Stuff that I have learned from the events this week

This week. THIS WEEK! I did not come to Cambridge expecting this week. I came into the week expecting to be stressed out by all the work I had to do...but not by the threat of terrorists. There were definitely moments where I was like, "God, YEESH! I could barely deal with my own little student problems. What is THIS?"

But I guess no one comes into this experience as a prepared person. It just happens and it scars you and your town for life. It doesn't make your town cease to exist, as I found out today. Even as there were people the next town over chasing the suspect, and Massachusetts law had put us all on lockdown for the first time in nearly 12 years, after a while, people did start going outside again. It was eerie for me to go out into the Yard and watch people play and eat at Au Bon Pain. This place is supposed to be deserted, I thought, but it isn't! There was playtime and laughter, but there was still this awkward fear looming over everything like a cloud. It was always possible to get over it by doing work or by distracting oneself from it, but a trigger would come and you'd be scared again.*

How incredibly relieving it is to have that blanket of fear lifted off of you.

Many people at my school made the great point this week that many people aren't getting the happiness and relief that I have now. They still have to live in that blanket of fear. For people in the war zones like in Syria, what we have just been freed from experiencing is life. My solution? Prayer. Keep praying for those warzones, applying the feelings that you felt this week to those prayers.

*That is, unless you were my friend Terrance. Thursday night when the MIT shooting occurred, I was in Lamont Library with a group of friends and this dude. We were all scared out of our minds and hunkered down to the basement...all except Terrance. Dude put some gospel music in his ears and kept on studying right next to the windows of Lamont Library. We all asked him why he wasn't fearing. He kept on saying, "God is with me. I don't have anything to fear!"
I knew that, but the difference between me and Terrance was that the guy had been meditating on it, so once a situation came around he just had his Psalm 91 handy, and he just chilled. I ought to get to that level of faith!