Category Archives: grief

Bread for stones

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Jesus gives a powerful analogy for the love of God.

He said that human parents are evil but they still give their children good things. Fish instead of snakes. Bread not stones to eat. He then completes the thought–if we are so messed up but we still do right by our kids. How much more does God bless, love, and nurture?

Great, unless your parent doesn’t do those things.

What if your mother gives you a snake? What if your father gives you stones for bread? What then?

God is enough. He allows His precious children to be raised by wolves, but He sends a Lamb to save us.

Stones always remind me of Jesus. I think about the weight of small stones and imagine the size, weight, and impossibility of the stone in front of the tombs.

God gave his own most beloved son a stone. And that Son emerged alive. The Bread of Life.

Stones for bread.
Bread for stones.
Always Jesus.

Church for the Broken

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He was a personal friend and mentor. He encouraged me to pursue God. For years I used him as an example of what a sold-out shepherd did.

A shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. A shepherd puts God first.

In my wilderness faith I have listened to Internet sermons. Recently I found my former pastor’s sermon archive. Good stuff. He is a smart guy–soaring passages of scripture combined with warm and honest anecdotes. Good stuff.

I probably should have left it there–my memories of him 20 years ago were foundational.

But I didn’t.

I emailed and told him I was encouraged by his sermons. Eventually I told him why I was in the wilderness.

Have not heard from him since. As soon as I said “sexual abuse” he was dead quiet. Not the first foundational Christian leader to quietly retreat as soon as I tell my story.

There is no room for sexual abuse survivors in the church. There is plenty of room for pedophiles.

Jesus is unequivocal about these things. Our “churches” should mirror heaven–the kingdom of children, entirely free of evil.

Instead we whitewash the citizens of hell, make them deacons, and banish the broken children they have left behind.

Now, I just stick to the gospels. Jesus never leaves me or my brokenhearted children.

The Conjuring and Haunted People

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I do not like horror movies for one simple reason: violence and pain is not entertaining.

There is too much real horror in the world for us to get our jollies from “fake” horror.

So I was intrigued when I read about The Conjuring, no real violence? Only a modicum of bloodshed? Has a man known for his scarifying horror porn turned a corner in making a scary movie with old-school methods instead of new-school exploitation?

Perhaps. But I don’t usually stray into movie review just for kicks.

The reviewer I read pointed out that most of us just say–why doesn’t the family move? That is the second time this week someone has posed that question in connection with horror. The first time the question was in response to the 7 deadliest neighborhoods in the US. A friend asked–why don’t they just move?

There is no reason why a fictional family beset by camera-funded haunts could not up and move except the placement of the crafts services table.

In real life however, the answer is right up front–poverty. People stay because they are too poor to move. The neighborhoods stay dangerous because poverty does not fund decent law enforcement.

Poverty begets crime, neglect, and the exploitation of our most vulnerable citizens.

When the money is gone so is the safety. We live in a dangerously impoverish country–little girls left in trash bins and garbage bags. Grown women murdered by a sex offender who stalked their neighborhood…then left them curled in trash bags. Kidnapping and harm.

The value of human life is plummeting in our country. Law enforcement does not keep us all safe–especially in the poorest places.

Ironic. We all know this movie will gross millions, hundreds of millions, all the while the gleaming cities of America go bankrupt, and more children die in our haunted streets.

Where could we move to be safe?

Woman Dies on Texas Giant Roller Coaster

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Ugh.

The story is awful–a family on vacation…an “adult woman” brave enough to ride a pretty scary ride. Allegations of nonchalant staff. A terrible death.

I find the subtle details moving and appalling–the woman trying to vouchsafe her belting–had it clicked? Was it going to hold? The terrible shock and grief of her family–watching her fall.

The most jarring part is that when she paid her ticket she assumed she would be alive at the end of the day. The emotionless capitalism of the park is also highly discordant. They kept the park open? Adult woman?

They want us to know she was older….as though her tragic death could be mitigated by her age.

Grief is grief and a family has lost their mother. Disfiguring.

I don’t do roller coasters for anyone over the age of 8. I do kiddie coasters and that is all.

No skydiving. No cliff diving. I am an unvarnished scaredy cat.

Which is why this story resonates with me so. Some lives are like roller coaster rides. We don’t know anything about our future and often we trust the wrong people.

I am praying for the family. I am praying as well that someone, anyone, will say–hey, this is not safe! We have to fix this…do things better.

Or just enough time to say…

Let us share this grief together.

Losing people

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A few days ago I received an email from a family member–normal right?

I could tell this person’s email account had been hijacked because s/he and I do not have a family relationship anymore. S/he joined the ranks of friends and family who were so chagrined by me that the relationship could not be repaired.

Close relations of crime victims often inflict terrible secondary wounds.

They are ashamed of me and my story and to preserve their “normal” life they do really wretched things.

