Thursday, July 23^rd, 2015. Shock. Disbelief.

Here’s the thing about tragic events like mass shootings.. you never pay that much attention to them necessarily, until they happen as close as two miles away from your front door.. the place you lay your head down every night.. in the same city where you go to school, go to church, go to the grocery store, and at the same movie theatre you were at just three nights before with one of your bestfriends.

How do you even begin to process it? What are you supposed to do when all sense of security that you had, gets taken away? On a random Thursday night, when your phone begins to blow up with texts from friends and family members asking if you’re okay, before you even know what is going on?

It makes you wonder what our world is coming to. It makes you wonder how someone’s heart can be filled with so much hate, that they would go so far to do something so tragic as taking the lives of innocent people- people that you know.

Waking up this morning, I barely wanted to get in my car and drive to noon mass and then to work. How could the city that I considered my home, suddenly make me fearful to leave the four walls of my house where I knew I was locked in and safe?

As I drove around town, I was shocked to see so many people on the streets, at work, going through their normal routine. In my mind, the world had ultimately stopped spinning. But the reality was: life still went on, even though there are people mourning the loss of their loved ones, others sitting in hospital waiting rooms waiting for any updates, but all searching for answers.

In the end, when such an event happens, it is nothing short of a tragedy. It glues us to our TV’s and our phones, waiting for any bit of information to be released. Instead of taking to our social media outlets to make this an issue of gun control and politics, maybe we should start focusing on the realities that these events open our eyes to.

They teach us to never take a single second for granted. They remind us to always squeeze our loved ones a little tighter. They encourage us to live everyday to the fullest. They teach us that evil is everywhere, and it is not something to be overlooked or ignored.

But they also teach us to rise up. To move forward. To come together as a community. To let that evil be overcome by good. To let our faith be put to the test, because while I question God's plan just as much as the next person, I do know that God always finds a way to allow beauty to come from ashes.

What has bothered me the most, through all of the press releases, press conferences, radio talk shows, was a comment to the effect of “How could Lafayette raise up a man who would do such a thing?” I am not saying Lafayette is filled with a population of only perfect citizens, but the shooter was from Alabama. Lafayette did not “raise him up.”

But, Lafayette WILL move forward. We will rise up, become stronger, and become closer as a community than we ever were before this tragedy.

To the victims, to their families and friends, and to my beloved home away from home, Heaven is being flooded with many thoughts and so many prayers. As Governor Bobby Jindal stated during his press conference, “Lafayette is a strong community. We will get through this.”