Returning to the place of grief

Posted on July 12, 2025 by Elea Lee

After it became clear that the state of Texas was not going to provide adequate consequences for the assailant or adequate protections for the victims, I did three things—

I wrote a book so there would be a record of what had happened to us.

I asked to move and tried to expect less of law enforcement (a person cannot change who they are without losses).

I became involved in extreme sports. I became an adrenaline junkie.

Facing my fear and pouring myself into physical challenges with the risk of pain helped me to ease the grief, anger, and helplessness of what had happened to people I loved.

Like all addiction, this was not a long term solution, but it did help me.

Routinely facing fear of physical harm helped me to be more courageous when there was only the fear of human ostracism.

I still seek the adrenaline rush and lately it has been through swimming in challenging conditions.

Blueprint 515 MCAT “guarantee” is not really guaranteed at all

Posted on March 5, 2024 by Elea Lee

Recently a dear friend signed up for and completed a course “designed” to guarantee a significant bump in her MCAT score.

She was meticulous. She spent the months before the course taking practice exams, watching tutorial material, and studying MCAT material.

She did well on her assessment exam and did everything stated in the protocol provided by the company for the guarantee.

It did not take long to ascertain that the weekly “class” time was not content-rich, particularly helpful, or taught by experts in their fields.

Instructors tended to shoot the breeze, quip, and offer up nuggets of their lives over what might have actually helped—strategy and content specifically designed to train students to understand the test and the material.

Recently she took the MCAT and got a solid score, but not the guaranteed score.

Within minutes of contacting the company she was informed that they had rejected her request for either of the guarantee options—no course extension past one month and no money back.

Suddenly the company began to throw up barriers which expressly contradicted their written policies.

Please read this carefully and pass this story along to others.

Had she read it she would have saved herself 3000 dollars and been able to raise her score more effectively in the time they wasted on what has ended up being an expensive swindle.

Sound of Freedom Roundup

Posted on July 17, 2023 by Elea Lee

Inside a Massive Anti-Trafficking Charity’s Blundering Overseas Missions

https://americancrimejournal.com/operation-underground-railroad-earns-47-million-in-2020/

We saw Sound of Freedom yesterday and it sparked a day-long conversation.

My adopted daughter was “trafficked” by her own biological mother, who gave her drugs and sold her for sex.

She died of a drug overdose in 2021 at the hands of her abusive boyfriend who bought her for sex.

We are now raising her daughters who were also exposed to abuse.

Child pornography is real and devastating. Trafficking is real and devastating. The movie is worth seeing for that reason, but I have profound questions about this narrative and this organization—which seems to have claims which are hard to verify or even possibly not helpful in terms of de-incentivizing human trafficking.

I began to question the OUR narrative when I read Katherine Ballard’s gloss on their adopted children. I have fostered and adopted a number of trafficked children and none of them have showed me “pure love” (nor do they need to). They have had deep wounds and have needed structure, love, and constancy from my family.

Do I “adore” any of them? I don’t think I should adore anyone but Jesus. But I have stayed in the trenches with them and I have learned that real love is just doing the best and wanting the best for someone, especially when their behavior reflects their trauma.

Christians may be willing to accept any Christian-adjacent narrative when we need to ask the hard questions even as we acknowledge that many of the stories of the predations of children happen inside the economy of poverty and addiction and maybe Ballard’s methods and efficacy need to be questioned by all of us.

OUR promises that they can, do and will go into the darkest corners of the world to rescue children. I hope they do. But we all need to be rescuers and often that is less flak vests and cameras and more quotidian commitments and truth-telling.

Jesus leaves the 99 for us. He expects all of us to be the hands and feet of his love.

All of the below round up is just for others to have more information about a flawed but ultimately valuable movie.

I am not advocating for anything but the Truth.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/global-histories/haiti/stories-of-faith/ht-04-we-had-to-seek-god?lang=eng

https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2023/july/anti-trafficking-ministries-nonprofits-sound-of-freedom.html

https://www.wkrn.com/news/local-news/tennessee-congressmen-want-answers-on-the-citizenship-of-a-franklin-soccer-coach-accused-of-raping-children/

10 Best Charities Fighting to Combat Human Trafficking

https://www.vice.com/en/article/4a3apm/anti-trafficking-group-with-long-history-of-false-claims-gets-its-hollywood-moment

https://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/sound-of-freedom/

Yeshua

Posted on January 13, 2023 by Elea Lee

I usually call him Jesus, like to think I am “his girl” and rarely live up to what he deserves.

