in “just” i call her melanie.  other times i call m, mel, magdalene.  she is my precious baby, even though she is not really my baby anymore.  she is the first child we had after we lost veronica and the day she was born i looked at her and knew that she was healing up a place in my heart, returning what the locusts had eaten.

the day we found out that sea was molesting saskia, m remembers coming home from rounds with her father and walking into the bedroom where sea was folding up the tent he made to molest his little sister.  she says he had a very angry look on his face.  i see the scene through her eyes, vividly.

she came into my bedroom where i was still talking to saskia and em and she heard what had happened.  she very, very calmly corroborated that he had abused her also, for years, until his abuse became more invasive and she understood from a sexual assault prevention lecture that she could ask him to stop.  he did and she never thought that he would abuse her little sister.  he abused her and yet she still had a basic level of trust in his humanity.  in her mind if he stopped abusing her then of course he would not abuse her little sister.

like em and me, melanie carries around an unshoulderable burden.  she knows now that if she had reported what he was doing to me or her father, the abuse would have stopped.

we tell  her it is not her fault.  and it isnt.

we tell her she could not have known, and that is true also

we tell her he fooled us too

and that it is all his fault, all the sin of it belongs to him

and yet this burden is something we all carry

there is no relief from the past, from things one cannot undo.

forgive me for applying a pseudo-letter here.  I hope your mom lets you read this but one way or the other I think Q is an excellent name–smacks of international espionage and such.

But that is not why I am writing.  I am writing because due to several rather LARGE DIFFICULT INTERVENING TRAGEDIES, I thought I had lost you and your whole beautiful family.  I had always wanted to be a very good __________ to you.  If your mama lets you read this you will know what word goes in the blank but for anyone else reading consider the mad libs! (beekeeper, ringleader, Oktoberfest organizer, primate handler…)

So it sounds like you are hitting a rough patch.  First let me say that I love you and think you have great potential.  Next let me say that the time of life you are in can feel like a real garbage dump outside the holy city, or put another way–the pits.  sometimes a body is inclined to do somethings like  1. kick the cat  2.  be mean to younger kids 3.  say rude things 4.  blame one’s parents.

Let’s start with the last thing for now:  one’s parents.  I had a great dad and I loved him very, very much, but he was not perfect (no sirrr–eee) and when I would feel a little down because my father tended to be a leetle too critical sometimes (he liked to catch a body doing something goofy and then correct them thoroughly).  Like if he were an English teacher he would correct me right now for using them instead of he or she.

Also. he was not very affectionate.  Kind, intelligent, loyal, truthful, adventerous on occasion, but not cuddly.  I needed a big-bear-i-love-you-dad.  Luckily I found Him.  Or He let me find Him, like divine hide and seek.  Over time I realized He was always there. waiting for me to ask the right question and that question was–

are You there?  are You real?

This is a question worth asking because once i realized He was there I also felt His great love.  You don’t wanna miss out on that.  God is the dad we need, we all secretly look for.

As another young friend of mine used to say–

our REAL Dad.

He’s the One who teaches us how to be.

love you kid,

E.

i am not sure about how she is gonna feel about this, but she deserves to be here.  she is an incest survivor, but she is more than that.  on so many days when the truth was a matter of survival, she told the truth.  especially on that last day when she brought saskia to me, the last day saskia faced her abuse alone, the first day the truth set us free

i tell em she can always tell the truth.  it is a tough story, but it is ours.  I am so grateful Em is my daughter.  I pray and hope for her all the time.

This is another story I am going to make you work for (if for some reason you do not know the story).  I hesitated to write about it because I would never want cause more pain, yet this family’s tragedy feels very close to me, it is the unbearable thing no parent wants and as such it has focused my prayers and changed my bedtime.  One of the reasons I regularly stay up until 2 am is because for months and months the dark brought back this story, this tragedy and the best I could pray and read until I was exhausted.  It hurt to know that an ordinary, beautiful family had gone to bed thinking they were safe and woke up in a nightmare.  I know that for Dr. Petit that day and that bad dream never stops.

Two small points of contention:  the lawyer for one of the rapist/kidnapper/murders tried to mitigate his client’s sexual assault description in a public statement.  This seemed so utterly insensitive and blind.  A little girl died a horrible death after being subjected to a sexual attack and hours of unspeakable fear and you (the lawyer) decide to be helpful and make a public clarification of the attack??

