Category Archives: child advocacy

Easter is a Doorway

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I read an article this morning about a little boy in Massachusetts who was gone for months before he was reported missing.

His body was found this week.

Stories about five year old murder victims whose whole lives were defined by abuse, neglect, and pain do not go with our Sunday best, our Easter celebration. These are hell stories.

These would remain hell stories without Jesus.

What Jesus does with the stories of lost children is what matters.

He takes the pain of broken lives.

He restores the impossible–life for death, peace for pain, love for hate.

The cost too high to calculate: he pays it.

So it doesn’t have to feel like Easter to me. I can face the loneliness of my own story–

Fostering the broken

Adopting the rebellious

Taking on the identity of the crimes committed against those I love.

No easy answers.

Just Jesus, alive, for me.

A Metaphor for You

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You were the one
To tell me all the others did it too
With a percentage
A statistic
Because it is the way you roll

50% percent, eh?
Half of all you knew.
I took the statistic to the source
Never got an answer.

Not surprised…
Inclined to believe they, like you
Would tell the students

obey the patriarchal voice

And hell, eat your broccoli as well
As the water rises around us
To the end.

Divorcing Facebook

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In all fairness to Facebook, I was a failure from the beginning.

I never posted a grumpy cat meme. I posted Bible verses. I wrote about child advocacy.

I was no fun.

So the decision to exit stage right was overdue. I stayed for the people I knew I would miss. And I left for my family’s safety.

Several times this morning I found myself fashioning vestigial posts about ghrelin, Alice Monro, and a beautiful rainstorm.

Notice I am still blogging, so I am hardly cured.

But it is a start.

I believe in the power of prayer. With or without the artifice of social media to prove that I am real.

I want to be real–

A tree that merely grows quietly in the forest. Making little noise at all.

Sibling Day

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I always see a rather dour group of chocolate, flower, and card execs huddled together in a dimly lit office…

(Think Brando in Godfather)

Coming up with new holidays–world chicken day? Classic sitcoms day? Creative tie day?

So there. You have my context for Sibling Day. Notice I have waited until the celebrations have subsided to comment.

Years ago I had to buy a book called Sibling Abuse after my adopted daughter revealed that my adopted son was abusing my youngest daughter. And others. He had a list of victims.

He had used his siblings. He abused their trust and their innocence.

And the aftermath was scorching. Our family has stood in a lonely place for a long time now.

My sibling did nothing.

My husband’s sibling as well.

So “sibling day” is kinda painful for me except for one thing–

The children in my family now have the best siblings. They shelter each other and enrich the lives of their brothers and sisters.

They give me hope.

I just wish I could give them the uncles, aunts, grandparents, cousins, and friends they so richly deserve.

Dear Cassandra,

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You were the smallest of the babies and just as beautiful as your sisters.

Your foster mama was a veteran fostering and adopting mother. She told me

everyone has a birth story

Meaning that adopted and foster children had a way of making their entrance into a family memorable.

I worried about you because you were so tiny. I visited your foster mother one day in the spring before they made it clear that all three of you were destined for adoption by the people who took you.

I will never forget praying for you. Praying for the path your life would take.

When you love a baby, your world orbits that child’s well-being forever.

Dearest Mercedes,

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Your foster mama was a grandmother and she cherished you so.

She and her daughters sang you lullabies with your nickname–Sadie woven into the songs.

Your hair was slightly darker than your sisters, even though Veronica was your identical twin.

I have home movies of you with your sisters on your first birthday. All three of you together was such a joy to see.

Such beautiful babies.

It hurt to lose you. It was some consolation to know you had your sisters.

Mark Twain on Social Evil

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Mark Twain said that when he was growing up in a slave state (Missouri) he was never confronted with a single dissenting viewpoint.

Pastors preached the (biblically erroneous) notion that Africans were cursed by God and therefore ought to be slaves.

No one saw any abuse of the slaves.

The slaves kept quiet about their opinion one way or the other.

In the Missouri of Twain’s youth slavery was a de facto good not evil.

A situation he addresses well in Huckleberry Finn.

But it was not true. Slavery was and is an abomination, an aggression against other humans.

What aggressions against humans do you take for granted or even passionately support?

Abortion?

Child sexual abuse?

Human trafficking?

Abortion is legal in the US and many people are passionately supportive of it. But it is a greater evil than slavery.

And while child abuse and human trafficking are illegal, if our government does not enforce their extinction, they will and do flourish in the gap.

What does it cost?

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I struggle with a voice in my head telling me that a woman in my ramshackle physical condition has no business hitting ramps on a wakeboard.

It is a powerful voice.

And yet I cannot help thinking that challenging that voice and hitting those structures is a victory of the heart.

Victories of the heart are often costly victories. We are challenged to face our deepest fears of loss and humiliation, pain and failure for love.

And so with the even objectivity of a math problem you could say–the measure of our love is the measure of our willingness to overcome our fear.

Or better said by a Braver Man–perfect love casts out all fear.

Tell me you love someone and I will ask you, what dragons have you fought to preserve your beloved?

Always the same reaction

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I was standing in a Walmart years ago when someone I had known for years told me she had been sexually assaulted.

She told me because I told her what had happened to us. She gave me the fragile gift of a common experience–a tragic common story.

I never knew. She is a beautiful, very together, very articulate woman. I never knew about this heartbreak.

I find my reaction to these stories is always the same. I want to hit something. I want to pound out the anger and hurt that is inherently a part of any crime

Especially against children.

Especially when they trust the person who hurts them.

I say this because if you have one of those stories you need to know you are not alone.

I grieve for you, pray for you, and long for justice for you.