Looking at the World with New Eyes – Part 1 I’m looking at the world with new eyes and it’s not what I want to do. I want to look around me in trust and peace and with the general idea that there are good things out there, good people, but something is in the way. Something has happened, you see, something that makes it all different. A couple of weeks ago, I witnessed a horrible tragedy – my co-worker and friend brutally attacked – injuries that a day and a ½ later would end her life. I was looking down from the 2nd floor of the building where I work watching it happening, calling 911, trying to comprehend what I had just witnessed. It was awful, horrible, shocking, senseless, baseless, wrong on every level. I remember thinking in that split second before my mind allowed me to act, “I can’t believe what I’m seeing right now – why am I seeing this? Why do I have to witness this?” The next couple of hours are a blur – she is taken away alive (miraculously), the shooter captured, people all around me acting heroically – demonstrating the good that we humans have in each one of us. I tell the authorities what I know, I go home. I sit at the kitchen table, crouched over, my eyes wide – my senses numb. I try to eat breakfast – everything is tasteless, dull, sawdust. Jerry is home with the kids that day – they are trying to talk to me and hug me and I just can’t move. I am frozen… I cry at the horror, the pain, at the fear of not understanding or knowing what happens next. I hear a loud sound, I jump – “What was that,” I croak? Just one of the kids jumping off the couch. Each email chime from my phone is a lifeline of information…it was not a random act. A relief in some ways to know, but then the questions rise up in me like a flood…WHY? Yet I know that no answer or reason will ever make sense to me – ever. I stay home, I lay down, I close my eyes, but I don’t sleep. I pray. I feel His peace come over me. I know that others are praying for me – I know that I must pray for my friend. I know that deep down, she won’t make it. I don’t accept that as an answer. I pray for her soul. She dies late the next night. But it isn’t over yet for me… Go to Part 2.