I just got back from Cru tonight. We sang some songs, Jeff read a bit from the Word, and then we had students come up and share about their friends who were lost. I wrote down a few quotes I thought you would enjoy reading.

“Lauren challenged me to know scripture more.”

“The reason God took her is because He wanted her back. But I feel so selfish because I want her back here.” (about Lauren)

A girl who served as Lauren’s orientation leader last summer said that she asked the students to share 1 thing they wanted the group to know about them. Lauren said, “I want everyone to know that I love Jesus.”

“Somehow when you talked to Lauren, she got to the center of your soul.”

“I was mad at God, like, ‘God, she could have totally rocked this campus for you!’ And then I thought, wow she already has.”

“I hope I can impact in my whole life the number of people Lauren impacted in her short life.”

“Lauren loved to praise God.”

“You don’t have to be Lauren’s good friend to feel like her best friend.”

Mary Read’s parents sent a note to be read to us, and they wanted us to know that she loved CCC and her Cru Bible study, and couldn’t stop thinking about it. They also told a story about her 5 younger siblings, who thought she “hung the moon.” They shared a story about the weekend before she died she was at home, and was sitting on the stairs IM’ing her friends on her laptop. Sitting next to her was her little brother with a toy computer in his lap.

After the students shared, we sang more songs. My favorite moment was as we sung “It is well with my soul.” It was incredible to be among this group of extremely wounded people, worshipping God together, hearing and feeling the pain we all felt in our voices.

“Tho’ Satan should buffet, tho’ trials should come, let this bless’d assurance control, that Christ has regarded my helpless estate and hath shed His own blood for my soul.”

That was when I began to cry, just realizing how incredibly gracious God has been to us, to send Jesus for us, so that even when we die, there is incredible hope that we will be with him. We miss our friends, but we will see them again. And it’s all because of Jesus.

The last verse about Christ’s return was equally powerful. I don’t think I’ve ever so greatly desired Christ’s return as during this experience. I never want to go through another event like this again, but I know I will. I know I will lose more people I love, and will experience pain from another’s sin as well as my own probably many times in my life before the end. That thought just drove me to pray, “Lord, I am begging you to come back soon!” But if He chooses to wait longer, I have the promises of God to trust in through these painful times, that He will never leave us, that nothing can separate us from His love (Romans 8), that goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever(psalm 23), just to name a few. I think often how much I wish this had happened somewhere else. I want my old life back more than anything. But at the same time, since it did happen, I’m so thankful to be here to weather this storm with the people I love here. It was wonderful to worship the Lord tonight with my brothers and sisters at VT.

Tomorrow I will go help my friend, Chum, clean out Lauren McCain’s room. I disciple Chum, who discipled Lauren. Chum is doing okay, but absolutely brokenhearted over the loss of her friend. A few other close friends of Lauren will be coming with us too, so I know there will be a lot of tears as we box up her belongings. Please pray for us as we do this extremely painful task.

Chick Fil A is donating a TON of food for us to serve dinner at Cru tonight- how amazing is that!? Molly will be speaking at Cru tonight, so please also pray for her as she shares with the movement. We also anticipate some media presence there, so pray for them to be overly respectful and not distracting as we try to worship together. I am very concerned that they will distract us from worshipping and disrupt our community, so we’ll see.

At 10 tonight we met at the chapel for prayer and praise. I split off in a group of 5 girls, and none of them were really ready to pray I think. We prayed for the victim’s families. One student who is attending a summer project with my husband and I to North Africa this summer, Tony, came and told me that he had received a support check in the mail that day from one of the Cru students killed. Wow. We were all really… I don’t know it was just a “wow” moment. I stood outside with my husband and a student, Tim, and talked about how we were, and the student said something that I thought just summed up how I was feeling too. He said, “I mean, things were so great…” I just said, “Yeah they really were!” A lot of us are grieving the loss of the way it was, and unsure of what “normal” will be. Afterwards, I was talking with one of the girls in my Bible study, Jessica, and she was very grieved but unsure of why since she didn’t know any of the deceased very well. Two of the girls she leads have been greatly impacted, losing one member of their Bible study and another member being traumatized by finding two of the dead. She mourned for them, feeling completely clueless of how to minister to them. I can relate to that. I feel like that too. Two members of the Billy Graham rapid response team were here, and we all prayed for Jessica, which I really appreciated and I think she did too.

