Sunday night in the middle of the night my oldest son started texting me, I kept hearing Luke Combs text tone over and over. You see I have one of his ringtones attached to my son’s number. Luke is my favorite country singer and my son reminds me of him. As much as I love hearing Luke’s songs, I wasn’t happy that my son was texting over and over so late. I grabbed my phone to see what was so important. Of course as soon as I read his texts, my heart broke. He was letting me know about the senseless murder of people at a Country Music fest, which Luke Combs actually happened to be performing at.I thought to myself once again Hate rears it’s despicable head. I started watching the news and looking on social media, another coward had decided to shoot innocent people. I will never understand how people can be so full of hate. 
I felt so helpless and full of hurt as I watched the footage. I couldn’t fall back asleep, so I laid in bed watching classic TV to try to calm down. I knew I was going to need to talk with Peyton when he woke up, about once again about how evil people can be. I feel like I am always having this discussion. We have talked with him about bullies and people who choose to deflect their issues rather than reflect, but mass shootings aren’t easy to explain. Peyton is very sweet and gentle and doesn’t understand why people are so mean.
I really don’t have words for this latest display of hateful violence. Daily I see people attacking each other on twitter because they disagree. I started calling it slanderous bullying. Peyton has asked me several times why people have to be so mean just because they don’t like who someone voted for. I’ve tried to explain to him that many times people take it as a personal attack against their views,rather than everyone is entitled to their own opinions. I really am on my last nerve with some of the offensive & slanderous “name tags” being put on people.
It’s a bit puzzling to me how people can sit on social media and name call, finger point and make “threats” then say they disdain bullies. This justification of anything goes because someone else said something you disagree with HAS TO STOP! My prayer and hope is that people look inside of themselves instead of deflect. We can’t control what others say & do, but we can control ourselves. If we choose to not play the game of verbal violence, maybe just maybe others will stop as well. Let’s all make a vow to tone down the rhetoric. While words are only words, they can lead to more.
I hope we can return good for evil, reflect not deflect, open our hearts and minds, disagree with respect and support causes not agendas! While this won’t stop evil, it’s a great start and we need to start somewhere because if we don’t I am not sure what will happen.