My world came to a crashing halt on April 19, 1999. No, not because I was suddenly thinking of an old grade school pal, Eric Chjnacki and silently wishing him happy birthday, but because the PA system crackled to life while I was in Bio II.
The news was not one of an impromptu school rally or to call Joe Blow to the office to meet with the principal or for Donna Diva to pick up the bouquet of roses left in the office for her from her boyfriend to say that he loved her. No. The announcement was that 2 high school students had taken their school hostage and was shooting to kill.
The class went from a rowdy raucous to an eerie silence in 0.5 seconds flat. Then, the panic set in. Girls started crying, boys started throwing out profanities. Couples were rushing to embrace while siblings were running towards each other making sure they were okay. Never mind that the school where the shootings were taking place was on the other side of the continent in Colorado. No. What mattered was that this was real and that it was our age group causing death and destruction.
I remember one of the young men in my class chatting it up with Mr. Mohr, our Bio II teacher, that he never thought he would see this in his day. Mr. Mohr had replied everyone thinks that and despite evil happening, we as a human race still keep hope that it will not happen. Then, they looked over at me, the only person still seated, writing. Mr. Mohr knew about my suicide attempts and the struggles I was going through that year. I think he was worried that I was further detaching myself from the reality I lived in. I tried to shove that thought to the side as I said in a joking manner, "Even if the threat was here and we died today, Father Murphy would still want this lesson plan for Good News even if it means asking permission to cross back over onto the realm of Earth and hand it in." Laughter rang out but their eyes showed a different tune. I think that was when I truly started to worry myself.
I walked in a fog as I went with my (now former) girlfriend and got in her mom's car. I was to stay with her until my parents came home. I don't remember the conversation in the car or what Marianne (Ricci Jean's mom) had to say in terms of comfort. I don't remember the ride to Ricci Jean's house much less my dad coming to get me and bring me home later that night. I do remember, though, that deep in my heart, I knew I needed help. And if I needed help, how much more did Dylan and Eric need before they decided to turn the guns on others much less on themselves? How close to that reality on the other side of the country was I? Would I ever get far enough away that it would seem a distant reality? An alternate reality?
Ten years later and I can say that that world in which I lived in when I was 16 going on 17 is indeed a distant reality. I read my poetry and journals from that time and see a dark, bitter, tortured soul. Someone who had lost hope. And I long to wrap my arms around her and encourage her to live. Encourage her to seek out another way to live. To hope. I wanted to give her what she had to learn on her own the hard way. A way she should not have gone. How similar that young woman's story was to that of Dylan's and Eric's. But unlike them, she turned to the Lord. She learned from the ground up what hope was and how trust in the Lord can do more than one can imagine possible. She looked to the journals and words of family and friends of two other teenagers who were involved in the massacre at Columbine High: Rachel Scott and Cassie Bernall. One young woman whose trust in the Lord and faith walk was evident to all who met her. Another who traveled down the wrong path and was spiraling to an end much like that of the young men who shot her at point blank range. Rachel's journaling in
Rachel's Tears show that she sensed these young men were troubled and she tried to reach out to them but to no avail. Cassie's own words and pictures in
She Said Yes: The Unlikely Martyrdom of Cassie Bernall portray a disturbing picture of a beautiful girl who herself was hashing out plans to kill her parents and end her own life before she was invited to Bible Camp and came back a changed girl. Many accounts say that the young gunmen asked both girls, as well as others, if they believed in God. When the answer was a firm, "Yes," they were killed for standing up for their beliefs and testifying to God.
It was the accounts of Rachel and Cassie that made me give pause to my life. I changed that day. Not a complete 180. No. Mine was a journey of 2 years. It has only been recently that I have allowed myself to revisit the young girl I left behind 10 years ago. A lifetime, it seems, but oh how I remember it like it was yesterday. I give thanks to the Lord for these unlikely martyrs who made me think, "Do I have something to believe in? Would I be willing to die for the Lord?" I give thanks to these brave young women as well as the others who did not back down from their belief because their faith inspired my own, if not countless others. I pray for the grieving families, of both the slain and the accused. It is so easy to point fingers and cast blame as to how someone could not notice that trouble was on the horizon when they themselves are blind to what is going on in front of them. I can only hope that I have reached one person in living the way the victims of Columbine reached me in dying.
On this day, I pray for victims everywhere. May God hold them eternally in His love and grace.
