In the last 8 months, I’ve been a lot of cool places in the world.
I’ve stood on the tops of mountains. I’ve been to beautiful beaches. I’ve explored 7 wonders of the world.
Despite the places I have gone and the people I have met and the things I have seen- I can say with a proud heart that there isn’t one place in this big old world that holds my heart like Minooka, Illinois does. Yes, the town that has one big grocery store, 3 McDonald’s and miles upon miles of corn? Yes, that is the place that is near and dear to my heart. That is the place I treasure. I may possibly be biased because that’s where I grew up, but that community is something special.
You see, this is a community who has gone through the unthinkable. Year after year, there is a tragedy. Without warning, out of the blue, a young life is taken. Families are forever changed, friend groups lose a part of their core. Friends that drifted hang onto cherished memories that are so freshly are now echoing in their mind. Classmates come to school and look at an empty desk, teachers look at tests and projects and know that the hands who created them are gone. Acquaintances wish that they would have taken the extra minutes out of their day to say hello, and ask how they’ve been. People of the community are shaken and just in awe of how it could be.
Year after year.
It doesn’t add up. It doesn’t make sense. Whether you knew them personally or not, it literally shakes you to the core.
How can you see someone one day, and the next day you’re reading obituaries and memoirs from their close friends and family. How can people, right on the fringe of heading out into the real world, be taken just like that. How can people so young, so full of life and potential be taken from this life into the next one?
Just like that, without a single warning.
For the 4 years that I went to Minooka High School, I witnessed too many of these tragedies. Every single year of my high school career, someone was taken. And the year after I’ve been gone, this ruthless and unrelenting tragedy continued.
While my high school memories are filled with so many positive ones, they are also plagued by way too many candlelight vigils. They’re plagued with the thought that someone wasn’t able to go to the football games on Friday night. Someone wasn’t able to go eat lunch in the cafeteria again with their friends. Someone wasn’t able to go to prom. Someone wasn’t able to see their 4 years of hard work paid off and walk across that stage in the cap and gown. Someone wasn’t able to go to their dream college and get their dream job. Someone wasn’t ever going to have a family of their own.
You don’t want to believe it.
You don’t want to believe that a family right in your own backyard is flipped upside down. You don’t want to believe that a parent is burying their child. You don’t want to believe that your classmate will never walk those crowded hallways with bright orange lockers again. You don’t want to believe that someone, whose future was just as promising as yours, will no longer ever be able to fulfill their dreams.
But the most unbelievable part is that this stuff is happening right in your own community. That your friends and classmates and teachers are hurting. That this small town you know and love is getting rocked time and time again. You want to believe you can fix the hurt, but you know you can’t.
I have struggled time and time again trying to comprehend why this stuff happens. I am a devoted follower of Christ, but there has not been one tragedy that I can look at and understand why or see the point in it. It’s hard to understand and believe that God has a plan when there just seems like no logical reason to rip a beautiful, innocent child away from their family, and their future. I know we serve a great God, but it is SO hard to trust that He has a plan in all of it.
There will never be anything fair about it. There will never be anything that makes it okay.
Although faced with struggle time and time again, I have never been apart of a community so willing. The MCHS community is one that understands the need to band together and stand tall in the midst of crisis. It’s a community that reaches out, speaks up and does what they can to make a difference in the lives of those hurting and affected.
That’s something so beautiful.
I think that in the midst of these tragedies, it awakens a whole atmosphere, an atmosphere that needs to forever be etched in the minds of everyone affected.
This life is too short.
In a matter of minutes, even seconds, your life can be flipped upside down. You can lose it all without preparing, without knowing and without excepting.
It’s cliche and people say it al the time but it needs to be more realized. Never take a moment for granted. Never look at a moment and be in a moment and believe that it is insignificant because you will be given a thousand more. Those beloved moments that you’re given are never promised or guaranteed. They can be taken in the blink of an eye, and nonetheless, never be given again.
Back in Cape Town, I started a journal. At the end of every day, I made a collage of words and doodled drawings of things that happened in my day. I dissected my day, part by part. The goal of this was to pull every moment in my day, significant and insignificant, and give thanks for it. What it came down to, was I was realizing that there were so many parts of my day that would typically go unnoticed and seemed like normal daily events. But yet, reflecting on it, I discovered these moments, were all moments I would miss if they suddenly were all to stop.
I found myself thanking God for giving me another car ride to sing my favorite song with my friends and thanking Him for giving me another night to eat dinner so I could eat my favorite meal that my host mom made. I thanked Him for giving me another Sunday to go to church and dance around to my favorite worship songs and I thanked Him for giving my hearing one more day so I could hear my friends laugh out loud at our favorite movie. I thanked Him for my health, my families health, and my friends health so that I had just one more day to hug them and hear their voice.
It sounds ridiculous, I know. You would think all these things are required to be freely given to us, but at the end of the day they’re just not and you can lose it all when you least expect it.
I don’t want to encourage you to live a life of fear because your life can be flipped upside down in the blink of an eye. But I want to encourage you to live in the moment. Love all the people around you even when they seem unlovable. Dance and sing in the day God has given to you because some people aren’t getting that day. Tell people how much you love them, appreciate them, and care about them while they’re here cause one day, God is going to need them back.
This last week, my heart has ached heavily for the Starr family and those close to Kara. I had only shared a Spanish class with Kara my junior year, and the beautiful tributes from her friends and family make me wish I would have got to know her more. It is evident that this beautiful girl will never be forgotten and her spirits and kindness and compassionate soul will forever reign in the Minooka community.
My heart goes out to the families of Mitch Fajman, Allison Rivera, Liz Daniels, Madison Angus, Kendall Forth, Tyler Fox, Darcy Chobar and all other families of Indians who lives were simply just taken too soon. I pray constantly for the peace and comfort that I hope that God just continually floods you with. The spirits and souls of your beloveds will forever be remembered.
And to my beloved Minooka Community back home, I pray that you continue to seek each other out at this time of need, and forever in the future. I pray that you always remember how blessed you are to come from a community that so deeply understands and bands together through the good and the bad. I pray that you speak kindness and life into all those around you. I pray that you shrug off the small stuff, and come forward with forgiving and patient hearts.
Specifically to the class of 2016, I pray that you remain strong in the weeks to follow. I pray that you stick together and celebrate the lives of the three beautiful girls you have lost, and forever honor their legacy while you continue to create yours.
Together, we are #MinookaStrong. Make this a great LIFE or not Indians, the choice is yours.
