Suddenly I see us
Traipsing in,
Blankets, flotsam of ourselves
Trailing behind us
We are like children
Dazed and shellshocked
By the dust of a falling world
Still crashing down
Behind us
But we are Here Now
And as we wipe the tears and soot
From our brand-new-eyes–
We recognize
This strong family
Resemblance in a sea/a star
Filled sky full of Light.
What if I lost you?
What if you were not there?
What if one moment I saw you
And then blink
You
Were
Gone?
I ask myself these questions
With every beat of my heart
Knowing I have walked down these lonely roads before
Looking for the babygirlchild
Woman
I lost that day
no replacements found.
To me the New Testament is about Love. It should be called the love testament, the love contract, the love promise.
We are stuck in our mess! for thousands of years, centuries, decades, hours and minutes. Waiting for hope. Holding onto the idea of it. And then along comes this Guy! Different from the rest because He is safe. Safe like a shelter in the storm. Safe like a mother’s kiss. Safer than these things.
The Song of Solomon says that “love is as strong as death, but when Jesus shows up Love becomes stronger than death.
And who does He love?
You.
Imagine a box
A brightly colored box
Like a present/
Like a gift
Something inside of it
Calling you to life
Christmas morning and all your birthdays
It was the birthdays that got me
The little girl alone in the hospital with army issue socks?
Tragic.
Life is tragic.
But we can all use socks…
You taught me to love
And risk myself
be brave child,
You whispered
Open the box.
Treasure inside.
I promise.
When I was a very little girl I thought religion was an insurance policy. I figured God was too busy for personal communication but that church and prayer were our way of joining his club.
I had a stuffed animal named Mouse who was my best friend. I could not imagine life without Mouse. Mouse was a great friend and I could say anything to Mouse. In fact, I worried a great deal about Mouse not going to heaven. I knew that faded bags of foam padding and chintz were not eternal. It was a rough dilemma.
When I was 10 I went to a charismatic prayer group at one of the Catholic churches. I was used to formal prayer but this was wilder–singing, hand raising, speaking in tongues. I did not know what to do.
So I closed my eyes and said, “God, I don’t even know if You are real or not, but if You are, show me.”
I immediately felt an intense love. It was like He had put a blanket of love around my shoulders. Not only was He very real–He loved me!!”. That was a life changing moment.
The rest has been a beautiful love story–perfect on His side, deeply flawed on mine.
I tell people Jesus loves them because He does but also because He has saved my life. I am crazy about Him. I want everyone to get to know Him–the God who is Love.
And Mouse? Well, mouse was always really Jesus
In disguise<3
A friend posted a picture of her former house, razed to the ground. It is a stark picture of the power of fire and destruction. So sad because it represented the lives lived within it.
Still. No one was hurt. No one lost their lives. It could have been worse?
I wrote for Yahoo! Contributor Network because I wanted to keep children safe. As the mother of rape victims I was aware of the devastating aftermath of sexual assault. I was also aware of how pervasive images of sex and pornography in our culture hurt our children.
So you can imagine how devastating it was to find out that Yahoo video searches render explicit images of pornography on ordinary searches.
I have contacted Yahoo repeatedly about this problem and the lack of a functioning filter. They have sent me automatic responses but have not fixed the problem.
How sad that a company with such power for good would not make efforts to keep children–and all of us, safe from the dehumanizing effects of human exploitation.
I write this here because they declined to publish my words on YCN.
Love has become one of the most abused words in America. It seems to mean a lot of things to a lot of people–sex, pride, ceremony, donuts, but rarely does it resemble the human picture God gave us for love–Jesus, whose name means “God saves.”
How? Poor life, misunderstanding, hunger, humility, some blazing sermons a few resurrections and then the most brutal execution in the history of the universe.
Read that again and think about what it means–Love.
Then He rises from the dead.
Love. Again.
Love is well and thoroughly defined by Jesus but then he lets Paul, James and John define it as well.
Wanna know if you really love?
Ask yourself if you would endure what Jesus endured for someone.
Then for the love of God, protect that person from the dogs–coyotes–wolves of this world.
Because if you won’t it’s not love.
John 21:15-19
Imagine your child is the most beautiful baby in the world. Now imagine they are a beautiful toddler, then preschooler and then kindergartner.
(yes, I know your child is the most beautiful of all these things–this is why I wrote it that way– so you could empathize)
Imagine you homeschool because you enjoy time with your child so much. Imagine your child is both smart and good, charming and graceful and funny.
Now imagine you discover that your child has been sexually abused by someone they trusted. Someone you let be around your child. You trusted the abuser too.
When you find out that all this has happened before your child is 6, how will you feel? What will you do?
I can only tell you what I did. The first thing I did was grieve. I cried for at least a month. I cried for three years. I cried yesterday.
