Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E93: How This Newtown Mom Found Peace Through Tragedy

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E93: How This Newtown Mom Found Peace Through Tragedy · The Lila Rose Show

• 0:00
  The morning that Catherine died, I got a phone call.
• 0:01
  It was there's been an incident at Sandy Hook school.
• 0:04
  All schools are in lockdown. So we went into the Firehouse
• 0:06
  and I and I saw Freddie first. He was in 3rd grade, so he was
• 0:09
  right around the corner when it happened.
• 0:11
  How was he absolutely terrified in that moment when he saw me,
• 0:15
  there was this realization that he was going to be fine, but his
• 0:18
  first words to me was I can't find Catherine to say it was
• 0:21
  hard to say that it was dark in Newtown is probably an
• 0:24
  understatement of all understatement.
• 0:26
  But the peace and the awareness of God's presence, this sense of
• 0:31
  I am here, I have you. I have rarely felt it since.
• 0:39
  Hello, hello, welcome back to the Lila Rose Podcast.
• 0:42
  Today we are going to be talking with someone named Jennifer
• 0:44
  Hubbard, who is a writer and an author as well as a speaker, and
• 0:48
  she has an incredible personal story.
• 0:50
  Now you probably have heard parts of Jennifer's story
• 0:54
  because the whole world knew what happened December 14th,
• 0:56
  2012 with the unprecedented Sandy Hook Elementary School
• 1:01
  shooting in Newtown, CT Jennifer was one of the mothers who would
• 1:05
  find out that morning that the shooter took the life of her six
• 1:10
  year old, her beautiful 6 year old daughter Catherine.
• 1:13
  We're going to sit down with Jennifer.
• 1:14
  She has a incredible perspective on what she endured and she has
• 1:19
  some incredible and important takeaways for us about the
• 1:21
  nature of suffering and for really anyone who's experiencing
• 1:25
  suffering or who knows someone experiencing suffering right
• 1:27
  now, how to navigate some of the worst things imaginable.
• 1:31
  Thank you so much to our sponsor, Amen.
• 1:33
  Amen is a free prayer app from the Augustan Institute, which is
• 1:37
  wonderful. I use it almost every day
• 1:39
  because you can hear the readings of the day on the app,
• 1:42
  readings from Sacred Scripture. You can hear the gospel.
• 1:44
  It's in a meditation session afterwards.
• 1:46
  What I also love about Amen is there's other features.
• 1:48
  There's stories for kids on there.
• 1:50
  There's sleep stories, there's meditations.
• 1:52
  You can pray the rosary on the Amen app, but there's all of
• 1:54
  this content and it's free that will help you find peace in your
• 1:58
  day-to-day. Make time for just even 10
• 2:00
  minutes with our Lord. Use the app to help you remember
• 2:03
  to do this and login. You can just access it on your
• 2:06
  phone and find that peace and that connection with God in your
• 2:10
  busy life. Download the Amen app for free.
• 2:12
  Check it out on the App Store. It's free and you're going to
• 2:14
  love it. Jennifer Hubbard, thanks so much
• 2:17
  for joining the podcast. Thank you for having me.
• 2:20
  You are inspiring, thank you and your writing is beautiful.
• 2:24
  Thank you. So I'm, I know our listeners are
• 2:27
  in for a treat. We're both out in Southern
• 2:30
  California. You're speaking at the
• 2:32
  conference. I just spoke this morning and
• 2:33
  you're speaking tomorrow. What's your topic on?
• 2:36
  Sacred suffering. OK, that's a I think that it's,
• 2:42
  I think suffering is something that we shy away from because we
• 2:46
  just don't want to deal with it even when it's happening.
• 2:50
  We really, I think that we have a tendency as just humanity to
• 2:55
  try to skirt around it or rush through it or avoid it
• 2:59
  altogether. And I think that that's a huge
• 3:03
  mistake because I think that when we endure our suffering and
• 3:08
  the trials that were promised biblically, we come out on the
• 3:13
  other side with such a grace and such a wisdom and an incredible
• 3:19
  treasure that we wouldn't otherwise have.
• 3:23
  And so I I, I try as best I can to share with readers or people
• 3:29
  and audiences of just the beauty of suffering.
• 3:33
  That's such a incredible thing for you to say, and I know your
• 3:37
  story. Our listeners are going to hear
• 3:39
  your story and so well, let's start with your story.
• 3:44
  Tell me a little bit about your background and your family.
• 3:47
  So I I actually was corporate through and through.
• 3:55
  I started in a consumer goods industry right out of college
• 4:00
  and was in sales and marketing, moving my way right up through
• 4:04
  the corporate ladder and ended up pregnant in Buffalo, NY of
• 4:10
  all places. And when my son was born, he was
• 4:15
  in the NICU. And I have to say, I'm ashamed
• 4:19
  to say it, but at that point in my life, faith was nowhere to be
• 4:25
  found. And I was, I often say I was
• 4:29
  worshipping myself. I, I was my own worst idol
• 4:33
  because I was so focused on my career and what a great career
• 4:39
  could bring me and provide for my family.
• 4:43
  I was, I was the end result of all of my work.
• 4:46
  And so when Freddie was born, he was huge.
• 4:50
  He was 11 lbs and landed in the NICU.
• 4:54
  I was AI cradle Catholic, grew up Catholic with a beautiful
• 4:59
  faith that my parents gave to me.
• 5:02
  A huge gift. And so in that moment of back
• 5:05
  and forth to the NICU and, and, and just reeling with the fact
• 5:09
  that this was something I couldn't control or buy my way
• 5:14
  out of, I found myself re engaging with my faith and
• 5:21
  building a new place in, in placing my trust in God.
• 5:28
  And so I packed it up. I literally when when Freddie
• 5:31
  came through his his own, his first little trial and he was
• 5:38
  home, I made a deal with God and in in my back and forth trips
• 5:43
  and my deal with God was if you bring my baby home, I will I
• 5:47
  will start going to church. And you know, I think that I
• 5:51
  think that I had it all wrong. We don't have a deal making
• 5:54
  deity. We don't.
• 5:56
  But I think that in that moment, he used that time and space and
• 6:01
  and my willingness to sit in church week after week after
• 6:06
  week till he just started moving my heart to this place of
• 6:10
  understanding that for me personally.
• 6:12
  And I, and I think that I'm not saying that women need to give
• 6:16
  up their careers to be home with their kids.
• 6:18
  I think that families have to make those choices in the best
• 6:22
  interest interest of their families.
• 6:25
  But what I do know is I needed to be home with my babies.
• 6:28
  And so it Freddie came home and I left my career.
• 6:36
  We moved to New York because it was split the difference between
• 6:41
  families and had nothing. We went from two really great
• 6:45
  incomes down to one in one of the most expensive counties in
• 6:49
  the country. And I think that in in
• 6:52
  retrospect, as much as I was not happy about it and, and really,
• 6:59
  even though it was my decision, struggled with what I had given
• 7:02
  up in those moments, Catherine was born and.
• 7:08
  I had how long after Freddie? Almost two years I had them and
• 7:14
  I had just six years of of just being totally immersed in them.
• 7:22
  Not a not at all a coincidence because there are none.
• 7:25
  But being able to just seep into seeing my children grow up and
• 7:31
  start school. Catherine was one of the first
• 7:34
  graders that was lost in the Sandy Hook shooting.
• 7:38
  And so at that point in my life, I just, it was my faith was
• 7:44
  growing. I had friendships evolving.
• 7:49
  Like when your kids start school, you, your network gets a
• 7:52
  little bit bigger. And in those days and actually
• 7:55
  years leading up to to the Sandy Hook tragedy, I had a friend who
• 8:02
  really sort of put this little spark into my faith that was
• 8:07
  already growing. I, I, I was going to church and
• 8:11
  fulfilling my promise to God of his bringing Freddie home.
