Category Archives: child advocacy

When we are weak

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This was over a decade ago. A small storefront church, a young mother speaking.

She spoke about a children’s song–

Jesus loves me this I know/for the Bible tells me so/little ones to him belong/they are weak, but he is strong/

The song is so simple, so elemental, but it is only a portion of a longer hymn few of us know or sing.

We like the idea of Jesus being strong until he requires something of us.

We like the idea of Jesus being strong until he requires us to acknowledge our weakness.

We are weak. All of us. There is not a living creature on the planet who can stave off death, yet we cling to the illusion of our self-sufficiency.

The young mother that day was focused on the call of the Gospel–one man able to save us from death forever, and how to bind that good news to her children, all God’s children.

How many times have you heard a person cry out in grief and pain and then seen people answer–

stay strong/you are strong.

No. You are not. None of are. We are weak. That is the point–we are weak. He is strong.
So when sin and grief and pain hit you hard remember this: the song is true.

We are weak
He is strong
Only his strength can save us
From the swirling darkness of this
Dying world

Hat People Myopia

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I have a childlike way of seeing the world. There is a story in The Little Prince that I have found very useful over the years.

The narrator tells us that he once drew a picture of a snake swallowing an elephant. When he showed the picture to most people the drawing they exclaimed,

nice hat!

They could not picture the inside of the snake–the hidden elephant, if you will. He determined to talk to the hat people about insubstantial things–golf, the weather.

I find my hat picture is acknowledging great darkness in this world. Who wants to read about child abuse? Who really wants to write about it?

Not me.

I would rather not. I have done it aggressively, unapologetically over the last two years because I realized that it is a too-common story exacerbated and perpetuated by silence.

It has been an ugly cause. Made the more ugly for me personally because I realize how many “good” people do nothing.

I won’t ever be good at talking about golf while the world is burning.

Someone I cared about and once trusted as an elephant-seer had a conversation with me that reminded me how lonely the world of the abuse survivor can be.

The person’s discomfort was palpable and they couched it in terms of my Christianity. I have a feeling a lot of people look at my story of unhappy endings and think,

she must have done something wrong.

Of course I have! I am a sinner. But mental illness and child abuse happen everywhere, not just in my life. We don’t talk because have been taught to be ashamed.

That is not freedom in Christ. Freedom in the love of God involves a central story of pain, humiliation, agony, the death of God.

I cannot see the survivors of the crucifixion singing glib songs of cheap sentiments in the days of the cross.

Beware of people who preach resurrection joy without crucifixion agony.

The story of heaven can only be told if someone is willing to reckon with hell.

Thank God He did.

The DSM and erosion of the rights of children

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The mental health professionals who shape the language of the DSM have been toying with the diagnostic language associated with pedophilia.

This matters because the pressure is now (and for some time has been) on legitimizing pedophilia.

Children are already largely the target of exploitation here and abroad. And in many parts of the world the legal protections for children are severely compromised or non-existent.

This waffling over the DSM is one more symptom that the rights of children to safe passage through childhood is eroding precipitously here as well.

John Green and Stupid People

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I write to stay off a steady diet of chocolate chip cookies and chips.

Notice I said–steady.

Sometimes I write an essay and then shelve it because it is too personal or polemic.

You can imagine how rough these pieces may be.

One such unpublished essay was, on review, well-spoken, passionate, and almost entirely wrong.

I had misjudged a man by a meme.

A man I now deeply respect and a quote taken out of context.

Yes, I still believe that we should not refer to people as “stupid.”

But as a current rabid fan of the Crash Courses on YouTube produced by John and Hank Green, I thoroughly endorse the Green Bros. and their ability to teach. They rock and they make my job as an educator much more fun and engaging.

Nothing stupid about that.

The Rain Song

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Rain comes down
After the rush
After the game
Someone, always someone has to
Drive home in the dark
Defeated

Whilst the victors go to Walmart.

