Close To Home

Well, it was a tragic weekend here in Tucson. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot along with 19 other victims at a grocery store gathering on Saturday morning. This happened about ten miles east of us and we discovered the shooter lived very close to us.

A little girl, Christina Green, who had just been elected to her own student council had shown up to see Giffords and was tragically shot and killed along with the same federal Judge Roll who just swore my best friend in for her new job in the federal courts.

All of it is just too close to home.

It all reminded me how quickly life can change. Literally in a single moment, our lives can dramatically change forever.

At the time this happened I was in between trying to get a little sleep during the kids' nap time and giving them a bath. I was doing normal things around the house.

It's a different perspective on a tragedy one has when you've experienced the other side. It's like opening a window and seeing something nobody else has seen unless they've experienced that magnitude of pain. And even after what we've been through, there are still windows we haven't had to look through, thankfully. But some of the families - the families of those who didn't make it - have to look through those windows and that makes me sad for them.

Seeing my hometown and even my street where my son bikes and we go trick or treating every year plastered all over the local and national news is so surreal and, again, so figuratively and literally close to home.

Giffords is still pulling through, but is still in critical condition. Tucson has some great hospitals, but I have to say that I feel a teensy bit better that she is being treated at UMC because that's where my two younger babies were born and that's where my baby boy battled and survived.

My heart, my thoughts, and my prayers are with those who lost loved ones in Saturday's shooting.

And with both of my babies crying at around 2 AM in the morning unsatisfied unless simultaneously held by me and falling asleep with both of them on the couch in the wee hours of the morning, through my frustration I had to be thankful.

Thankful because there was a time where I prayed for that. Thankful because a tragedy can be more than close to home. And thankful because it can all be taken away in a single moment.