And the assailant in question made egregious statements about Dr. Petit who was brutally attacked in his own house and lay bleeding for hours as his family was raped, terrorized, murdered.  The assailant had the audacity to say that Dr. Petit should have fought harder to protect his family!

Nothing about how he should not have had to fight off attackers in his own home in the middle of the night.

My prayers will always be with the survivors of this beautiful family.  Irreplaceable.

Gave birth today.

10 years old.

that is right.

I am isolating each statement for a reason

call me judgmental

call me culturally insensitive

no 10 year old

should be having sex

no 10 year old should be a mother

(see no ten year old should be having sex)

Most important part of the story–no age was given for the father

why?

I am pretty dog gone sure he was not 10

or 11

or even 12 or 13

dont think this is a cultural phenomenon or an interesting gestational news flash

nope

child abuse

a little girl’s innocence stolen

Palm Sunday is one of my favorite Sundays, right after Easter Sunday. I love it because it is a celebration and it child-friendly. I have memories of the church I attended in college with its long sanctuary and walls like the inside of a pearl, bright, white, and clean. The children would parade down the aisles waving palm fronds. It was wonderful.

Now I have my own children and we put on our own Palm Sunday celebration on our back porch. Before we celebrated we talked about the elements of the story of Palm Sunday: the borrowed colt, the worshippers, the meaningfulness of precious clothes laid on the ground for a king. It is a beautiful story with a hard and merciless ellipsis. Between events celebrated on Palm Sunday and the following Sunday lie the darkest days of human history.

What we do with those days matters. Do we see why they are dark? Do we see our own selves in the story? I am the worshipper who flees, I am the soldiers gambling for the seamless clothes of a Savior. In fact, I am all the characters in the story except the figure on the central cross. That is a job he has taken from me, a death, a punishment I will not have to face. God sparing me at the ultimate cost to himself.

I think we should remember those clothes -clothes laid down, clothes taken as the Son of God dies alone. These are my clothes-no matter how precious the robe of human consolation, gift or love it is appropriate to lay it down on the path of a suffering Savior, not just a shining Christ.

You wish you could shout out to the crowd-be there for this man, Jesus on Thursday in his loneliness and betrayal, turn back your jeers on Friday during his lonely death, worship in awe and grief and gratitude as he alone dies for us all.

Revealed such a terrible record of abuse that I don’t have the heart to recount her ordeal.  Look it up.  Read her memoir.  Wikipedia it.  I can’t bear to think about 1.  what she went through and 2.  that multiple members of her family have defended her attacker, her own biological father.

This month is taking its toll on me. 

Please.  If you read this pray for Mackenzie. . She deserves to be believed.

When I told the kids what I was doing for April to raise awareness about the prevalence and danger of sexual assault, esp. child sexual assault, Saskia asked, are you going to write about me?

She is the reason I write, and not just because her innocence was viciously stolen by her adopted brother.  Not just because at five she was already a rape victim in her own home.  No.  I write about S. because she is the one who gave me the permission to do so.

We were driving down the road one night and listening to NPR.  A writer was discussing being raped as a child by a neighbor.  She descibed herself as a survivor of sexual abuse.  S. said, like me!  When she said this and the way she said it I realized that providing community, giving her the knowledge that she was not alone in her story would help her.  I also learned from S. that she would not suffer the same level of shame as many other victims if we chose to be open about the abuse and celebrate her bravery.

She is brave, very brave.

And she has already suffered terribly.  First it was the abuse, then it was the way people encouraged and provided support for her attacker while ignoring her.  Literally ignoring.  Then it was the loneliness.  Our life as a family has  been isolated by other people’s complete prejudice towards abuse victims.

Saskia is courageous and she is one precious reason to keep going even when I am exhausted and want to quit.  Especially when I am exhausted and want to quit.

I love you precious daughter.  I love you so much.

I wish I could give you back all that was stolen.

I really should title this post, whatchoo talkin’ bout willis?  That is a defining quote for my generation and I do remember the safety of Different Strokes, the hint of cultural community–what I would now call parasocial relationships thanks to Teenage Paparazzo.

Todd Bridges was molested by a family friend when he was 11 and 12 and his life went spiralling out of control as a direct result.  I do believe that he could have made lots and lots of better choices, but I respond to his pain.

His mother believed his story, his father did not.  He suffered emotionally from what happened to him and used drugs to mute the pain.

I do not think the perpetrator faced any consequences.  He should have.

Whatever Mr. Bridges should have done differently, he is absolutely doing the right thing by telling his story.

Thank you Willis