At Nancy's on Scotts Creek

Wow, Friday was such a crazy day that it took until today to process it fully.  On Thursday, Naval Medical Center Portsmouth, VA staged an Active Shooter drill starting at 9 a.m.  Just after 8:30 a.m. Friday, a Navy ET (Bruce's rate in the Navy, an electronic technician) stabbed a young Master At Arms (Navy police officer) 8 times at the Navy Exchange.

The Hospital went to Code White, the highest alert level and the base was locked down trying to catch the bad guy.  My police radio was active with calls for the State Police to respond.  By the time I traveled back from dropping paperwork off at my office and seeing an offender, Portsmouth was teeming with police, FBI, Homeland Security, lights, sirens, news teams, and craziness.  I couldn't get to my next appointments because streets were blocked off.

And yet...1/2 a mile away in my own neighborhood, all was calm.  As I often do when troubled, I stopped at my friend, Nancy's, house.  This is the view from her yard...peaceful, lovely, with Cooper's Hawks swooping down from overhead and egrets feeding in the Creek.

Our hearts broke for this young Master at Arms, who was in surgery while we waited.  Channel 10 told us that he was a new father with a tiny baby shown off on his Facebook page.  His wife was devastated. Please pray for this young family.  God is so good, Justin Powell had surgery on Friday and his most recent condition report stated that he was doing well.  He does have a long road to recovery, though.  Pray especially for the total healing of his voice box; he was stabbed in the throat.

Please pray also for the young man who did such a horrendous thing.  He was apprehended at about 5:30 p.m.  At what point in our development as a society did we reach the stage when we face extremists at home and abroad, but sailors are attacking their own?  People say it is a lot of things; PTSD from battle, mental illness, side effects of the vaccines service members received before deploying overseas, depression, anxiety, the list could go on for paragraphs.

I believe that our efforts to remove God from our society have led to this point.  We have a generation of largely un-churched young people with broken homes who have no center to their lives.

Was my heart troubled for a time?  Of course, one can hardly stand in a friend's yard with helicopters searching overhead looking for an attempted murderer and not have the heart grieve in such a situation.  But, God is faithful.  I instinctively went beside the still waters and prayed.

Come unto Me all ye that travail and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.  Matthew 11:28