Deliver us from evil

Body of gunman is carried from schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Pa. (ABC News)

I wrote this in April 1999, just a few days after the school shootings at Columbine. My son, Grant, was 12 years old at the time, and a seventh-grader at Miller Middle School in Macon.

It has been seven years, and Grant is now a sophomore in college. Now it's my youngest son, Jake, who is 12 and a seventh-grader.

After Monday’s shootings at the Amish school in Pennsylvania – the nation’s third deadly school shooting in less than a week – I’m starting to get that lump in my throat again.

DELIVER US FROM EVIL
Sunday, April 25, 1999
(Excerpted from Ed Grisamore column)

We ride to school each weekday morning down familiar streets.

The view never changes. The route is rather routine.

Yet the journey is always different.

Sometimes, my 12-year-old son and I swap stories. Other times, we listen to the radio. We laugh. We talk. We reflect. We communicate.

But, after the events of this past week, the ride has consumed an eerie grip of fear. It's not easy keeping my hands on the steering wheel when my head is light and my heart is heavy.

Oh, how I wish we could change the subject back to baseball.

Now, when I drop him off and watch him climb those seven brick steps, there is a lump in my throat the size of a baseball.

It is no longer simply enough to worry if your child has studied for his social studies test or remembered his lunch money.

He will be behind those schoolhouse doors for seven hours. In these troubled times, we must live with the paranoia and endure a deep fear that someone might start pulling a trigger.

From the time we give them roots to the time we give them wings, we protect and over-protect the lives of our sons and daughters.

We child-proof our homes, strap them in car seats and make them wear helmets on their bikes and while waiting for the pitch at home plate.

We are forever sounding the alarms of everyday life.

Chew your food so you don't choke.

Know what to do in a tornado drill.

Don't talk to strangers.

Don't smoke cigarettes.

We are conditioned to shield them from everything, from ultra-violet rays to ultra-violent TV
shows.

Now it is shocking to be faced with terrorism in our schools.