208 Miles

Last night, after an eight-hour kerfuffle to get Little A’s official picture taken as part of his visa application, we found ourselves tired, but relieved, and located in Covent Garden, a cultural centre of London, full of lovely restaurants, theatres, and shops. We sauntered across cobblestone streets, manoeuvering through the crowds, buying dinner at a booth on our way into one of the city’s largest train stations at rush hour.

A few short hours later, I was just falling asleep as 129 people were killed, shot to death in Paris, in a theatre, in restaurants, in the crowds. 208 miles away.

As an American, I’m used to my buffer. I’m used to that big Pond keeping me safe. 9/11 was horrific because it was a modern-day Pearl Harbor–it reminded us that our oceans can’t protect us from everything. But I wasn’t afraid to die then. Now, children and adolescents and young adults are killed in schools and on campuses in my home country almost daily, but I live in London, where I’m safer and my son is safer because people don’t have guns. Right? 208 miles stand between me and Paris’s 11th district--that’s less than the distance between Chicago and Detroit. Less than the distance between Los Angeles and Monterey, almost identical to the distance between New York and Washington, D.C.

208 miles is not very far.

So tonight, I sit here in the long dark of winter, my little man asleep in his bed, and I try to fight the shivers that threaten to course through my body with every exploding firework, because last week’s festivities around Guy Fawkes Night have given way to Diwali, a celebration of light, and the pyrotechnic displays continue. I wonder what kind of world my son is going to grow up in. I hear phrases like, “act of war” and “terrorists’ new strategy” and I am reminded that I am small and weak and broken and the future is uncertain. So many things are uncertain.

So I must place my faith wisely, and here is where it lies:

“God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” -1 John 4:16-18