A little bit about shootings and cancer

I don't know how to talk to my kids about the risk that they may be murdered at school.

Talking to your kids about the fact that they could be murdered at school is just an awful thing to have to talk about, much like my having to talk to my kids about their dad's terminal diagnosis. There's no easy way about it. But the good news with the schools is that they are LIKELY to get out alive. So I tell my kids to go in prepared and brave. "You watch and you listen. And you tell me ANYTHING that strikes you as weird or disturbing." And if it so be that he or a friend gets called to be with our loved ones in Heaven, then that's something that we can be sad about at that time. But we don't live in fear of it and we don't mourn before it's time. We live life to the fullest while we have it.

We live the same way (or we try) with my husband's diagnosis, though most days he's too ill to live life fully, but we do what we can. But barring any miracles from Heaven, his shooter is coming. We don't know when, or how, just that the doctor has repeatedly assured us (because we just refuse to believe there's no other way out) that the cancer WILL EVENTUALLY take his life.

I have recently and repeatedly found great comfort in these words by Dallin H. Oaks:

"As children of God, knowing of His great love and His ultimate knowledge of what is best for our eternal welfare, we trust in Him. The first principle of the gospel is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and faith means trust. I felt that trust in a talk my cousin gave at the funeral of a teenage girl who had died of a serious illness. He spoke these words, which first astonished me and then edified me: 'I know it was the will of the Lord that she die. She had good medical care. She was given priesthood blessings. Her name was on the prayer roll in the temple. She was the subject of hundreds of prayers for her restoration to health. And I know that there is enough faith in this family that she would have been healed unless it was the will of the Lord to take her home at this time.' I felt that same trust in the words of the father of another choice girl whose life was taken by cancer in her teen years. He declared,' Our family’s faith is in Jesus Christ and is not dependent on outcomes.' Those teachings ring true to me. We do all that we can for the healing of a loved one, and then we trust in the Lord for the outcome." (https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2010/04/healing-the-sick?lang=eng)

We can't control the future... not that we shouldn't try to make things better, but fearing the worst does nothing to improve the future. Prepare for the worst, expect the best. It's what Dean has always helped me to do. Still holds true.