Tell me one more time why you don’t believe in hell.
And I will say,
well, ask Nixzmary, she lived there.
Nixzmary Brown
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Category Archives: child advocacy
Are You a “Good Samaritan”?
I don’t enjoy planks, but I do them anyway–because I am middle-aged and I need them.
They are so unpleasant that they always remind me of Jesus on the Cross all those merciless hours.
An eternity, really.
But today I was reminded of Byreon Hunter as well. What I wrote about him before seemed too insignificant to the task of grief for such a sweet little peanut.
His story seems to mirror the story of the victim in the parable of the good Samaritan.
Idolatrous culture, outcast guy, acts suspiciously like the peerless Storyteller.
We forget that to his listeners there was no such thing as a “good” Samaritan.
I personally think he was quite real. Which means so was the brutalized victim.
Make no mistake: no human punishment can ever atone or pay for doing that to a child. Ever.
But Jesus took every blow, every wound, all the pain.
He pays the whole price for our brutal rebellion, knowing we are all Samaritans without him.
To be a good Samaritan? That takes Jesus.
And the planks, those God-forsaken miserable planks…on the cross
For us.
Byreon Hunter
Little Byreon Hunter was an abuse and murder victim before anyone began to look for him.
The details of his abuse, torture, and slow agonizing death are more than any of us want to face.
But face them we must. Humans, parents, bad boyfriends do unspeakable things in our midst.
This is America. And if we don’t like what happened to Byreon Hunter then we must insist that his murderers face the full force of the law.
Knowing, as we do, even that would not be enough.
The Character of God
Have you ever had a friend who you trusted completely? For reasons of time and circumstance you thought–this person has my back.
Or something…
Most of us would like it if God were a glorified Santa Claus, providing winning lottery tickets and easy answers.
He is not. He is “not a tame lion.”. And this is a dark world.
But if you get to know Him well, you learn something–God is completely trustworthy.
Lucky for us His love never fails.
The Story of an “Unplanned” Pregnancy
I was in a barn the other day, marveling at the smell. I have given birth to all my babies in temperature and germ-controlled hospitals.
I am not going to lie, I would not want to have a baby in a barn then put him in a feeding trough to sleep.
I love animals, but the whole thing seems so desperate and impoverished.
Surely the Lord of the universe could have given the kid a motel room?!
The birth of Jesus was deeply inconvenient, fraught with the appearance of impropriety, and a life-long exile from paradise for the Baby in the manger.
To many people his life would look like a mistake, but they would be wrong. The birth of this child in the barn was the most important in history.
An event I take quite personally. My life and hope returned, my spiritual debt paid. My life sentence taken by Another.
What would I do without you, Jesus?
Reann Murphy
What we know is scant:
A little girl plays in the snow
In a trailer park
In Ohio
She goes missing
They look for her
Only to find
Her too late.
Years ago I lived and worked in a community where a little girl was found murdered and discarded in a dumpster.
This seems to be defining: how do we respond to any story of any child murdered and treated like trash?
Do we mourn? Do we demand justice? Do we search for answers?
Or do we distance ourselves from our poverty–moral or tangible, and say,
not my kid, not my problem?
Nelson
When a great man dies it is fitting for the rest of us to stand in his honor.
So I do.
But it is even more worth noting that Mr. Mandela was just an ordinary man who stood when it cost him.
Stood when others ran.
Stood when sitting, hiding, turning, leaving would have been easier.
He paid in minutes, days, hours, years, indignity, and heartbreak for a freedom that should have been his birthright.
What ordinary men do…
Tad Costin, Julia Lack, and the diminishing language of evil
A story developing out of Houston is so evil that I have opted to skip links: a man used his connection to in-home daycare for single parents to rape very young girls.
His pornographic model girlfriend may have helped him make videos. So far she has been charged with possessing child pornography.
It is a lurid story with the potential for hundreds of victims, many of whom would have been saved from this predator if he had been properly charged and convicted when he was caught sexually assaulting a young girl a few years ago.
The charges in that case were dropped, leaving him free to rape countless other little girls.
It further disturbs me that the language associated with the young victims is very dehumanizing.
The official legal statement refers to the victims as “young female children.”
Another site refers to the videos of the rapes of little girls as “material with minors.”
When you can’t call unfiltered evil evil, you definitely don’t have the guts to fight it.
The Girl in the Cage
The catalyst was an unsolved burglary–a nonviolent crime, and one that some police departments would not even bother to pursue.
Perhaps it was the gold bullion that saved her. You can imagine the home owner’s sense of violation and loss.
But in this case a pedestrian break-in and a bit of decent detective work revealed an unspeakable evil.
To think of the suffering of the little girl and the other children these two hurt is a burden to the psyche.
So the quotes about Mr. Gore are worth pondering–he seemed like a nice guy, went to church and everything.
Went to church and everything. Until we face the monsters in our own hearts we cannot face the monsters that walk among us.
And the scars, terrible scars in the heart of a little girl.
The Formula for Attachment Disorder
Of course I have wracked my brain about this–has it always been there?
Have there been generations of attachment disorder kids? I don’t think so. I think that RAD is a mostly modern problem, ushered in with the advent of formula for infants, ushered in as quickly as nursing mamas have been ushered out.
Up until the invention of fake breastmilk everyone had assumptions about the survival of infants: for at least the first few months someone with breasts was required.
We see nursing mothers (and surrogates) in great art and ancient sculpture. The baby who survived survived at the breast, able to spend crucial hours close to the face of love.
Attachment disorder is the opposite of that.. At the very most crucial time in a baby’s life, detaching a child from a consistent, nurturing presence is deadly–if not for the body, then absolutely for the soul.
Lots and lots and lots of people have been nurtured and loved and bottle-fed. But make no mistake–the advent of bottle-feeding is at the heart of the change that has robbed our poorest and most vulnerable babies of the love that would grow their souls.
The easiest way to “solve” the problem of attachment disorder is to make nursing a priority in our culture, and start valuing the power of nurture–breast or bottle, babies need snuggle time and a regular source of love.
There is no substitute for love.
Carrying Light 