Category Archives: child advocacy

Every day I walk through cold water

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First there was the shock-shock, which I would describe as a blanket of cotton, a fog, a zoned-out staggering thing. I am not sure how long this stage lasted, but it began to ebb when the nice women at the crisis center gave my five year old and her sisters their crime-victim quilts, hand-made, with such kindness.

The quilts underlined the permanent nature of the gift–beautiful crime victims. Undoable. Irrevocable.

Our story seemed one way for years, then just as things got safer because we knew and could protect them

The truth rolled over us, applying permanent tattoos everywhere.

I did not realize I had a thrill-seeker, risk-taker issue until the months of hunger, tears, and fighting were over…all technically either lost or a draw. Until after I wrote the book. Until after people began to disappear.

By then I had begun to walk through cold water.

Now I know why I do it. I do it because…I do it because

Because when I walk in cold water I can see you there

Through the dust

The crush of angry humans

The agony of your bedraggled well-wishers.

Your own pain indelible on your bloodied face

Dying for me

Deep

In cold water.

Dear Lisa, Anne, Travis*, Dr.,

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I read this morning that Sasha Obama may have made a decision about where she is going to college. I am happy for her. Happy she knows. Happy she is happy.

When I found out my daughters had been sexually abused by their adopted brother I was immediately aware of the similarities and differences between my children and Sasha and Malia.

Both sets of sisters are:

Are multiracial

About the same age

Have well-educated parents

They even share the same initials

Years ago I asked myself, “what would the world do if the Obama girls had been the victims of felonies?”

Surely we would mourn and pour out support for them.

I would hope we would, at least.

My daughters were the victims of abuse during the Obama administration. The way they were treated by the criminal justice system was a function of the Bush and Obama administrations, as well as the specific decisions of the elected officials of all three of the branches of the state government of Texas.

My partner and I argue about why they have and are being treated a certain way when they apply to universities in Texas and elsewhere.

He says it is because they do not attend a public school and that is all.

I maintain that while that has been a point of obvious discrimination against one, the other seems to have encountered additional roadblocks because she has written openly about her status as the victim of a crime.

Crimes.

Committed against her all before her eighth birthday.

She had the courage to write about being a sexual assault survivor and is now experiencing what I call bureaucratic limbo.

I rejoice for the Obama girls, but I cannot help but wish my daughters had the same rights they have.

The right to education and the right to be heard.

Due process. I am still waiting for due process.

Sincerely,

E.

*Some names have been changed because I don’t always edit as carefully as I should.

Jennifer the Beautiful

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I miss you girl

Miss your sister

Your nieces, nephews, cousins, children

Used to sing

Break-up songs for lullabies

Wish I could write you and me

A happy kind of story instead

No lost loves, no broken promises

Hope changed into

The steady gaze of a man who can build with his own two hands

Homecoming tabernacle

For all us, broken

But I am not a vegetarian!

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We have all been in the grips of a winter cold. This morning one of my younger kids slept-talked a single line–but I am not a vegetarian!!!

I don’t know the context, but the sentence itself was lovely in its exposition.

Often our lives are defined by others based on labels. The vegetarian label seems pretty harmless unless he was dream-offered a nut-apple-squash loaf or was inhabiting some sort of carnivore-topia.

In the world we are awake in we navigate through real perils when we reveal who we really are. Revealing we are a certain shade of skin or religion or sexual identification can cause people to see us differently–for good or ill.

Revealing our status as crime victims can do the same. I might not have thought so years ago, before I knew or started telling our family story, but now that I have, I can attest: it does.

Years ago I remember talking to my children’s counselor and she used the term “damaged good.” As in, “you wouldn’t want people to see your kids as damaged goods.”

Terrible to think she was right. We absolutely could have buried the story of what happened to us. We did not, and we are a healthy, happy, fairly isolated group of people now. Telling the story has categorized us as “high-risk” and the syndrome of isolation and silence has been almost categorical.

A small, small, lovely group of people have stuck around, bless them.

I used to believe that sexual assault victims should absolutely tell someone. I still believe that, but I would tell them not to expect much from those you tell.

I would tell them keep talking until you are safe.

I would tell them you are not alone.

Mary Ellen

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Wanted: Lester Eubanks

What would Jane say about the unspeakable crime scene? The girl already broken but still living? The final blow that ends the life.

Sometimes forensic science is not parsing out the rape, murder, and prosecution of the unspeakable crime. String of crimes.

Sometimes it is asking who decides what level of “good behavior” lets the murderer go on a shopping spree, walk alone in a mall–surrounded by the blissfully unsuspecting? Walk into the crowd.

And why all these years to wake us from slumber to

look for him

Among us?

BFF

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I am a bit of an outlier when it comes to organized religion. I used to go around to the laundromats in our town and leave Bibles. This seems like a frenzied but well-intentioned activity now, but review of this stage of my life defies easy adjectives

I was such an evangelical type then, and in my heart I still am. What has changed has never been Jesus. His love, his sacrifice, his constancy, and his friendship are defining, priceless, immeasurably worth it.

