On Mother's Day, to all those visiting here: welcome. We know how this day can hurt. We're "there" ourselves. We're praying for you.

The desert is not a dwelling place; it is only a path, a road on which one comes to know the merciful love of God. Everyone who seeks God must pass along it, since the experience of the desert is closely related to the deepening of our faith in His mercy. (GOF:pg131)

I was asked to give a talk at one of these post-abortion healing retreats recently, and this is what I said...

When my brother died unexpectedly at the age of 25, many people came to the wake. Though I was destroyed by my beloved brother's death, I was holding it together until the mother of a high school friend came up to hug me and whispered in my ear, "I lost my brother when we were both very young too. We're praying for you all." I wept openly in relief on her shoulder.

I held a handmade sign at the 2003 March For Life that read, "24 years later my choice hurts me still." This was before there were hundreds of "I Regret My Abortion" signs. Two women came up to me tentatively and, in utter amazement asked, "Is that your story?" I said yes. They broke into tears and gushed, "Ours too! Oh thank you!" and we hugged.

When someone has suffered through precisely what we've suffered, no matter whether it was our own choice or not, our hearts swell with relief, gratitude and comfort. This, to me, is the best kind of consoling: BeenThere, DoneThat.

That is what God offers us all. After all, He knows how it feels to lose a child, too.

And it's why these retreats are so very needed and it's good that you're all here.

I was 20 when I had my abortion. My daughter would have turned 34 later this year, probably already having made me a grandma by now.

These words stop me in my tracks. I still find it surreal and impossible that it's my life I'm talking about.

But when the veneer first began to crack, in 1999, 14 years ago, I couldn't even utter the word abortion without being unable to finish the sentence. I recall trying to talk about it to the one person I could trust, a priest friend, and being unable to speak out of sheer anguish and shame. He was the youth group director, and my then-9-year-old son adored him, couldn't wait to be old enough for youth group and we'd choose him to be his Confirmation sponsor 6 years later.

Why, out of the supposed blue though, did my veneer start to crack? I'm not sure. I'd started attending scripture study a few years before, and had become the then-youngest lector at my church, and God spoke to me through His Word in those experiences very often in eye-opening ways. But I never truly could bring myself to face the abortion. It never clawed at my insides to get out, it slept quietly. I know I couldn't ever have addressed it while my mom was alive. It just wasn't an option. My mom loved me and was the most devout Catholic I knew, and I long ago decided it would kill her to know. She passed of ovarian cancer in 1985, four years before my son was born. Nine months before my brother died.

I'd thought that that was the worst desert possible, for me. But I was wrong about that too.

I really think, knowing my obstinate self, that perhaps I was really so intent on controlling my own destiny, I just got so good at stuffing it down inside, for 20 long years.

The reason I started to face it came from outside myself. I think it was the only way it could. I'd felt compelled to address my shame, after 20 years, strangely, because I'd met someone who projected a similar shame, a similar vulnerability, and wanted him to know that even highly-put-together-looking people have shameful secrets they're terrified will get out and destroy them. I know now that God put that person in my life as a kind of "project:" to help him deal with, and heal over, his shame (which I believed was abuse at the hands of his own father), by helping myself deal with my own, and then, most importantly, to help even one woman deal with, and heal over, her own sad history of abortion.

Even still, it took me 4 years of waffling to even go on a retreat like this one. I talked with the retreat director on and off for a year before actually going. I was terrified. I truly thought my life would be a wasteland if I let this secret out.

I thought surely my business career would be ruined if colleagues knew my secret. Just when it had really started to be wildly successful. The Fortune 500 world wouldn't understand or accept my remorse.

Fellow parishioner friends no doubt would shun me: "How can she proclaim the Word up on the altar? How can she be a Youth Group volunteer? What a hypocrite!" That was my immediate social circle. I thought I would lose it altogether.

I feared my son would be shaken and horrified. To know that he could have had a sister, or worse, to fear that, had she been born, HE might never have been? And if his classmates heard from their parents, "Hey, isn’t that the mother of your classmate?" I'd have to deal with that too. It took me three years to tell him about it; he was only 12 at the time, and I still hadn't committed to going on the retreat yet!