• 8:15
  And I was teaching religious Ed and like I, I was a good Bible
• 8:20
  study girl. And so to have to have December
• 8:25
  14th happen and be had my child fall victim to a a mass shooting
• 8:34
  in an elementary school rattled rattled me.
• 8:38
  But I sat in the Firehouse the morning that Catherine died, I
• 8:41
  got a phone call from from a friend who was was so beautiful
• 8:46
  in her faith. I just we would walk together
• 8:50
  and she would share her faith and I was curious about how she
• 8:54
  had this this relationship with our Lord that was more than just
• 8:58
  a deal. I quid pro quo.
• 9:00
  If I perform then he will give and back and forth and my
• 9:06
  relationship because of her was growing and so she was the one
• 9:10
  that called me. Our daughters went to school
• 9:13
  together. Same.
• 9:14
  Grade. Same grade, same classroom.
• 9:16
  And how did she know something was wrong?
• 9:18
  We had there was a robocall that went out to all of the families.
• 9:22
  It's, you know, that standard practice unfortunately now in in
• 9:26
  schools that if there's something happening in, in the
• 9:30
  school or schools cancelled, you know, it was one of those
• 9:33
  typical you get the phone call and it's an automated message of
• 9:38
  help, please. You know, we're dismissing
• 9:39
  early. And this day it was, there's
• 9:42
  been an incident at Sandy Hook school.
• 9:44
  All schools are in lockdown. And she so Sandy called and she
• 9:49
  said, I think it's more than that.
• 9:50
  She had she had been at the gym and she had heard rumblings that
• 9:53
  there was something happening at the school.
• 9:55
  They weren't really sure what it was.
• 9:59
  The shooting happened around 9:00, and we were, she and I
• 10:03
  were there about 9:30. So it was fresh and raw, like
• 10:07
  they were still bringing kids down to the Firehouse.
• 10:11
  Sandy Hook School sat up on the hill.
• 10:14
  It sits up on a hilltop and they had taught the children to walk
• 10:18
  down this little tiny driveway in the event of an emergency to
• 10:23
  the Firehouse. And so when we arrived, we
• 10:26
  couldn't get beyond the Firehouse.
• 10:29
  They had lined up the vehicles like little matchbox cars.
• 10:33
  So we went into the Firehouse and I and I saw Freddie first.
• 10:36
  He was in 3rd grade, so he was right around the corner when it
• 10:39
  happened. How was he terrified?
• 10:43
  Absolutely terrified. He was standing.
• 10:46
  They had the teachers. How old was he?
• 10:48
  He was 8. The teachers were standing sort
• 10:52
  of in this big common area. They hadn't yet organized the
• 10:57
  response to this tragedy because they.
• 11:00
  I think that they were still thinking of what just happened
• 11:04
  here. Police officers that weren't
• 11:08
  even Newtown based were rushing to the scene.
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  Outside of Sandy Hook, there had never been an elementary school.
• 11:22
  There was Columbine, but that was years before.
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  There was never an elementary school tragedy of this
• 11:29
  magnitude. And so there was no playbook for
• 11:32
  how to respond. And so FBI and and state police,
• 11:37
  everybody just on this little tiny Firehouse.
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  And so when I got there, Freddie was standing there.
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  The teachers had all of that. They almost look like little
• 11:47
  chickens. They had all their babies sort
• 11:49
  of pulled into them. And the teachers knew what had
• 11:52
  happened. My understanding, I have not
• 11:57
  read the police reports. I did not participate in any of
• 12:01
  the investigations. The FBI would bring the families
• 12:05
  together once a week and say, here's where we're at and here,
• 12:08
  here's what we know. I went to 1 and I said, I'm out.
• 12:12
  I, I can't, I, I think that, I think that people need to find a
• 12:18
  place of resolve for themselves, for their hearts.
• 12:22
  And for some families, there was 26 victims.
• 12:27
  For some of those families, that path to resolve was to
• 12:31
  understand what happened that day.
• 12:36
  For me, that was not going to be helpful because I had I had just
• 12:40
  had six years of just innocence and wonder in awe that our
• 12:45
  babies bring us. And if I knew the intimate
• 12:48
  details of what happened in that classroom, I'd be wrecked.
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  I think. I think I would spend have spent
• 12:55
  all of my time thinking about those last, what they say were 3
• 12:59
  minutes instead of basking in the six years that I had.
• 13:03
  So I backed out. So all of these teachers, my
• 13:09
  understanding had heard what was on had was happening because
• 13:12
  someone had pushed a button on the intercom to alert the rest
• 13:16
  of the school so. In that classroom where the
• 13:18
  shooter was. Where the shooter was.
• 13:20
  And so the entire school heard the gunfire and it's an
• 13:26
  elementary school. It wasn't a huge school.
• 13:28
  So regardless of of APA system, you're going to hear it.
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  So you you can imagine all of these people had just heard what
• 13:40
  had happened. They had to get the kids out of
• 13:43
  the school. All three minutes were
• 13:45
  broadcast. The whole thing, the you could
• 13:49
  hear, you could hear my understanding, you could hear
• 13:53
  the gunshots, you could hear the response of, of the, the, the
• 13:59
  officers coming in. So you're hearing this play out
• 14:04
  and kids are kids are hearing this and teachers are full aware
• 14:10
  of what those noises are. And then you had to go through
• 14:15
  the process of getting the kids out of the school and trying,
• 14:20
  trying as best you can to keep their focus forward and not on
• 14:26
  the cat. The the catastrophic outcome of
• 14:31
  glass and just sheer devastation.
• 14:35
  It's an elementary school. It's tiny.
• 14:37
  There were, there were maybe I, I want to say probably 100 kids
• 14:41
  in the school. Did the little ones who left
• 14:44
  like your Freddie, all of the the killing that was in that
• 14:47
  classroom, It was in the classroom.
• 14:49
  So they heard it, but they didn't see it.
• 14:51
  My understanding I, I, I don't know, I know that that Adam
• 14:57
  Lanza, the shooter was in the hallway and so.
• 15:01
  Shooting into the classroom. Yeah, he had gone from a couple
• 15:05
  of he'd gone into Catherine's classroom.
• 15:07
  He had gone into another classroom.
• 15:10
  I think that he he was, he was killed in the hallway.
• 15:18
  Who knows? Who knows?
• 15:20
  It's a moment. I I believe it's just a moment
• 15:23
  where just evil just put it. It put its claws into that
• 15:28
  little school and into those little hearts and all the more
• 15:34
  reason why us as parents, especially the ones where our
• 15:38
  kids deal with trauma and tragedy, like we just pull them
• 15:43
  in close, pull them in so close that we can, we can combat that,
• 15:48
  that just that touch of evil that they experienced.
• 15:52
  So they're they're all in this in this school waiting for their
• 15:58
  parents. And I think the teachers were,
• 16:00
  were waiting on direction. Sure, they had had lockdown
• 16:04
  drills, but it was never to this extent.
• 16:07
  And I looked over, I saw Freddie and his eyes were, he's got
• 16:13
  these Big Blue pools of pools like, and they were, they were
• 16:18
  just, there was terror, terror in his eyes.
• 16:21
  He was eight. He shouldn't have to know what
• 16:26
  terror is. And yet he did.
• 16:28
  And and I think that he, I, I think that in that moment when
• 16:31
  he saw me, there was this, this realization that he was going to
• 16:37
  be fine. But he, his first words to me
• 16:39
  was I can't find Catherine because I it's innocent and it
• 16:45
  is something we just tell our like watch out for your Mama,
• 16:50
  watch out for your sister. And they take it seriously.
• 16:55
  And so he, he was with me. I had to, I had to literally
• 17:06
  check him out of the line. They when they got the when they
• 17:10
  got everything organized, they had lined up the classes in
• 17:13
  order. So they were kind of stair
• 17:15
  stepped in the Bay of the Firehouse.
