It's hard to make sense of it all, sometimes.

Our community has been rocked by a tragedy. A 10 year old girl was killed in a terrible, senseless accident. I didn't know her personally, but I have friends in common with her and her family, and they are just reeling from it. On the same day, I learned an incredibly joyful piece of news from another friend, so it's been an emotional few days. I'm not someone who believes that tragedy is inherently meaningful. I'm not sure if I've talked about this before here, but I'm not someone who believes "everything happens for a reason." I think random terrible things just happen sometimes. Sometimes people choose to do horrible things to one another, and that's also very very hard to comprehend, but sometimes in life, things just go horribly wrong. There's no silver lining, no saving grace in this instance. At least, not one that I can see. This is not to say that I think everything is meaningless. Just the opposite, in fact. I believe you can grow and come to grace through unbearable pain, and I believe that life, love and our connections to one another are The Thing that make it all worthwhile.

So, I'm hugging my dear ones closer to me tonight and trying to figure out how to create something from this. Not that it will in anyway make it better, but what can I take from this? And the big thing I take is "SLOW DOWN." Take the time to really pay attention and notice all the things around you. Don't miss them.