She tells me a story
That haunts me all day
And into the night
About ordinary love
I run a line down memory
Not just mine but hers
Especially hers
All that I did not see
Plays out in normal…
nightmares sometimes happen in broad daylight
Chatty conversations with the devil
Always
Turn into shouting matches
I beg God, please…
Rain down mercy from heaven on these little ones
They do not deserve this
Heal us.
When I catch a glimpse of Him
No threadbare God
Ever
Again.
This is the anniversary of tragedy in Mogadishu.
But my sense of loss over these events has bled outward through the years.
When it happened I wondered why Clinton waffled so badly not just in Somalia but even more tragically in Rwanda.
The gruesome loss of American lives in Africa would eventually be overshadowed by the meaninglessness of their sacrifice–no one came to save the Somalis and no one came to save the Rwandans.
And really, Who will save any of us?
We call ourselves a rich country but we are debt-soaked and impoverished, too spoiled and weak to pass a balanced budget and live within our means.
And yet our moral deficits outstrip our fiscal woes. Clinton was a moral-less man yet so many revere him. All I can see is the people he let down–people who expected him to use his office to protect the innocent not debauch young women.
And that is where the story gets personal. In 1998 when I was losing a foster daughter to a fixed adoption, Clinton was embroiled in a sex scandal. I wrote his wife asking for a federal review of the illegal activities I witnessed as a foster parent.
Months later I got a form letter from her telling me to appeal to one of the people I had reported.
I got the message; I lost the child.
My remaining adopted children craved violence. They did not have much to work with at our house. Most of our movies were kid-friendly.
But the three my adopted son ferreted out because of their violence?
Tristan and Isolde
Blackhawk Down
The Passion of the Christ
Now both he and his sister glory in their horror movies.
Not perhaps realizing how close they are to autobiography.
Blackhawk Down….
In the spring of 2007 another Blackhawk helicopter came down near Opp, Alabama. This one had my father in it. He was on an accelerated schedule to train pilots for our foreign wars.
People whispered that Bush was at fault. The army had rushed training. The pilots my father taught were too green. There were flaws in the flight simulators.
His students walked away from the crash, my father did not.
Some accidents are “unsurvivable.” They change who we are forever.
There are two parts of the movie I cannot forget. In the first a fatally wounded soldier is told he will survive as his life bleeds out in the darkness.
In the second the survivors reach sanctuary.
In the end we will all face the unsurvivable wreckage of our broken lives. And when we do, only a Mighty Fortress will save us.
I was shocked by the line
Sometimes I forget to factor in the Asian.
Not so much because a fictional adoptive father could have racial prejudices about his Asian daughter, but because the show’s writers had veered way out of the way to make a young character adhere to that racial stereotype.
Which is, of course, false. Not all Asians are driven to succeed by genetics, as the writers of Modern Family suggest.
Asia is a pretty big place filled with diversity and the same gamut of winners, losers, and control freaks as everywhere else.
They owe little Lily an apology.
But the affront of racism in an American sitcom pales in comparison to racism at large.
Recently an Asian American man was savagely beaten by bikers in New York city. No one has yet to be arrested.
Which reminds me…I know how to get spray paint off a fence.
A caustic, thankless process.
Years ago a prominent Indian family in our community was targeted by vandals. Their fence was effaced by obscenities.
My husband and I scrubbed the words off the fence. Justice would have pursued making the vandals scrub the fence.
Sometimes justice feels pretty sparse.
And as a white woman in America, I admit I am prejudiced…nothing scares me more than a bunch of white dudes.
You just never know what they are capable of doing.
I am a stress eater.
So while the rest of the country is blathering on about a ridiculously totemistic showdown between identically useless political factions, I found myself eating leftover chili and apples that I did not technically need.
Because I am worried about invisible children.
Not the ones trucked out to shop a piece of legislation or a legal decision, real children.
The children in question are very dear to me but as I watch them travel through adolescence I am increasingly dismayed by their choices–joining gangs, dabbling in illegal substances. Sex way before they should.
They are refugees from one of the most repressive regimes on the planet and they have been given the opportunity to come to America–Texas.
But they have not been given the opportunity for much genuine community.
Overlooked by pastors and churches. Stereotyped by people who should have known better. Stopped and interrogated simply for walking down quiet streets.