My father was still alive, and would probably disown me and not only never speak to me, but tell the rest of the family who'd say, "See? We knew she was evil." He was very critical of anyone not 1,000% Catholic, and had long been a "picketer" outside his town's abortion clinic.

My high school friends, my best friends in the whole world, I feared would not be close to me anymore. There had been rumors, when we were in high school, of "other" girls getting pregnant and having their abortions, in our Catholic school. WE were the "good girls", the National Honor Society, drama club, AP-course taking girls, we would never have had abortions, ever. I feared I'd lose my best friends.

It truly was a desert I thought I was about to enter and live in the rest of my life. I backtracked, for over 3 years.

It strikes me that, for the Israelites wandering 40 years in the desert, it not only seemed a lifetime, but for some, perhaps all, it really was.

But something kept at me. Somehow I just became unable to stay quiet at some point. I wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper, March of 2002, spilling the beans, saying, "I still cannot stop asking myself one question, 'If it will make a difference, how can I not write? If my story can help even one woman decide to have her baby and keep it or give the child to a couple dying to adopt, then it will all be worth it.'"

Little did I realize then, there was much more to the reason I started to move out of the desert.

The retreat in late 2002 was painful, but in the same way it was painful when my friend's mom told me she too had lost her brother. I wept in anguish and grief and sorrow that weekend, but in grateful healing. Others had BeenThere,DoneThat, and God was taking me back. And that was all that really mattered, because I could only finally forgive myself, if God could forgive me.

After that, it sounds like a cliche, but I was a changed person. A humble, but purposeful, unafraid person, and here's why: I soon started "sidewalk counseling" at the abortion center nearest me, thinking that was going to be my only contribution. Within one month of that, all of the following happened: I was asked to tell my story on a local TV show about post-abortive stress disorder and the healing I gained from the retreat. The local paper interviewed me twice for two different articles, and I was recruited to become Connecticut State Leader for SILENT NO MORE. I took the Amtrak “LifeTrain” to that year's March for Life with twenty-five fellow parishioners and 500 more from our Diocese. And I was invited to write a column for Catholic Exchange.com which lasted 3 years.

One year after that month, I was invited by a total stranger I've never met on the other side of the country to be co-blogger at After Abortion blog, which has since received almost 600,000 visitors and even in hiatus, receives a couple hundred visitors weekly who average an hour's stay each time, reading, usually folks googling for help with searches like "damage after abortion", "depression after abortion", "husband doesn't understand after abortion."

THIS is why I am unafraid: I didn't seek ANY of this out. I was content to be quiet and unnoticed by the world. I would have preferred it. But God clearly dumped all this in my lap and said, "See what I've been waiting for you to get busy on?"

He was patient with me, but wanted me to do all this. There was no doubt in my mind. And he made my son understanding and forgiving of my shame too, so it all made me able to be unafraid.

So I had literally no choice but to move on and move quickly, to do all that God was asking of me. I was grateful and humbled by it all. I could really do something to make up for what I'd done, even just a little, to make some good come out of something so bad.

It was God's grace and his mercy to me that both allowed me and noodged me to do all that. But don't think anyone else has to do what I did, going as public as I did. He asks all different things of each of us, in our healing. Most folks just quietly pass on His grace and healing to those around them, like family and friends, through their own goodness and recovery.

Since my healing road out of the desert began, I am calmer, I sleep very well, I complain less, I live with a lot less, and am just more trusting, even though soon after I started sidewalk counseling and the online column, I became seriously ill for several years. I clearly know now that I was being attacked, by satan. Not a single doubt in my mind that satan was livid at all I was being asked to do. I truly again felt like Job, who was deprived of all, including his health, as a test by satan of his faith. So... I basically told satan to Flip off!

I've thankfully recovered from it mostly, but my illness prevented me from working and forced me to close my business, tap the IRA and all savings, sell my home and some prized possessions like my Baby Grand piano and my pool table against my wishes, almost be homeless, then live at a friend's house for nine months while I got a part-time retail, bottom-of-the-barrel job just to have some money coming in, eventually go full-time, manage to qualify for a low-rent apartment, keep my only possession, a 200,000 mile car, on the road (hopefully for another 100,000 miles), live the past four years without health insurance, and still be living paycheck-to-paycheck without any savings for retirement or another car, so I'll have to work till I die, most likely.