Friends can be equally painful. They stop being friends, shrinking quietly into the shadows, not calling, not inviting our family to events. That familiar blanched look of fear…silence…gone….

I had a friend who was a sister to me. Unlike many she stuck with me through the shock, grief, and early period of survival, but she deeply disapproved of my public efforts to draw attention to what happened to us. Too public…to noisy…

She is gone. It hurts.

The list gets longer and more erratic after that–people who make their money from shepherding other people–gone or worse–cruel.

You start to rethink people. The world seems increasingly lonely.

Yesterday the Christian Post asked if it’s readers experienced loneliness. A bunch vehemently denied it–

Never! I have God! Ditto!!! Double that!

But of course I have to be the lone dissenter. I said,

Jesus experienced loneliness, why shouldn’t I?

That is my motto and I am sticking to it. But I won’t lie to you–I wish I had kept my mouth shut for my children.

They had a shot at “normal,” if it weren’t for my big mouth.

The truth will set us free…no one said it would make us look normal.

Normal is the lie.

For all of us…not just mouthy me.

The Practice of Justice

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When I mull over the latest horrendous story of a child being exploited or murdered I think–somewhere in the multiverse there is a version of me who writes a blog on great chili recipes.

I hate this beat.

But I write about it because I know that exploited children are forgotten, marginalized, stigmatized, and dismissed.

How do I know? Because my children are crime victims. It has been a lonely road for all of us. We have lost family and friends. People react with distance at best. I am not going to catalog “at worst.”

But here is the thing–my kids–the crime victims are vibrant, intelligent, compassionate, wise beyond their years.

I write for them in belief that many other children who have been victimized deserve to heal with dignity.

They deserve a voice.

If you say you are “against child abuse” but then sideline, stigmatize, and ignore actual victims you drive home a message of silence, oppression, and injustice that indeed speaks louder than words.

It all comes down to who you actually invite to your party. That is the test of justice. Ironically it is also the measure of love.

Gizzell Kiara Ford

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I went to the Vietnam memorial with my father once. He never said much about his time in the war but I knew it was a game-changer. He combed the wall in silence looking for a name, names…when he found the one he was looking for he touched it in silence. Memories of the dead.

This is my Vietnam memorial. Gizzell Kiara Ford is on it. Beautiful child. Lost.

At the Saginaw Intersection

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The last article I posted was heartbreaking–this blog post gives more information and is unbearable.

No one should treat another human being with that kind of savage cruelty.

All we have to look for a–a red truck with a paint splotch.

So start looking. This little girl deserves justice. The children who found her will need help to carry this terrible memory.

And none of us are safe.

If someone tells you they have been abused

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Worth repeating.

Worth putting on your refrigerator:

When I first found out that my adopted son had sexually abused children I was in shock. The hours and days that followed were filled with anger, pain, and terrible questions.

They were also filled with calls to the state to report him and forensic interviews.

I understood that I had to revise my view of my son–he was capable of unspeakable harm.

How do we handle stories of unspeakable harm? Not well. We handle them with avoidance, ostracism, excuses, and silence. We blame the victims.

Don’t. Don’t do these things to a crime victim. Do this instead:

Be there and listen. Victims of abuse are all around you. Most will not share their stories because they know if they do they will be viewed as contagious.

Abuse is not sui generis contagious. Ignorance is. Refrain from perpetuating any stereotypes about the abused or their families. Remember, they are the victims.

Explaining to a child how and why an older person would take their innocence is a heartbreaking conversation, but it starts with repair–

What I told my kids was this–sex is like driving a car, good but challenging and not for kids.

Kids should not have to deal with sex–either in advertising, media, a bikini culture, pornography, or abuse.

It is our job to protect them, and we can’t do it by keeping our heads in the sand.

And if they have been hurt by sexual exploitation it is our job to be there to heal what has been broken–the human heart.

Just: a book review

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No one in their right mind writes a book review of their own book so people don’t have to read it.

So here goes:

I wrote Just because books had helped me through some tough times.

It is not a work of literature. It is a cry for help. I wanted to add to the voices of men and women who had helped me–mostly celebrity survivors who had been courageous and told their stories. Oprah, and Ellen, Sugar Ray, Ashley Judd, and Todd Bridges…

What would have I done without them?

So this the story: we fostered and adopted children damaged by neglect and abuse.

Life with them was so hard. It became even harder when we found out my adopted son had molested some of my children and others.

We pushed for legal consequences.
We dealt with the damage.

I was surprised by how little protection the justice system gave us. The book was a cry for help and a warning.

What I would add to that as an epilogue of sorts is that there is another book too painful and personal to write about what I call the shunning syndrome.

If you are brave or foolish enough to speak openly about being victimized by sexual abuse, you lose almost everyone you love.

Tough book to write. Even tougher to live. Par for the course for humans–we let our wolves drive our flocks.

But beyond the lonely places, we are fine (thank you).