raise. The only answers we have come up with are the ones that apply to every other loss and tragedy in human history: that our loving Father and Lord, having made us in His image, loves us so much that he allows us the kind of choices that include such horrible sin and destruction, that we can love Him and rely on Him of our own free choice. The actions of that miserable mentally-ill young man who gave in to the deepest depths of the darkness of despair, have meaning only in God and in the wisdom with which He created us (unfathomable as it is). And this wisdom gives us the cause for which the 32 children and professors died: to glorify God through their lives and deaths, that we who remain may know, love, and serve Him throughout our lives in this world and be happy forever with Him in the next. Can there be any better cause? It is succinctly stated in Romans 8:28, “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God”. 9/11, 4/16, WWI, WWII, all the exotic and mundane events worldwide where people have lived and died, faught and strived, the hospitals and nursing homes and streets and houses and prisons and jails, are part of the unified whole of human life and God’s purpose in creating us. I hope I would think, believe, and feel the same had it been my daughter on the second floor of Norris Hall last Monday (where she may very well have been that day–her advisor’s office was located there). Thank God He has given us the answer that can give us hope and strengthen our faith in the face of every loss and struggle of our lives, should we choose to accept it–and Him. As we knelt in prayer before Norris Hall, we prayed for the repose of the souls of those who perished and were wounded there, for their families, and for all who are touched by their suffering, that God would lead us to trust in His love and wisdom, and that He would give us His peace. It can’t come from anywhere else.

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    The bad news: As bad as the Va Tech slaughter is, it is not the worst thing that can ever happen. 

    The good news: The worst thing that can ever happen has already happened. We all need to spend some time in front of a crucifix. The God of the universe was betrayed, handed over, denied, abandoned, humiliated, totured and died a suffering, agonizing death.  For love of us.

    Death comes to us all, but Love has conquered death.  We do our best to forget this fact, but tragedies do remind us. 

    Where was God?  He was in those classrooms. 

    But He is risen! And in Him, we will be safe.

    My prayers and hopes are with Him and go out to all of those killed, wounded, suffering loss, and otherwise affected.

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