In prior years, this would have me contorted into sleep-deprived KNOTS with worry. But I'm convinced now that, had I not been ill those many years, I wouldn't have had the time to blog, to do all the stuff God asked me to do. I got ill, I think, so that I was forced to take my eye off working for a living and really devote my time to do what God was thrusting upon me.

And through all of this, God has not abandoned me.

When I was just $20 short of being able to pay the rent a couple years ago, and that was after counting up $10 worth of pennies, nickels and dimes in my change tins, I scoured my place looking for that lost $20—you know, the one you stashed and forgot in a jacket pocket or sneaker sole that you always find a year later? I scoured every coat I had... nothing. I finally asked St. Anthony for help—to help me find that $20—then I looked in my old leather business briefcase, unused for NINE YEARS, and in the very last zipper pocket, I found not one, but FIVE $20 bills!

To get my son's car on the road, donated from a relative, we needed an extra $1,000 we just didn't have, to repair it and insure it. I'd been throwing out old papers, found a stash from two years before and was about to toss it, when something made me sift through it. I found a money order for $1,000 I'd made out to my son but never gave him. NO expiration date on it, and the bank said it was good and honored it.

...

The bottom line is: God is so good... He won't abandon any of us. So though I have no way to survive if and when I ever can't work again, I just am not thinking about it. I'm trusting Him to look after me, just as He has been doing, all these years. I'm doing what He asks of me, and I'm doing all that I can do for myself to survive as I should, and the rest is in God's capable hands.

The desert I've already been through, makes anything else pale in comparison.

God Bless Pope Francis....and Pope Benedict

"The appearance of a new pope is a noisy affair. The great bells of St. Peter’s follow the white smoke; the cheering crowd of tens of thousands overflow the great square; the ceremonial bands play their anthems and fanfares. In the midst of all that, the election of Pope Francis was marked by three great silences.

"The first silence, rather brief, immediately followed the “habemus papam” announcement itself. The people were temporarily stunned — who was this Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires? His name had not been mentioned by the many who made predictions — including this writer. At 76, it was thought that his time had passed, even though he had been the principal alternative to Joseph Ratzinger in the 2005 conclave. The silence also acknowledged the historic weight of the moment: The first Latin American pope, the first Pope Francis; and the first Jesuit pope.

"The second silence was from the new pope himself, who emerged on the balcony of St. Peter’s, standing ramrod straight, not saying a word, allowing himself only a simple wave. There were no expansive papal gestures. His long silence before addressing the fevered cheering masses indicated that he too, perhaps, was surprised at an outcome he may have expected in 2005, but not now.

"The third silence was the most dramatic, and will soon be fixed in the imagination as the signature moment of his election. Before giving the people the traditional blessing, he asked them to pray that God might bless the new pope first. Then he bowed low as a great silent prayer enveloped the previously ecstatic square. He stood still and spoke gently, but that gesture was a grand announcement that here was a humble man who trusted in the power of prayer.

"Before that, he led the gathered pilgrims in praying the Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be prayers for his predecessor Benedict XVI. It was a moment of such Catholic simplicity that it left me and my colleagues momentarily out of sorts in the broadcast booth. I lead first-graders in those prayers as a country pastor in Wolfe Island, Ont. That a pope would do so on the balcony was both reassuring and surprising in its simplicity."

~ Father Raymond J. Souza, National Post

Disregard the mainstream media's swelled-head, presumed-superiority and uninformed "knowledge" about the real Catholic faith. Ignore the malarkey about how the Church can now "revive" its original commitment to helping the poor. Are they kidding me?? Talk about rewriting history and creating your own untrue reality.

Did you know that the Catholic Church is SECOND ONLY TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT in how much charity (i.e., physical, monetary and service-based HELP) it gives and has always given to those less fortunate than you or me?

Do you have any idea what deep trouble the federal government would be in if the Catholic Church closed all its hospitals, stopped all its charities, dried up the well and filled it with cement in this country alone? There is no amount of taking the "fair share" of any American, no amount of taxation of every single middle-class worker for every year from here until eternity that could make up for all that the Catholic Church and its faithful do for the poor and disadvantaged in this country, never mind worldwide.