• 17:17
  They've moved all the fire trucks out.
• 17:20
  And it was really apparent when everybody was, it was
• 17:24
  Catherine's entire class that was gone, and it was that class
• 17:29
  was missing. What age?
• 17:31
  665 and six she was in. She was in first grade.
• 17:35
  So they, the kids were, the parents were coming in and they
• 17:39
  were collecting their kids. And like just the panic and the,
• 17:43
  the sheer, it was almost like a numbness, like shock of like
• 17:51
  what just happened here. And once the kids were reunited
• 17:59
  with their families, they took us the families that lost, and
• 18:03
  we waited. For what?
• 18:07
  What were you reading for? Our children, we literally, we
• 18:11
  had clipboards. We had to fill out our child's
• 18:15
  name and their classroom and their teacher.
• 18:18
  What was that like? Because you got there, you saw
• 18:21
  Freddie probably looking for Catherine, and then they're
• 18:24
  handing you a clipboard. Numb.
• 18:28
  There's just, it's a numbness. You, you, you kind of go through
• 18:32
  the motions. I never thought, you know, it's
• 18:35
  interesting that the day that Catherine died, she cried every
• 18:39
  single day. Like she did not want to go to
• 18:42
  school. She was, she wanted to be home
• 18:44
  with Mama. And she would cry.
• 18:48
  She'd get on the bus. I'd look at her, I'd be like,
• 18:51
  oh, I can't. She didn't cry on December 14th.
• 18:56
  She she got on the bus. She was glowing like radiant.
• 19:03
  And my neighbor, I remember walking up, we lived on a, we
• 19:08
  live on a cul-de-sac and my neighbor, she sort of grabbed my
• 19:12
  arm. So kind of like moms do, the
• 19:13
  kids are off to school and the moms kibitzen and she grabbed my
• 19:18
  arm and we were walking back up to the house.
• 19:19
  And then she goes, oh, finally, like, oh, because it was
• 19:24
  heartbreaking for all of us to watch this little kid get on the
• 19:27
  butt and they're little. She seemed big at the time, but
• 19:30
  they're little. And so it just you start going
• 19:37
  into this sort of robotic action of what do I need to do next?
• 19:42
  What do I need to do next? So we sat in the Firehouse and,
• 19:46
  and I knew like I, I didn't, I didn't know then, but I knew in
• 19:53
  retrospect, I, I remember getting in the car when that,
• 19:56
  when, when my friend called and said, I think we got, I think
• 19:59
  we've got to go down to the Firehouse.
• 20:01
  I remember calling my house and talking to my dad and he had
• 20:05
  said to me, he goes, well, listen, because they had seen it
• 20:08
  on the news. It was breaking news all over
• 20:11
  the country. And you got to remember, we're,
• 20:14
  we're there, We're not watching the TV and we're, we're like,
• 20:18
  we're trying to get to our kids. And so my dad had said something
• 20:23
  just came through. I'm watching it on TV.
• 20:28
  Bring your driver's license. You're probably going to need
• 20:31
  your, your driver's license so that they can do whatever they
• 20:36
  need to do so that you can bring your kids home.
• 20:42
  So I remember grabbing my driver's license.
• 20:44
  I, I literally, I had on sweats, threw on my jeans and a
• 20:48
  sweatshirt, a baseball hat and was driving to the school and,
• 20:53
  and saying, Oh my God, no. I think my heart knew.
• 21:00
  I think, I think we know as parents, there's, there is a
• 21:04
  bond with our children that goes beyond any sort of reasoning.
• 21:08
  And so sitting in that Firehouse writing down Catherine's name
• 21:14
  and her teacher and her grade and sitting there and waiting,
• 21:19
  they would, they were giving us updates.
• 21:21
  What had happened was they were they were combing the school in
• 21:24
  the event that any of these little ones were hiding anywhere
• 21:28
  because they scattered like they, these kids, they just in
• 21:31
  the classrooms that were that were most affected.
• 21:36
  Some of the kids ran for their lives.
• 21:39
  And so they wanted to and some survived and some survived.
• 21:42
  Yep. And so they wanted to make sure
• 21:45
  that every single soul was accounted for.
• 21:50
  What I now know we were assigned state troopers.
• 21:53
  What I now know is that they were trying to identify so that
• 21:58
  they could then come and tell the families with a certainty of
• 22:05
  what had happened. So we sat in the Firehouse, I
• 22:10
  sat with my friend and we prayed.
• 22:14
  And I, I'm, I often remind people that we were built for
• 22:19
  fellowship. We were not made to walk this
• 22:22
  world by ourselves. Two by two on the ark, two by
• 22:27
  two Jesus. Jesus sent the disciples and his
• 22:30
  apostles out like 2 by two guys. And so had I not had this friend
• 22:37
  that I had walked with and I had grown in my faith with.
• 22:41
  I don't know if we if I would have sat in the Firehouse and
• 22:45
  prayed. I really believe that if, if you
• 22:49
  have someone that you can pray with in the seasons of joy, you
• 22:54
  have someone to pray with in the seasons of suffering, but don't
• 22:56
  go try to find someone in the season of suffering.
• 22:59
  Like that's not a great time because you're kind of empty.
• 23:02
  Not a good time to invest in French, invest in friendships.
• 23:07
  So Sandy and I sat in the Firehouse and we we prayed and
• 23:11
  prayed and around, I want to say 333 o'clock, the governor
• 23:17
  arrived and told us that if we were sitting in that room, that
• 23:23
  our loved ones, because there were some teachers involved and
• 23:26
  some administrators involved, if you're sitting in this room,
• 23:31
  your loved one was a fatality of this incident.
• 23:36
  And what a sacred and holy moment because that room was
• 23:44
  just where grief and devastation and everything that everybody
• 23:51
  had been carrying was gone. Like gone.
• 24:00
  I for me, it was like I literally thought to myself,
• 24:05
  fatality, A six year old's not a fatality.
• 24:09
  How does that happen? I had to go out and tell my son,
• 24:16
  your sister's gone. I remember he was sitting on a
• 24:20
  on a couch. They, they had emptied the room
• 24:22
  when they made this announcement.
• 24:23
  It was just for immediate family or caregivers.
• 24:31
  So they, my son was out in the, in sort of a common room.
• 24:38
  He was sitting with one of our priests who had come.
• 24:42
  And I remember going out into this room and thinking, now I
• 24:45
  have to tell him that his sister is gone.
• 24:47
  Like, and I remember saying to him, your sister, your sister
• 24:55
  died, but we're going to be fine.
• 25:00
  And just like getting up in his face and saying we are going to
• 25:04
  be fine and thinking we're going to be fine.
• 25:08
  We're we're going to be fine. So I kind of gathered him up and
• 25:13
  said, let's get out of here. Let's let's go home.
• 25:18
  We had, I was leaving, I had my, my key.
• 25:21
  Like literally when I tell you, you kind of go into autopilot.
• 25:24
  I was, I was going to drive him home and one of the one of the
• 25:28
  officers was like, you're not driving him.
• 25:32
  So someone drove me home with him.
• 25:35
  I remember walking in the house and it was, it was so quiet.
• 25:41
  Catherine's dad was in Europe at the time.
• 25:45
  He was coming home that weekend. Work trip A work trip So.
• 25:50
  What a time to be. It was and it was 10 days before
• 25:53
  Christmas. So I walk into the house and
• 25:57
  they were very excited about Christmas.
• 26:00
  That morning we were going to make gingerbread houses and the
• 26:03
  tree was up and just the amped up excitement of it's we're,
• 26:09
  we're in the T -, 10 day count of Christmas.
• 26:14
  And I remember just sweeping like finishing up the chores
• 26:18
  that I was doing before I went to school in the morning and
• 26:23
  thinking what am I supposed to do her, Her little shoes were by
• 26:29
  the front door. She loved animals.
