Eve Marie Carson

Eve Marie Carson was killed this week in Chapel Hill. She was murdered, shot in the right temple and left in the middle of the street. She was the student body president of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She was a brilliant young woman - a young woman who was destined to be a light in this dark world, to be a gift to all those who knew her. Her light has been put out, the gift she was has been taken away from the rest of us in the world.

I never knew her, but I am moved to tears at the loss of her. It is so senseless. It is so frightening. The world is so damn crazy. Is there no place or no one that is safe anymore? It is beyond anything that I can comprehend.

I think about her parents and I can hardly breathe. How do parents survive a loss like this?

I think about my son Jacob, a sophmore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I think about how he and all the other students at Carolina must feel, the impact this has on their lives, their ability to feel safe in the world around them.

I have been praying all day. I have thought about this beautiful young woman all day. There is nothing else I can do but pray. Pray and hope. Hope and pray. I lift up this young woman and her mother and her father. Her family and her friends. I lift up all the students at Carolina. I lift up the young woman at Auburn who was also murdered this week, also shot to death. And I lift up her family, friends, and fellow students.

I hold them up to the light of God and pray for protection from violence, for all of us.

I pray for my son Jacob, too. That God will keep him safe.