September 15

Today is Sept. 15....the 10 year anniversary of the shooting at our former church in Ft. Worth. http://www.wedgwoodbc.org/content.cfm?id=2010 A man walked into a youth service on "See You at the Pole" day and opened fire, killing seven, and seriously injuring seven others, before killing himself. This is where I went to church when I was single, and for a short time after we were married. We had left there about a year before the shooting. My friend Sydney was the first one killed that night. I heard about the shooting on TV just before walking out the door to go to my home group for our new church. The house I was at was pretty close to the church, and my main memory is sitting there, trying to pay attention to the lesson being taught, but all I could hear were sirens and sirens and sirens, knowing exactly where those many, many sirens were going, and why. I was pregnant with Joshua at the time, and was sooooo upset. I finally had to force myself to calm down, because I was worried I was getting too upset, and it might hurt the baby in some way. As I watched the news coverage on TV, I would note every time I saw someone I knew, and tried to keep count of who I still had not seen. I didn't find out any names until the next morning, during a press conference with the pastor. Even then, he did not mention names, but he described some of the victims, and I knew Sydney was one of them. Sean Brown was one of the others, and we knew he and his sweet wife as well. They hadn't been married very long. The time period following the shooting was probably the most emotional and heart wrenching time of my life. I had seen these things on TV, but never ever thought I would be so close to it. After a week or two, things seemed to go back to normal for most of the people I knew....people who were not connected in any way to Wedgwood. It was still far from normal for me. I found myself wanting to just scream at them, asking if they had already forgotten what had just happened in their own backyard. This shooting is still the worst mass tragedy Ft. Worth has ever seen, and they still use the 911 tapes from that night when they train their police officers. I can't believe 10 whole years has gone by.