Oh, by the way, something I forgot to mention about our noon prayer time today. As we were finishing up our prayer time, Jeff, our director, says on the bullhorn, “now Franklin Graham is here with a message for anyone who wants to listen.” And there was Franklin Graham not 10 feet from me! To be honest, I was a little starstruck:) I thought to myself, “Heck yes i’ll listen to what Franklin Graham has to say!” He shared with us a little from scripture, specifically John 3:16 I remember, just telling us that God loved us and was in control, but he had no answer for why this happened. If I could see over the photographers that were standing between us and him, I’d probably have enjoyed it more, but all of us were really honored that he came to minister to us. I think that was when it really hit me how big of a thing this is internationally. I mean, its a big thing for us in Blacksburg, but I’m realizing its a big thing for everyone in America, and around the world. It’s strange to be somewhere where history is in the making. Well, it’s for the birds if you ask me. I’d give anything for life to be as it was a week ago.

Tonight we had a bunch of students over to our director’s house to eat some Chick Fil A that was donated for us, and to celebrate our director’s daughter’s second birthday. About 40 students came, and we had a really good time. Many of the students now just want to not talk about the incident and get their minds off of it. We did watch an interview with one of our students, Molly, on CBS evening news, which was pretty emotional for some of the students who are good friends with her. But other than that, for the most part we just enjoyed each other’s company and hung out. It was really nice. Later tonight we will have another prayer time, only this time the staff guys will be “bouncers” for the media so we can actually pray instead of being distracted by cameras and stuff like that.

Today we had a campus ministry prayer meeting in the center of the drill field, where 150+ students from different religious faiths came together to pray. We split the students into groups with those who were of the same faith, and prayed for the victims’ families, the family of the murderer, the VT administration and the VT campus.

I was again struck by the sorrow that is hanging over all of us here. The students are mourning the loss of their friends, their sense of security, and longing for things to get back to “normal”.

One very frustrating thing about the prayer time was the overwhelming presence of the media. We didn’t choose the drill field for media attention at all, but unfortunately that seems to be one of the central hubs for all activity related to the incident on campus right now. The cameramen were attempting to be respectful, but how can one pray when a strange man is poking a camera in your face and holding a boom microphone over your head? It was incredibly distracting to say the least, but I found it refreshing to be together with the students, talking to God and fellowshipping with each other.

Tonight we have another Cru only prayer time in the chapel, which is right off the drill field. However, we are restricting access to the media for this time. Our students need to meet with the Lord together in an undistracting environment. We are all ready for life to get back to normal. I fear for what that means though, that it will never be the same here again. I’ll just have to trust the Lord that time heals wounds. However, I think the media leaving will be a huge sigh of relief for most of us, though we know that if the tables were turned, we’d want to know what was going on as well.

Today we found an article written by John Piper after the Columbine shooting about how to minister to those suffering. Here is a link to the article. I thought it was excellent, Biblical, and very practical.

If the link doesn’t work, here is the web address: http://www.desiringgod.org/Blog/577_what_to_say_about_virginia_tech/

I volunteered to write a blog so y’all can know how we are doing. I’m not exactly sure how to start this. Usually when I write a prayer letter or blog, I try to start with something engaging. But honestly I don’t feel like being engaging right now. So i’ll just tell you how we are. It feels very strange to have so many people wondering how our little (and relatively insignificant in the scheme of things) team is doing. It’s encouraging, but a little weird too.

Yesterday was the longest and most stressful day of my life up to this point. It started when I received a call in the middle of our weekly staff meeting from another staff on our team who wasn’t attending the meeting telling us that 1 was killed and 8 injured. So we turned on the tv, and watched horrified as the truth of it all came out in waves. First, only 1 dead, then all the sudden 20?! I felt as if i’d been punched in the gut. Most of us were to much in shock and disbelief to cry, or do anything really but curse or stare at the tv and answer our phones that rang off the hook from concerned friends and family. Strangely, I had had a dream the night before about a gunman mowing people down at random, but I actually have disturbing dreams like that often, so I forgot about it until the middle of the day. I heard about one of our students who witnessed his entire class blown away, and he alone was unharmed (physically). I was sickened to think about what he endured and will continue to remember for the rest of his life. I had to call all my girls to find out if they were alive. That was a very sobering and surreal time. I never thought i’d have to do something like that. Our director’s birthday is this week, so we had cake at dinner time, which was a nice happy break. However, our happy birthday song was probably the most pitiful of all time.