I have lost nearly all my faith in people, in churches, in the clubs we sheep join.

I did not lose my faith (in people and their institutions) when I found out my children had been abused by their adopted brother.

I lost faith (in people and their institutions)

When friends disappeared

Churches turned against us

Pastors got ghostly quiet

Family supported the abuser

The courts and LEO refused to prosecute all the offenses and the appropriate felony level.

He abused children after his juvenile sentence and police did nothing.

The victims were marginalized, treated like they were, we were, contagious.

But Jesus is there. He is the God of the marginalized. He is the voice in my head telling me that despite all my disaffection, I should write all this down.

When I have wailed to God about this incipient loneliness he says in his steady voice–I am here.

And one glance at the Cross reminds me of what that cost him,

Being there for me.

The Limitations Story

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[20] The bed is too short to stretch out on, the blanket too narrow to wrap around you.

–Isaiah 28:20 NIV

She was attempting shop therapy on the last warm day before both a cold front and a major holiday. The first part went better-than-expected, but the second part went wildly amiss.

The two competing voices in her head urged different paths. The more sensible one argued for the one stop shopping and efficiency of a big box store and the other said you want something quirky, old, with a story and a past.

So she turned left into the driveway of the German-themed antique co-op. A lot of things in this town were German themed–coffeehouses, bars, restaurants, “fests” of one sort or another.

This antique concession always fascinated her because the majority of its offerings were strewn about the lawn. She wondered if they worried about thieves making off with retro baby cribs, baker’s shelves, and attic fans in the middle of the night?

From the beginning she made precipitously bad decisions, ignoring no-return signs, not pre-measuring the hulking canoe rack which she purchased then realized would neither disassemble nor fit into her car.

She convinced the owner to let her exchange out the canoe rack for a forlorn but stately utility shelf… which then also did not quite fit the car.

Despair.

Not physics despair, metaphysics despair, the kind that washes over a softly aging, fully middle aged woman when she realizes she wishes she had listened to the sensible voice, that she needs the sensible hands and feet of others, that these sensible beings are not here now and she doesn’t want to get into it with them.

The asking of help: a mitzvah of humiliation.

She stuffs the shelf in the car, wedges it in so tightly, ties it and the door with makeshift things, drives home down unfamiliar roads, hazard lights on, fully mindful of the precariousness of her itinerate position.

She has told no one but God what the real problem is. So much heavier and unwieldy than a shelf protruding from a minivan.

At home her daughter meets her, helps her dislodge the stately shelf–with its past and history, talks about the terrible thing that happens when a person confronts yet again the ornamentality of 911.

But the shelf is home, safe for now, so easily anthropomorphic.

Moving Mountains

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I have a hunch that when we get to Heaven we will realize that no matter how big, how wild, how impossible our prayers have been, we could have prayed for more.

Let me be clear: God does not answer prayers for evil. He does not reward our sin, cowardice, or avarice. He rewards the just, but if we pray along the lines of love, mountains do move.

Have you ever seen a mountain move? Have ever seen it lumber to the sea and toss itself in?

I have not. And as with these oh-so-solid mountains, many of the big-ticket items I have prayed for have been stolidly immobile for years.

Impossible things.

But I do worship the God of impossible things. His wry sense of humor, His unflagging love, His ridiculous, tenacious prophets, and His remarkable creation all suggest

Moving mountains ain’t no thing

For Him.

Veronica

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When I lost Veronica–as I was losing Veronica, I decided I had to leave a trail of words so she could find me. This was back before the bloom of social media, so the trail of words was newspaper and legal-document based with a book of some sort when she grew up.

If anyone asked me, I would say that loving Veronica and having to figure out how to survive without her was the single most defining tragedy of my life. Defining in that it changed me. Defining in that it may have made me a better person.

The days and the hours right after I lost you were hell–actual hell. I wanted to die it hurt so much. I missed you, but worse than that I knew you missed me. I hated not being able to tell you why I was not there–that it had not at all been my choice to let you go.

This forced me to pray in a way I had never prayed before. I prayed for people to stroke your hair and people to sing you lullabies. I prayed for people to do things to love you, because I could not.

And in the process I realized that this kind of prayer was a form of metaphysical bargaining–God send someone to love Veronica led to God saying who will you love in return?

I loved youth group kids for you

I loved refugees for you

I loved drug addicts and the mentally ill for you

The snooty

The cowardly

And the messy

For you

I loved strangers for you

I loved pilgrims for you.

And the people who worked the drive through….for years they all were you–my lost baby in the world.

Because for the last 20 years all I have seen around me are would-be Veronicas.

Because that is how God sees me. He sees me through Jesus, His beloved lost Son.

So when you are afraid to call, when I have no address to send birthday gifts or plane tickets I marvel at what you don’t know about the treasure of love I have for you,

my baby girl.