The mainstream media is ignorant of that. As of most truths Catholic. And so, apparently, are the "more than half" of supposed U.S. Catholics. Tim Russert is rolling in his grave over the audacity of U.S. Catholics, including even his son Luke, in lecturing the new Pope about what the Catholic Church "should do."

"Get with the times!" "Get with the Program!" "Get out of the dark ages!" We've heard it all since even before JFK who, with his cheating on Jackie, certainly was no faithful Catholic.

Don't believe me that it's been going on that long?

1953: Yale professor Peter Viereck, in his book Shame and Glory of the Intellectuals, chapter 3, p. 45: "Catholic baiting is the anti-Semitism of the liberals."

The funny part is, those who upbraid the Catholic Church and will always insist on lecturing the Catholic Church or putting forth lies about this faith, be they CINOs (Catholics in Name Only) or not, have no clue how infinitesimal and insignificant they truly are, and all of us are, for that matter.

Allow me to speak to you for just one minute, if you are one of those saying such things, even in your own mind:

You? You---are telling GOD---how to build and run a Church? A church, that while it has made mistakes and I have personally contacted each and every bishop and cardinal in this country over some of the worst ones, it is still a church that's given so much to so many people, especially the poor, since its inception over two-thousand years ago? YOU---are telling GOD---why His inspired direction of His people, His chosen Cardinals, to select a Pope is somehow, even in the least way, flawed? You are surprised at the beliefs of this new Pope, and disappointed?? Really? Where have you been?

It would make me laugh out loud if it didn't make me cry.

In our galaxy alone, the Milky Way, there are 10 to 20 billion Sun-like G stars and 150 billion M-dwarf stars, the latter of which have M-dwarf planets, a huge number of which are just the right size and inside the stars' livable zones so as to be "potentially life-friendly planets."

Have you read about how, only just now, the Voyager I and II are just now reaching the fringes of our solar system and may soon pass through into interstellar space after riding the magnetic highway?

Did you also read about the discovery of "the largest known structure in the universe" which has 73 quasars (thus probably also 73 galaxies) and is "1.6 billion light-years in most directions, though it is 4 billion light-years across at its widest point."

Our galaxy, the Milky Way is 100,000 light-years wide and has about 200 billion stars, overall.

To give some perspective, Earth's solar system, inside the Milky Way, is about 0.0032 light years wide.

Our entire solar system, not the Milky Way galaxy and not just our planet Earth, is 32-ten-thousandths of one light-year wide.

That means our entire solar system, not just Earth, is A MERE EIGHT TEN-BILLIONTHS THE SIZE OF THIS LARGE QUASAR GROUP STRUCTURE.

And our best efforts haven't even gotten a spaceship outside our own solar system, never mind our own galaxy, yet?

And they're closer than ever to finding the so-called subatomic "God particle," the Higgs boson, which excites mankind (or at least physicists) because "Without the Higgs boson to explain why electrons and matter have mass, Carroll said, "there would be no atoms, there would be no chemistry, there would be no life, so that's kind of important."

The next question they'll have to answer though: how did the Higgs boson come into existence? Somehow it too had to start somewhere, somehow.

Ever stop to think there's a reason it's called "the God particle"? Ever stop to think that "a Creator" created the Higgs boson too? Why is that any more difficult to fathom than a Creator creating human beings in all our complexity?

You think that you could create a human finger, with its capillaries, hair follicles, nails, bones, ligaments, nerves? Has any human being yet, in all our supposed glory, replicated an exact human finger, never mind a body, other than through procreation, joining a sperm cell and an egg cell, which still takes a man and a woman and wasn't a process created by man in the first place?

And you think that all that complexity, massive and miniscule size and existence just happened--on its own, by mere chance? You honestly think that all that complexity, of that mind-boggling scale, and the nuances and possibilities in all those hundreds of thousands of quasar-galaxies with each of their 200 billion stars, you think this all just---POOF!---happened on its own, in one "big bang" or even several, without cause, without origin? Without a PLAN?

And you think that YOU are significant in telling the Catholic faith how to be the Catholic faith, or what kind of Pope to choose?

"How precious to me are your designs, O God;

how vast the sum of them!

Were I to count them, they would outnumber the sands..."

What kind of Pope will Jorge Mario Bergoglio be? I'm thrilled, as I was when Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger and Karol Józef Wojtyła before him were chosen.

