Hannah went on a school trip with the history club last week. You may recall that she made a similar trip last year. Anyway, she left our town on Saturday morning at oh-dark-thirty and headed south to tour some Civil War battlefields and museums as well as Washington, DC. She was in Virginia last Monday. Did you hear me? Virginia. On Monday, April 16th.

Now, I had an itinerary and a vague idea of where she would be each day. But I’m not real big on geography and certainly not the geography of the Commonwealth of Virginia. So when the news broke about the horrible tragedy at Virginia Tech I kind of panicked a little bit. I grabbed her itinerary and saw that she was visiting the Museum of the Confederate Soldier. I had no idea where that was. At that moment, as far as I was concerned, it could have been on the campus of Virginia Tech. I may have freaked out a little bit while Dale and I googled to find the location of Virginia Tech and then checked a map to find Blacksburg in relation to Richmond. When I saw they were miles and miles away from each other I was able to speak again. But for those few moments I was a wee bit frantic. If you asked Dale about it, he’d tell you I was absolutely fine. Calm might be a word he would use to describe my behavior. And yet inside I was freaking out. Call it not-wanting-to-jinx-things or denial-it-ain’t-just-a-river-in-Egypt but outwardly I acted like Hannah being on this trip (and then being in Virgina on April 16th!!) was no big deal.

Inside, though, part of me was holding my breath until this moment.

Home. Safe and Sound. Thank you, God.