True Grace

I started a post this am. It was a typical post for this blog. As I was writing, the story of Dr. Petit came on TV. The murderer of his family received the death penalty today. I started to tear. I stopped writing the blog post. I’ll finish it tomorrow.

Dr. Petit was a husband and father of two beautiful girls. One night two men entered his home, beat him with a baseball bat, raped his wife, his 16 year old daughter and his 11 year old daughter then tied them to their beds and set the house on fire. His daughters were alive and conscience when the house was set ablaze. They died of asphyxiation.

I have 3 daughters. To think of my daughters going through what his family did is crushing. I can’t get my arms around it. As I put myself in his shoes my stomach turns with pain. My heart tears. I can not see how I could have the grace Dr. Petit has. He has lost everything. He has to live with the vision of the horror his daughters and wife experienced for the rest of his life. He has to live with the pain of knowing he was unable to protect his family.

In the midst of all of this, Dr. Petit has shown tremendous grace. A grace rarely seen today. A grace that all of us could learn from. A grace I don’t know I could have.

My thoughts go out to him. I hope his strength is as impressive as the grace he has shown. It’s going to need to be for him to move on.

In a world where anger tends to reign supreme, Dr. Petit is giving us all something to emulate even in the most heinous of situations.

I’m going to hug my girls a little harder and a little longer from now on.