This past weekend was kind of crappy. Saturday morning we woke up to news that our neighborhood was on lockdown due to a shooting and that the suspect was still at large. Over the course of the day we learned that a police officer had noticed footprints in the snow tracking from car to car in the apartments around the corner from us and when he found the man those tracks belonged to, the man had drawn a gun on the officer and started shooting. (Thankfully the officer was not hurt.) The man then jumped a fence in to the cluster homes next to our neighborhood, broke in to a house, shot the home owner in the chest and stole one of their families cars. He had then driven up in to my parents neighborhood where he had crashed the car and taken off by foot.
This all happened very early in the morning... around 6am. By 1pm they had still not found the man, but they released the lockdown on our part of the neighborhood. However, knowing the man was still on the loose, I was not happy with the thought of anyone leaving our home. My kids are older, 23 and 21, but I still wanted them to stay home until they found the guy! I have never ever wanted a gun in my house, but I have to admit, I really wished we had one that day. I would have felt a lot safer.
So Tuesday of this week, with the suspect STILL on the loose, we took our first family field trip to the gun range. I wasn't ready to shoot personally, I have never even touched a gun, but I watched as my hubby and kids tried different guns and practiced shooting targets.
As I was watching them I thought a lot about fear. I personally have lots of fears. I have fears of bad things happening, a fear of evil people, (thanks Criminal Minds), a fear of losing someone close to me, a fear of some kinds of bugs or insects, a fear of what my future looks like, a fear of the unknown... the list goes on and on... but I have to stop and put my fears in perspective sometimes. Fear literally has the ability to stop us from living the life we want to live if we let it, but it is ultimately based on our estimate of what MIGHT or COULD happen. I don't think there is a magical way to wipe out fear completely. We are always going to have things we are afraid of... it's a very human characteristic. However, it is how we deal with those fears that will ultimately determine the type of life we live.
So, how do you deal with fear?
(By the way, they caught the guy the next afternoon. I'm not going to lie, it was a big relief.)
