I have a morning ritual that I follow religiously.
I wake up (usually at 6 AM) and spend 30 minutes in the Bible and in prayer. Then I pull out the laptop and spend 30 minutes working on my blog (or just writing SOMEthing, hoping it will turn into blog).
I sat down in my spot this past Monday morning and opened my laptop. I had no fresh ideas, so I started poking around in some old documents to see if I could find some inspiration or maybe try to piece something together.
Brad’s spot is the other side of the couch. His morning ritual involves drinking coffee and watching Morning Joe while scanning his iPad for news.
He looked over at me fumbling around for words and said, “You HAVE to write about what happened yesterday. You HAVE to.”
I was slightly taken aback. He’s never told me what to write (maybe because he knows it wouldn’t work). I asked him why.
He said, “The deadliest shooting in America happened a half mile from your house. You know more about Islam than most people you know. You have a unique perspective to offer someone who lives in Augusta, Georgia or Bloomington, Illinois. I really think you have to say how it affected you.”
I thought for a moment and my voice grew bitter. “You know how it affected me?”
He looked back up from his iPad.
“The helicopters woke me up. I stayed home from church. I watched TV all day. I may as well have been in Bloomington, Illinois. I have nothing to say that hasn’t already been said. There are fifty families out there whose worlds ended yesterday. No, it pretty much didn’t affect me AT ALL.”
Brad paused and nodded. “Okay, I see what you’re saying. You don’t have to write as a victim. I just think you have to say SOMEthing. I mean, obviously do whatever you want. It’ll just be weird if you don’t.” He returned his attention to his iPad. Never have to worry about what that one’s thinking.
I sighed and my eyes fell on the three guns sitting on the coffee table in front of the couch we were sitting on. (This couch is upstairs outside of our bedroom. None of the kids were home and this was not in the downstairs living room where we all hang out. Just in case anybody was wondering/worrying.)
Before Brad left for church the day before, he reviewed with me how to fire them. I picked up each one and aimed them at the bottom of the stairs, at the imaginary intruders. After all, we had no way of knowing what else was coming down the pipe that day. Would it be another 9/11, Paris or Brussels, with multiple attacks?
I’ve grown up around guns. My dad took each of his three daughters hunting, showed us how to use whatever gun was called for that day, based on the quarry we were hunting (dove, quail, deer, hogs). I’ve held guns a million times, shot guns a million times.
But never in my life have I held a gun and imagined pointing it at another human being with the intent to kill, even to save my own life. And the weight of that distinction rattled me to my core.
As I said, I’ve been hunting quite a few times in my life. But you wanna hear a secret? I have never shot ANYthing. Not once. The only times I’ve ever pulled a trigger were for practice.
Oh, I’ve had opportunities. I remember sitting alone on a tree stand when I was probably 12 or 13 and a young buck, maybe 4 or 6-point, walked right in front of me. I was enchanted. After watching his graceful movements for a several minutes, I looked at the gun in my hands, back at the deer and said to myself, “Nope, just not gonna happen.” I watched him for about another 15 minutes before he scampered off.
Guess I’ve seen Bambi too many times.
I grappled with being the cause of death again in my college days when we decided to put my childhood dog to sleep. She was old and miserable. And yet, I remember crying in the kitchen with my mom and saying, “Who am I to decide when she’s supposed to die?”
Mom told me if it would be too hard for me, she would hold Candy while the vet gave her the shots that would end her life. But in the end, I held my dog AND the decision of her death, crying the whole time.
And these are animals we’re talking about here. Holding their fate in my hands was heavy enough.
But the idea of facing another human, made in the image of God, and deciding in an instant to send them into their uncertain eternity made me want to throw up.
I took a concealed weapons course a couple years ago but didn’t apply for my license until recently. At the time of the course completion, I had just not settled in my mind that I could shoot to kill.
But as terror attacks continued to break out, I wrestled more and more with the idea. My salvation is secure. If I die, so be it. (My bigger fear is that the terrorists WOULDN’T kill me, frankly.)
The deciding factor was thinking about my children, my coworkers, innocent people shopping at Publix or eating at Chick-fil-A, vulnerable to the whims of madmen who live by the ethos of death and destruction.
I have heard biblical arguments both for and against killing in self-defense. And to be perfectly honest, I’ve only settled that one about 80%. But if, God forbid, I’m ever in the position to defend others helpless in an attack, well, that decision has been made, and will soon have a license to prove it.
But if I know me, I would think about it every day for the rest of my life. Is my attacker resting in the forgiveness of heaven? Or burning in the unbelief of hell? There would be even MORE therapy than there already is and even MORE meds to keep me functioning during the day and sleeping at night.
My God is sovereign. He controls the wind and the waves, the moon and the tide, the storms and the calm. He has a myriad of warrior angels who fight for believers in His name. His all-powerful word could still a tornado and easily stop a terrorist in his tracks. Is planning to kill in defense of yourself or others a lack of faith?
All the days ordained for me were written in Your book before one of them came to be. Psalm 139:16
My King knows how my days will end. I’ve often asked Him to let me die saving someone else. But His ways are higher and His plan is perfect. I love Him and He loves me. These things I know are true.
And yet Solomon, who asked God for wisdom and God granted his request and then some, penned these words in the dark book of Ecclesiastes:
There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.
In God’s perfectly ordered plan, there is a time for all of these things. And His plan for you in any given moment can be totally different than His plan for me.
Everyone who was involved in the multiple tragedies over the weekend was born at their appointed time. And for some, their time to die was Friday night and Sunday morning.
Seeds of understanding were planted and weeds of ignorance were uprooted and tossed aside.
Two different attackers on two different days in two different locations in the same city decided it was time to kill. One killed himself after he murdered who would be his first and only victim when his plan for bringing more death was foiled. Brave police officers killed a second attacker and his corpse fell among many others in the pools of their blood that he spilled.
The time to heal followed as doctors and nurses from all over the state were summoned to ORMC and worked tirelessly to save the lives that were almost snuffed out.
It became a time to tear down walls of lifestyle, religious beliefs and ethnicity and to build on the shared human experience of suffering and tragedy.
It was a time to weep for lives lost. And it is still time to weep. Laughter may make unexpected and brief appearances in the form of pleasant memories of the deceased. But the time to weep is far from over.
It is inarguably a time to mourn, for those lost and WITH those who lost. The time to dance will come later, though it’s hard to imagine ever dancing again.
It is a time to embrace. A time to give up on the search for survivors. A time to speak boldly in some moments and stand silent in others. A time to ferociously love those around us and viciously hate the evil that still runs rampant in this world.
And I regret to say, it is a time of war. War has been declared repeatedly, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not. May we not be lulled to sleep by the illusion of peace, when there is no peace (Jeremiah 6:14, 8:11).
I pray to God that He never brings me to a time to kill, but if He does, that He will give me the wisdom and ability to do what needs to be done.
And if that time becomes a time to die, that my ending life would count for something greater than myself on this earth as I run into the arms of my Savior in heaven.
And my hope rests in my final destination.
