Shattered

The news article said that they "found the couple's two-year-old daughter unharmed" in the home.  Unharmed.  In the same home, on the same evening that they found her mother's body.  Unharmed. While police locked down the neighborhood to search for her father, the primary suspect in her mother's death.  Unharmed.  When her whole world was shattered.

The reporter got it wrong.  There may have been no evidence of physical injury, but a little girl was most certainly harmed. 

And these are the thoughts that spin through my mind as I rock my 20-month-old a little longer than usual.  When my husband told me, over the phone, about this young mother, a former co-worker, shot-dead by her husband, my thoughts went first to her child.  A little girl not much older than my youngest.

Maybe it's morbid, maybe it's empathy, but I wondered if, when she was afraid, that little girl cried out for her mommy, like mine does.  I wondered if she cried out for her daddy, like mine does.  I wonder if she's being comforted now, while mine sleeps easily in her crib. 

I pray healing for the harm that this child experienced.  I pray healing for the friends and family walking through this tragedy.  There is no quick remedy for a wound so profound.  And so I pray that I will remember, as my little girl grows, to pray for this other little girl, whose world has been shattered.