• 26:32
  She loved them. And so she had these little
• 26:35
  place spaces set up on the floor that I, you know, all the sudden
• 26:40
  what was an annoyance because, you know, it's like stepping on
• 26:43
  a Lego, like clean up your toys. All the sudden, these little
• 26:47
  spaces that she was playing, you know, she'd lay on the floor and
• 26:50
  she'd move the horses and they became artifacts that I didn't
• 26:54
  like. Don't touch, don't touch.
• 26:58
  And somehow you just go day by day by day, and some days you go
• 27:06
  hour by hour by hour. And here we are 11 years later.
• 27:15
  What was it like? After you got that news, you
• 27:18
  said day by day, hour by hour, you're dealing with this
• 27:21
  impossible brief. I mean, I, I'm, I can't even.
• 27:26
  It's hard to imagine, you know, And it's a national and
• 27:30
  international news story. Yep.
• 27:33
  I had no idea. I was, I was fortunate enough
• 27:39
  that my brother was in emergency response.
• 27:45
  He was a Fire Chief. He Homeland Security.
• 27:48
  He just, he, he understood the magnitude of what had happened
• 27:54
  and he drove through the night and got to my house and
• 27:59
  literally said no TV, no phone. We were assigned a state
• 28:06
  trooper. It was the first time that that
• 28:09
  Connecticut had ever rallied in, in some sort of incident of this
• 28:14
  size. They had to think through how,
• 28:20
  how do we deliver information and get information from the
• 28:23
  families. And so we were each assigned a
• 28:25
  state trooper, fortunate enough that my husband at the time had
• 28:32
  worked for was working for a company that was so incredibly
• 28:36
  helpful and generous. They put security guards at the
• 28:39
  top of our up the top of our Rd. We were on the on the
• 28:43
  cul-de-sac. So they were at the top of the
• 28:46
  road. Our trooper was at the bottom of
• 28:48
  the road. Was this to keep out media?
• 28:50
  Media to keep out media. So the this is an unprecedented
• 28:55
  school shooting. How many kindergarteners and 1st
• 28:59
  graders? Are lost.
• 29:01
  So it was 21 first graders, 5 administrators and people were
• 29:09
  curious. They wanted answers.
• 29:12
  And I don't blame them. I don't I I don't blame them.
• 29:18
  I think my tendency now, unfortunately, we deal with this
• 29:24
  far more than we should. My tendency now is to understand
• 29:30
  that media is important. It's important that people
• 29:33
  understand what's happening and the stories behind what's
• 29:37
  happening. But there's a point of human
• 29:39
  dignity that we have to give people space to think about and
• 29:46
  understand what exactly is happening because it's forever
• 29:48
  changing. It's not.
• 29:51
  I heard someone tell me after I think it was the Uvalde
• 29:58
  shooting. Are you in touch with those
• 30:01
  families? No.
• 30:04
  Because I think that they need they, they know where I am.
• 30:09
  And so I heard someone say it was a fast moving news cycle.
• 30:16
  And I really, I struggle with that, that compassion and our
• 30:24
  ability in in as humans to have empathy and understand that how
• 30:32
  we're treating each other and how our kids are growing up is a
• 30:38
  fast moving news cycle. But I get it, like I lived it.
• 30:47
  So we we kind of had this really beautiful bubble around us.
• 30:52
  And the reason was that we needed to start processing our
• 30:58
  grief and doing those things that we as Catholics do to say
• 31:05
  goodbye to our dad. And I had to plan Catherine's
• 31:09
  funeral. And it was one of these things
• 31:11
  where that's what your priority is, not the media, not the
• 31:16
  interviews. Just stay.
• 31:19
  My brother was stay right here. Like, let's just stay right here
• 31:22
  and let's just get through today and the tasks that need to get
• 31:26
  done today. Meanwhile, that little bubble
• 31:29
  allowed Freddie some freedom to play in the front yard and have
• 31:33
  his friends. Like all of these kids were
• 31:36
  traumatized and they needed, they needed to realize that they
• 31:39
  were still 8 and they were the, the world was still kind in
• 31:45
  their world. The world is still an OK place
• 31:47
  to live. Like we're not going to, we're
• 31:49
  not going to bubble wrap and we're not going to fixate on
• 31:52
  this. We're going to, we're going to
• 31:53
  go through what we do. Because I think what I've
• 31:57
  realized is the reality of all of this is I'm not the only
• 32:00
  parent who's lost a child. I'm not the only parent that has
• 32:04
  lost a child in a school shooting.
• 32:07
  And so I think that I, I think that for Freddie especially to
• 32:15
  understand that suffering and grief hit our lives in profound
• 32:23
  ways, but life continues to go on and we must, as best we can,
• 32:29
  rally the rally the energy to go on.
• 32:31
  So he's playing in the front yard and I was planning a
• 32:35
  funeral for a six year old. I mean, and going to other
• 32:42
  funerals because those were Catherine's friends.
• 32:46
  And so as best we could, we would map out who was doing what
• 32:50
  wake and who when was what funeral.
• 32:52
  There were, there were at least 20 funerals that were happening
• 32:58
  in our town the week before Christmas.
• 33:02
  It was to say it was hard. To say that it was dark in
• 33:07
  Newtown is probably an understatement of all
• 33:11
  understatements. That week and you're having to
• 33:15
  plan a funeral completely out of the blue and for the like, for
• 33:21
  the for the nightmare, for the ultimate nightmare.
• 33:25
  What was your sort of spiritual and emotional sense?
• 33:28
  You mentioned you were numb when you got to your home and there
• 33:31
  was this numbness, but then you also had this maybe peace.
• 33:35
  What were what were you experiencing on that deep
• 33:39
  spiritual level? There was a peace that was so
• 33:44
  profound. And you know, I, I think that
• 33:48
  when we're void of what we want, what we, our expectations, what
• 33:55
  our prayers are, when we're void of that, because I was, I was
• 33:58
  void, void of it. I was just trying to get through
• 34:03
  what needed to get done, the peace and the awareness of God's
• 34:12
  presence. I have, I have rarely felt it
• 34:20
  since and I want it so bad. Like I, I spend hours in the
• 34:26
  morning way before dawn. I get up and have this, this
• 34:30
  quiet time when people say to me, I just don't have time to
• 34:33
  have that quiet and that peace. What, what a tragedy and that in
• 34:40
  and of itself, because that's where we encounter God.
• 34:43
  And I, I chase that all the time now because I had it.
• 34:47
  I had it in that week of just planning and and doing what was
• 34:54
  the next step. I wasn't thinking about what was
• 34:56
  going to happen in two weeks. I wasn't worried about did I
• 35:02
  have enough Christmas presents? Did what am I?
• 35:05
  My Christmas cards aren't out. Like none of it.
• 35:07
  All that all just it vanished. And I believe that's where God
• 35:12
  wants us. And I, I don't believe that he
• 35:15
  used tragedy to get us there, but I think that my tragedy got
• 35:18
  me there and I wanted to stay there.
• 35:21
  I've often said I would love to go back to that desert minus
• 35:26
  what got me there, because it was such a sacred space.
• 35:33
  I think people who maybe have suffered, but suffered with
• 35:37
  faith, maybe they can relate to what you're saying, but I think
• 35:41
  it's also mind blowing for others, right?
• 35:44
  To hear you, to hear, to hear you say to go.
• 35:48
  You wanted to be able to go back to that time for the death of
• 35:51
  your beloved 6 year old daughter, your beautiful little
• 35:54
  daughter, because you felt so close to God.
• 35:57
  So, so like right here, like almost this sense of I am here,
• 36:06
  I have you like you need not look, you need not seek like
• 36:11
  I've got you profound to the point where I don't know how
• 36:18
  anybody goes through life without knowing that they are
• 36:25
  loved by a God that wants peace for them.
