After Dec. 14

I wrote the following in my journal this morning.  I thought I would leave it privately there, but feel a strong prompting to share it with you, instead:

Wednesday, December 19, 2012 – About Friday, December 14, 2012:

I didn’t write about this earlier because I think I’ve still been processing it.  Last Friday morning, while I was getting my hair done and having a very selfish moment being pampered by my hairdresser and dear friend Debbie Dufur, the lives of 26 people, 20 of them young children, were snuffed out.  And the lives of hundreds of others changed in the twinkling of an eye by a gunman who entered Sandy Hook Elementary in the quiet community of Newtown, Connecticut, and gunned them down one after the other before finally taking his own life.

While I drove home and finished wrapping gifts and preparing them to be mailed across the country to Sean’s home, Christmas this year came to a screeching halt in the homes of those people who were so senselessly murdered.  It’s left our nation reeling.  The issue of gun control, gun banishment, gun prohibition, has come to the surface again.  It always does.   As though banning the weapon will stop the user.   There has been an outcry of sorrow, an outcry of “Why???”, an outcry even, in some circles, of this is a government conspiracy led by a 'nonAmerican' President to gain control of our people.  I mean, really???

But in the midst of all that, this morning I read the sweetest article.  I have saved it to my quote file.  It is by a person by the name of Jeff Benedict and is simply titled"Grief".  He is a sports writer with his own website jeffbenedict.com.  This is in part what he wrote on his blog on that website (or you can read it in its entirety from the link above).  It’s been going around Facebook:

“Dave Checketts is not a professionally trained clergyman. The former chairman of Madison Square Garden and the New York Knicks is currently CEO of Legends Hospitality, the concessions and merchandise company he jointly owns with the New York Yankees and Dallas Cowboys. But he’s also a lay minister for the Mormon Church with oversight of ten Mormon congregations in Fairfield County Connecticut, including the one in Newtown.

On Friday morning Checketts had left his New Canaan Connecticut home and headed to his Park Avenue office to prepare for a weekend business trip to Dallas for Sunday's Cowboys-Steelers game. He and Cowboys' owner Jerry Jones planned to host a group of new investors. But late morning he got an email about a shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary. From his laptop he accessed the church records for Mormon families in Newtown. Five of them had children that attended the school. 
 
A series of phone calls confirmed that all of those children were accounted for except one – six-year-old Emilie Parker, a first grader. Suddenly, it wasn't possible to focus on business. Checketts cleared his calender for the afternoon. 
 
Robbie and Alyssa Parker had just moved to Connecticut from Ogden, Utah. Along with Emilie, they have daughters ages 2 and 4. ...When Checketts reached him... Robbie was on his way to meet his wife at the fire station in Newtown. She was there with other parents awaiting word on the children. 
 
Checketts emailed leaders of Mormon congregations throughout western Connecticut: “Pray for Emilie Parker.”

He also organized a prayer service for that night. Then he headed back to Connecticut. He was almost to the Parker’s home when he got word that Emilie was among the 20 children who had died. “I didn’t know what to say,” Checketts said. “I go back and forth between tears and anger. It is just hard to comprehend.”

 
When Checketts reached the Parker home, Robbie asked him to lead his family in prayer. While praying, Checketts felt impressed to say that Robbie would deal with his grief by speaking publicly about the tragedy, and that he would emerge as a powerful voice for compassion and peace.
 
After the prayer, the family's needs were discussed. Chief among them was finding a mortician. But funeral homes in the area were overwhelmed. Checketts promised to take care of everything, including all burial and funeral expenses. 
 
He called a funeral home in a nearby town. Six years earlier Checketts had attended a service there for a young Mormon missionary who was killed by a drunk driver in Argentina.
 
“I had to go tell that boy’s parents that he wasn’t coming home alive,” Checketts said. It was the hardest thing he’d ever done as an ecclesiastical leader. However, that experience had introduced Checketts to an unusually empathetic funeral director. 
 
Suddenly facing an even harder situation, Checketts reached out to him and asked if he would prepare Emilie’s body for burial. The church, Checketts explained, would cover all the expenses.
 
“There will be no expenses,” the funeral director said.
 
The following day, after authorities released the names of the victims, Parker was the first parent to speak to the national media. Without notes or a spokesman, Robbie choked back tears and expressed sympathy for the family of the man who killed 26 people and himself. "I can't imagine how hard this experience must be for you," he said.

Checketts was moved to tears. “What happened in Newtown is unthinkable,” Checketts said. “But little children are alive in Christ. Though the nature of the crime is the essence of evil, our faith tells us that these children burst into the presence of God and are safe in his arms.”

Grief, while heartbreaking, can also give rise to powerful acts of compassion.

...It reminds me of the story of Kenneth Brown, a U.S. Marine serving in Japan after the atomic bomb. It was just before Christmas when Brown encountered a Japanese professor of music who introduced himself as a Christian. He said he had a small children’s choir and asked if they could perform a concert for the American soldiers.

Brown belonged to a unit of hardened fighters that had spent four years away from home, battling the Japanese from Saipan to Iwo Jima. The concert took place on Christmas Eve in a bombed out theater. The closing number was a solo from ‘The Messiah’ by a girl who sung with the conviction of one who knew that Jesus was indeed the Savior of mankind. The soldiers cried.

 

Afterward, Brown asked the Japanese music professor: “How did your group manage to survive the bomb?”

“This is only half my group,” he said softly. 

“And what of the families of these?”

“They nearly all lost one or more members. Some are orphans.”

“What about the soloist? She must have the soul of an angel the way she sang.”

“Her mother, two of her brothers were taken. Yes, she did sing well. I am so proud of her.  She is my daughter.”

Brown was moved to tears. “We had caused them the greatest grief,” Brown later wrote. “Yet we were their Christian brothers and as such they were willing to forget their grief and unite with us in singing ‘Peace on earth, goodwill to all men.’ That day I knew there was a greater power on earth than the atomic bomb.””

The article brought a sweet peace to me.  Just reading about the forgiveness others have in their hearts makes it easier for me to forgive.  This Christmas season has been a season of forgiving for me.  I’ve had to find room in my heart to ask forgiveness too many times.  I've also had place to forgive others and forgive myself as well. 

I am so grateful to have the Savior in my life.  To understand the concept of forgiveness.  To be able to make that a part of my life.   I am grateful for Christmas in ways I have never understood before.  Ever.  Suddenly I am not as concerned about buying gifts, not as concerned about the decorations or the lack of them, the bustle and all else that is involved with the holidays.  It is the forgiveness – being able to forgive and being forgiven – of being able to set aside and move forward, loving without condition.   

This is the truth of the Christmas season…to give so fully of ourselves that we can let go of anger and hurt, let go of self-deprecation, let go of self and reach out as Christ would truly reach out.  That is the lesson of Christmas.  It is a new concept to me.  Certainly this is only background innuendo in books like The Christmas Carol, and The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.  Oh, it is there, but only seen after the eyes have been opened to it.  But it is, after all, the entire essence of the life of the Savior.  He gave His all so we would have the Atonement to play a role in our own lives.  And that is such an entirely personal experience that one must walk to it alone.  And in that aloneness will one find the companionship of the Lord and a step forward out of self into selfless.

Merry Christmas.