Monday, June 16, 2008
 

A Final Note After the Hostage Situation


Hello, all, Bailey here. I'm sorry we've been away from the blog for so long. As you can imagine, we've needed time to rebuild our lives after the tragedy, both emotionally and physically.

All of us Scenes and Beans posters are coming along. Some are still healing physically. We have been very busy restoring Java Joint, as the interior was devastasted by bullets. The counter and the space around it has been replaced, along with the stools. Walls have been repaired. John and I have had a lot of help from townspeople, and of course, from the Scenes and Beans folks.

Wilbur wants you to know he likes his new stool even better than the first one. (He says he didn't want the first one back anyway after a certain man chose to sit on it.) As for S-Man, he's signing his contracts for the two-book publishing deal. With all the media attention after the horrible events here on Memorial Day weekend, his first book, Starfire, has received plenty of buzz already. I know you all will enjoy reading it when it's published.

I am not going to comment directly on the events. You all have read the papers and seen the news. There is little left for us to say. This post is a more personal one for you, our friends, who've been reading this blog for almost two years now. We have enjoyed you so much. We've loved meeting those of you who made the trip to Kanner Lake and stopped by Java Joint to say hi. We want you to know we will forever treasure the online friendships we've made here.

But after what happened, I'm sure you'll understand that we no longer feel we can post on Scenes and Beans. Does that mean if this blog didn't exist, the hostage situation may never have happened? I don't know. Perhaps the three men who were so desperate would have come anyway. Or perhaps they would have chosen to go somewhere else, and other people would have paid the horrible price for that decision. We only know that despite what did happen, God was with us. In the darkest of moments, He was there. We clung to him that afternoon, and we cling to Him now and thank Him for bringing us through.

As you know, the thousands of comments that came in after our last post taxed our blog. Many of you tried leaving messages on previous posts before the blog finally crashed. When we got the blog up and running again, I had to delete all those messages. (Of course there were some from that horrible day that we would have deleted anyway.) Please know we read your kind words and notes of prayer, and were so heartened by all of them. Thank you, thank you for your concern for all of us.

I will be leaving Scenes and Beans up for now, although comments have been turned off so the thing doesn't crash again. Maybe from time to time you'll reread some of the stories we've told you over the past two years. And we still hope you will come visit us in Kanner Lake. Although much has happened to our quiet little town in the past two years, we all sense that we're about to enter a quiet time again. Good thing. We need some rest. :)

Blessings and love to all of you.

--Bailey and the entire Scenes and Beans crew

Posted by ~ Bailey Truitt @ 7:00 AM 0 comments