• 36:32
  He has plans for us. He has hope for us.
• 36:35
  He has a future for us. Like to not just to sink your
• 36:41
  teeth into that and say, yes, that's what I want, please.
• 36:44
  Like there it was. So my faith in that period of
• 36:53
  time was so strong that as we moved farther away from
• 36:59
  Catherine's death and I started getting my footing and I could
• 37:03
  breathe again, I would find myself really kind of going,
• 37:08
  going off to not that not, and I'm not saying that this is bad,
• 37:12
  but I would, I would start thinking me again, like, Oh,
• 37:16
  what do I want? And I would quickly come back to
• 37:20
  this place of I, I want to be so close to our Lord that like my
• 37:25
  nose is in hit like show me where I'm supposed to go,
• 37:28
  because it's way too scary to think about.
• 37:31
  Like I'd start thinking about what's spring going to look
• 37:36
  like? And then I'd, I would get
• 37:38
  scared, like kind of panic, like, oh, wait a minute, what
• 37:42
  does spring look like? And I would I, I would literally
• 37:45
  be just OK God like come back, come back.
• 37:50
  It it just push and pull of really wrestling with my faith
• 37:56
  and where God stood in my life because I had sensed him as he
• 38:02
  wants to be and I wanted that all the time.
• 38:07
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• 38:09
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• 38:12
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• 38:17
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• 38:58
  So your speech tomorrow and you've written about this.
• 39:00
  You have a book on this is suffering and use the word
• 39:04
  earlier sacred suffering, which I think is such a it's so
• 39:11
  countercultural because we run from suffering.
• 39:14
  I think so much of our society is avoiding suffering.
• 39:19
  What do what do you mean by sacred?
• 39:22
  Why is suffering sacred? I think is suffering is
• 39:26
  something that is guaranteed to us.
• 39:28
  So my first, my first thought about suffering is why do we
• 39:35
  feel like it's a punishment when it's it's biblical, we will have
• 39:42
  trials in this world. So in that sense, I feel like
• 39:48
  trials give us an opportunity to do one of two things.
• 39:53
  We can lean in to our faith. We can trust that we we will be
• 40:01
  brought through to the other side, or we can fight against
• 40:07
  it. We can fight against our Lord.
• 40:10
  I believe that those trials are opportunities when we are just
• 40:13
  wiped clean of every expectation and when we're on our knees and
• 40:19
  we really don't have the way it's when.
• 40:22
  God moves mountains and we can see them.
• 40:26
  We can. And so for me, that moment of,
• 40:30
  of God just being able to work in our lives without us like
• 40:37
  pushing away like, Oh, I got this.
• 40:40
  I I really don't want to go down this road.
• 40:43
  When you're suffering, you kind of just go and in the sense that
• 40:51
  God is with us, it's a sacred time that we shouldn't minimize
• 40:59
  it. We shouldn't try to skirt around
• 41:02
  it. We we shouldn't try to avoid it.
• 41:07
  I think that, and I'm not, I'm not saying we should seek out
• 41:10
  opportunities for suffering. That's not at all what I'm
• 41:13
  saying. But when suffering does come
• 41:16
  into our lives at whatever, whatever way, shape or form, we
• 41:22
  need to embrace it and, and sit in that season, you know, I, I,
• 41:27
  I truly believe that we are given things in our lives and we
• 41:32
  are, we are experiencing, we experience things in our lives
• 41:37
  to grow us closer to our Lord so that the fullness of eternity is
• 41:42
  ours. And if we try to skirt around
• 41:45
  it, we're going to, we're going to miss the point.
• 41:49
  I think it's no wonder that all of those treasures that we hold
• 41:55
  in the highest of esteem are created by some sort of pressure
• 42:00
  or some sort of strain. I, I, I recently read that
• 42:06
  pearls are formed because irritants get into the shell of
• 42:12
  the oyster and the oyster produces this beautiful thin
• 42:18
  wrapping around to try to combat the irritant.
• 42:24
  And I think so often that when we, when we have these seasons
• 42:28
  of suffering that we're transformed through them.
• 42:33
  We grow closer to our Lord. And it's that thin layer that's
• 42:41
  created each and every time that we, when we arrive in eternity,
• 42:50
  this precious stone to offer to the Kingdom.
• 42:53
  It's no wonder when people talk about heaven, it is adorned with
• 42:58
  everything gold. It's forged through fire,
• 43:02
  diamonds, pressure, pressure, pressure in in the coal mines.
• 43:04
  And yet we we avoid that because we think that it's going to
• 43:10
  destroy us. It's not.
• 43:11
  It's going to make us stronger and better and more beautiful
• 43:14
  and more resilient and more able to say to our kids, you here's
• 43:19
  I'm living proof they're watching us all the time.
• 43:22
  I'm living proof that you can trust in our Lord in all
• 43:26
  circumstances, Every single one. Wow.
• 43:34
  Well, that's the faith, right? The Lord.
• 43:36
  The Lord. But what did he do?
• 43:38
  He was crucified. Yeah.
• 43:40
  He the ultimate example of the ultimate suffering that he
• 43:43
  endured. And then he says, what did he
• 43:46
  say? Pick up your cross.
• 43:48
  All roads lead to Calvary. All roads lead to Calvary.
• 43:53
  Were there other people that you knew at the time or you've known
• 43:56
  since that you're you're kind of, for want of a better phrase,
• 44:01
  embracing the suffering? You know, you're you're you're
• 44:03
  letting it happen. You're going through it.
• 44:07
  And were there others or have you observed other people who
• 44:10
  maybe fight it? Oh yeah.
• 44:12
  And how does, how did you see the difference in how you
• 44:16
  navigated the trial versus maybe others?
• 44:18
  Maybe they didn't have faith or they had a faith, but they were
• 44:20
  angry and they just didn't want to, they didn't want the
• 44:25
  suffering so that it was just rejection of the suffering.
• 44:29
  Anything to share about that? Yeah, I mean, I think when you
• 44:32
  have when you have 26 families, it's a great case study for for
• 44:38
  any mental health institution of here's the same tragedy and
• 44:44
  here's 26 different responses. The one thing I I know for
• 44:49
  certain is those people who had a faith, who believed that this
• 44:57
  tragedy could serve a higher purpose.
• 45:00
  And that is for our Lord, for his glory.
• 45:05
  There was a gentleness about them, just a gentleness, whereas
• 45:11
  the the people who and just pushed back against it.
• 45:19
  This is horrible to say, but there was an anger that just
• 45:25
  never subsided. And I think that's because when
• 45:29
  you have a Lord who knows you and, and knows that you know, he
• 45:41
  knows you. And by that I mean giving him
• 45:46
  everything you release it, you take what's, what's weighing you
• 45:53
  down. And all of those things that we
• 45:54
  are warned against by Saint Paul and Saint Peter, like don't do
• 46:00
  this by Jesus himself. Like here are the things I want
• 46:03
  you to ponder. They're good and they're
• 46:05
  righteous. When what you're pondering is
• 46:08
  your anger or what you're due or the way that you're going to
• 46:15
  justify the death, that's what you become.
• 46:24
  And so for me, what I, what I know to be true is I was kind of
• 46:29
  over on, on the camp of I'm going to, I'm just going to kind
• 46:32
  of sit on all this. And I didn't realize I was
• 46:34
  stewing on all of these sort of gross emotions.
• 46:41
  There was, there was one night that I just, I let God have it.
• 46:47
  I was furious and I didn't, I was, I was playing, playing the
• 46:51
  good Bible study girl like God is good and we're going to be
• 46:54
  fine. And I wasn't.
• 46:58
  I, it was, it was June of 2013. It was the last day of school.
