A Dark and Damp Perspective...

There were wet, overcast skies all day yesterday, and a message from good friends that there was a problem with their last ultrasound, and then finally a call about another student death, and I was just about done for the week, but it had just started.  I feel my life through life, which some might say is a tough row to hoe, but it's just how I manage things.  It's tough for me when it's tough for others.

Today began with a staff huddle on how to manage, then another staff meeting at another school on how to manage, and then a hospital visit, a debriefing with a wonderful teacher who was quite shaken, and student after student with wet eyes and confused looks to defeated faces.  a woman asked me if I ever felt like I was in a whirlwind.  I answered no.  Not so strangely,  my thoughts, almost all day, were with our friends, who have just recently learned of a problem with their child's inter-uterun development, but who also have found some peace with the news that he has otherwise perfectly healthy everything else....still, enough to shake you.  One little thing, a hand, and it's enough to leave you clinging to each other, preying when you never pray.  That's all I thought about all day, and it helped me find perspective on the rest.  I was exhausted by day's end, feeling your way through all that darkness does that.  Yet, I felt nothing akin to the students family...or to the fog of our friend's worries...nothing.

I feel my way through life, and so it's tough for me when it's tough for others, and yet I tucked my daughters in tonight knowing that I might be the luckiest man alive.  I dare say that one of the problems with the world today is that we've just forgotten that we belong to one another.  I'm reminded every day.