Thoughts And Prayers

I debated whether or not to address the events of April 15th at the running of the 117th Boston Marathon in words. My good friend slash co-host of TheRightNowPodcast and I spoke at length last Tuesday night in podcast form addressing our scrambled, confused, angry, and frustrating thoughts. After all which has transpired over the last week however, there are still too many emotions running through my mind to not let it out.

I've lived in The Commonwealth of Massachusetts for thirty years and have never really felt afraid, and while the home my wife and I share is forty-miles west of Watertown, Massachusetts, I didn't feel safe till the second suspect in Monday's Boston Marathon bombings was in the custody of law enforcement. Does putting the entire city and state in a moment of fear mean these two suspected terrorists did what they set-out to do? I do not believe so. How can a terrorist feel as though success has occurred when volunteers, not just first-responders and law enforcement, but volunteers and every-day persons don't sprint away from explosions and watch their fellow-Americans expire, but turn and run directly into the unknown willing to risk their lives for another? To those people, fear was a fleeting moment, to those people the word bravery just isn't enough. Were they scared? Of course. Did that terror bring out the best in them? Absolutely.

Along with an act of terrorism, this was a complete act of cowardice. You allegedly accept our public assistance in the form of welfare, you go to our schools, you live in our cities, you befriend our people, then you do this? You are cowards. You rip families apart, you take young lives, you shatter the dreams parents have for their children. You are cowards. What about your own? Your family. How do you expect them to process this? To leave them with immense confusion and bewilderment, how do you do that? You are cowards. No matter what you've felt or feel about our people, you have made no statement to be proud of by your actions. You've only furthered our belief of what our people are. We are together in a country contrived like no other and when dismay happens around us on any level, we move together, stronger, and proceed.

I don't dare to speculate on how events like this in the future can be thwarted. We'll never fully know, and for our protection, how the FBI investigates the hundreds of thousands of people on their watch list. We don't know what exactly goes on in a terrorists mind when he believes something good will come out of taking the lives of the innocent. Furthermore, at what point in these men's lives did they believe their life was better the way it currently is? One dead, the other about to spend the rest of his years at the very least locked in a cage. Are incidents like this isolated? I'm sure the people who protect us everyday, law enforcement, federal, state, and local, are stopping events everyday that we are not privy to, and I'll continue to put my faith and life in their hands based on what I've seen over the last seven days. As for what we, the average person, can do to help prevent these events? I just don't have the answer.

I appreciate any of you who read this and our thoughts and prayers at LynchyRightNow go out to everyone whose lives will forever be altered. For those who would like to donate to the victims of these atrocities, select TheOneFund here. Thank you.