Another horrible news report about a family that lost everything in a fire. An alert on your phone about a kidnapping. The grotesque political dysfunction. The existential global threats—the climate, wars, terrorism. Another act of violence for which the only thing offered is thoughts and prayers.

It’s demoralizing. It’s frustrating. We are so vulnerable as parents, hostages to fortune because of these little kids we love. It’s like that verse in Hamilton,

There are moments that the words don’t reach
There is suffering too terrible to name
You hold your child as tight as you can
And push away the unimaginable

In some ways, this really is all we can do. We’ve talked before about the beautiful passage in Mary Philpott’s book Bomb Shelter, when she realizes, later, that her father’s job was to prepare D.C for a nuclear catastrophe that his family would almost certainly not survive. How was he supposed to compartmentalize that? How was he supposed to sit at the dinner table or deal with a sulking teenager or enjoy a family vacation?

By doing precisely that—by compartmentalizing. We have to hold our children tight. We have to push the doom and the dread away. We can’t let bitterness or despair consume us. We have to be present. We have to love them. We have to push away the unimaginable.

Because right in front of us we have something very imaginable, very wonderful and very right now.