I'm thrilled because of his major first (first from the Americas), but most of all because of his simpleness, his humility:

"...he sent two clear signals last night, unmistakable to papal Rome. He appeared in the simple papal cassock, declining to wear the accompanying red shoulder cape that his predecessors have always worn...

Additionally, he declined to use the term “pope emeritus” for Benedict, referring to him instead as “bishop emeritus,” thereby taking sides in a dispute within the Vatican about what Benedict should be called. Small things? Yes, but deliberate choices from an experienced pastor."

God chose a PASTOR, this time, like Pope John Paul II. He chose a simple, but experienced shepherd.

I pray for our new Pope, and for all those of us who truly believe we are the sheep, and especially those who are too proud, too modern, too "with the times," too self-important, to ever allow ourselves to be sheep.

More on that analogy, another time...

'twas 11 days before Christmas around 9:38 when 20 beautiful children stormed thru Heaven's gate. Their smiles were contagious, their laughter filled the air. They could hardly believe all the beauty they saw there. They were filled with such joy, they didn't know what to say. They remembered nothing of what had happened earlier that day. "Where are we?" Asked one little girl as quiet as a mouse. "This is heaven" exclaimed one little boy. "we're spending Christmas at God's house." When what to their wondering eyes did appear, but Jesus their savior, the children gathered near. He looked at them and smiled, and they smiled just the same. Then he opened his arms and called them by name. And in that moment was joy, that only heaven can bring, those children all flew into the arms of their King as they lingered in the warmth of His embrace, one small girl turned and looked in Jesus' face. And as if He could read all the questions she had, He gently whispered to her, "I'll take care of mom and dad." Then He looked down on earth, the world far below. He saw all of the hurt, the sorrow, and woe, then He closed his eyes and He outstretched His hand. "Let my power and presence re-enter this land!" "May this country be delivered from the hands of fools". "I'm taking back my nation, I'm taking back my schools!" Then He and the children stood up without a sound. "Come now my children let me show you around." Excitement filled the space, some skipped and some ran. All displaying enthusiasm that only a small child can. And I heard Him proclaim as He walked out of sight "In the midst of this darkness, I am still the light!"

~ (several sources credit Cameo Smith, Mt. Wolf, PA, as the author)

I can only hope this can console the parents who are grieving this Christmas season. It is what I truly believe, for all our lost children.

Would anything have really stopped Adam Lanza, and if so, what?

That's the only question we should be asking and answering for ourselves now.

I am a parent. Of a grown 20-something young man. Who played sports on Newtown's fields in grade school, having lived in the next town over. The middle school my son attended will be the new temporary home of the children who attended Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Although my son was far from harm on December 14, 2012, the news bit into me as if my son was still in grade school. A natural reaction for any parent. But never so literally close to home as this.

I weep reading how Dylan Hockley died in his teacher aide's arms, Anne Marie Murphy, as she tried to shield him. I get angrier when I see callous, heartless political cartoons, like the Christmas wreath demolished by bullets. Are these cartoonists so full of their own cleverness that they can't resist torturing those parents with an image they don't ever need to have burned into their brains?

I'd wanted to wait to post this, but the anti-NRA frothing is just too much. People are being duped, making it more possible that there will be more Newtowns.

I'm not an NRA member. But the way this country is going, I will be a gun owner someday, and soon.

Do we ban assault weapons? I say yes. Had we done so, Adam Lanza wouldn't have had access to one. Some may have died, but perhaps not as many. Rapid fire, machine-gun style, yes, only the military needs them, at least unless we have another civil war someday, then those who want them will get them anyway, I suppose. I wouldn't expect to survive that event anyway, unless I'm already in a red state by then and have gotten my own guns. I have fired guns before. I was a pretty good shot.

Do we "ban those who have been hospitalized for serious mental illness or have a history of drug abuse" from ever being able to purchase weapons? Do we better enforce the National Instant Criminal Background Check system? Yes to both. That still wouldn't have stopped Adam Lanza. He had neither history.

But if you have half a brain, you will do your own homework. You will stop being held in near-total ignorance by the mass media who give the gun control politicians all the ink they can stand while ignoring the facts.

