Author Archives: Elea Lee

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About Elea Lee

Foster parent, adopting parent, family advocate, educator, homeschool parent

Tiny Brides, Big Problems

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It is funny how very kid-indifferent organizations will truck out the welfare of minors for political leverage.

Do you care about the rights of children in Yemen? Afghanistan? Cleveland?

If you do then you will do something for them–to speak and advocate for them, even if it costs you. Even if it actually puts you back personally, socially, or politically.

Yesterday I heard someone quote a politician who said they were looking for a “principled not political” vote on Syria.

Yep, me too. I figure that I might find it lurking in the same corner of the multiverse as the Yeti, the Loch Ness monster, and the Tooth Fairy.

And you? How about you?

The laws guarding the rights and safety of children in this country are on the brink of being vestigial. What chance do the little ones married off to pedophiles actually have?

Here, or anywhere else…

Talking about the “Tooth Fairy”

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Imagine you were five.

And everyone else had a tooth fairy.

But when your teeth come out your mother and father congratulate you. Keep it. Celebrate. But no magical reward.

You might ask some questions.

Tooth fairies are good, right? The Tooth Fairy is good, right?

Not in our family.

In our family the tooth fairy is absent. My son asks why? I tell him the truth. It happened like this…

Sometimes grownups do bad things, say bad things. They get angry at the victim of a crime instead of the person who commits the crime.

In those cases, when a grownup gets angry at a little kid for something that was not her fault… well, he might not say it was because of the crime done to her, because he was shamed by it’s proximity to him.

He might say it was because she did not eat all of her veggies.

But the strength of his anger would let you know. Let you know he was not safe.

So we don’t see him anymore.
Because we don’t want him to hurt you–any of you–again.

This is the part I am sure of–he would do it again.

And every child deserves to have a safe tooth fairy.

Or the truth, and none at all.

Final Words for Ariel Castro

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It is easy to rejoice in the death of a monster. It is easy to see Ariel Castro’s suicide as the final word on the life of an evil man.

But is that enough?

I don’t think so.

I think I must grieve.

Grieve for his countless victims.
Grieve for the irreparable harm of his years of sin.
Grieve for broken justice, in this case blind for too long.

Grieve because he was once a baby whose life, like all small humans, was once so full of potential…

Grieve because all he did to hurt, disfigure, and destroy was his choice.

And he could have chosen light instead.

Kyle the Valedictorian Glurge

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I admit I am a little fascinated by glurges, mostly because we humans often do not live up to them. (And that some of them attend Georgetown.)

We tell stories about pastors disguised as homeless dudes or nerdy kids who become shining orators. But in real life we scuttle the other way at most signs of social disorder.

We long for a good glurge.

The Good News is that Jesus is one. He really does befriend the weak, disguise himself as a homeless man, and save the losers.

Losers like me.

Then in a stroke of sheer genius he teaches us to be like him.

The real love stories are so often the quiet, painful ones that escape our attention.

Hostage Negotiation?

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The car was dark and I was not driving when he said that he would go head first into a truck if he had to go to prison.

Cell phones cut in and out. Did he say head into? Drive into?

I was not sure how to put words into a string of meaningful units. All I could think of was how awful that would be–a spreading tragedy.

I said,

As your mother I don’t want you to do that. I don’t want you to kill yourself.

I also would prefer he not kill anyone else.

I need to say these things out loud but I also need to say–I think his impulse for self-preservation is very strong.

Mark Ruffalo and Miley Cyrus

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So much noise lately–first Mark Ruffalo lends his voice to the pro-abortionist cacophony, then Miley Cyrus lends that and a bunch of other body parts to our monkeys-on-display culture.

I have not and will not watch the Miley display. Poor girl. But I have read the Ruffalo letter and found it remarkably resonant to both situations.

Ruffalo describes his mother’s abortion as

“traumatizing…shameful, and sleazy, and demeaning.”

He is right. All abortion is traumatizing, shameful, sleazy, and demeaning.

There are plenty of places where prostitution is legal, but there is no place on the planet where it is anything but “traumatizing, shameful, sleazy, and demeaning.”

A point Ms. Cyrus has just proved rather infamously on a public stage in front of millions of people.

Abortion, prostitution, and this much publicized burlesque–so much in common, and none of it–none of it–raises the dignity of women.

You can make a great many immoral acts legal–SCOTUS has proved this over the course of the years, but no matter how legal a thing is, if it ever was “traumatizing, shameful, sleazy, and demeaning”…it still is.

Antoinette Tuff: Hero

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I read the story thinking everyone seemed a bit too chill about what could have been a nightmare in a Georgia elementary school.

And then I got to the part about Antoinette Tuff. She is a hoss–and my kind of hoss; the kind God sends.

She used her wisdom, her compassion and her heartbreak to avert a tragedy.

What a woman. What a hero.

Proof that every story matters.

Repercussions of Reporting Child Abusers

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Recently I came under attack for allegedly reporting a known child rapist for babysitting.

Seems like a slam-dunk to me. I admit it–I do not think any convicted rapist should be alone with a child ever.

So it was weird getting lambasted for what really should be a legal and moral mandate–if you know someone who is or has been violent or abusive and that person is alone with children…. Report them. If they were convicted of felon child abuse, assault, or rape? Yep. Call CPS

And then…

I was reminded that an entire church has an extremely low opinion of me because I….reported a pedophile in order to protect children.

I am a messy woman with a messy life and most people wisely keep their distance. But to be hated, misunderstood, and rejected for not tolerating child abuse?

Kinda seems like an honor.