I have been praying for justice for Alanna Gallagher. No child should be tortured and murdered.
I am grateful for news of progress in her case. If allegations that her 17 year old neighbor is the prime suspect are true, all parents should take note. Predators watch their prey. Alanna was a victim of proximity to evil. How well do you know your neighbors?
And how well do they know you?
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?
Sometimes I get angry when my adopted sister gives people trouble when they are just trying to help keep kids like me safe.
Sometimes you should not worry so much about other people’s stuff. You are a mother now and need to focus on being a good mother. You should not harass other people who know it is hard to be a survivor of child abuse.
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.
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.
Carrying Light 