Category Archives: grief

RAD Memories

Posted on by
3

I had a dream a few nights ago. I had no money, no means of buying things. I had been given the task of engaging my adopted daughter (who has disowned me) in a conversation.

Because it is a dream, I choose to discuss an array of roasted and cooked chicken that is behind a butcher’s counter.

I try to keep the conversation very neutral, very chicken-focused.

Because when your kid is RAD that is how you learn to roll…even in your subconscious.

I am going to start laying out my memories of life with my adopted children. Like an old woman pulling sweaters from the attic. I need to organize this thing….the life we lived together.

The first thing you should know is the last thing that happened–she cut me off because she suspected I had reported her brother….suspected him of child abuse.

Ironically, as with so many things before, she unleashed her anger on the alleged reporter instead of facing the crime.

The terrible crime.

Talking about the “Tooth Fairy”

Posted on by
Reply

Imagine you were five.

And everyone else had a tooth fairy.

But when your teeth come out your mother and father congratulate you. Keep it. Celebrate. But no magical reward.

You might ask some questions.

Tooth fairies are good, right? The Tooth Fairy is good, right?

Not in our family.

In our family the tooth fairy is absent. My son asks why? I tell him the truth. It happened like this…

Sometimes grownups do bad things, say bad things. They get angry at the victim of a crime instead of the person who commits the crime.

In those cases, when a grownup gets angry at a little kid for something that was not her fault… well, he might not say it was because of the crime done to her, because he was shamed by it’s proximity to him.

He might say it was because she did not eat all of her veggies.

But the strength of his anger would let you know. Let you know he was not safe.

So we don’t see him anymore.
Because we don’t want him to hurt you–any of you–again.

This is the part I am sure of–he would do it again.

And every child deserves to have a safe tooth fairy.

Or the truth, and none at all.

Final Words for Ariel Castro

Posted on by
2

It is easy to rejoice in the death of a monster. It is easy to see Ariel Castro’s suicide as the final word on the life of an evil man.

But is that enough?

I don’t think so.

I think I must grieve.

Grieve for his countless victims.
Grieve for the irreparable harm of his years of sin.
Grieve for broken justice, in this case blind for too long.

Grieve because he was once a baby whose life, like all small humans, was once so full of potential…

Grieve because all he did to hurt, disfigure, and destroy was his choice.

And he could have chosen light instead.

Reading Comprehension

Posted on by
Reply

Sometimes things I write will stick in my mind. Today it was Jesus whipped men for less.

I wrote it and then I really thought about the implications.

Jesus whipped people. And not only was it not sin, it was holiness.

Why did he whip them? They were using the name and worship of God to lie and defraud people. The worst sins are often cloaked in the church. We lie, cheat, and steal in the house of God.

But He does not forget.

We cannot see Jesus as he really is unless we can see all of him –suffering and beaten on the Cross, angered and righteous in the temple.

Our God is a man, but no ordinary man. And just as most of us have not experienced enough of his love, his tenderness, his mercy, none of us has really experienced the full challenge of his holiness.

One day
One day it is coming.
The clean fire of love.

Bread for stones

Posted on by
Reply

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

Posted on by
Reply

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

Posted on by
Reply

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

Posted on by
Reply

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

Posted on by
2

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

Posted on by
Reply

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.