Yesterday the daily Bible reading was Isaiah 53 and it brought me to tears, as it always does. “Crushed for our transgressions”? I think of the ordinary atrocities we humans endorse on the reg as well as the ones which will forever radiate darkness in our history.

He took them.

And he offers such untrammeled friendship. King of kings, yet he is the friend of every yet-born child.

I should stop there. Benign, seek Jesus stuff, right?

But that is not all. Isaiah’s view of the Messiah is polarizing. He is not depicted as the universally recognized cool guy everyone loves. He is depicted as “despised and rejected of men.”

Why?

Because we do not usually like to be told we are wrong, helpless—supine. We like to be in charge.

Jesus is our, wants to be, our friend, but ultimately that should be on his terms, not yours or mine.

Does that galvanize or offend you?

I do not enjoy thinking about Jesus’ crucified death, his humiliation, blooded and broken and naked and alone, but I know

That and worse was to be my lot without him.

Hidden Camera—Basketball

Posted on September 16, 2022 by Elea Lee

We met because our children played in the same basketball league. My son and his daughter were on a team where the coach was stretched too thin. I volunteered my older daughters as coaches and every week we tried to be there for extra support and practice.

One game stands out in my memory. The opposing team had ringers and parents so focused on winning that they badgered and heckled our team.

I approached one of the league officials and asked her to intervene. She refused.

Our kids lost and we comforted them with words about how hard they had played and how unfair it all was.

Now it just seems like a metaphor for all that was yet to come.

Advice for the dictator

Posted on March 5, 2022 by Elea Lee

Lately he doesn’t seem to smile much, hardly a surprise when his latest hobby is world domination.

I pray for him, but how?

How do you pray for a monster?

By acknowledging we are all monsters, only some monsters do not obey the voices in our heads which

Reduce cities to rubble and children to dust.

The advice is simple–

You are a man, just a man

And you are dying

You cannot, no,will not, outrun God

Repent and change

Leave everything but your soul behind and say you are sorry for what you have done

Replace your illusions of control with the acknowledgement of your weakness

For we are all monsters here

Debtors all to grace

Eternal Sea

Posted on July 18, 2020 by Elea Lee

When I wrote the slim, hasty, typo-ridden memoir Just, I used pseudonyms.

I chose to link my adopted children’s pseudonyms to their first initials C became Sea,

Sea like the color of his eyes

Sea like the cold ocean we stood in together

Sea like the depths, the hidden things both beautiful and terrible, the bigness of it all

Sea, placeholder for the God who makes seas then makes them evanesce

C is lost to me for now. He has disowned both me and the God who made me

But I can still remember

The time you hit your mouth on the hard metal of the seesaw and we had to rush you to the dentist

The way we would wait until you were sleeping to exclaim over your cuteness because

Most times when you were awake there was both sturm und drang

The time we went to the shore and I carried you on my back and you pummeled my head all the way back to the car

If I had a dollar for every time you hurt me or someone else I love dearly

It would not begin to be as much as you are worth

Of your eternal value

Of the Light you can become forever

If you just

Turn and face the Sea.

Frankie Gonzalez

Posted on June 2, 2020 by Elea Lee

I can feel the force of the grief, another small tragedy. His death, like his life, will be a small story, buried beneath bigger fires, the roiling of big boy fights, what is the death of one little boy when the world is burning?

Everything.

His life was everything

To him

And to the One who stood at the field of Heaven

Waiting all those days to welcome him home

Wipe away every tear

No more crying

No more pain

The Multiverse You

Posted on May 6, 2020 by Elea Lee

It is 4:53 in the morning and the-multiverse-you is sleeping somewhere

(Perhaps held in the arms of her beloved)

…she does not know about the foster children, or the loss, the things you use to distract you

From the sound of being cracked open

a meal, a primitive marine creature–a crab, a lobster, a clam

The oral surgeon calls the missing piece of you by the kind of nickname you might use for a lovable but naughty child—that little stinker or cuss or rascal

Only, the-multiverse-you tells it as though it were a puzzling but mildly discomfiting dream

No mention, no hint even

Of global dishevelment and chaos on the planet where she sleeps,

untouched

As you fiddle with various words for comfort to mask the pain

In all the broken places.

The Feast of Thorns

Posted on February 17, 2020 by Elea Lee

Long before our terrible story your birthday was already

the feast of Servites pruning winter roses. I cling to that now, all the other days this day could be:

Obstinate mountains lumber into obeisant seas

Lame men whole, blind men see

Dead men rise and shake off their shroudy bindings

impossible things all around ya

If only you will

See

Carrying Light

Words for light

Category Archives: crime