Pray for Boston

Wow.  What an emotional day yesterday.

I consider myself a spiritual person, I pray, I have a relationship with God and I try my best to always do what is right.  But in situations like this, I have a hard time praying even though I know it is the first thing I should do.  I just get SO angry.  I get filled with rage towards somebody who would carry something out like this.  I hear a lot of people saying things like “What has this world come to?”, “It just keeps getting worse” etc.  Most of the time  I agree with that, but other times I wonder if maybe our world is the same as it has always been?  Maybe now because of the social media channels, we hear about it immediately and we hear about it more so it seems more extreme? Maybe not, who knows.  Let’s be honest, I am from Chicago and am well aware that violence happens everywhere everyday, and a lot of that violence never even makes the news.   It is a reality that has been alive LONG before terrorism.  All I know is we are no longer guaranteed safety anywhere, not going to a movie, going to the mall, going to school and now running a race.

I have a theory I will delve into on a different day on why so much violence has happened and it actually  has nothing to do with gun laws and everything to do with the kind of people we have morphed into in this millennium.

I received so many text messages and phone calls yesterday from close family and friends asking me “Are you still going to try and run this next year??”.  To be honest, I did not even have to think about my answer.  Yes.  Yes I am still going to try and qualify to run Boston in 2014.  It has been a dream of mine for quite some time and no terrorist prick is going to stop me from doing that.  It might seem safer at this point to live in a hole, but sorry not doing it.  You have to live your life.  Whether you are a victim of an act of violence or in a fatal car accident, your life could end at any given moment.  And I hate to tell you, but you have no control over when that will happen, God does.

All we can do is pray. Pray for Boston, pray for the victims, pray for our world and yes even pray for those who did this. Whether you like or not, the oppressors need just as many prayers as everybody else.  Continue to love and be kind to one another, despite this fear and anger you might feel.  Continue to see the good in everything, the blessings in the mess.  The number of good things and people in this world outweighs the bad by far, the media just does not portray it that way unfortunately.

Stop the anger, stop the hate.  Say a prayer and BE the change you wish to see in the world.