"Their hearts are easy to find."

Thursday came and went last week. It was June 23rd. And for the first time in over two months, I didn't write anything on this blog. My reason? I was so immersed in my family's crazy acclimation to the first week of summer that the days of the week didn't matter. I'd forgotten it was Thursday (or if I knew, I'd forgotten what Thursday meant). It was all-out beautiful, messy survival mode for Team McDonough.

Yet now, as the dust has settled into some semblance of a routine, I am left reflecting on the past three weeks, and how much I've learned.

Here's a start.

The attack at Pulse, the nightclub in Orlando, happened 18 days ago.

My kids started swimming lessons four days ago.

The attack at Ataturk Airport in Istanbul took place two days ago.

93 human beings were killed.
292 human beings remain injured.

Innumerable lives have been torn torn apart.
Futures lost.
Dreams disbanded.
Love, buried in an aching tomb of pain
and chased by a cocktail of asphyxiation,
infused with
anger,
confusion,
forgiveness,
disbelief,
a litany of other emotions.
And grief.

And there was unity.

And there was division.

After the attack in Istanbul, I wrote this poem on a piece of paper. I felt like we have had our hearts broken so many times that there's got to be some cost...some collective destruction...some adverse impact.

On our hearts.

Oh, and in the midst of all this, my kids are learning to swim.

I watch them in the water.

They are learning to trust that their little, slippery, shivering bodies genuinely want to float.
That they are filled with air, and that if they just release themselves from fear--if they trust their teachers--trust their buoyancy, that they can lean back and literally lay on top of the water!

When I watch my daughter swim away from me, a look of simultaneous horror and jubilation spreading through her cheeks...I feel so much love.

When I hold my children in the water I feel their hearts beating--thundering--in their little chests. They are so scared, and so excited...but most of all, they are just so alive.

I re-read my poem.
I am hopeful for my children, and I am sad at the world they are inheriting. But their hearts are so big. They hear about dogs who are abandoned, and their little faces contort in shock and disbelief because they don't understand how someone could leave something alone in the world.

This week as my internet browser toggles between horror and hopelessness, between sit-ins and sinners, between unity and division, my children are teaching me that we need to seek out those moments that make us alive. We need to hear our hearts beat. We need to remember that they won't beat forever, but they beat today. And they are muscles that need us to keep loving so we don't end up with hollow shells that echo beneath our ribs.

Just as my children's bodies want to float, our hearts want to love.

A friend e-mailed me after Istanbul. The message ended like this:

"Enough from me, now go and enjoy your babies...their hearts are easy to find."

May we someday, in the midst of a painful world that is struggling--and far too often failing--to love us back, say the same about our own hearts.