I'm not one to get caught up in national trials that would have me hanging on Nancy Grace's every shouted word - Casey Anthony, Jodi Arias, I know there is horror and evil associated with these cases but I choose to avoid it. The feeling that someone's real tragedy has become my entertainment doesn't sit well with me.
Maybe it's because I live here in Florida, or because I have a son, but these past two weeks I've allowed myself to be drawn in, to listen and feel and form my own opinion about Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman. My heart has been heavy today. I watched last night, waited for the verdict, tense, and I cried, knowing that there would be no peace or justice either way. No matter what the jury decided we would be forced to confront the ugliness of this world and know that there was nothing we could do or say that would force George Zimmerman to confront the full weight of his actions, no way to return Trayvon Martin to his parents, no way for us to look into that evil night and know with 100% certainty what happened.
I don't believe justice was served. I don't believe Trayvon's life and death meant as little as this verdict indicates. I have lost a sense of faith in our judicial system that I was probably naive to have in the first place. I think lawyers, loopholes, and powerful words twisted the truth, or as close to it as we could get, into a version that allowed law to triumph over the justice we feel in our souls wasn't done.
I equally know that a guilty verdict would also have brought me heartache and tears. I weep for George Zimmerman. I don't think he's an evil person. I think he made a terrible mistake with devastating consequences. How often have we all been on the verge of committing a terrible act, a mistake that might forever altar our future, whose consequences we would never have predicted? But for the grace....I wonder if his future would be safer if he served 10 years behind bars, and then faced the public as a man having paid some sort of price, rather than the "free man" he is now. He holds a truth within him that he must live with the rest of his life, and it is that burden that must suffice as our justice.
This world is not our home, that's what my heart has been pounding all day. It's a reminder I don't like to get in this way but one I imagine we all sorely need. If we are the most just, democratic, free country on earth than God help us...
This article is my prayer:
Not Guilty: Now What?
