Author Archives: Elea Lee

About Elea Lee

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

The Be-born

Posted on by
Reply

When words are inaccurate, or worse yet, dehumanizing, then we should change them

Let fetuses become young ones

Let blastocysts become our sons and daughters and let us consider that if the dividing line between protected and unprotected in the lives of young humans is the womb, consider calling our littlest ones the be-born.

Make it a blessing to each one-

Be born, little one

Be-born

“Unborn” is not enough

Not enough of an acknowledgment of the inimitable beauty, power and purpose inherent and irreversible invested in each human life.

https://theexperiencedmama.com/bible-verses-about-unborn-babies/

Yeshua

Posted on by
Reply

I usually call him Jesus, like to think I am “his girl” and rarely live up to what he deserves.

Yesterday the daily Bible reading was Isaiah 53 and it brought me to tears, as it always does. “Crushed for our transgressions”? I think of the ordinary atrocities we humans endorse on the reg as well as the ones which will forever radiate darkness in our history.

He took them.

And he offers such untrammeled friendship. King of kings, yet he is the friend of every yet-born child.

I should stop there. Benign, seek Jesus stuff, right?

But that is not all. Isaiah’s view of the Messiah is polarizing. He is not depicted as the universally recognized cool guy everyone loves. He is depicted as “despised and rejected of men.”

Why?

Because we do not usually like to be told we are wrong, helpless—supine. We like to be in charge.

Jesus is our, wants to be, our friend, but ultimately that should be on his terms, not yours or mine.

Does that galvanize or offend you?

I do not enjoy thinking about Jesus’ crucified death, his humiliation, blooded and broken and naked and alone, but I know

That and worse was to be my lot without him.

The Music Box

Posted on by
Reply

It is morning, the day before my mother’s funeral. My oldest son and I are standing by the French doors in the great room of my mother’s house. He is cleaning the windows and I am admiring the view of the pond when we both hear music coming from the mantle above the fireplace, six to eight feet from where we are standing.

I go over, thinking it must be one of her clocks. It is not. It is a music box, playing its song.

It played for a couple minutes, then the morning quiet resumed.

That was all.

The dress rehearsal

Posted on by
Reply

Towards the beginning of the pandemic a man in our town died. He was young and his death sent a ripple of fear and disbelief through our community.

We stood on his widow’s driveway in the sunshine as she told us about the progress of his disease and swift death. It was as terrifying as the plague.

Eventually so many others died.

I was nearly one of them. After my life was given back to me, I told God I would always give Him credit for the miracle of my life returned.

I was surprised at how few of my extended family and friends seemed to believe me. It was shock? Or the fact that the recovery seemed commonplace to them?

It also troubled me that at least one of my friends thought that if I could survive it, so would she.

And she did not.

I carry her mistake with me. I feel her absence still, with all the others we have lost.

People have been telling us about their rapture dreams. “Rapture,” in this case is a shortened term for God taking a bunch of us home, ending the age of Grace.

Back in 2020 it felt like watching a tsunami rolling towards us on the horizon.

Jesus is coming soon. Find him. Buy oil for your lamp. It is minutes to midnight.

Matthew 25:6 NIV
[6] “At midnight the cry rang out: ‘Here’s the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!’

She is not the same

Posted on by
Reply

There was a canal outside the city where we would go with cookies some afternoons after school had released us. Watch the boats glide past the steep bank, press down among the long grasses—brittle spun gold—punctuated by poppies

She is not the same anymore

Neither the woman on the canal nor the one in the hospital bed

She has been set free

And I feel the silence

A migratory grief

Sometimes in the head, other times

the heart

My mother died last week

Posted on by
Reply

She was sick. The accretion of conditions related to smoking years ago and other things were taking their due.

John 20:1 NIV
[1] Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance.

John 20:19-23 NIV
[19] On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” [20] After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord. [21] Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” [22] And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. [23] If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”

Hidden Camera—Basketball

Posted on by
Reply

We met because our children played in the same basketball league. My son and his daughter were on a team where the coach was stretched too thin. I volunteered my older daughters as coaches and every week we tried to be there for extra support and practice.

One game stands out in my memory. The opposing team had ringers and parents so focused on winning that they badgered and heckled our team.

I approached one of the league officials and asked her to intervene. She refused.

Our kids lost and we comforted them with words about how hard they had played and how unfair it all was.

Now it just seems like a metaphor for all that was yet to come.

Hidden Cameras Prologue

Posted on by
Reply

It was at his youngest child’s birthday party that I saw what at the time was one of E’s distinctive “celebrity” qualities—he used his pitcher’s arm to lob a beach ball into the splash pad pour bucket—ball, plunk, fill, pour, repeat. The crowd of summer park goers reveled his ability to beguile and entertain.

At the time I took his boyish self-confidence as the contributing factor—he had an athletic gift and had been praised and admired for it for years.

Why not use it for harmless fun?

I look through all of this with grief and anger now. All I did not see or understand about him that day, who he had been for years, and what was to come.

Someone cares (for your stick figure family)

Posted on by
Reply

I saw a bumper sticker the other day which said “no one cares about your stick figure family.”

The message seemed particularly pointed and I have pondered it in it’s untruth.

We do live in a difficult and fragile world full of perils and violence and uncertainty. But Someone actually cares quite a lot for each of our stick figure family.

Jesus—

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%2015%3A13&version=KJV

The burning paper ceremony

Posted on by
Reply

Ghosts should be

From the future—50 something you visits little girl you and tells her one day

You will be burning

Years of unopened letters (mostly official but some personal) all while the

The alarmist cock crows

Hey, you, I would say, look at these people

You will have a tribe

And this tribe you will have will

More than

Make up for the pain