Cooking, Not Coping

Every day, I allow my heart to live, beat, play, and work outside my chest.

I send my children into the world to learn, grow, explore, and become the bright, shining humans they are meant to be. They are woven into the fabric of my being, and parenting means learning to love them fiercely while loosening my grip enough to let them go.

Every weekday, my children head to two different schools, and Marshall heads to work in an entirely different school district, driving a bus full of other people's children. Three places where the people I love spend their days. Three places I cannot be all at once.

There was another school shooting. Too close to home: Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, OR. The classroom that was shot at was a special education classroom, and because both my children access special education classrooms, that news hit especially hard.

I don't have words for that.

When I saw the buses lined up, it nearly broke me.

There was something about that image. Those familiar yellow buses, symbols of the ordinary rhythms of childhood, caught up in a situation that should never be ordinary. I thought about the children, their families, the school staff, and the people waiting for news. I thought about children who might need additional support to understand an emergency or communicate their needs. I thought about parents trying to get information about their kids.

And I thought about my own family, spread across different schools and school districts, each of us going about our ordinary day while I sat with the knowledge that the world can change in an instant.

In the sixteen years I have been a parent, there have been 2,280 firearm incidents at schools, with 149 of those happening this year alone, according to the figures I have been tracking. Those numbers represent frightened children, disrupted communities, and families whose ordinary days have become something else entirely.

We send children to school to learn, make friends, discover their gifts, and figure out who they are becoming. We also teach them how to hide from someone with a gun.

What in the actual hell?

I am weary. I am worn. I am tired of the news alerts and the mental calculations that follow every headline. Where did it happen? Is it near my children? Is someone I love in danger?

I know that worrying cannot protect the people I love. But knowing that doesn't make it easy to stop.

Worry is what happens when love meets uncertainty and discovers it cannot control the outcome.

So what do we do with it?

Today's my day off, so I am cooking.

I'm making Sauerbraten, beer cheese bread, red cabbage, and German chocolate cake. A proper German feast. Marshall's favorite.

I am spending my Friday chopping, stirring, baking, and preparing a meal that takes time. I am doing something tangible in a world where so much feels beyond my control. I am making something delicious for the people I love.

Why?

Because sometimes, when I cannot fix what is wrong with the world, I need to give all that love and fear somewhere to go.

I cannot personally stand guard over every school. I cannot guarantee my children's safety or Marshall's. I cannot make the next terrible headline disappear.

But I can make dinner. (Which as I listened to the news off and on throughout the day I kept adding more to the list...)

I can care for the people in front of me. I can create a little space for comfort and connection. I can remind my family, and myself, that there is still goodness to be found in an ordinary day.

And on Monday morning, when my children head to their respective schools and Marshall gets behind the wheel of his bus, you can bet I will be holding them tight.

Probably longer than usual.

I will send them off because they deserve to learn, grow, laugh, and live their lives. Fear cannot be allowed to make our world smaller than it needs to be. But I will also be honest about the fact that sending them out the door takes a kind of courage I wish parents didn't have to practice.

As a pastor, I think about Jesus' words in Matthew 6:34: "Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own."

Honestly, Jesus, have you seen the news?

I have always found those words both comforting and irritating. Telling people not to worry is a lot easier when you're not the one sending your children into a world where a school shooting is a possibility we have somehow learned to live with.

I don't believe Jesus is asking us to ignore danger or pretend our fears are unfounded. Rather, these words invite us to consider how much of today's life we surrender to tomorrow's uncertainty.

Worry tells us that if we imagine every possible disaster, perhaps we can prevent it. If we stay vigilant enough, maybe we can keep the people we love safe.

But worry is not a force field. It cannot protect our children, prevent violence, or give us control over the things we cannot control.

Faith doesn't promise that nothing terrible will happen. It offers something different: the assurance that we do not have to face the world alone, and the call to help make the world more compassionate, more just, and more safe.

Sometimes faith looks like prayer. Sometimes it looks like protest. Sometimes it looks like contacting an elected official, supporting evidence-based violence prevention, or showing up for a frightened neighbor.

And sometimes it looks like making Sauerbraten.

We can take a break from the news without becoming indifferent. We can find moments of joy without pretending everything is fine. We can pray for the people affected by violence and work to prevent the next family from experiencing the same terror.

We can acknowledge that we are afraid without allowing fear to consume the lives we are trying to protect.

That is what I need from cooking today. Not a solution, but a way back to the present. There is food to prepare, a meal to share, and love that needs somewhere to go.

The news from Bend remains heartbreaking. The work of preventing gun violence remains urgent. But there are still things I can do. I can care for my family and my community. I can advocate for safer schools. I can insist that disabled children deserve the same safety, dignity, and protection as every other child. I can refuse to accept that children being shot at school is an inevitable part of life in this country.

I can do the next faithful thing without knowing how everything will turn out.

Perhaps you are carrying worry today, too. Maybe it is about your children, your spouse, your health, or the state of the world. Maybe you are exhausted by the feeling that everything is fragile and so much is beyond your control.

You do not have to choose between caring deeply and finding moments of peace. You can ask for help. You can take a breath. You can let someone sit with you in your fear. You can do what is yours to do without believing you must do everything.

Today, I am making a feast.

On Monday, I will send my children back into the world. Marshall will go back to work. I will go back to mine. We will do the ordinary things that make up a life, and I will keep working toward a world where those ordinary things do not carry quite so much fear.

I will keep praying, but I will not pray instead of acting. I will keep loving, but I will not mistake worry for love or fear for faithfulness.

And when the next terrible headline comes, I will try to remember that I do not have to carry the whole world in my heart all at once.

I can grieve. I can reach for another person's hand. I can make dinner. I can hold my children a little longer. I can work for change.

Because the world needs changing, and the people in it need caring for.

Worry cannot protect the people we love. But love can move us toward the work of protecting one another.

And even in a world that gives us far too many reasons to be afraid, we still deserve to gather, to laugh, to eat, and to find moments of peace.

Not because everything is okay.

But because it isn't okay, and we need one another for the work ahead.