How do we manage to keep our lives going after tragedy occurs?

Our community has experienced some tragic loss recently. Innocent lives have been taken so suddenly and unfairly, it is hard to comprehend.

And yet, day breaks and night falls. We go to work. We shop for holiday gifts. How is it that we manage to keep up our regular lives while sad realities threaten our spiritual buoyancy? Or perhaps the more pressing question, how long until we break down?

I have a set of go-to’s when I am low. Chocolate. Coffee. The hugs and comforting words of family and friends. Scripture and prayer. And usually one or many of these things boosts me back up. But what they don’t always do is give me the space and time to really ask those questions and wait in silence for a response.

Questions like:

Why do bad things happen to good people?

Why doesn’t sincere effort and good intention count more when we inadvertently hurt others?

Why do we hurt others?

Why is life so unfair and inequitable?

Why does life end?

Why is life?

That’s not to say that comforting answers to those questions aren’t found in the words and actions of my go-to’s. But they don’t make the questions go away. And when we lose people to violence, when we lose people when they’re so young and innocent, the questions gnaw at us and taunt us.

I don’t know where this column is meant to go. I try not to write these with an open end. I know how much we each need a hopeful or encouraging word. So my attempt at that is simply this: during this holiday season, when our attention is thin and our emotions are high, let us find each other and a quiet place. Let us take off our Santa hats and our makeup and our guard, and feel what we are feeling. Let’s ask the questions we are wrestling with, and just let them sit between us for a minute before ushering them away with pacifying cliches. And then, when the tears have fallen or the laughter has erupted or the hugs have come, we can have the words. We can eat chocolate. We can pray.

I have the suspicion that life is not just about getting past those difficult moments so we can march on. It’s also about sitting in those moments together until the big questions quiet down. Together as families, as partners, as a city, a village. My sincere condolences to all who are mourning during this season. May you find light all around you.

This story was originally published December 9, 2016 at 1:20 PM with the headline "How do we manage to keep our lives going after tragedy occurs?."