The text arrived in the middle of an ordinary Monday morning: There is an active shooter in our building. Five words, and the floor of my life dropped out from under me.
It had been a beautiful spring morning on March 27, 2023. I had dropped my kids off—then in second and fourth grades—at the door of The Covenant School. They bounded inside like it was any other day, because it was any other day—right up until it wasn’t. I went home and started working. And then, that text.
I don’t remember deciding to leave the house. I just remember being in my car, barefoot, no shoes or purse, driving with the frantic precision of someone whose brain had already accepted the worst. I screamed into the windshield. I beat the steering wheel until my hands throbbed. I ran red lights. When I arrived, police cars and barricades had sealed off the entrance, and officers were directing frantic parents to a church down the road to await news.
Inside that church, surrounded by families waiting to learn if their children were alive, I lived through the worst hours of my life. The wails of those who discovered the unthinkable that morning still echo in my mind.
My children survived. Both had scraped faces and arms from frantically fleeing through the woods beside the school—terrified, not knowing if a shooter was waiting in the trees—until they reached a nearby fire station. That run through the woods still visits them in their nightmares, three years later.
There is a before and an after now. Before, ordinary life had an ease to it: a school assembly, a crowded gym, a pickup line. After, I reflexively scan for the exits of every room I enter. My children now carry a burden no child should bear: the knowledge that safety is not guaranteed, and that the adults who love them cannot promise it without taking real action.
I love our country, I respect the Second Amendment, and like millions of American parents, I am utterly exhausted by a culture war that treats our kids’ physical safety as a political football. This is why I joined March Fourth, a nonpartisan movement of parents and supporters who believe faith demands action. Prayer guides our hearts, but God also gave us hands to build safer communities and protect our children. Parenting is never a passive act; you do not raise a child simply by hoping for the best. You act.
Right now, taking action means rallying behind the Safer Schools Act (H.R. 6683), introduced by Republican Congressman Roger Williams of Texas and Democratic Congressman Jared Moskowitz of Florida. It is about as far from a political culture-war bill as it gets. The legislation provides targeted support for public schools to conduct security risk assessments and helps fund the physical upgrades those audits recommend, including controlled access points, camera systems, perimeter hardening, and direct-to-police emergency alarms.
As our kids head back to school, I ask you, whatever your political background, to stand with March Fourth. Call your representatives and urge them to support and pass the Safer Schools Act. We owe our children a world where walking through the front doors of their school is just an ordinary Monday, and nothing more.