• 47:03
  There was an author's tea that went horribly wrong in Freddy's
• 47:08
  class. He was reading a a piece that he
• 47:11
  had chosen. It's the end of the school year
• 47:13
  tradition, you know, pick a piece of work and and read it to
• 47:17
  the parents that had all assembled and we had all
• 47:19
  assembled. And here are these parents that
• 47:21
  me, myself included, saying thank God this year is over.
• 47:26
  Like it's summertime and summertime in my house was PJS
• 47:29
  and sleep and just let's go put our toes in the water and no, no
• 47:35
  rules, just us. And so I was so excited for it.
• 47:40
  And, and this little tea was keeping me away from that.
• 47:44
  Just Freddie and I needed to decompress.
• 47:47
  And so he chose a piece of work. And at the end of it, he looked
• 47:52
  at me, big eyes and I'm sitting in the chair and I'm kind of
• 47:57
  looking at him and I'm trying to gather where he's at.
• 48:02
  And he literally he like we're trying to like talk to each
• 48:08
  other like, and I gave him the just finish, like, come on,
• 48:13
  let's go. It was the autobiography part
• 48:17
  about the author. I have a mom and I have a dad.
• 48:20
  And he had written this piece before he before Catherine died
• 48:26
  and he stumbled over and a sister because in an 8 year old,
• 48:32
  in an 8 year old mind, it's do I have a sister?
• 48:35
  She's not here. She died.
• 48:36
  So do I still have a sister? And the whole, the whole place
• 48:39
  just sort of it was like the straw that broke the camel's
• 48:43
  back. Like because they all know who
• 48:46
  we are. They all know that Catherine was
• 48:49
  lost. We get through it.
• 48:52
  Freddie took the bus home. I drove home, I walk in the
• 48:56
  house and there were boxes. It was the last day of school.
• 48:59
  There were boxes on my dining room table and it said Catherine
• 49:03
  Hubbard, one of two, Catherine Hubbard, two of two.
• 49:06
  They were evidence boxes that they had collected and they were
• 49:10
  trying to to wrap things up and they had delivered what was left
• 49:16
  in the school of Catherine's that day, that day.
• 49:21
  And I was like, I, I can't, I couldn't even lift the box to
• 49:26
  see what I was assured that Catherine's things were they
• 49:31
  were handled with love and that they.
• 49:35
  And this was six months later. Six months later, they had at
• 49:38
  some point they had to they had to close down the investigation.
• 49:42
  They had to bring things. But Catherine, yeah, he hit her
• 49:45
  backpack on her hook. Like all of the things that just
• 49:49
  you don't plan for this. So you know, the reality of of
• 49:54
  all of it. Her little pencil case, her
• 49:57
  book, everything. There it is on my dining room
• 50:00
  table. And I had taken to going to the
• 50:02
  grocery store at night because I did not want people to see me.
• 50:06
  I didn't want people to ask me questions.
• 50:08
  I was tired of lying to people. They'd say, how are you doing?
• 50:11
  And I'd say, I'm fine, Freddie's going to be fine.
• 50:14
  How are you? And I wasn't fine.
• 50:16
  But that's what I don't want to get into it and I didn't want to
• 50:20
  talk about it. So there I am at the at the
• 50:22
  light going to the grocery store.
• 50:23
  It was 10:00 at night and it just bubbled up in me, this
• 50:29
  moment of just exhaustion. I had heard and seen too much
• 50:35
  that day and I started mumbling to God like this is ridiculous.
• 50:41
  Seriously, this is what I get. Was I not, was I not a faithful
• 50:48
  and and faithful and giving servant?
• 50:52
  I was teaching CCD for crying out loud.
• 50:55
  My kids, they, they knew you and I gave up a career for this.
• 51:01
  And this is my thanks. And like, it got to the point
• 51:06
  where I found myself screaming in my car at our Lord as the
• 51:12
  light kept circling through like red, green, yellow, red, green,
• 51:17
  yellow. And my just my litany of
• 51:19
  offenses that I had been offered just kept going and going and
• 51:24
  going. And at the very end of it, at
• 51:26
  this point, I'm weeping. The snots coming out of my nose.
• 51:30
  I'm just like mad yelling like it's that fight that you have
• 51:34
  with someone where it's like you've held everything and you
• 51:36
  were like, I'm just not going to bring it up.
• 51:38
  And it comes up and I screamed and you could have stopped this
• 51:43
  and you didn't. And at that moment, when it came
• 51:47
  out, I literally, I covered my face because I thought, now I've
• 51:53
  done it. I've done it like that's it,
• 51:56
  Game over. This beautiful piece that had
• 52:00
  surrounded me in the days after Catherine's death, It was gone.
• 52:05
  Like I just blew it. And what happened instead was
• 52:12
  this piece that I write. I'm a writer.
• 52:15
  I this piece that came into my life and into my car and, and
• 52:23
  just into my whole being. I'll never find the words to
• 52:26
  describe. I will never.
• 52:28
  It was, it was like that moment when your kids have a temper
• 52:32
  tantrum and they you're like, you're just taking it and you're
• 52:36
  taking it and you're taking it. And then they say what's really
• 52:39
  on their mind and you think, there it is.
• 52:44
  And it's like, it's out. It's it's brought out into the
• 52:47
  light and I think that's what happened in my car and I think
• 52:52
  that long way around the horn. But I think that the difference
• 52:55
  between people that have a true and real and living faith have
• 53:01
  the confidence to go to our Lord with everything and say, here,
• 53:09
  you take it because you're the one who knows how to deal with
• 53:12
  this gut because I can't. And it's not left to simmer and
• 53:15
  Stew and just create this mire and muck that we just can't
• 53:19
  carry around. It's a it's a going to I love
• 53:22
  confession. It's a going to say, OK, this is
• 53:25
  this is this mire that's in me and I'm going to kind of fixate
• 53:28
  it because I'm going to be shameful or thought unworthy
• 53:30
  here. You, you take it because you
• 53:33
  love me and you don't want me to carry it.
• 53:36
  The people that don't have that, I think to this day struggle
• 53:43
  with the death that they experienced in Sandy Hook of
• 53:47
  those of those 26. And I often see them trying to
• 53:53
  go down paths of finding that peace.
• 53:56
  And the real piece comes when you can let it go.
• 54:01
  There's, there's no amount of money, legislation or time that
• 54:09
  will bring our children back. And you know, I, I don't know if
• 54:16
  I want Catherine back here. She's where I'm going.
• 54:22
  I, it seems madding to be like, Oh no, come back here and live
• 54:27
  this, this life on, on earth. Yes, it's a beautiful life and
• 54:32
  we're surrounded by such beauty and, and God's creation, but
• 54:36
  this is not where we're meant to be.
• 54:38
  And so she's, she's where I'm going.
• 54:41
  You stay put and I'll get there, God, God willing, because
• 54:46
  nothing, there's no amount of money, there's no decision,
• 54:50
  there's no action that's going to bring her back.
• 54:54
  And to think that there's something that's because her
• 54:56
  coming back would be where I'd have where I have peace.
• 54:59
  That's where like, you know, when you when you've got both
• 55:01
  your children with you and you're like, OK, I'm good.
• 55:05
  That's not going to happen. So to think that that would
• 55:07
  happen would be insanity. Well, and we believe in you,
• 55:11
  believe in heaven, and it's all right there.
• 55:15
  Well, you know, I think. Good there.
• 55:17
  I I've often thought that if, if we're, if we're practicing our
• 55:23
  faith and we believe what we say, thy will be done on earth
• 55:31
  as it is in heaven and that we praise and worship and adore a
• 55:39
  Lord who sacrificed his life so that we could have heaven.
• 55:47
  Why don't why don't we believe in it?
• 55:51
  It just makes it makes no sense. It's horrible for us that are
• 55:56
  left. I don't want to minimize grief
• 56:00
  in the sense that it's, it's goodbyes that we don't want to
• 56:03
  offer, but it's temporary. And I think that in that
• 56:09
  temporariness, in the, in the sadness that's there, it needs
• 56:13
  to be honored. That's why sacred.
