Category Archives: grief

Returning to the place of grief

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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.

When the lie is on a hand-made sign

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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7762407/

The mother looks almost beatific patting her baby bump. She is going to great lengths and expense to end the baby’s life through dismemberment in utero.

Another picture from the case shows a supporter holding a sign asserting that abortion—the medical murder of babies-“saves lives.”

This is a statement which should be scrutinized with the same carefulness as injunctions over the gates of Auschwitz.

A lie is a lie is a lie, but covering human carnage with a bait and switch slogan is both Orwellian and apocalyptic.

The woman with her hand lovingly placed over her tummy is bent on killing her child prematurely.

It is hard to see such tragedy celebrated. Endorsed. Maybe even promoted by the journalists and photographers focused on elevating the rights of one human above another.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbeit_macht_frei

Don’t blur out atrocities

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The video started out unedited, presumably because it was filmed by her abusers—

The young woman is dragged by her hair from the trunk of an SUV.

Her arms are abraded and bloody

Her face is bloody

And her clothes show other signs of violent assault.

She has a look on her face which is haunting and she is pushed into the vehicle by men shouting and pushing in on her.

After the initial few hours of seeing her clearly, news organizations blurred her out. I know they had their own reasons for doing so, but they should not have.

If the aim is to find her among millions of people, we need to see her face.

If we are to face what happened to her. We need to reckon with all the horror together.

Ohio

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The wind is strong and I am compelled to go down to the river. It is dusk, when the blue light left by a departing sun is the most like the color of heaven and the girls come with me.

Em imitates Elijah, repeating his litany of praise to the God who rescues us.

She is a survivor, improbable survivor, traveling across from river to river

State to state

Improbable spitfire

Proving her life matters.

Sound of Freedom Roundup

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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/

Signs and Wonders

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I tell my kids that I had strange dream—in the midst of a banquet there was a duck, laid out on a platter, but the duck was still alive, and seemingly unaware that it was already served up as food.

I spent the rest of the dream trying to mediate some kind of restoration for the duck.

That is when my daughter told me about the Live Action story from my previous post. It hit me hard for a number of reasons. I had a beloved foster daughter who was premature and needed NICU services to survive. I would have adopted the baby in the story. Survivors of abortion should get all the benefits and services other neonates would receive.

I believe that Jesus died for my sins and the sins of a broken world. He died for the pain and he died for the grief and he died for the injustice and he died for the hate and he died for the tyranny and he died for the cowardice and he died for the willful myopia.

We are all the duck and we will get no other God -Rescuer willing to pay for our lives.

We should listen and follow him

The way a duck would if it were given a restored life and the rights of a child, not a meal.

John 3

Lord, teach us to pray

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Luke 11:1-2 KJV
[1] And it came to pass, that, as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, one of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples. [2] And he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth.

As he was praying in a certain place—why not tell us what place? Does the author not want us to know where he was praying? Was it too personal? Was he aware of the human tendency to enshrine geographical locations?

Jesus was an expert on prayer. The word prayer for most of us is tied to the supplication to someone in authority over us. Jesus is the King of kings—no greater authority exists, so his prayers are far more about homesickness and heart. He misses his Father and his home, so he calls home frequently.

As John taught his disciples—this is interesting. The Bible does not tell us what John told his disciples about prayer, but we could examine his lifestyle and biography for clues.

John was a relative of Jesus, but his parents were at least 2 generations older than Mary, meaning it is highly likely they are not present in his public ministry years. He was some kind of orphaned prophet. Many of us experience real or emotional orphanhood, and we need to know that God longs to be our mother, our father, and our home.

He ate locusts and honey—food he can forage for and that does not depend on human donations. Eating locusts feels confrontational—eating pestilence. Eating honey feels celebratory and hope-driven. Milk and honey are the signifiers of abundance and heaven. I like to believe he dipped the locust in the honey to make this extreme diet slightly more palatable.

Our Father—while humans might have been invited to use this term for the God of the universe, it is a borrowed and honorary title until Jesus has given his own life for ours. The crucifixion is our Adoption Day, yet Jesus gives the gift of this intimacy in this prayer. God is our Father—what a powerful blessing.

Who art in Heaven. Heaven is his home and as his children it becomes ours as well. I like to think of this as the address line on a letter, as well a the revelation of key components of God’s personality. What is Heaven? Home, God’s home. He defines Heaven by his attributes and we know a little more about him because we have some concept of the conditions of Heaven—safe, saturated with goodness and light, but also almost certainly beyond our full comprehension. Daniel, Ezekiel, and Isaiah all give us glimpses of Heaven and later so will John.

Halllowed/holy is your name. None of us can venerate the name of God enough. We can only approach what it means to be holy and hallowed—pure, light-filled, powerful, undiluted, intense. When you really sit in the presence of the idea of holiness for even a few minutes it can make you uncomfortable. We would all be consumed by holy fire if it were not for Jesus’ sacrifice for us on the Cross. We can come close to holiness only by way of his saving and protecting blood sacrifice for us.

Thy kingdom come.

We see God’s kingdom come any time humans comfort each other, sacrifice for each other, confront injustice for each other, fight darkness with light and expose lies with truth.

We have been commissioned to bring the kingdom, not just wait for it to come like a train rumbling into a station.

Thy will be done. See above—we are supposed to listen to God and do what he tells us.

As in Heaven, so on earth. We practice our citizenship rights whenever we do anything in the same way it would be done in “real” Heaven. I say real because we live in such chaos, sometimes seeming so far for Heaven. By giving us this sentence—thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, Jesus tells us that we can live heavenly lives now, but what does that mean?

Put the most simply—it means spend time with Jesus. He is our best friend. Talk to him, sing to him, ask him for help, ask him for more. Pour out your grief and anger.

If he is new to you, ask him if he is real and what to do next. Read the Bible, especially the Gospels, and if you already know how much he loves you, ask for more, for yourself and for a broken world.