The last two weeks have overwhelmed me with the number of child abuse cases I have heard about. The volume and the acts have both taken life out of me and infused me with new mother life, making me more diligent to love my children the way God intends for me to love them. Even with my own resolve, I was moved to challenge others to examine themselves for even the slightest case of parental disdain for children, particularly their own. Read more about this in my latest EEW column, that begins below:
I warn you now. This article ain’t pretty. But how can it be, examining parental disdain for children that encompasses child hatred from gross sexual and physical abuse to cruel and even subtle mental and emotional abuse? The only way depths of sin can be extracted and discarded is if we identify and search for it, looking externally and internally. The ugliness of this wicked world and, sometimes and in some ways, in our homes, challenges us to look at the ugliness in our own hearts.
I cried like a baby when I heard the news: a 10-year-old girl weighed just 32 pounds, emaciated and malnourished, starved by the hands of her mother who locked the child in a closet where the child slept and relieved herself. Undoubtedly, the child experienced more than physical starvation, longing for her mother’s love, hoping someone would relieve her from pain and shame and confusion and wondering why this someone wasn’t her mother, why her mother was the one to do this to her. Even as I write I cry when I think of her; the 3 and 4 year old whose mother left them home alone so she could go party; the 4-year-old stepson of gospel singer James Fortune who Fortune scalded in a bathtub; and the victims of Jerry Sandusky, the former Penn State football coach found guilty on 43 of 45 counts of sodomy and rape of young men entrusted to his care. All this, and the thought that Sandusky is apparently guilty of many more abuses, including sexually molesting his own son, has had me sad and contemplative for days. Read more here.
My One Thousand Gifts List
#641-650
An invitation to speak at the Mother’s Day luncheon for the LIFT Women’s Resource Center
A relatively stress-free evening alone with the children and the challenge they presented (like one of the little ones wetting his pants and flooding the bathroom floor while I was trying to cook dinner
My husband demonstratively enjoying my house burgers
A rich time of fellowship with God in spite of Nate interrupting me
Another year for my sister
Getting an unexpected box of food from my neighbor that I was able to share with someone in need
Charyse doing my hair
Giving clothes to Sharon for Caleb, my nephew
A flattering and encouraging critique consultation from Ms. Burke
Talking to Nichole on her way home from Chicago
These are sad times and these stories are the tip of the iceberg. I was watching the documentary titled “All God’s Children” the other day. This documentary details the lives of the children of missionaries stationed in Africa. These children were kept separate on a compound without their parents for a long period of time while there parents spread the word of God. The children experienced 3 decades of abuse of all kinds. In one of the documentary one of the victims expressed how he could not believe how children are treated and how he believed for many years that all children were abused.
This saddens me to think that this is going on as I am typing. Great article and I feel our society’s pain. We really need to do something.
But for some reason people like the Jerry Sandusky’s of the world are often given free passes because of the massive coverups. We have to change the mindset of many and wait for the really bad ones to be at the end of their lives. I would have to say that Jerry Sandusky was a monster yet he inflicted so much pain on so many people.
I am hugging my children as we speak. I just wish our society as a whole would start treating our children, elderly, handicap, each other with love and support. Our society needs to seek a holistic approach to one another.
Denise,
I never heard of “All God’s Children.” When I think I can digest the message I am going to take a look at it. We have to be so careful what we do to our children in the name of spreading the word of God. SMH. Children cannot, should not, be neglected for “ministry;” children are our ministry, first and foremost behind our husbands, if we are married. Thank you for your deep compassion, not just for children, Denise, but all humanity and particularly the vulnerable ones. God bless you, and thank you for taking the time to comment.