The Only Thing You Need To Do Today

(I promise, it’s this simple)

Can I tell you the real reason I came up with this idea to do 4 things on 4/4?

Because I needed a way to make myself keep caring about school shootings.

I care, of course. On the gut level, the human level, the parental level, the personal level. My heart sinks and my stomach twists whenever the news comes across the screen again. My children seem suddenly fragile and vulnerable as they walk out the door to school. I remember the time I feared for my own life from someone else’s gun. I remember the time my uncle lost his life to gun violence.

But year after year, decade after decade, the numbers have become numbing. So many lives lost, so many collective uprisings of righteous anger, crying out never again only to turn around in disbelief: again? 

The horror of the Uvalde shooting is still fresh in my mind, not even a year ago yet. So when the Covenant School shooting happened, something inside me cried out: enough. Enough doing what I’ve done before. I needed to do something more.

I needed to do the things I do when I get lost and don’t know what to do. Pray. Talk to other people. Find a way to take action. Give whatever I have to give.

My hunch is that you feel the same. Even if we come at this from different political or religious standpoints, you feel the utter frustration of enough. You’re asking what you can do to stop this horror from happening—again and always.

But your answer might not be mine. You choose only one focus: to pray every day in specific ways. Or call your representatives once a month. Or start to learn more about the root causes of gun violence. 

Your answer might not be clear yet. You might be here because you want to care, or you care but don’t know how to act, or you’ve been acting and giving and learning and organizing for years but now you’re burning out.

So the one thing you need to do today is start asking how to keep caring. 

Maybe your answer will be multi-pronged, as mine was. But maybe your answer will be singular or small. 

No matter if your step feels tiny and tentative today, you are moving in a direction. By the end of the day, you’ll be in a different place than where you started. 

And what’s even more encouraging? You won’t be alone there. 

In the past week, more than 700 of us have gathered in this space. I’m in awe of a hearty band of people rising up who want to help lead us. They want to write persuasive scripts to help us talk to our representatives. They want to help us rally our bishops to live out their positions on gun violence and legislative reform. They want to research ways to invest our resources to enact change locally and nationally.

I’m grateful for every one of you who’s reached out to say me, too and ask how to do more together. The past 7 days have reminded me that I’m far from the only one who cares deeply about school shootings, who feels like she’s been shouting (or praying or writing or calling or giving) into a void for years with no response.

What’s changing now is us. 

We are fed up with inaction and increased violence, sick to our stomachs with statistics (like how firearm-related deaths are now the leading cause of death among children and adolescents in the U.S.). We know we’re divided politically as a nation, but now we see ways every week that our polarization is killing us. 

And we refuse to settle for the cynical shrug that school shootings are simply something we have to accept as part of life in this country. We don’t. We have changed in seismic ways in the past as a nation. We could do it again.

So the only thing you need to do today is decide how to keep going.

I hope one or two of the ideas I’ve shared over the past week might nudge you in a new direction. Pick something small and try it today. If you’d like to share here what you’re doing, it’s inspiring to learn from each other.

But know that today is only one day. We have lots of work to do, and I’m inspired by those who are spurring me and you to keep going. I’ll be sharing more soon (though I promise I’m not emailing you every day anymore, whew!) because guess what?

Every month has a 4th. A day to show what we are FOR. A day to do something.

We get to do this work together, to figure out how to keep caring.

Thanks for doing something today with me. #forchangeforkids