They learned there were yawning holes in the law.
They continue to long for the chance to play competitive soccer in a town that only makes room for football.
They are falling fast through the cracks.
And I ask myself–who do you call when you see children who live next to a dangerous road lie down in that path and say they are ready to die?
I have always been afraid I would lose a child from their community to that road–too many speeding trucks.
But to see them lying there…and to know there is no one I can call to save them.
How? You ask–how do I know?
I have called before, for other children I loved.
Called pastors
Congressmen
Senators
Bureaucrats
Ordinary people
Christians
The answer always the same–uncomfortable silence–this is not our issue.
Is it yours?
It is and should be a popular cause to support cancer research for children and children who endure the shocking ordeal of cancer.
No child should have to endure cancer. Ever. It is a tragic function of our scary, broken world.
But what if there were “better” and “worse” ways to get cancer?
And what if some of the worse ways had to do with enduring other things that children should not have to be exposed to? Second-hand smoke? Meth labs in their homes? Physical abuse? Or sexual exploitation?
The terrible truth is that some people do get cancer from being sexually exploited and physically abused.
People like Robbie Middleton.
Kids you will probably never see on a poster for cancer research because our society systematically marginalizes child abuse victims.
Imagine. Imagine the hell of that kind of abuse–that it could result in a boy’s death.
Then imagine you and I were the ones who looked away because it was too hard to bear.
Too hard indeed.
The word games on Facebook drive me crazy. Really, people? Really?
You really don’t think I and 300 million other people cannot find a state, a drink, a dog’s name that doesn’t have “a” in it?!?
Yes. I know these games are just for fun, but their cloying recurrence on the Internet becomes a mild irritant to a reclusive evangelist with an ax to grind (me–a pronoun without an a).
The truth is there is a question we cannot afford to neglect and it has nothing to do with spelling.
It is this–name anyone or thing other than Jesus that can save you.
Yep. I said the j word.
Everyone is looking–money, sex, fame…combing our small and brief horizons for anything, anyone who can save us.
When like milk, Connecticut, and Rex, the answer is right there before us–
Jesus.
A savior with no a in his name. Only love in his eyes.
I don’t get out much.
And I doggedly refuse to watch Miley Cyrus videos.
So my only real encounter with twerking was at a quincenera years ago.
My husband and I were youth ministers at the time and when we saw a group of teenage girls doing this “dance” with their butts towards the center of gathering our jaws dropped.
What is this thing?
We asked incredulously. Back then–or at least in our corner of the hinterlands–they called it “booty dancing.”
Strange when something is sexualized, unintentionally comical, and apocalyptic all at the same time.
Things have devolved since then. Women and girls have allowed a commercialized Groupthink to convince themselves that exposure is normative.
Public spaces have become saturated with private area behaviors.
What is the language of compassion and value that can be extended to all of us when we have been young, foolish and easily led into exposure and exploitation that will leave its scars on the soul?
A number of years ago I contacted local grocery chains asking them to police/filter their magazine offerings.
My kids are often offended by the gauntlet of celebrity cleavage shots one has to camp in front of as one waits to pay for milk.
Not okay.
One story ignored me, the other store’s media rep said,
at least it is not full nudity.
Oh…ok, then…
So it is with great elation and relief that I report that HEB had entire aisle devoted to high-quality, reasonably priced children’s books.
Not a boob in sight.
Thanks guys.
There seems to be a new trend in excuses for rape–pastors who claim their illicit and immoral acts were somehow motivated by a desire to “cure” their victims.
This, of course, like so many of the insidious blurred lines of our debauched culture, is from the pit of hell.
These men, or anyone who uses the mantle of spiritual authority to harm children, should expect judgment.
But how about the antidote to wolves in sheep’s clothing? Where are the good shepherds?
I have read tragic stories lately about violence in Kenya and Chicago, about livestock suffering at the hands of people, about grief coming unexpectedly from a simple water accident.
Each story of violence and loss reminds us of the importance of good shepherds.
We live in a perilous world and we ourselves are the most dangerous element of that world–polluting, raping, murdering, and neglecting.
Yes. Neglecting.
Sometimes the worst thing we do is not direct harm.
Sometimes it is a terrible enough injustice for us to walk away from our flocks, our children when we know there are predators lurking in the fields.
Carrying Light 