This is the Moment

It's hard enough for us to wrap our minds around a disturbed individual barging in a high school or a college and gunning down their fellow peers, let alone for us to wrap our minds around someone gunning down 20 children at the age of ten or under. It's too much for me, I know. And yet, I cannot stop checking the news, wondering, praying.

It's as if we thought nothing could be worse than a school shooting, and yet this morning, somehow it got worse.

This is a moment of silence, a moment of prayer, and a moment to run to your loved ones and cherish their very being. Because you just never know when it will be gone. Gun control, violent video games, parents lack of parenting, and schools not doing all they can is not what we need to think of at the moment...maybe down the road, yes, but not when little souls have just passed through this life. Though, we will wonder the motive, we will wonder why, and what could have been done, we cannot take back this horrendous day and nor ever will.

This is the moment where you call your spouse, even if you had a spat that morning, and you tell them you love them, now! Because what if they don't come home today, nor any day, ever again.

This is the moment where you put your differences aside and you tell an old friend you still care, because they may never call again, and not by choice.

This is the moment where you forget a cousin or sibling owes you money and you hug them tighter right now! Because money isn't worth it and love is forever.

And most importantly so, this is the moment where you grab your kids and you hug them until they can barely breathe, kiss them until they are covered in your lipstick or your whiskers scratch their precious faces. This is the moment where you go out and play with them and do your work later, you stay up late watching movies, eating junk food, telling stories, making forts, and just be a kid with your kid. This is the moment where you tell them you love them, for always and forever.

This is the moment where you reach out to neighbors across the country and tell them you are here for them...even if you don't know them.

This is the moment where we stand up, united, holding hands, wiping tears, and praying...whether we believe or not.

This is the moment where we put all else aside and love and cherish every moment we have with one another.

It may not be another school shooting, it could be a car crash, a sickness, anything could happen. So take the extra three seconds it takes to tell someone important you love them.

Not out of fear. Don't tell them you love them just because you may never again, rather, because you mean it, because they need to know, because you do love them after all, they are worth your three seconds.

This is the moment.