Try to survive today.
Rules for losing a child
Reply
Author Archives: Elea Lee
A Chance of Rain
I think just to mess with me, the weather app will place one small storm cloud on the far horizon of days. I tell myself, the light is moving away, the days grow short, the heat will break, these are just shoes in a messy front hallway, seemingly lost and matchless, discardable, but
Make no sudden moves
Until the rains come
Rules for Prodigals
I once knew a man who said it should be the parable of the prodigal father, which, of course, is true. We are not very prodigal with much but our father’s treasure.
I have been the younger son. I have been the older son. Jesus knows that we are all really not great sons–judge-y or profligate or both, so he gives a story where the two great characters are an old man and a fatted calf.
The man who saves the world makes himself the main course at a feast thrown for a loser.
I am that loser. The shining moment of clarity in any human life is when we realize we are all the prodigal child.
And so we should know the rules for prodigals–
I have done nothing to deserve this inheritance I have squandered
I have made little account for the days my Father has grieved on my behalf
But he never stops hoping I will come home.
What pride, what fear, what foolishness can withstand the power of love?
Luke 15:17-20 KJV
[17] And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! [18] I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, [19] And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants. [20] And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.
House painters
The house blinks and dozes as the men apply coats of new paint, let their music waft over privacy fences, over all of us
Little bits of 80s anthems, power ballads from the past,
Is it that easy?
To summon joy?
Chuppah
You should not drink juice, especially from plastic straws, should not drink milk, especially whole, for animal protein is a moral issue now, too much to intervene, to save the children from anything but
Juice and whole
Milk, honey,
And mammon are such old words, reminders Jesus is older than
All of us. This rough hut, this hand-held chuppah, this soaring cathedral, this new grave, this glassy sea.
I may tell myself in my best moments that all this is the real real, true true we will inhabit together One Day, One Day
But today, yesterday, tomorrow even
We are the monsters
We become.
Apogee
The girl-child mama ties her daughters to her–kites, they rise
Aloft in the summer breeze
Curl, swirl, dip, and sing
Bird-children
While faraway grandmother
Ponders apogee
The furthest point one can be from another.
The Space Between Us
I see the man making models of planets in his meticulous, scienc-y basement then lining them up like a photographer arranging and rearranging a family portrait,
Mercury, you stand here…Jupiter if you could squeeze in by the ping-pong table
Or the final run and podium judgment of the Westminster Dog Show
It is a neat trick
Of human folly to think we can order the objects floating in an infinite sky, make them feel smaller than they are, more manageable
When even the moon is beyond us
Its insistent pull and reflective splendor
Missed so often in the ordinary
Night sky
As we pack all the objects of this solar system
Between us
Furniture against the door of Love
When you get lonely
Go for a run in a safe, well-lit place
Sing your God songs, loud if possible
Kick around in the Gospels, the Jesus stories, the Bible project, CS of course
Ask Him direct questions
We love you sooo much
But He is love–
oceans-are-small-compared-love
No-story-too-small-love
Big-sky-love
Lonely awful die-for-us love
Lend us a child like you, Love
Arms wide open love
The stars are more than fire love
In the dark sky they admonish/love
He will never leave you, never walk away
Dear Heart,
I keep thinking about the video of you when you were wee, all dumpling, sass, and wild curls. You were getting ready for something, and judging by your cute little dress, something liturgical. Your dad told you to say goodbye to the camera, but you misunderstood him and thought it was me.
You protested, but she’s my mommy!
Seems like both yesterday and three lives ago.
There are no words for how much you mean to me.
No words for how hard it is to close the book on the always with you chapter of your life.
I love you
All you have been to me
All the joy you are to me.
Poured out perfume which fills the room
Forever.
Love,
But-she’s-my-mommy
Protect your ass, you mean
Recently I took an online “course” designed to protect Christian ministries from lawsuits arising from child sexual abuse.
I knew it was going to be annoying, but it was worse than I had anticipated.
Here are some (but definitely not all) of the curriculum deficiencies:
- There was very little information about helping victims of child abuse
- Many of the recommendations were protective of the church over the child
- There were broad, unsubstantiated allegations about the victims of child abuse and their families which included saying that they were mentally disabled and prone to familial dysfunction
- The course stated and repeated that the adult survivors of child sexual abuse were not emotionally stable, neither able nor willing to process and recover from childhood trauma
- The methods of ferreting out both abuse and abusers were shot through with harmful stereotypes and inadequate information
- The course taught the participant to favor in-organization reporting over direct and immediate reporting to law enforcement, legal guardians, and child protective services
- The test reinforced curriculum biases
I contacted the company directly after I took the course and asked them for information on their source material and bibliography.
No answer.
I am not a rape victim, but I was targeted by at least one pedophile when I was young, and I have children who are childhood sexual assault survivors.
I am not “low IQ,” and my children are all smarter than I am. Had any of us been “low IQ” (term taken directly from course material), we would still deserve help from the law and relief from abuse.
Our individual and collective intelligence was not the reason my children were molested by my adopted son, but it also did not save us from protracted and compounded grief.
First from the felonies,
Later from the way “good people did nothing,” or worse still, did things to let us know they wanted to silence our story.
Jesus said, tell the little children they will always be safe with me.
Yet in order to protect their legal asses big, well-known communities and institutions all over this country are serving up biased, unsubstantiated defamation of childhood rape victims and their families in place of solid, simple procedures to ensure that children are safe in church and that the law is followed.
It should never be “protect my ministry,” over protect the children.
Matthew 18
Carrying Light 