The next thing I did was ask how could I have missed it? The abuser was highly deceptive. Most are.
Then I stared right into the face of an awful list. On it were:
Acting out sexually
Academic problems
Bedwetting
Anger issues
Small cutting
Depression
Suicidal behavior
Poor hygiene
Gender identity crisis
Eating disorder
Low self esteem
Imagine you are the mother of the most beautiful child in the world and you do not want your child to struggle with the things on that list. You want healing.
I prayed and the answer I got was remarkably simple: the truth will set you free.
I had a hard time at first because of the list. I hated the idea that people would judge my child because of what had been done to her instead of seeing she was not those things.
She was just another 5 year old crime victim. Five year old rape victim.
You don’t get your head around that right away. Hurts too much.
But I began to tell our story. I used the language of the criminal code because what had been done was a crime.
As I told the story I found out one thing for sure: the list is wrong, really wrong.
How do I know? Because the vast majority of rape and child sexual abuse survivors never show up on the list, never reveal their stories.
They live quiet, normal, functioning lives with no predetermined set of symptoms from the list except the terrible loneliness and pain that comes with the betrayal of their innocence and the added weight of attempting to heal alone.
Why would they need to heal alone?
The list.
Who wants to have to deal with terrible pain of sexual abuse AND the stigma of that list?
Not me. I wouldn’t. But I have chosen to let the truth set me free and it has.
My beautiful child is no more at risk of the things on that list than any other child. In fact she is far less so.
Why?
Because she has me and I would swallow a world of pain, humiliation and prejudice before I would let her walk the road into adulthood alone.
In fact. I want to get rid of the list. It a terrible fiction.
So. I think of myself as one if the 100 most disenfranchised people in the United States. Why? Because I vote.
And because when I have contacted elected officials about our growing need to protect our children they tell me that protecting our children is not their issue
Let me rephrase that: local and national elected officials who have responded to my concern about protecting children from pedophiles have said they won’t help me because it is “not” their “issue”
I used to think it was everyone’s issue.
I keep thinking–this is an election year, shouldn’t someone care?
So the Akin thing forced me to study up on the politics and what I found was interesting.
Akin was wrong–really, really wrong, but to what end?
He was trying to save babies. He meets his political downfall because he crossed a line in trying to prevent murder, mass murder.
The ends do not justify the means. His strong desire to save babies from elective abortion does not make what he said right…
but a bit of contextualization never hurt anyone.
Rape is rape, but the strange wording and semantic crash for Akin came because he was trying to legally address something that is known, practiced and acknowledged in obstetrics–doctors can call a lot of things the way they want to. Many doctors are already allowing or referring for elective abortions to minimize their risk of law suits if parents deem their child imperfect.
Akin is 50 steps ahead of a 50 year old game, but what he was discussing when he got caught out was the notion that a baby would be valuable even if she were the child of a rapist or child molester.
Ironically, another recent flurry of outrage occurred over a pregnant teen in the DR who was not permitted to abort her fetus so she could receive cancer treatment.
I thought it was interesting that no one thought to question why a girl of 13 or 14 was pregnant and how old exactly was the father?
Akin was wrong and he will pay for his verbal gaffe. But we all pay an unacceptable price if we laugh at the “rape rape” without asking how we can help the young victims of rape by providing healing, safety, comfort, advocacy and a voice–not a brutal medical death to a second innocent child when the first has endured too much.
For a long time my name was Bitch. I will only write it once, hereafter I will use a placeholder, but it is important for me to acknowledge it just once.
My adopted daughter called me this regularly for years. Never without venom. It hurt to be called beach because of the venom. It hurt because she was saying I was not human, without value.
I suspected that my new nickname, like much of her other abusive behavior, was a reflection of her own struggles with identity. She said I was the beach, but struggled with who she was and how valuable she was.
She was valuable to me. I had sacrificed a great deal to be her beach, um… mom.
She is still valuable to me. I know she can be a pain in the grass, but she is my daughter. She is my daughter.
When someone treats her badly or dehumanizes her or devalues her. And let us be clear, those words themselves are placeholders for very bad things. People who should help her have done very bad things instead. Well, I may be a beach, but I want to stomp and yell and kick’em in the shins.
I want to say stop!! She is worth more than this!! She is my daughter.
I want to have a healing, undoing, potion for the harm done to her.
I do. It is a single name–Jesus. He became the beach for her, for me, for all of us to undo the undoable, to restore our lost and stolen value.
When she tells me what has happened to her I grieve and wish she would stop running from the one Man who raises the value of an ordinary beach like me.
He buys the field/finds the treasure/sets the captive free.
And instead of the rude name we have become accustomed to, He cups our faces in His hands and calls us by our eternal name–
Dear
Very Dear…
Carrying Light 