If you never worked as a full time substitute teacher or know how it works...it is a pretty daunting position. You never know from one day to next where you will be placed and the students never get used to you or vice versa. There is no routine...which is pretty much a necessity in a school setting. On top of that she was not being paid a full salary so she worked two other part time jobs to make ends meet...living with her family...again in the hopes that she would be able to keep herself available for that dream job in a classroom of her own. So, Lauren must have really wanted to be in a classroom to place herself in this position.
SO, going to that morning in December...imagine that Lauren was settling herself into a classroom of children who were not used to her methods...trying to settle a group of fifteen six-year-olds who were excited by all the talk of holidays and gingerbread houses that they were to make that morning. I can only imagine as a teacher how challenging that must have been for her and then she finds herself facing the unthinkable!
Lauren died protecting a classroom full of children...only one would survive. As I think about this as I blog...I stop...and pray for the teacher Lauren was substituting for...the difficulty of learning about this tragedy from afar...there are missing details...ones we will probably never know. How the regular teacher must have felt when she heard the news!
Once again, I think about the question that is often on people's minds when something like this happens...Where was God in this? HE knew...in His master plan that this was going to happen....Yet. He gives humanity free will...He gives us paths and we choose...How are we to know that the decisions we make (or don't make) will be the ones that keep us safe from harm? What life decisions have we made and will not know how those decisions played a part in how we lived? Or how we will die?
I ventured off too far..I am trying to remember Lauren for her life and not her death. Lauren was loved by so many...said to be a miracle from the start...as her mother wanted a child so much and had such difficulty in motherhood. She loved music, dance, and theater. Lauren was known for her exuberance, her love of family and of children, her friendliness, kindness and loyalty, and her ever-present smile.
An interesting thing happened while making her quilt. We designed the quilts weeks ago...one of the first...and we cut out the blocks last night to be sewn together today. We had been trying to modify the quilt designs to our new method but when we saw Lauren's design we decided we wanted to stay with it as much as possible. For this technique to work there needs to be seven rows of five blocks; however this design only had six rows, so I decided we cold just quilt it in the traditional way. Then we sewed the strips to the batting and backing...even though the strips were cut to fit according to design (or so we thought!), when we were done...the quilt top was too small for the backing...by one strip! I don't know if I am making sense to you as you read...but let me say that this was a big surprise!
To make it even more surprising...I looked to see if we would have enough scraps (as I had already used most of the material for the design we created) and there were just enough pieces to add the seventh row and the correct pieces to make it look like it was supposed to be a part of the design. I am posting a picture of the completed quilt...the top row is the add on...I suppose a quilter would say that it is off balance but I think it still works. And, we cannot help but think it needed to be this way.
Where is God in this tragedy? I think He is here guiding us as we make these memorial quilts and with all the others who send their love and support for the families of those lost. And I think He was there with Lauren and the others on that morning in December. Praise God!
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