The Zombie Apocalypse Has Arrived

We were downtown tonight for dinner and afterwards decided to enjoy the beautiful summer evening with a stroll downtown. We left the restaurant and started walking …

Look closely at the people. Do you see what they’re doing? They are on their phones. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM.

A block further down, we headed to the playground and I took another picture…

There were hordes of zombie-ish people all walking together in clumps, not talking, but staring at their phones. You guys, this was straight out of Hollywood.

(Side note: Two of the Pokemon Go zombies had big black guns strapped to their belts. Not even any attempt to conceal them. Just strapped there proudly for all to see. Standing a few feet away from the playground. Welcome to Colorado, folks, where the pot flows like wine and preppie looking suburban kids pack heat.)

It was surreal.

Speaking of surreal, I’m starting to dread my Facebook news feed.

This morning between services at church, I opened Facebook to post something on our church page and glancing at the news feed, saw that the top item was a breaking news report from Baton Rouge of a shooting. Not the one from the other day. Another one.

AltonSterlingPhilandoCastileDallasNiceBatonRougeWhatsNext

CNN can’t even keep the Breaking News story at the top of their page because more bad news keeps breaking.

THIS MADNESS NEEDS TO STOP. But it’s not stopping. It’s happening faster and faster. I feel like we’re stuck on a runaway train speeding toward the Grand Canyon.

When we got home tonight, my husband and I tried to talk about raising our two littles in this world. We quickly had to stop the conversation because it got too painful. We were both at a loss. We had so many questions and no answers.

How do we teach our kids about things like authentic community and soul care and loving other people when the world walks around ignoring each other to look at their phones?

How do we teach them to love and have compassion in the midst of a terror filled world? 

How do we protect them and yet allow them to experience the world little by little – at their level –  and guide them through this mess we’ve made for them?

This is a brain dump post, so I really don’t have a good way to wrap this up.

It’s almost midnight and I’m awake because I’m burdened by the state of the world and anxious about raising my kids in it and stressed about when and how to address the big things with them. Like racism. And gun control. And terrorism. And technology. And. And. And.

Praying is the Sunday school answer, but it feels really really ineffective right now. (Sorry, God, but since you’re God you already know my heart about this.)

All I can do is stop reading the news for a while and hug my kids tight and take a break from the world and breathe a few deep breaths and then go back out in it and model love and try my best to help them understand where God is in all this.