You will educate yourself to the facts that 99% of the mass media won't tell you because it isn't politically correct:

1. The worst school killing in United States history was not Virginia Tech, and was not done with guns but massive sets of 500-pound bombs buried in and surrounding a grade school in Michigan.
2. "Places and times with the strongest gun control laws have often been places and times with high murder rates. Washington, D.C., is a classic example, but just one among many."
3. "Britain has had a lower murder rate than the United States for more than two centuries-- and, for most of that time, the British had no more stringent gun control laws than the United States."
4. "In the middle of the 20th century, you could buy a shotgun in London with no questions asked. New York, which at that time had had the stringent Sullivan Law restricting gun ownership since 1911, still had several times the gun murder rate of London, as well as several times the London murder rate with other weapons."
5. "The crime rate, including the rate of crimes committed with guns, is far higher in Britain now than it was back in the days when there were few restrictions on Britons buying firearms."
6. "...other countries with stronger gun control laws than the United States, such as Russia, Brazil and Mexico... All of these countries have higher murder rates than the United States."
7. "Gun ownership has been three times as high in Switzerland as in Germany, but the Swiss have had lower murder rates. Other countries with high rates of gun ownership and low murder rates include Israel, New Zealand, and Finland."

When you "control all the guns," history shows, the murder rate goes up even more, and the madmen use other weapons as well. What will you do then, America, that you could have done now, to protect our children?

Adam Lanza had legally obtained guns— his mother's—so how do we stop all people from taking someone else's guns? We probably can't.

He probably did this because he was afraid his mother was going to commit him to a mental institution, even if she was looking for other suitable longterm care such as the many group homes that exist throughout the state and the nation in spades and that we never hear about.

So how do we help mothers like Nancy Lanza and Liza Long, whose story I linked to earlier. How do we help their sons, and prevent them from carrying out their revenge/prevention threats or unspoken plans?

The second part of that question is the only one we can address quickly.

Newtown schools are reported to have had the best-prepared emergency procedures of almost any school in the nation, and practiced them more than most. So we need to do more, but what?

Metal detectors wouldn't have stopped Adam Lanza. He blasted the windows in the lobby to gain entrance.

Bulletproof glass in all entryways? Sure, that would have stopped him. Period. End of story. His guns would have been useless. We give bullet-proof glass to the White House? Is the President worth more than our kids? Why don't all the D.C. politicians belly up some of their 13.8% increased income (way higher than the rest of the country got since the recession began in December 2007, a USA TODAY analysis found) to fund that glass for all schools in the nation? Surely it won't add even another trillion to the deficit and if it did, I dare anyone to object. Our kids are worth it.

Do we arm a retired (but in relatively decent shape) cop and put a couple at every door to every elementary and middle and high school? I say, yes. Put it in the damn school budget. If you think our kids' lives aren't worth those salaries and the cost of the bullets, or if you think stricter gun control will be all that saves them, then frankly, you're choosing to be either ignorant or an idiot.

It might be a lot less expensive to do this than to build and staff more psychiatric long-term care facilities, which isn't likely to happen because Washington thinks gun control is the only answer. Further, having new facilities is so nebulous and far-off a solution, though one we as a nation must answer.

More such facilities and group homes, even if better run than those of the past, might not have stopped Adam Lanza anyway since he seems likely to have killed to avoid being committed. The state of Connecticut even closed several such hospitals, ironically one right in Newtown itself, because they were too costly to maintain after deinstitutionalization left them with too few patients.

Do I think the principal could have stopped Adam Lanza if she'd been armed? No. She would've had a handgun. If he came in pointing the Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle, her chances would have been almost nil. If she was a crack shot, she might have hit him when he came through the office door, or she might have missed. She'd only have had one chance. Could someone standing behind a raised counter or sitting at a desk have shot him? Perhaps, but not without hitting an obstacle or a child.

Do we allow—not require—some specially-screened, well-trained teachers to carry a weapon in school? I don't know. Part of me says yes, part of me worries about the possible dangers to the children. Rules would have to be: 1) keep the gun physically attached, holstered under the shirt, not visible to the students, AT ALL TIMES. 2) Keep it unloaded but with the ammunition clips locked in the teacher's classroom, with one clip on his/her person at all times.

This would not be a solution in city schools where teachers have been assaulted by students or where there is potential for this. There, the gun could be wrestled away from the teacher, with terrible cost.

