The connection is not good
His speech is blurry
I ask the usual questions
About job and schedule
what are your plans for the future?
He says he may join the army
since the %#*^#%^
what?
I ask
What?
could you say that again?
Knowing he is standing at a pay
Phone
Miles away from me
When S was little she loved Elmo. We did not get PBS on tv so we watched DVDs. I always associate Elmo with her babyhood.
The first time someone talked about her being “damaged goods” because she was a sexual assault survivor I was knocked back. In a country where women are paid and applauded for nudity, a little girl’s non-consensual abuse would make her “damaged goods?!”
Children are hurt, wounded, violated, and robbed by sexual abuse
But they are not damaged goods. Ever.
What damages us all most is when we hand the abuse of children over to the wolves and refuse to speak out and fight for the dignity and safety of every little girl who once loved Elmo.
Some people are healing listeners. They help me just by reading this, abiding with my quixotic ways..
But there are others who astound me
They hear my story and do not grieve
They only tell me what I should do
And those people?
Always wrong…
Listening skills and empathy–dangerous compassion
My daughter has a winsome smile, a keen wit, a sharp eye for chess and a knack for Shakespeare.
She is also a crime victim.
Grief stalks us all. We lose people we love to death, cancer, accidents…
We need to be honest and admit that grief and pain stalk us all.
We need someone to save us. Someone who will stay with us through the pain and help pick up the pieces.
Some willing to be lonely and misunderstood with us. To stay with us through it.
Jesus cried out His ultimate loneliness on the Cross so we would not have to face this broken world alone.
I think it is safe to say I love Harper Lee. So much so I named a pet “Scout” and have been itching to name a kid Harper for a decade.
Atticus has seen me through some tough times.
But here’s the thing, because of my outspoken telling of our family story (adoption, RAD, abuse) I know a lot of victims of child sexual abuse.
Most are white, stable, well-educated and financially stable.
They are not Mayella Ewing.
And yet I believe the reason why 90% of these people are extremely quiet about their stories is the grim stereotype associated with Mayella.
Think about it. How would our perception of abuse victims be different if it had been Scout, Jem, or Dill who had been abused?
Would you tell your story if you knew people would think of you as a Ewing?
Would you fight any harder if it were Scout?
And, for a diehard TKM fan this is hard; Mayella Ewing deserved better. From her wretched father of course, but how about everyone else in Maycomb? Was there no one who could have helped her?
More than 50 years later I will say it–
No
At least very, very few…
I used to preach. Seems weird to me now because those sermons, talks and exhortations all exist beyond the scrim of discovering that my children (and their friends) had been, were being sexually abused by my adopted son, Charles.
By the time the abuse was revealed I had already quit because Em was having lots of problems. Charles just finished the deal.
All this to say that following Jesus is not about hearing or preaching sermons. It is about living the life of God in His wake and in His love.
Harder than a sermon, as elemental as a preschool lesson–
1. Ask Him to pour out
His love all over you
And
2. Pour it out on others
She found herself gazing at the child.
Dragons are accustomed to solitary places. Her heart was creased and caged by the years she had lived.
In her mind she could see her life stretched out in a long train of high haunts and gleaming fortresses. She was no longer proud of the way she could make men run in fear and trembling when she came to the breaches and swooped down to take their treasure–gold, jewels, bolts of silk and brocade. Before she had brooded over it like a nesting bird, but now her gaze had shifted.
Now she watched the boy. He supplanted all thoughts of other treasure. In times past she would run her scaly claws through the things she owned, anxious to keep things. Now she wish–ached to be able to take all of it to Someone–someone who could with power and promise keep this child safe–from the darkness in the world she knew too well.
They say that God Himself designed the space between a mother and her child. It is the perfect distance for the eyes of a child, focused on a love that should anchor them to a fixed point in an unfixed universe.
The bond of a mother with a nursing child establishes the language of the unspoken, irrevocable promise–I am here and because I am here you are safe.
–Dame NP Doxia, A Dragon’s Guide to Raising the Human Child, pg. 7b
Ask them is
What would you say to your uncles
if they had ears to hear?
For a long time there is silence
Then they say
Why didn’t you fight for us?
Speak for us?
And your aunts?
Sigh.
no dog should mean more to you than a child
That comet dust would make me
Think of you
All dazzle-y and luminous
Because of wandering
Light
your eyes
hold all the
Cities of the world
And their lashes
Each borrowed
From distant ashes
Come from burning infinite
Suns
Carrying Light 