Today is the fourth anniversary of the shooting at Sandy Hook elementary in Connecticut. I’m just full of good cheer, right? I hadn’t realized how devastatingly close the shooting was to Christmas and Hanukkah until the other day when I was double checking my list of names for the Victims quilt to make sure that I hadn’t missed anyone before I started quilting blocks. I had the very macabre thought that I was checking my list twice like Santa and that’s when I focused on the date of the Sandy Hook shooting. How heart-wrenching it must have been for those parents to throw out the half-used advent calendars, pull the stockings from the mantle, and return or donate the unopened presents stashed away in closets. So today, in the midst of my own Christmas prep, I stop for a moment to hold those families in the light.
