What Columbine Taught Me About Grief, Prayer, and Change
TLDR:
When Columbine happened just miles from my high school in Arvada, CO, what I remember most is not outrage but overwhelming grief, prayer, and community mourning. My dad and I carried personal connections to the tragedy that shaped us deeply. Twenty-five years later, I believe we still need “thoughts and prayers”—not as passivity, but as biblical lament that allows us to grieve together, gain clarity, and sustain the long road toward real change. Outrage alone burns out; grief held in prayer and lament transforms.
Tuesday, April 20, 1999 is a day I’ll never forget.
I was a junior in high school, sitting in Spanish class at a small Christian school in Arvada, CO—about 20 miles north of Littleton in the Denver metro when our teacher turned on the radio to reports of a shooting in Littleton. My classmates and I sat in stunned silence. Before long, the whole student body was gathered in the gymnasium—partly for prayer, partly for safety I imagine—as administrators scrambled to make sense of what was happening. Soon, a fellow student grabbed songbooks and we began singing. It was all we could do: reach for ritual in the middle of horror.
Even now, more than 25 years later, I find myself shaking as I write. The devastation wasn’t limited to Columbine. It rippled across every school, every community, and every family in Colorado and even the nation. And for me and my dad, it cut close.
My father worked in school security in the neighboring district. He carried the weight of wondering whether something like this could happen on his watch. I imagine he carried the grief and uncertainty of wondering what if it had been under his own watch. Tragically, years later, he did have to respond to a school shooting within his district. I played summer basketball with several Columbine students. One teammate—who I watched blossom into one of the best players in the state—survived by hiding in a closet that day. But the trauma apparently stayed with him. His senior year, he took his own life. My dad went to his funeral, grieving a boy he barely knew but wishing he had reached out more.
The weight of those connections has never left me.
And what stands out in my memory is not anger. Not rage. Not endless political debate. What I remember most is grief.
That Sunday, April 25, my dad and I joined 70,000 others at a public memorial led by Franklin Graham, Amy Grant, and Michael W. Smith.1 Afterwards, we walked the mile or so to the park beside Columbine, where a sprawling makeshift memorial covered the grass. Crosses, flowers, handwritten notes—the pain and love of an entire community laid bare. It was the park where I had run cross country meets in prior years—the brutal hill saved for the final stretch of the 5k soon became a place where 15, then 13 crosses, were mounted in memorial.2
On May 2 a student memorial was held at Red Rocks Amphitheater, then May 20, 1999 - a one-month anniversary memorial at Dakota Ridge High School was held and attended by 2,200 people. At the memorial, President Bill and first lady Hillary Clinton met with the Columbine victims and their families.3
As this was a shock to the entire nation, Katie Couric and the Today Show came to Littleton to cover the tragedy only days after the horror. One image still haunts me: the father of Isaiah Shoels, interviewed on the Today Show, weeping as a spring snowstorm swept across the background. It felt as if God and creation itself was grieving with him.
This past week, another school shooting hit the headlines—this time in a Catholic school. And what struck me was how quickly the grief was skipped. Almost instantly, the air filled with rage.
But here’s the truth I learned since Columbine: outrage alone cannot sustain change.
It burns hot and then burns out.
It alienates before it unites.
And soon, it transfers to whatever’s next in the news cycle.
“Thoughts and prayers” may sound like a cliché, but they are not passive. They give us room to grieve, to weep, to remember, to hold one another before God—to lament—a biblical practice that is often overlooked and undervalued. Author May Young writes that “lament offers us a way for us to process suffering, injustice, pain, and disappointments… and…helps us to engage these pains so we can move forward.”4 Prayers of lament root us in our shared values and give us the clarity to act—not out of rage, but out of love and moral conviction. Lament is also an act of resistance and a “prophetic voice”5, says May, as “lament helps communities to understand those who are in pain and to stand alongside them.”6
That’s what happened in Colorado. It wasn’t instant. It took more than 18 months. But real change came. Tom Mauser, whose son was killed at Columbine, helped lead the charge. Nearly 70% of voters approved stricter gun regulations. Even a Republican governor signed the bill after state legislators had failed to pass legislation.7 That kind of transformation doesn’t come from a flash of outrage. It comes from grief and prayer, from mourning together long enough to discover what we’re truly called to do.
Here’s the truth—we don’t need fewer prayers. We need more of them. Because prayer and mourning—biblical lament—give us the strength to walk the long road toward real, lasting change.
Sometimes lament is the only and most appropriate response to the horrors that take place… The cry of lament is a cry for change. It is naming evil and pain that has befallen us and our world.8
May we never rush past grief. May we learn to pray, to mourn, and to let sorrow shape us into people capable of real change, trusting that God will guide us to right actions.
https://www.denverpost.com/1999/04/26/columbine-high-school-shooting-victims-memorial/amp/
If memory serves, originally 15 crosses were placed, both the memorialized the lives of the two shooters, but those were taken down, and eventually, the remaining 13 were moved to private land, as some felt the explicitly religious symbols didn’t mesh well with public property. Read more about that here: https://danielmauser.com/the-spontaneous-memorial/
http://www.acolumbinesite.com/after/1999.html
Young, Walking With God Through the Valley, 4.
Young, Walking With God Through the Valley, 71.
Young, Walking With God Through the Valley, 65.
https://www.edweek.org/leadership/colo-voters-approve-wait-on-gun-buys/2000/11
Young, Walking With God Through the Valley, 72.