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Protect Was My Word: Day 24

By in Foster Children, Parenting, Personal, Relationships Tags: , , ,

Protect was my word

Today Bree turned 25. Bree, my eldest, my baby.

She lives in New York City. She attends Columbia University Medical School. Her graduate work is the field of genetics.

I wish she was here. But her life is there now. She finished her first year, last week. Her second year begins in a few days. She will intern at Presbyterian Hospital, this term.

We had a Zoom call, this morning – a surprise Zoom birthday party for my 25-year-old baby.

The call was her mother’s idea. Not all of la familia could get on the call. But I and her mother and her siblings and aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins and stepfamily all joined at 8:30 a.m. PST.

Protect was my word.

We wanted the surprise Zoom birthday party to actually be a surprise. We all dial-in. Then it dawns on us that nobody told Bree about the call.

We laughed. Would she be available? She could be taking a shower, be on a walk, her phone could be dead. 

Planning isn’t my specialty.

I text her. 

No response. 

I text again and again and again and finally she replies: “hi.”

Told her I wanted to Zoom with her. Suspiciousness must have been in her; we have never Zoomed. We use FaceTime.

Anyway, she gets on a few seconds later and her face beams.

Our family is very close. 

After a few minutes of catching up and laughing, her mother suggested that each of us say a word or words describe Bree.

Her mother and siblings and aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins and stepfamily all joined and revealed their words with an explanation. Their words were radiant, fun, loving, music, joy, intellect, sweet, peacekeeper, lovely, caring, intelligent, diligent, fun, caring, brilliant, dance and funny stories.

It was my turn. 

I said something like this:

Protect is my word. Because 25 years ago, at about this exact time, you came into this world. And I hadn’t known what love was until that moment. Then the nurse said she was going to take you and clean you. I told her I would accompany her. And she took you into this room and she placed you on a small bed under this warm light. And she stepped away to gather the cleaning materials. And you lay there, exposed, without touch, crying. And I put my two hands on you and whispered into your ear and told you that I would always protect you, until the time I breathe my last breath.

I’m thousands of miles away from her today. And if I saw her now, I’d, for the first time, kiss her 25 times on the forehead. (Whenever I see her, I kiss her years on her forehead.) 

I’ll see her soon enough.

I’ve been thinking of my 25-year-old baby all day today. 

But I couldn’t not think of the 125,000 children in American whose parental rights have been terminated. That means they live in the foster care system and have nobody — neither father nor mother nor sibling nor sister nor aunt nor uncle nor grandparent nor cousin nor stepfamily — to protect them.

Protect is my word. 

I Surrender: Day 19

By in Foster Children, Philosophy, Politics, Religion, Spirituality, Uncategorized Tags: , , , ,

Surrender. You can only do so much. 

Sometimes, you’ve gotta let go.

Some things you can change. Some things you can’t.

You can pray. 

You can act.

You can raise awareness.

But sometimes, surrender. Because you can only do so much.

The world is full of suffering. Insidious kinds of suffering. I wrote about suffering here.

Atheists use suffering as an argument against the existence of God.

Their logic goes like this:

  1. If God exists, he must be good
  2. If he is good, he would not allow needless suffering (like children being locked up in homes with their abusers)
  3. The world is full of needless suffering
  4. Therefore, God does not exist

Philosophers call this puzzle the Problem of Evil: Technically, The epistemic question posed by evil is whether the world contains undesirable states of affairs that provide the basis for an argument that makes it unreasonable to believe in the existence of God.

Some suffering is from natural evil — disease and disasters.

The other is due to human evil — things people do to others, bringing physical and emotional (or both) pain.

***

(As an aside, I’m reading The Book Thief for the first time.)

Humans can’t do anything to prevent natural evil; we can’t prevent earthquakes or tsunamis or tornadoes. 

Surrender.

But human evil — physical abuse and rape and verbal abuse and greed — can be stopped. 

People have choices. (Though I do hold to a libertarian view of free will, I still, often, find myself afraid that most of our actions are done without decision — we are in autopilot more than we want to believe.)

Even so, human evil is prevalent. (You and I have played our own parts in it.)

***

When my children were young, one of our prayers before bedtime was the Serenity Prayer. We’d pray it after the Our Father, Glory Be, then Anglican prayer of repentance. Anyway, it’s not really Christian, but it’s a good one: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Acceptance and surrender are the same thing.

 The good news is that human evil can be curbed through education, intervention, legal sanction, attending 12-Step meetings.

But even then, you can only do so much. Evil still happens.

Children are still hurting.

I Surrender.

Girls Not Brides: Day 17

By in Foster Children, News, Parenting, Politics, Religion Tags: , ,

Girls Not Brides. Another international organization working to protect children.

It’s the 17th of May, National Foster Care Awareness Month. Because of the horrors I was hearing about daily in my work, I committed to writing every day, to raise awareness.

It became too hard.

I missed a few days.

Fought off some depression.

And I don’t want to be a downer to my friends on social media.

But I can’t not speak out.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: COVID-19 affects all of us. But, COVID-19 hurts children most. The fallout amongst the health experts I speak to weekly in Washington DC is unknown. I wake up daily to news articles on spikes in calls to rape hotlines, child deaths, you name it. 

It will take years to recover.

Never in the history of U.S social services have children been kept from mandated reports. Never in the history of social services have children been locked-up with their abusers, with no end in sight. 

According to Girls Not Brides: “We know that girls and women – particularly amongst the poorest and socially marginalised groups – will likely be most affected by the pandemic.”

It’s always the weakest and most vulnerable that get hit hardest. The people Jesus stood for, advocated for, died for. 

COVID-19 hurts children most

Seeing countless people protest because they can’t go to the beach or party at their favorite bar or who believe guilds of tens of thousands of our finest medical doctors and researchers (in the (WHO, CDC, NIH) are conspiring…we live in a bizarre world and ignorance is our biggest killer.

I digress.

United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article Four: “No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.”

COVID-19 hurts children most. If you can, consider a gift to an organization that helps these children. RFK. Girls Not Brides… 

For the children,

Paul

Too Many Horror Stories: Day 11.

By in Uncategorized

I don’t want to read it, anymore.

The morning reports. About the children. Not your loved and sheltered and guided ones.

The millions shacked up with torture. Torture. In America. COVID-19 makes them illusive to the press. Who talks about them. No mandated reporters to help.

I feel for the homeless; I fear more for children of rampant neglect, abuse , abandonment, far more.

Children.

They will end up incarcerated, unless we act.

Unless we act.

We can act.

www.rfk.org

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