Yesterday, in-between watching CNN, I sat down and wrote a blog on building Parent/Child Connections: http://faithfullparenting.wordpress.com/ This was one of my responses to the unfolding drama in Boston. I know it is just one piece, the parenting piece, in the complex array of broken pieces in this tragic story.
Why did this happen? There is the emigrant story, the broken piece where the emigrant does not assimilate to the American culture and life. To understand this more Mary Pipher does an excellent job in her book: The Middle of Everywhere: Helping Refugees Enter the American Community
Then there is the broken piece of radical religion. How does loving God mean doing something like this? It does not. God is love and this is not love.
Perhaps another cultural broken piece is family loyalty trumping everything. An older brother influences a younger brother to join him in an atrocious act. We could find and name so many broken pieces.
It is important to work through these questions on the road to recovery. Along with this, in order to heal we need to choose our response. There is a lot of hard work ahead to do in order to heal. Will we become haters? If we choose that route we align ourselves with the same spirit that motivated the terrorists and they win. We become like them. Anger is a normal response to grief, but we can’t stay angry and let it poison our souls. We must move beyond it to the hard work of grieving, sadness, and the seemingly impossible process of forgiving. Hate, revenge, and bitterness are not the answers we need for healing. They never are. They will only destroy us and turn our hearts to stone.
Dear Boston choose the harder path of healing and recovery and you will find yourself surrounded by heaven ready to help. Our prayers are with you.
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