Yesterday I felt numb and in shock. Today I am overwhelmed with sadness and stress. I woke up this morning to the radio playing messages from students and community members just kind of sharing their experience and how they were feeling, and read a few messages from some famous country singers, and were just talking about the event. The adrenaline of yesterday had subsided, and I was just left with the reality of what had happened. I also found out first thing this morning that one of the students in our movement was confirmed dead. I was anxious for but also dreading finding out the names, and it was a terrible moment. We had some regional and national CCC staff come to help us through this time, so we met up with them at our office and just shared how we were doing. Our team is very close and very much a family, so it was great for us all to be together and process a little together. We expressed fears about being clueless about how to respond, feeling pressured by the media attention we’ve gotten, we cried, prayed. I wish we could have done that for longer. Moving into “work mode” was excruciating for me. I keep thinking, how can I minister and love and care for these students, when I need those things myself?

Last night we had a prayer time with our students and those from the baptist college ministry here. The students seem to be experiencing a range of emotions. At that time, most names of the dead had not been released, but the students knew some of their friends who were missing. Some were weeping, some were just still so numb and shocked. But the prevailing thing I see among the students and the entire community is just an overwhelming feeling of sadness. Today it seems like people haven’t been talking as much. It’s just been quiet. I mean, what can you say? There’s no need to ask, “how are you?” as we customarily do more as a greeting than out of an actual desire to know the answer to that question. We already know the answer. We’re all doing terrible.

We have confirmation that three of our students have been killed, and one other unofficially. We also know of three other survivors but witnesses to people being murdered. I knew three of the four students personally who died. In fact, I spoke with two of the girls just Sunday about their bible study leader applications for next year. One of the dead was led by one of the girls I lead. I called her, and we just cried on the phone together after hearing the news. Again, there just aren’t any words. I’ve heard students say that they feel like their feeling of safety has been yanked out from under them. Blacksburg is an incredibly safe town. Sometimes, Paul and I leave our door unlocked at night, and when we wake up its like “eh, oops”. No big deal. Everyone feels very safe here, especially in their classes! Having that taken away dramatically has been really painful and very scary.

You may be wondering what we’re doing to help our students through this time. Honestly, it is so fresh that most of us haven’t even thought this far, and are wanting to process and grieve ourselves. Thankfully, we received some grief counciling resources to help us. Here is a copy of part of what we received that I thought was really helpful right now:

1. Recognizing the event has occurred. Work with your campus public relations office to release a general statement about the incident and its anniversary. You can also coordinate candlelight vigils and hold prayer meetings (if appropriate for your campus culture). In fact, student organizations are often willing to plan and implement these types of events.

2. Getting students talking! Whether you ring in counselors to hold mini-discussions in he residence halls or frame the discussion as art of a public forum, it is important to get
students talking about their feelings and concerns. Encourage faculty not to ignore the issue in their classrooms—especially since some traumatic events and crises may be relevant to course readings and discussion. Initial conversations may already have occurred—just be sure that the talking continues as students face different coping needs.

3. Encouraging students to volunteer. Often students feel as if the only way they can help is by volunteering for a cause. This seems to be especially important in times of local, national, or global crisis. For example, students at colleges and universities throughout the Southern Appalachian Region often collect items for the victims of flooding in local communities. Depending upon the circumstances and the type of crisis, students may also choose to give blood, hold food drives, raise funds, and/or circulate petitions.

4. Making your staff accessible. Encourage your staff members to get out of their offices and wander around campus. A visit to the residence halls is sometimes the only way you can connect with a grieving or distressed student.

5. Referring students to counseling. It is also important that student affairs administrators refer students experiencing feelings of grief to a counselor. This is especially true if students seem to be experiencing any of the symptoms of PTSD (described above). In cases of severe crisis or incidents it may also be helpful to extend the hours of your counseling center.

Thank you for your prayers and support. We feel very encouraged and loved right now!