What is a Child Worth?

The horror show goes on.

On Sunday morning, I woke up at the Grand Hotel Marriott in Rome. After a quick breakfast — cappuccino, yogurt, granola — I went downstairs and asked the doorman to hail a taxi. The cab driver took my luggage, loaded it in the trunk, and took off for Rome’s international airport. I had spent the previous ten days in Italy for a writing workshop. And now it was time to fly home.

But in the time I had been gone, Nashville had changed.

By now you know.

By now you know that on Monday, March 27th, around 10:00 a.m., a 28-year-old woman shot her way into a private, Christian elementary school called The Covenant School and killed six people. Even as I type that sentence, the horror of the truth cinches tight around my heart.

I was not home when it happened. Italy is seven hours ahead of Nashville, and on that Monday evening, I was sitting on the side of an English roll-arm sofa on the fourth-floor of Le Sirenuse Hotel in Positano when my phone began to buzz and buzz and buzz. The woman next to me gave me a sharp look. We’re in the middle of serious writing exercises, her eyes said. I apologized and turned the phone to airplane mode.

When the session ended, I turned my phone back on and hundreds of texts poured in. My eyes could not make sense of the words I was reading.

“There is apparently an active shooter at Covenant Presbyterian School. If You’re in Green Hills lock your doors and stay in.”

Anyone know if our schools is on lock down?

Emergency response vehicles all coming down Hillsboro Road.

Yes our kids are on lockdown.

Omg I’m hearing it’s St. Paul or Covenant.

It's Covenant.

It’s Covenant.

The impossible truth leaked like poison, spreading from phone to phone. Across the globe, and straight into my eyes.

My knees hit the floor and I screamed. Instantly, the faces of several young children I know and love appeared before me and I begged Jesus out loud to have mercy and spare their lives. My face hovered inches above the white and blue tile. Tears streamed down my cheeks. I wanted to throw up. A woman I had only met hours before placed a hand on my back and told me to breathe. I sat up and looked out the window at the impossibly blue water stretched out to a distant horizon. I was so far from home. I was so far from home. How would I get home? An hour-long car ride, two trains, two international flights.

“Are your children okay?” someone asked.

“Yes,” I heard myself say. “Yes, but there are people I love in that building. There are children I love in that building.”

All evening, through the night, and into the morning, I waited for the news. Has anyone heard from the Smiths. Any word from the Kennedys? Has anyone heard from the Dyers?* As time passed, the horror only intensified as more and more families came to mind who have children at Covenant — friends from church, former co-workers from my time as a teacher, and families with whom we’ve shared our life. Everyone in Nashville knows someone who was connected to that school. Everyone knows someone.

I decided to stay in Italy. Every morning, I participated in intense workshops — often openly grieving when I could not stop the flood of tears. Every evening, I spent hours on the phone with friends back home, trying to process what had happened, and what happens now.

What is a child worth?

What is a child worth to us?

I keep thinking about combat. I keep thinking about a generation of shell-shocked children in our country who now carry the same burden that veterans carry, who volunteered to face the horror of war.

I keep thinking about means, motive, and opportunity. In the last decade, we have put measures in place to minimize the opportunity to turn schools into battlefields. We’ve hired security guards, created strict lock-down protocols, and trained police departments to move toward danger with heroic speed. These decisions no doubt saved lives at Covenant last week. And still, the means for murder are readily accessible to anyone. The motive of mass shooters is inexplicable and perhaps unknowable, but it’s not going anywhere. Isn't it worth trying to understand?

Isn’t it worth trying?

I keep thinking about another point in history, when children’s lives were regularly put in danger. In the late 1800s through the early 1900s, nearly two million children under the age of 14 worked in factories and mines, sometimes for 12+ hours a day. Children were maimed, injured and sometimes killed. In 1874, 20 people, mostly young girls, some as young as 5, were burned alive in the fire at Granite Mill in Massachusetts. The story ignited a call for child labor reform. It took more than sixty years, but the American people banded together and did something about it.*

Meaningful change might take a hundred years.

But it will have been worth it.

On Saturday, I said goodbye to the other writers that had held me all week in Positano, and made the long journey back to Rome. I didn’t walk to the Forum or the Vatican. I didn’t see the Parthenon. I just went to bed at the Grand Hotel Flora and counted down the hours until I could get home and hold my children. My boys.

The next morning, I got in that cab.

It was quiet. The streets were empty, all the people warm in their beds. It was Palm Sunday, that Sunday thousands of years ago when masses of Jewish people welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem shouting Hosanna. Please, save us. Save us. They wanted Jesus to save them from the Romans, their oppressors. They wanted Jesus to save them from poverty and crime and evil. They wanted Jesus to save them from the very present grief of their lives.

He entered the city, dined with his friends one last time, and then found his way to the Garden of Gethsemane, where he prayed so intensely that he cried and bled. “My soul is swallowed up in sorrow — to the point of death.” Matthew 26:39 says Jesus fell to his face and prayed. Then he was arrested. By the end of the next day, he was hanging dead on a cross.

The hope of their earthly deliverance had been sacrificed on the altar of evil. And Jesus’ disciples did not fight back. They fled in fear. They turned away. They scattered.

Rome had won.

As the cab drove down Via Vittorio Veneto, my mind wandered. I did not know where the airport was in relation to anything else, but it would be nice if the cab could pass by something — anything — so at least I could say I saw a bit of Rome. Perhaps the Colosseum or the Trevi Fountain.

I thought about Easter and the hope of resurrection. After Jesus’ crucifixion, all of Jerusalem plunged into great darkness. But three days later, the tomb empty. Jesus appeared to his disciples and 500 others. He broke bread. He laughed. He extended love, forgiveness, and hope to his followers. Evil will not get the last word. Eternity awaits. Rome did not win. “In this world you will have trouble,” Jesus said. “But take heart. I have overcome the world.”

The cab veered left, and I peered through the front windows, just as the Colosseum rose into view. The massive round structure is crumbling. But still, it stands — this massive monument to Rome’s violent past. Thousands and thousands of Romans stood in that theater and cheered while innocent men bled to death.

How evil does a culture have to become to accept murder as its entertainment?

Tears sprang to my eyes and I began to sob.

It is us, I thought. It is us.

Hosanna. Hosanna in the highest.

Save us from ourselves. Save us from ourselves.

Illustration by Joe Sutphin © 2023.

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*Names have been changed.

**If you’re interested in this history — I highly recommend reading The History of Child Labor in the United States Part I and Part II.

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One More Thing

The illustration included with this email was created by my friend, illustrator Joe Sutphin. In honor of his work, a contribution has been made to the Caring for Covenant Fund, through the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee. If you feel so led, please consider giving. The money will go to support families, teachers, and administrators at The Covenant School.