Could a teacher, armed and waiting behind the classroom doors where Adam Lanza continued killing, have shot him as he entered the room? Possibly. I have some friends who are teachers. Male teachers. They might consider being among those who go through extensive background, criminal, drug and fingerprint checks, become trained and carry a firearm in school. If there were a few such teachers—and their classes were always next to all the entrances—it might give the school a fighting chance.

Because right now, they're all still sitting ducks. They may be hiding in a locked bathroom or under a desk. But they're still sitting ducks. Today. And every day, still.

The fastest remedies include hiring the armed retired cops and arming a few teachers whose classrooms sit next to entrances. Maybe also an active-vehicle-search security checkpoint at the entrance to the parking lot, the way all military contractors and facilities have. Yes, it would take forever for high school kids who drive to school to get through. Which is worse to have: long lines, no cars for seniors, or dead children and teachers? Who says seniors can't still take the bus, if it means all the kids are safe? I say, grow up, seniors: you can drive after school. A car is a privilege, not a right, in high school.

The next fastest is the bulletproof glass.

Those steps might stop the gun violence in the non-college level schools. And that would be worth it. If my son was still in school, I wouldn't give a rat's behind if he had to see an armed guard and bullet proof glass at his school every day, as long as I knew he was guaranteed to be safe while there. I guarantee you every one of those 26 families would agree because it would have meant their loved ones were still safe today.

But even if this all stops the gun violence in our schools, what will the mentally insane do next? Will they revert back to what Andrew Kehoe, a 55-year-old school board member and school caretaker, did in 1927, when he killed 45 people—38 children and 7 adults—in a K-12 school in Bath Township, Michigan, by blowing it to smithereens?

"Then on May 18, 1927, he beat his wife to death. Then he set fire to his farm and drove to the school where he served as caretaker. Kehoe had been busy for more than a year, secretly setting bombs of dynamite and explosive chemicals. He ignited the first wave of bombs, and when townspeople ran to help, he set off the second wave, which claimed his life as well. Authorities later found an unexploded 500-pound bomb in the rubble."

You see, it isn't the guns. It's the mental illness. As the writer of that article states so succinctly:

"Madness is not some modern affliction — it's a human condition."

Maybe an active-search security checkpoint might have stopped Andrew Kehoe from bringing in those bomb materials in the first place. Maybe not. It would have stopped Adam Lanza.

But if madmen really are intent on killing, they can find a way. Terrorists couldn't bring down the World Trade Towers by parking a bomb-laden truck underneath it. Years later, they succeeded with box-cutters and airplanes loaded with fuel. Unthinkable.

But what is the next unthinkable? We don't want to think about it, but how can we prevent it if we don’t think, "What is the next unthinkable?"

As this story proves, arguing about gun control is probably moot. As the article puts it, "You can't argue with evil. And you can't use rhetoric to protect yourself from a psychopath."

So let's just do what we can do—Right Now—that will protect our kids from psychopaths. What can be done, RIGHT NOW?

Do Not Pass Legislation. Except to allow teachers and guards to carry firearms at school. Ban those with serious mental hospitalization and/or drug abuse histories from possessing. Otherwise, it will take too long and won't answer all the problems. Pass the assault/automatic ban later.

Do Not Collect $100 from Washington to fund anything. Get the bulletproof glass, get the armed security and the vehicle-search checkpoint at the perimeter, maybe get a few good & willing, volunteer teachers, male or female, trained, armed and teaching near the entrances. If Newtown, Connecticut can receive donated money and building services within days to tear down Sandy Hook Elementary School and build a memorial to the fallen, surely this nation's citizens and businesses can donate to fund these simple remedies.

And if you think that means our kids Go Directly To Jail/School, you've got it wrong. It's to keep OUT the criminals, and to safeguard our children. We owe it to them, don't we?

Maybe this will be the finest tribute to these 20 children and 6 educators in Newtown: that we did stop the next one from happening, without waiting for Washington's "help."

No parent could ever watch this without weeping throughout. Perhaps no person at all, who recognizes that they have a soul. Maybe we could all skim a little off the money we haven't already spent on Christmas gifts, decorations, food, drink, cards, parties...and give it to St. Jude Children's Hospital so that babies and kids like Dax can be cared for and hopefully healed.

