>>176106, >>176107, >>176108, >>176109, >>176110, >>176111, >>176112, >>176113, >>176114, >>176115, >>176116, >>176117, >>176118, >>176119, >>176120, >>176121, >>176122, >>176123, >>176124, >>176125, >>176126, >>176127, >>176128
The shooter escaped. No casualties. But here’s what I didn’t do: put down the phone & say a rosary.
I have phone numbers of men in the White House. I’ve traveled with the Secretary of Defense. SEALs I know would come, one call, anywhere. I built a business to survive financial storms. I could liquidate everything and have millions in cash inside a week.
Last night, none of it mattered.
Every father is powerless outside a locked door.
That night broke something open in me.
The Bible teaches God first, family second, nation third. I’ve spent my entire life inverting that order. Family first. Nation second. God last. And the force behind all of it has been love. Love deeper than the Mariana Trench for my children, for for Jesus I keep making wait.
Love is good. Love is rational. Love was the defining characteristic of Christ. Love is what told my son to lead those seventeen kids last night.
But I’m no Jesus.
Too often my love manifests as something darker. Lust. The deadly sin. Lust is pleasure detached from love. Desire unmoored from wisdom.
I lust for the irrational. For battleships. For American manufacturing. For EVERY American to prosper. I lust for the safety of children and grandchildren I haven’t met yet people I already love more than language can carry.
I can be emotional & irrational about making this nation great again.
Last night it took every bone in my body not to call in every favor I possess to land a helicopter full of the hardest men in Florida on that rooftop.
That wasn’t love. That was lust. And lust overrides discipline and clear thinking.
I am a sinner.
Which is why I can’t hate the people destroying this country.
Most of them are just consumed, the way I’m consumed: a deadly sin.