Amish school shooting

The recent news of the Amish school shooting has been very hard for me. Not only because I am a teacher and a mother but because I grew up close to a large Amish community.

I don't often talk about the Amish with people that are not from my home state. It usually leads to a bunch of questions that seem silly to me. Am I Amish? Do they really live in barns? and things of this nature.

The fact is that I do not know any Amish people personally. I did not have Amish friends or have Amish children at my school. They weren't really my neighbors in the sense of living next door and we didn't go the same stores exactly.

I have always respected the Amish. The fact that they live there lives the way that they do, they stay close to their community, they are pacifists, they live off of the land and all this in the name of their faith. It has always really seems like hippies to the extreme without the marijuana.

They have their beliefs. They live peacefully and they do not try to cram their beliefs down anyone else throats. They never came knocking on my door and telling me how I'm supposed to live.

The fact that this last school shooting took place at an Amish school is the most upsetting part for me. We can never understand the thoughts of a violent individual but sometimes you can at least see the twisted thought path that was involved. I've yet to see anything that would point in that direction.

Today they were talking on NPR about the fact that the killer had lost a daughter 20 years ago and had molested two of his female relatives. I still don't see the link to the Amish school. It just leaves me sad, confused and hurting.

The NPR report also talked about the Amish community reaching out to the families that were involved. They were not only talking about the families that have lost children or who still have children in the hospital but the family of the killer. They are reaching out to them in their time of need as well.

I hope that some day I could learn that level of forgiveness.