I know this especially reminds folks of those 20 young children lost on Dec. 14, in Newtown, too. God be with their loved ones this Advent and Christmas season. We know their children already are with Him.

"As this painful week unfolds, we can let it belong not to the killer, but to victims we mourn, and admire, and keep alive in our thoughts."

My heart also breaks for this woman, and all those like her. She gives the chilling reasons why we may not be able to prevent this insanity, no matter what policies or laws may result from this:

"I live with a son who is mentally ill. I love my son. But he terrifies me.

"A few weeks ago, Michael pulled a knife and threatened to kill me and then himself after I asked him to return his overdue library books. His 7 and 9 year old siblings knew the safety plan--they ran to the car and locked the doors before I even asked them to. I managed to get the knife from Michael, then methodically collected all the sharp objects in the house into a single Tupperware container that now travels with me. Through it all, he continued to scream insults at me and threaten to kill or hurt me.

"That conflict ended with three burly police officers and a paramedic wrestling my son onto a gurney for an expensive ambulance ride to the local emergency room. The mental hospital didn't have any beds that day, and Michael calmed down nicely in the ER, so they sent us home with a prescription for Zyprexa and a follow-up visit with a local pediatric psychiatrist.

"We still don't know what's wrong with Michael. Autism spectrum, ADHD, Oppositional Defiant or Intermittent Explosive Disorder have all been tossed around at various meetings with probation officers and social workers and counselors and teachers and school administrators. He's been on a slew of antipsychotic and mood altering pharmaceuticals, a Russian novel of behavioral plans. Nothing seems to work."

This woman apparently does not live in Connecticut; her article is entitled, "I am Adam Lanza's mother" metaphorically. But she highlights why it may be, at least sometimes, futile to expect loved ones, family members, to "notice" a relative's mental illness and "do something" to report it so that they don't tip or jump over the cliff as Lanza did. Perhaps Adam Lanza's mother was in a similar situation as this mother remains. This mother may well end up dead herself, as her son promises to carry out when he gets out of the mental hospital.

So this account, while eye-opening, frightens me to death.

And though this does not cause mental illness, what can compound that specific problem is when high schoolers, as we all know, can be brutal to one another, regardless of how excellent a school may be. I myself was ridiculed--for characteristics of my body--in a prestigious Catholic high school in the mid 70s, so this isn't new though it now has many more cutting avenues (Twitter, Facebook, email, cellphones, blogs, even voicemail, none of that existed back then in the dinosaur era).

And apparently, there was another school killing that was worse than both this one and Virginia Tech, proving that mental illness isn't a "modern" thing, though it is the reason for it all. And that one didn't involve guns at all.

So the bottom line is: no healthy-minded person grabs an actual knife and threatens to kill another because s/he's told to return his overdue library books or is taunted by peers. No healthy person reacts that way to such things. Who knows what taunts Lanza may have encountered in his junior high, when it was reported he took a turn for the worse regarding threatening and odd behavior. But it proves the point that mental illness is the fundamental problem. No healthy person reacts to high school taunts or any bullying by killing anyone, never mind 20 six-year-olds and 6 dedicated educational professionals.

So what do we do? I don't know. For now, we think and believe like the father of Emilie Parker, who credited Emilie's "Heavenly Father" for all her wonderful qualities and gifts, and then said the following, when he took questions after he spoke to the world last Friday (at about 5:10 into this video),

"The person that chose to act in this way was acting with the God-given right that he was given by God, with his own free agency. And that free agency is given to all of us, to act and choose to do whatever we want, and God can't take that away from us. And I know that's something he was given and what he chose to do with it. And I know that God can't take that away. I'm not mad, because I have my [free] agency to make sure that I can use this event to do what I can to... do whatever I can to 1) make sure that my family, my wife and my daughters, are taken care of, and that if there's anything I can do to help anybody at anytime anywhere-"

And there they cut off the video at ABC News (which they shouldn't have done, but he was talking too much about God for their tastes, it seems). It's clear that this young father was about to say, that he would offer his help, love and compassion to all, if they so needed it, even to the family of the shooter, which he said at the very outset of this video.

What a faith this father has. I don't know that I could say, never mind feel, the compassion and understanding he holds and offers so deeply, within a day of the tragedy.