Often the things I express here are of a superficial nature. This is partially, I'm sure, because I can be superficial.  However, it is mostly due to my lack of confidence in my ability to fully and completely express my thoughts exactly as I feel them. It's as if I'm afraid I won't be able to fully say what I feel, and if I can't express what I truly feel, well then as I writer I come up sub par. I'm not sure that all who write share that fear, but for me the fear of not being talented enough to fully express what I would like to can be paralyzing.Today though I'm humbling myself enough to write what I have been feeling, and thinking the last day or so.

The shooting. That's probably what it will be known as for quite some time. Throughout the day while I contemplated fully the effect of what had happened my heart broke. News reports kept coming in, pictures of the victims, speeches, names. With each new piece of information my already broken heart shattered, and the more confused I became.

I was confused because it is incomprehensible to me that someone could perform an act of such evil. Such evil we have never, as a nation and as a world, seen before. This act had no motive. No twisted logic. No understanding. It was simply someone, who I am sure had been suffering in ways I can not comprehend, performing the most evil of acts, against the most innocent of people.

I'm overwhelmed at the level of evil that exists in the world today. I am saddened by it. I'm scared because I know that it is only going to get worse, and that there are many more who will suffer. I am nervous to someday bring children into a world where so much evil exists.

My life is based on a few principles, and every aspect of my life is controlled by them. If my principles were different this is where my thoughts and emotions would end: sadness, fear,apprehension. I, however, have something that eases these feelings, and calms my troubled heart. It is one of the principles I guide my entire life on. It is the sure knowledge that God loves his children.

I have a testimony of much more than that, and those various other things I know also bring me peace at this time of pain. However, the knowledge that God loves his children heals my heart in a way that nothing else can.

God loves his children. He loves me. He loves you. He loves each of those children who died. He loves the ones who survived. He loves their parents, their teachers, their janitors and lunch ladies, their garbage man, their neighbors, their mailman and their cousins. He loves us all. This means that he also loves the shooter. He loves his mother. He loves his father. He loves his family. God loves every single one of his children. No matter what.

I can't explain why this horrific thing happened, or why innocent children and good people are suffering so much. I can't explain the power of infinite love God has either. All I can explain is that God loves his children. He loves them because they are his, they are part of him, they are created by him. This knowledge, although it does not take away the evil in the world, makes the evil endurable.

I find peace for the future in the love of our Heavenly Father. Although this love doesn't mean evil things wont happen, it means that evil will not be eternal and that I will never have to face evil alone. Neither will you. God loves his children and for me right now, that is enough.

This, and this have made me cry this weekend. I hope you find peace in them as well.