Daniel’s Pilgrimage

We just got back to Richmond from a weekend with my family up in Maryland. We enjoyed time in the hot tub, by the pool and in the wonderful garden of a backyard that my parents have. We enjoyed the company, good food and some beers/wine/margaritas. I love my family and it is just very peaceful and relaxing up there so that makes for an enjoyable weekend away.

Mike’s girlfriend Sarah was around for most of the weekend, which was very cool. The 3 couples(my parents, Mike and Sarah and us) get along very well and we all had a good time. Looking forward to more family time like that in the future.

We also got to spend time with our good friend Scott on Saturday which is always a pleasure. I even made an appearance at Horizon Owings Mills on Sunday morning. That was a church I was a part of at it’s beginnings and which we went to when we first got married. It was good to see them doing well and to see some long lost friends.

Now we are back in Richmond gearing up for a shortened, but busy, week.

We are back from a draining weekend. I don’t have the energy to write about it at the moment. Instead you should go and read Fawn’s post about it. Fawn is Jarrett and Alicia’s other sibling, the one with the very cute babies who show up on here from time to time.

We are in Blacksburg for graduation. The university has their ceremony tonight and then the Engineering College has theirs tomorrow. This weekend was supposed to be a huge celebration. It’s amazing what a fews minutes on a Monday morning can change. Our time here is sure to have it’s ups and downs. We’ll be celebrating Jarrett’s academic accomplishments and mourning how much we miss him. Please keep us in your prayers this weekend.

We have spent the last two weeks living a nightmare. Every morning waking up hoping that it has just been a dream. I still hope to wake up tomorrow morning and find that it’s just been a horrible, horrible nightmare.

My brother-in-law Jarrett was one of the students killed at Virginia Tech two weeks ago. He was my wife’s favorite person in the whole world. Every time she talked about him, and it was often, she would just light up. Not to mention when she was around him she just basked in his presence. To her he was as close to perfect as a person could get. She loved him more than she loved anyone or anything. And now he is gone. A life of so much promise, so much joy, so much love??? cut short with the pull of a trigger of a madman’s gun.

And we are left to go on with life. We are supposed to go back to work and play. We are supposed to have life go back to the way it was. But that can never happen. Life is not the way it was two weeks ago. Two weeks ago everything changed. I know my wife will never be the same. I know that I will never be the same. I know that our marriage will never be the same.

I have no answers or explanations. What I have is hurt and confusion. I don’t even want answers. Any answer that makes this okay or bearable is unacceptable. This is not bearable. This is not okay. This is tragedy.

I live under no illusions that we are the only ones who have lived through tragedy such as this. Many have living through it and many are living through it right now. We just happen to be the most public right now.

It is time for me to make a difference in this world. It is time for us to make a difference in the world. It is time to take every hurt and pain we’ve experienced in life and use them as our motivation to help the hurt, troubled and mad people in this world. To help people understand that violence is not the answer. To be with the hurting. To choose to love instead of retreating into self-pity. It is time for this to happen now!