• 56:15
  That's why suffering sacred. It needs to be honored.
• 56:18
  But we also need to know that there's, there's joy and there's
• 56:21
  celebration and there's moments still to be had on this earth so
• 56:27
  that when we are all reunited someday we can all look back and
• 56:33
  really know that job well done. You honor you honored.
• 56:39
  I, I, I really believe that someday, God willing, in heaven,
• 56:49
  I really believe that there's this moment when we will hear
• 56:52
  from God. Well done my beautiful daughter.
• 56:56
  Well done my beautiful son. Now you can rest.
• 57:02
  Thank you so much to our sponsor Every Life.
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• 57:39
  Was there ever a time, Jennifer, where because you had lost in
• 57:43
  such a incredible an unbelievable loss?
• 57:47
  Yeah. Was there ever, did you ever
• 57:49
  struggle to enjoy, you know, Freddie, for example, or was
• 57:54
  there ever a struggle of, you know, you're kind of bracing
• 57:57
  yourself, you trusted God, you had this kind of deep level
• 58:00
  piece, but I don't know, there's sort of a sense of, well, the
• 58:03
  next shoe could drop. So I need to kind of be detached
• 58:07
  from enjoying life too much. Did was that ever a struggle?
• 58:13
  Yes, it was. And I think in, in, in the sense
• 58:18
  of honoring the traditions that were a part of our family,
• 58:24
  those, those moments where I just didn't, I struggled with
• 58:29
  putting up the Christmas tree. Do you do, do, do you do those,
• 58:36
  those things that are typically circled in red Sharpie on your
• 58:40
  calendar or not? Like are they worth it?
• 58:48
  And I, I think that in those moments, so we made, but we made
• 58:52
  school buses, school bus cakes for the first day of school.
• 58:56
  It was a riot. I'm not a Baker in any
• 58:59
  stretching it, but it was a Pinterest board and I was like,
• 59:02
  I can do this. So we would make a school bus
• 59:04
  cake first day of school, the kids would come home and here
• 59:06
  was this cake that was hardly delivering anything to the land
• 59:10
  of sweets. And it was a moment where we
• 59:13
  just celebrated at the start of a new school year and so on.
• 59:19
  Freddy's first day of school as he was in 3rd grade, so it was
• 59:22
  first day of 4th grade off he goes to school and it was hard.
• 59:26
  It was so hard because remember, I'm at home.
• 59:31
  And so our lives were just steeped in the traditions of
• 59:36
  these. There was a day that we went and
• 59:38
  got school supplies and Catherine loved to get school
• 59:41
  supplies. And so, you know, no Catherine
• 59:43
  for that. And the first day of school, I,
• 59:45
  I'm packing a lunch box and I'm used to having two on the
• 59:49
  counter. Now I've got 1 and I, I can't
• 59:53
  let my son see me crying because he needs to know that he can go
• 59:56
  to school and I'm going to be fine.
• 59:57
  And so it was just, it's hard, hard like to just muddle through
• 1:00:02
  life. And so I really debated if I was
• 1:00:05
  going to make this stupid cake and I decided to make it and it
• 1:00:11
  was horrible. I cried the whole time.
• 1:00:15
  It was the worst looking cake ever.
• 1:00:19
  My tendency. Could have been that's it.
• 1:00:25
  No more like get the kid home from school.
• 1:00:29
  I'm going to become a homeschooler parent and I'm
• 1:00:32
  just, I'm not going to do life the way that I knew I needed to
• 1:00:36
  do life because it was too dangerous and too hard.
• 1:00:40
  And I, by the grace of God, powered through that cake.
• 1:00:47
  And in walks Freddie from school.
• 1:00:50
  And I think there was a little bit of question mark on his
• 1:00:52
  mind. If I hadn't made the cake, there
• 1:00:54
  would have been no conversation. It would have been how was your
• 1:00:57
  day? And and yet he turned around and
• 1:01:01
  he kind of looked and he said, thank you, mom.
• 1:01:09
  Wow. I'm telling the cake was awful.
• 1:01:12
  It was horrible. But I think that in that, in in
• 1:01:17
  that moment, he was justified in living and I was justified in
• 1:01:29
  living as best I could in that moment did not need to be
• 1:01:32
  perfect. It did not need to be perfectly
• 1:01:34
  appointed. It just needed to be honored.
• 1:01:39
  I think that I have a very real sense of time and the fact is
• 1:01:49
  that I could have bubble wrapped Freddie and said Nope, but it's
• 1:01:56
  not my time. It's not my time to sort of
• 1:02:02
  curate. And so my position with him is
• 1:02:09
  know, know who's you are and know that you can trust your
• 1:02:14
  Lord for your plans, for your hope for your future.
• 1:02:18
  Because I'm trusting him in mine.
• 1:02:22
  And the fact of the matter is, is that Freddie could die any
• 1:02:25
  day. I watched him go through driving
• 1:02:27
  as a teenager. If I lost Freddie, I would be
• 1:02:33
  devastated, but I would be OK. I would be fine because I am
• 1:02:39
  fine. So did you.
• 1:02:41
  So it sounds like you thought homeschooling.
• 1:02:43
  You probably thought maybe should I leave Newtown?
• 1:02:46
  Like, Oh yeah. The whole thing.
• 1:02:48
  Completely changed the life and maybe, I don't know, maybe any
• 1:02:51
  of the families, you know, did that, but I would imagine it
• 1:02:54
  would be the temptation of just like, let's just totally switch.
• 1:02:57
  This get out of here. You can't keep doing this.
• 1:02:59
  Yep. But you didn't, no.
• 1:03:03
  No. And I think that I think that
• 1:03:04
  that is the, I think that's the tendency when we're suffering,
• 1:03:08
  like let me figure out how to just get out of this.
• 1:03:11
  We're quick to make decisions. My brother said to me, no
• 1:03:14
  decisions for a year, no decisions for a year, no job
• 1:03:18
  changes, no house changes, like just sit with this for a year.
• 1:03:22
  And it's wise advice. And in any situation, I think
• 1:03:26
  that we are so quick to get out of the situation.
• 1:03:30
  We are such an immediate society.
• 1:03:33
  We can push a button and have what we want today and it
• 1:03:37
  doesn't give us the time to say, is this really let's trust but
• 1:03:42
  verify? My heart and my gut is telling
• 1:03:45
  me to get out of Newtown, but Lord, is that really what you
• 1:03:48
  want me to do? Whereas I think that when you
• 1:03:51
  don't honor that suffering and you want so badly to skirt
• 1:03:54
  around it, you don't give time and space to our Lord to say,
• 1:04:00
  no, don't go. Because if, if, if I had done
• 1:04:05
  that, if I had said we're out life, everything is different.
• 1:04:11
  I would have missed out on on, on a lot of blessings and a lot
• 1:04:15
  of joy and a lot of moments where I just to this day will
• 1:04:19
  bow my head and say, Oh, thank you, Lord, I, I've been afforded
• 1:04:25
  much that I, I shouldn't have been.
• 1:04:29
  I we all suffer, we all have pains, we all have trials and
• 1:04:33
  yet I am afforded these beautiful opportunities.
• 1:04:37
  When I landed here I was like really me, who am I?
• 1:04:42
  I'm a mom from Newtown who lost a daughter does not entitle me
• 1:04:47
  to such beautiful and amazing opportunities.
• 1:04:52
  Well, you're an author. You started a a foundation and
• 1:04:58
  your speaker, obviously writer, you write for Magnificat.
• 1:05:00
  I mean, you do you, you, you're a mom, yes.
• 1:05:04
  And you also have all these beautiful ways that you share
• 1:05:07
  your lessons and stories of motherhood and loss.
