Another Massacre on Valentine's Day

I had just finished writing my last blog post, which mentioned the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, when I heard on the radio that there was a mass shooting this afternoon at Northern Illinois University, which is not far from where we used to live. Last I heard, 18 kids had been shot.

We know many people who have attended NIU, and know someone who goes there now. She's my daughter's friend, who was also homeschooled; as soon as I heard the news, I let my daughter know. She checked on her friend and found out that she was ok, thank God. She was in the next lecture hall over when it happened; everyone in her class piled all sorts of stuff up against the door of their lecture hall and waited half an hour until the police told them it was safe to come out. The only way they learned what was going on was that a few of the kids got online and saw the reports of the shooting.

Right now, all over Chicagoland, terrified parents are trying to get through jammed cell phone lines to make sure their kids at NIU are ok. We're listening to a Chicago tv station over the Internet; they're telling parents how to text their kids at NIU in order to check on them, and they're telling the kids to send their technology-challenged parents a simple text message: I AM OK.

This is so sad. I won't get on my soapbox. All the parents and kids are in my prayers.