In the aftermath of the mass shooting that took place on Wednesday morning at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the Usual Suspects lined up to denounce sincere expressions of "thoughts and prayers" from conservatives for the victims and their families.
They proclaimed, in a nutshell, that it was meaningless and did not prevent mass tragedies from happening.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D), for instance, said at a press conference that "And don't just say this is about 'thoughts and prayers,' right now. These kids were literally praying! It was the first week of school, they were in a church."
And as we also reported, former Biden-Harris White House press secretary Jen Psaki, now an MSNOW, host, took it even further with the following declaration on X:
Prayer is not freaking enough. Prayers does not end school shootings. prayers do not make parents feel safe sending their kids to school. Prayer does not bring these kids back. Enough with the thoughts and prayers.
As I've talked about before, it angers me when Democrats sneer at "thoughts and prayers," in part because, like many people, I've experienced something pretty close to hopelessness before in my life on more than one occasion, and prayer and knowing that others were praying for me were the primary things that got me through those rough patches.
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The power of faith and prayer was absolutely what carried both my mom and me through everything we went through in 2022, which was one of the most challenging years of our lives.
We lost my dad after a long battle with kidney disease. Four months later, we learned of her colon cancer diagnosis, and soon after, surgery and then treatment followed, which was hard on her. Further, after the completion of her three months of chemotherapy, there have been the periodic follow-ups to see if all the numbers and CT scans look okay and show nothing of concern.
Prayers and our faith in God have been our guiding force through all of it.
And it's not just confined to us praying about our situations; it has also been the prayers from family members, friends, neighbors, and the online community, including RedState readers, that have absolutely meant everything to us. When I've said in the past that we felt the prayers, I wasn't kidding. We did.
There have been two times in my life that I can recall questioning God about why bad things happen. One of them was right after 9/11 (I was in New York City that day - in Times Square), and the other was when we found out Mom had cancer.
Even though I knew praying didn't prevent bad things from happening, I had prayed many times ahead of her colonoscopy, asking God to please let Mom be okay, but she wasn't.
I wanted to understand why, despite Mom being the most wonderful, loving, caring, God-centered woman, she was having to go through what she was. But God's ways are His own, and we're not always meant to understand them. Further, being a person of faith does not earn anyone a "life will be trouble-free" card.
One never knows what the future holds, but what does give us strength and comfort is knowing that God is in control of all things, through good times and bad times. And one thing I do know is that mom's cancer journey was something that helped both of us grow stronger in our faith.
My mom often says that praying is the best thing a person can do for someone else who is going through tough times. It's something to remember when you feel helpless and hopeless about a situation you or someone you love and care about is going through.