• 1:05:10
  And what? Tell us a little bit about
• 1:05:13
  Catherine's Foundation. So the Catherine animal lover
• 1:05:17
  through through. I studied art in college and so
• 1:05:21
  this whole animal welfare world was new to me.
• 1:05:25
  Catherine never wanted to get into my crafting closet, which
• 1:05:28
  was which was always very hard for me to wrap my head around.
• 1:05:31
  But her passion was animals and she followed it through and
• 1:05:34
  through. And so when we wrote her
• 1:05:36
  obituary, the question becomes, in lieu of flowers, what will
• 1:05:40
  you do? And so in lieu of flowers, the
• 1:05:44
  decision was made that we would ask for people to donate to the
• 1:05:47
  Animal Control Center. Catherine loved to go to the
• 1:05:49
  pound love. It was like her event and so I
• 1:05:53
  wrote the obituary and I made a typographical error.
• 1:05:58
  I said it's a fill in the blank like the family in in lieu of
• 1:06:03
  flowers, the family requests donations to go to and I wrote
• 1:06:05
  the Animal Center of Newtown. What is that?
• 1:06:09
  It's a rescue. I had no idea what it was.
• 1:06:12
  It was a rescue Google search. Can someone give me the address
• 1:06:16
  for the for the animal control? Center the animal control.
• 1:06:19
  Center. So 1 is the pound and one is
• 1:06:21
  the. A private non or a nonprofit for
• 1:06:25
  women. They rescued cats.
• 1:06:27
  I didn't know who they were. They didn't know who I was.
• 1:06:29
  We. Honestly.
• 1:06:31
  They did. They did because I had no, I had
• 1:06:34
  no idea of the magnitude and reach of the tragedy.
• 1:06:40
  And then to put out there because they were doing BIOS of
• 1:06:44
  of the children. This beautiful little redhead
• 1:06:48
  with this big grin loves animals.
• 1:06:53
  She rallied her kindred spirits like nobody would have ever
• 1:06:58
  imagined. So donations started pouring
• 1:07:01
  into the animal center of Newtown.
• 1:07:04
  And these women were overwhelmed.
• 1:07:07
  They picked up the phone. They called us.
• 1:07:08
  They're like, you don't know us, We don't know you, but you are,
• 1:07:12
  we are very grateful that you sent.
• 1:07:14
  Don't. And I'm like, huh, no, we sent
• 1:07:17
  it to the Animal Control Center and well, we're the animal
• 1:07:21
  center. And we received over $125,000
• 1:07:24
  worth of donations in a very short period of time.
• 1:07:28
  I think their annual operating budget was maybe $700.00.
• 1:07:31
  Wow. They showed up at the house
• 1:07:35
  these beautiful women had there was no restrictions on the
• 1:07:38
  donations. It was just here you, here you
• 1:07:40
  go. They said, what do you want to
• 1:07:42
  do? I go, what do we want to do?
• 1:07:43
  I don't know, like, who are you and what do you do?
• 1:07:47
  They were like, we, we do spay neuter and and I'm like, what,
• 1:07:51
  what is that? Like, what do you what do you
• 1:07:54
  do? And they suggested a sanctuary
• 1:07:57
  and they described it as a place where children would see their
• 1:08:01
  own innate beauty in the animals that they encountered.
• 1:08:05
  And I said, I'm in it was Catherine, the way that they,
• 1:08:09
  their vision of just children come in nose to nose with the
• 1:08:15
  animals that we would care for and their ability for children
• 1:08:20
  there to give children the ability to see their own innate
• 1:08:23
  beauty in the eyes. And they, and it was, they had
• 1:08:26
  the way that they said it, as they were saying, children will
• 1:08:31
  see their, their own innate beauty in the eyes of a lamb or
• 1:08:34
  a deer or a dog. I could see Catherine in those
• 1:08:38
  little, those little spaces that she created and, and, and just,
• 1:08:43
  she wanted to care for them. She just wanted animals to know
• 1:08:47
  she loved them. And in this sweet, innocent way,
• 1:08:51
  we, we could honor that request of hers in a really big way.
• 1:08:56
  And so I didn't know what we were doing, where we were going,
• 1:08:59
  what even I had to Google a sanctuary.
• 1:09:03
  And it's in Newtown. It's in Newtown and children can
• 1:09:05
  go. We literally I think that in
• 1:09:09
  that yes of sure, that's what we'll do.
• 1:09:12
  I believe I honored God's path for, for me to get through this.
• 1:09:19
  So in the days and years, it's now been 11 years, I, my
• 1:09:23
  intention was to get this thing started, have it represent
• 1:09:26
  Catherine and move on with my life.
• 1:09:28
  It's been 11 years and I have yet to be able to move on.
• 1:09:32
  But it's this beautiful. It's this beautiful place where
• 1:09:36
  God just shows up over and over and over again.
• 1:09:38
  We were given 34 acres by the state of Connecticut.
• 1:09:42
  We've got, we have programming that has gotten into school
• 1:09:46
  districts. It's we, we've educated 142,000
• 1:09:49
  human beings on how to care for animals or the environment that
• 1:09:53
  they live in. The work that we do at the
• 1:09:55
  sanctuary is about ensuring that animals know human kindness.
• 1:10:02
  And so we provide education and stewardship opportunities and
• 1:10:06
  where possible, direct care to keep animals in homes and
• 1:10:10
  habitats. And the work that we're doing is
• 1:10:14
  translating into creating a more empathetic human being in such a
• 1:10:19
  quiet and gentle way. When you care for an animal or
• 1:10:23
  you understand a purpose that an animal serves, something's
• 1:10:27
  unlocked in you. And we're seeing kids that once
• 1:10:31
  they understand that, that they have an opportunity to protect
• 1:10:36
  an animal that might live in their own backyard, it becomes,
• 1:10:39
  it becomes tangible. They can do this.
• 1:10:42
  And when you care for something, it's really hard.
• 1:10:45
  It's really hard to be mean to something else.
• 1:10:48
  And so my hope is that as we continue our efforts in growing
• 1:10:53
  the sanctuary and expanding our programming and, and teaching
• 1:10:55
  people how to care for the environment and the animals that
• 1:11:00
  we share it with, that we create a a kinder and gentler world
• 1:11:04
  because God knows we need it. How can people find your
• 1:11:08
  writing, Jennifer? Well, I wrote a book, it's
• 1:11:11
  called Finding Sanctuary. It's on Amazon.
• 1:11:14
  I'm in Magnificat and I write for Alatea.
• 1:11:20
  I'm in a hit or miss for Alatea. It's whenever they want to
• 1:11:23
  publish me, but it's about two or three times a month.
• 1:11:26
  And you can learn about the sanctuary at cvhfoundation.org.
• 1:11:32
  Thank you. We'll link to your book and your
• 1:11:36
  writing in Magnificat is so. Beautiful.
• 1:11:38
  Thank you. Thank you for doing that.
• 1:11:41
  Thank you for coming on the podcast and sharing what you
• 1:11:43
  have to share. I know it's touched a lot of
• 1:11:45
  people and given peace and encouragement, no matter what
• 1:11:49
  happens, that the Lord is with us.
• 1:11:51
  I hope so. Thank you.
• 1:11:53
  Thank you, Jennifer. You're welcome.
• 1:11:56
  Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Lila Rose
• 1:11:58
  Podcast. Please check out Jennifer's work
• 1:12:01
  at her book. It's incredible stuff.
• 1:12:03
  And as always, don't forget to subscribe.
• 1:12:06
  That's how the podcast reaches more people.
• 1:12:08
  And if you haven't already, join the Locals community.
• 1:12:11
  It's free to join the community to
• 1:12:12
  justbeafriendofthepage@locals.com. And we love our paying
• 1:12:16
  subscribers because that helps us produce more podcasts and
• 1:12:19
  keeps the show going. So go to the link in the bio
• 1:12:21
  locals.com and we'll see you next time.