You're right, You don't smell anything baking either. I am just not up to it. I am so sad these days. I am looking around, watching the news of the world, the news of this country, the news as close by as my children's school. All I seem to see are children crying. Crying and screaming. Running and bleeding, their eyes blank with terror or, Goddess help them, death.

You know I have Faith in the rightness of Your plans and in my belief that all that happens to us is for our learning and progress. Those two beliefs have seen me through my most dark personal hours, but even my darkest hours don't begin to touch what I have seen happening. I have not been a mother in Kosovo, clutching my terrified child as his father is shot to death in front of both of us. I have not waited, in adrenaline panic, as I listen to gunshots from inside my daughter's school, knowing she is still in there. My blessed life has not caused me to try to hide my family from the inconceivable power of nature, to watch from the inside as our house, our fortress, is torn away from around us.

I watch these images from the safety of my couch. My coffee is hot, my children safe, dinner cooking. I am safe and secure, my babies are under my control, I am keeping them safe. Sad and tragic as these world events are, MY babies are safe. We talk about how lucky we are. We are untouchable and not a part of the outside.

WHAT an illusion. With the shrill ringing of a phone, our life changes. My teenage daughter answers and I hear her begin to cry, softly at first, then louder and heaving. One of her friends has been killed. Fifteen years old. With a gun, shot in the face, right here in our backwoods, little town, our deliberately chosen 'safe haven'. An A student, good kid, no explanations kind of boy. Accident? Suicide? No one knows yet. Rumors fly.

Here. It has arrived right here in my unassailable life. It is now MY children who are crying, MY children dressing up and going to a church for a funeral. And it is I, trying to explain, trying to help them to understand when I don't understand, myself. 

Can I tell them...this is part of the Plan? This is to make us learn and grow strong? Can I use my own Faith to help them? Even I am struggling to see how such wholesale pain inflicted on these young souls can possibly be justified. Is the future of our beloved Earth so horrible that they must start their soldier training at this tender age...so that they will be tough enough to cope with the future? Why is this all necessary? Will all of these oceans of tears be enough to wash away the possible future and, through these lessons, reshape the new Millenium into a gentler world, where the tears will stop and the children will smile again?

I must trust. I MUST trust You. You, my Goddess MotherSisterLoverFriend. Hold me, would You? Just a hug, please? Let me feel Your Presence and Your Power. Help me to feel the certainty in Your Plan and to pass it along to my children and their friends. And, please, more than anything for me or mine, grant Your blessed peace to the Mothers of the world who are grieving and searching for answers when those little, wet eyes beseech them. Help them. Help us all.