"What information consumes is rather obvious: It consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it."

--Herbert Simon, recipient of Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics

Crises can come in many forms. We typically think of glamorous media-reported crises when we consider the events that transform our lives, such as Columbine, 9-11, or the earthquakes in China. These events spark national and global interest, as well as ause a synchronous sigh of relief as we thank God that it is not us involved. We pause and gather our friends and family close. We thoughtfully discuss the events with our peers, and coworkers gather around the water cooler as the media discuss the events ad nauseam. Not to diminish the importance of these national and global tragedies, but eventually the media hype fades; the donations stop flowing; reporters move to the next hot story. Our lives, though momentarily interrupted, return to normal. In short order, the promises we made on 9-11 to change ourselves, grow closer to God, and spend more time with family soon are forgotten. We revert to life pre-9-11.

What about the individual crises that hit us? We must face many silent tragedies alone, and some we do our best to hide. There is no news coverage. The Red Cross is not rushing to our aid and “Chopper 5” is not hovering over our homes. There will not be millions of dollars pouring in from Hollywood. We deal with the crises armed with our faith and whatever support system we have in place.

Many crises our youth face are not seemingly big events to the outside world, but they are big events to those who are going through them. The crises I deal with on a regular basis involve divorce, teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, family illness, and more. These more directly affect my students than anything Fox News reports and are a lot more common than the major events that receive national attention.

Two fathers at my church have died within a six-month span. For the youth involved, the sting of death is felt to a far greater extent than the pain they felt during 9-11, Columbine, or the tragedy that occurred just a couple hours from us at Virginia Tech. A crisis cannot be measured by numbers or media coverage. A crisis, no matter how broad the scope, can only be dealt with one individual at a time. When a family of five loses a father, it is not just one family member who grieves; there are individual children, a wife, mother, brother, niece, sister, and others who need love and attention. There are coworkers, clients and church members who will grieve in individual ways. Each family member potentially will need care long after the obituary is read and the plates from the repast are washed.