Author Archives: Elea Lee

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About Elea Lee

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

Where are you going?

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My father was a straight talker.

He was raised in a baptist church by the parent who attended, but he was also raised in the south during a time when it was hard to miss the hypocrisy (is it ever far from us?)

He walked away. When I first knew him he did not believe in God. Even when other members of our family became flamingly involved with Jesus, my dad stayed back.

He did not take the leap until a conversation with a fire-and-brimstone type who pointed out that his hereditary baptist background suggested that the alternative to the yoke of Jesus was a bit warm.

Warm apparently worked. I say this because I never really felt it was even necessary to bring hell into the conversation. Who needs to know they are escaping a one-way trip to a dump if the alternative is an all-expenses-paid trip to paradise?

Where are you headed?

And who or what is leading you there?

Paper Love

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I see an image of the word love written beautifully by a young woman I know who actually wouldn’t know real love if it walked up to her and slapped her in the face with a fish.

Not that love would ever do that, of course…

My point is: love is a potent magic. Actually, love is more than that. Love is a Person.

I know this because for years and years and years I have lived on a diet of scraps when it comes to human love. Many of us do.

Humans see our faults, boss us around, prefer second-hand shoes to our hearts and minds.

Humans: a rum bunch.

So I type in “God’s love” and begin to read the verses–I am on a quest for love.

I immediately feel the iron. God speaks to us of love as though it is the chicken wire that keeps out the wolves, the walls holding back the storm, a strong fortress against assaulting armies.

This kind of love is tough die-for-your-sins stuff.

Look-into-the-face-of-hell-then-dive-in-to-save-me love.

Yup. No flowers and chocolates here. Something stronger instead. They say if you bury gold for a thousand years it will not rust. They say honey never decays. We’ve all had loves that walked out or faded.

But this guy Jesus. He is gold and honey love. Tough as nails. The nails that pinned him down to the Cross…for me.

Worth the world entire.
The world in His eyes.

Love the Island

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You can imagine me
Being dumped
On a nearly deserted island
just for talking too much

And you can also
See me chafe
Not so much for myself
(I am quite capable of talking to flora, fauna, and God, thank you, very much)

No.

For the children in my boat
They don’t deserve this–
The extreme isolation
So many freaking
Hot piña coladas!

No.

They deserve community
Friends who see them through
A voyage through calm seas

I tell myself this
Too much
Until I remember a wee bit of sage advice–

If you are going to burn your bridges
You better love the island

Love indeed
Beautiful survivors

I Have Lost You.

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I would have written this as a letter
I would have used the proper
Format:

Dear You,

Only…
That is the point
Dear you, not me
Not God Himself, quite real

Your appetite for bacon
Recalls to me the reason
Why?

We are not family anymore
Friends with the devil
Need to count the flies
Attending him

I speak the oblique
Because you have a right to be angry
We all do
But only on the pallet in hell
we lie down…

So close to Jesus.

Explaining Evil?

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He picks up a Shutterfly book his father made several years ago…our family before the flood.

There are pictures of flowers taped over my adopted son’s face. One of his victims has placed them over his face because her grief is still deep, and the righteous anger with it.

To her younger brother this is a strange thing. Who is this teenage boy? Why is his face covered?

I explain it to him. I explain the story using the simplest words I can find–the words of a fairy tale, a bedtime story. Only no one wants to tell the story of why the little girl has covered her “brother” in flowers any more than we want to face the hurt that happens when someone you trust and love betrays you and all you hold dear.

Hold dear…
Hm, little girl in the picture, I will always hold you, dear.

It is my job, like breathing.

Fear

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My children have led me into courtrooms, hospital rooms, doctors offices. Psych wards. Juvenile detention centers. Places of both extreme light and extreme darkness.

Some of them look like me, others don’t. Some don’t even live with me anymore. Some may have never known I was their mother.

I was a foster mother. Hard. I adopted kids: hard as well. I lost children, hardest of all.

But this weekend my tallest son taught me how to paint on an extension ladder. He is nearly a foot taller than I am, so he makes it look easy, but what impressed me was his success in teaching me to challenge my fear.

He taught me by doing it–first and better than me, then by walking me through my fears (and why) then how to overcome them.

We both know from experience that I am a crabby old dog, disinclined to new tricks. But love will prevail.

After all it is love, they say, that casts out all fear.

Good news when it is a long flight down.

Ten a Day

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I do believe all crimes against children are under-reported. I know because even the cases that get reported do not go down the wormhole of additional victims.

So I have been going along with the standard figure for death-by-child-abuse in the US–5 a day.

Today I read that figure should be double–ten children a day die from child abuse a day in America.

Mind boggling.
Incomprehensible.

Or…
One kindergarten class every 2 days.
A basketball team a day.
70 a week…3 thousand 6 hundred 50 a year die…

Are murdered…
And we…
Do nothing.

One in what?!?

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I see this statistic so often I have it memorized–one in four girls are sexually abused, one in six boys. That is 25% of girls and 16% of boys.

Only the statistics are ridiculously low and therefore misleading and therefore very wrong.

There is NO reason to believe that the statistics for Norfolk or Pitcairn Island wouldn’t apply to the rest of us. There is little reason to think that pervasive abuse of boys by a man like Jerry Sandusky would not factor into raising the stats for boys.

Let me offer a counter example–1 in 4 girls eats cereal for breakfast, 1 in 6 boys has some kind of tomato in his diet.

I bet if you read that statistic you would have one of two responses–

Boy,those numbers are off!
Or
Sure, but that cannot be all of the kids eating cereal and tomatoes.

The most scientific response to those statistics would be to dig deeper to find out why the kids were not having their diet accurately reported.

It would actually be a relief if the answer were in the children–they lied or felt ashamed of their cereal and tomatoes?

But the ugly truth is this: our society systematically pressures victims and their families to suppress stories of abuse. Our numbers are grossly inaccurate because no one wants to face the real numbers.

And by numbers I mean people
And by people I mean children
And by children I mean rape victims…who deserve our help, our assistance, our dismay.