You bring rain
You always God
You bring rain
And with it midnight lullabies
For an old insomniac like me

I understand the darkness
In his voice
In his shared sense
Of humor

How “finishing the job”
Could seem so reasonable
To a monster-
o-us–

She listens to the darkness
The rain
The lullaby for a child who would not
Ever
Relent

Now become a man
Face your god
Face your God
No wonder you do not believe in
One
When the other is something so unspeakable

My Joy

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John 2:9-10 (NIV)
and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside [10] and said, “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.”

Pour the water first
Jesus is coming
Joy.

So Much for the Children

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If I had a dollar for every time someone argued that expanding the definition of legal sex was NOT going to end in disaster for our kids, I would actually have enough money to opt out of the Cap’n Crunch ads that defray my blog costs.

In a week when the DOJ makes a show of shutting down a crucial child advocacy website this story out of Virginia should put everyone on notice.

An aggressive endophile was allowed to walk free by Virginia courts precisely because sodomy laws no longer applied and the judges involved did not deem the aggressive solicitation of sex from a minor to be a crime that mattered to them.

If you have children you care about you should take note of this case.

What follows hereafter will be more of the same–courts and justices deciding not to pursue legally valid statutes against sex between adults and minors.

We are not far from the end of civilization and we are already a failed state.

You may want to start disguising your kids as pets. They will get more legal protection from PETA and the SPCA than from our courts.

No Threadbare God

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She tells me a story
That haunts me all day
And into the night

About ordinary love

I run a line down memory
Not just mine but hers
Especially hers
All that I did not see

Plays out in normal…
nightmares sometimes happen in broad daylight

Chatty conversations with the devil
Always
Turn into shouting matches

I beg God, please…
Rain down mercy from heaven on these little ones
They do not deserve this

Heal us.

When I catch a glimpse of Him
No threadbare God
Ever
Again.

Not your issue, I know..

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I am a stress eater.

So while the rest of the country is blathering on about a ridiculously totemistic showdown between identically useless political factions, I found myself eating leftover chili and apples that I did not technically need.

Because I am worried about invisible children.

Not the ones trucked out to shop a piece of legislation or a legal decision, real children.

The children in question are very dear to me but as I watch them travel through adolescence I am increasingly dismayed by their choices–joining gangs, dabbling in illegal substances. Sex way before they should.

They are refugees from one of the most repressive regimes on the planet and they have been given the opportunity to come to America–Texas.

But they have not been given the opportunity for much genuine community.

Overlooked by pastors and churches. Stereotyped by people who should have known better. Stopped and interrogated simply for walking down quiet streets.

They learned there were yawning holes in the law.

They continue to long for the chance to play competitive soccer in a town that only makes room for football.

They are falling fast through the cracks.

And I ask myself–who do you call when you see children who live next to a dangerous road lie down in that path and say they are ready to die?

I have always been afraid I would lose a child from their community to that road–too many speeding trucks.

But to see them lying there…and to know there is no one I can call to save them.

How? You ask–how do I know?

I have called before, for other children I loved.

Called pastors
Congressmen
Senators
Bureaucrats
Ordinary people
Christians

The answer always the same–uncomfortable silence–this is not our issue.

Is it yours?

Childhood Cancer Awareness

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It is and should be a popular cause to support cancer research for children and children who endure the shocking ordeal of cancer.

No child should have to endure cancer. Ever. It is a tragic function of our scary, broken world.

But what if there were “better” and “worse” ways to get cancer?

And what if some of the worse ways had to do with enduring other things that children should not have to be exposed to? Second-hand smoke? Meth labs in their homes? Physical abuse? Or sexual exploitation?

The terrible truth is that some people do get cancer from being sexually exploited and physically abused.

People like Robbie Middleton.

Kids you will probably never see on a poster for cancer research because our society systematically marginalizes child abuse victims.

Imagine. Imagine the hell of that kind of abuse–that it could result in a boy’s death.

Then imagine you and I were the ones who looked away because it was too hard to bear.

Too hard indeed.