"Enough..."
"Please write something about this shooting thing," she asked in a voicemail left in the middle of the night.
There are so many wonderful articles and posts being written in response to this latest mass shooting that I didn't think I had anything new to offer. But then I thought about something that was shared at our mid-week church service last night. It was the antonym for terror -- calm.
I can write about terror. I can write about being calm in the midst of terror. I grew up in a never-ending cycle of terror. It wasn't noisy and public, it was silent, private, and brutal. It started when I was four and persisted for almost fifteen years -- with brief interruptions.
Night after night I lay wide awake in the bottom bunk hoping to protect my younger sister who slept above me. Yes, I wanted to protect her from the abuse, but I also wanted to protect her from being aware of what was going on in the dark just beneath her. I also worried that if she knew, she might tell our mother, and I'd been threatened that if our mother found out, we would all be left homeless and hungry.
You might ask, how does a 5, 8, 11, 14 year old stay awake all night? How does she keep silent through years of serial assault. How can she calmly wait through the long hours, suffer, and then unwaveringly respond "fine, thank you," to the question, "How did you sleep last night?" the next morning. I can only answer -- love.
Love is the answer to every one of those question. It began with love for my sister. I wanted to protect her from what I had learned about the level of cruelty that humans were capable of -- even the humans who said that they loved you. But once I was introduced to the concept of a loving God, it became much more.
I stayed awake contemplating a real relationship. A loving relationship with a Father-Mother God who was all-powerful, all-knowing, always present. I steeped myself in an understanding that "this" was not about me. It was about "him." It was about the abuser's false sense of himself as broken, sick, damaged, angry, disappointed. And this false view of himself could never really touch me where I lived -- in the consciousness of God's goodness. A goodness that I was learning about in Sunday School. I was inspired and comforted by the example of Jesus -- who was crucified, and yet who's ability to love was never diminished by violence or hatred.
Love is still the answer to every question for me. We cannot govern or control the thoughts or behaviors of others. Only God, divine Love, can do that. But we can deepen our relationship to our divine Source, and find an unbroken peace, an irrefutable grace, the changeless might of stillness, right in the midst of terror, cruelty, and fear.
In his epistle to the Romans, Paul writes:
"Who shall separate us
from the love of Christ?
Shall tribulation, or distress,
or persecution, or famine,
or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
Nay, in all these things
we are more than conquerors
through him that loved us.
For I am persuaded,
that neither death, nor life,
nor angels, nor principalities,
nor powers, nor things present,
nor things to come, nor height,
nor depth, nor any other creature,
shall be able to separate us
from the love of God..."
The first time I read this passage I knew he wasn't kidding. This wasn't the untested rhethoric of a scholar. It was a message lived and proven on scoffold and in prison. I read the words, but I didn't process them as thoughts of the mind. I actually felt them -- felt the truth of their message in every cell of my being. It resonated like a spiritual tuning fork. I knew this truth, I had lived it -- night after night.
I can recall my earliest memory of feeling this sense calm in the midst of this terror. I was five. We'd moved to a rural community where my parents had leased a farm. The early days were filled with planting potato starts, the scent of freshly turned black earth, and the mewing of baby calves.
But the nights were a vacuum filled with dread. I would lay awake, waiting for the house to grow dark, cold, and silent. Listening for the sound of footsteps. Night after night. Spring, summer, fall, then winter. One very cold night as I lay awake in terror, snow began to fall outside the rippled glass in the old farmhouse windows. I didn't know about God, but I knew about love. I watched the snow fall and I felt a gentle peace descend on my heart. I felt safe. I felt calm.
This didn't stop the visits, but it gave me a place to go when terror slinked around the dark corners of my mind, and threatened to shatter my heart -- and my life. When the abuse did stop, I still had so much to work out as I sought healing -- but I was not broken. I had not -- ever -- be separated from my capacity to love, to put another's needs before my own, to show compassion. This was my miracle of grace.
When I did learn about God's love, I understood exactly where that earliest memory of peace came from. I knew that what I had felt one snowy winter night was the presence of something pure, good, and innocent -- something that could never be touched, or taken from me.
I don't know if this will be the response my young friend was asking for when she said, "please write something." But I do know that it comes from my heart. I don't know that it will help. But I do know that it is true. It is my truth. It is what I have to give. Nakedly, honestly, purely. It is a gift of love. And of this, I am absolutely sure -- Love is the answer.
offered with all the love in my heart,
Kate
There are so many wonderful articles and posts being written in response to this latest mass shooting that I didn't think I had anything new to offer. But then I thought about something that was shared at our mid-week church service last night. It was the antonym for terror -- calm.
I can write about terror. I can write about being calm in the midst of terror. I grew up in a never-ending cycle of terror. It wasn't noisy and public, it was silent, private, and brutal. It started when I was four and persisted for almost fifteen years -- with brief interruptions.
Night after night I lay wide awake in the bottom bunk hoping to protect my younger sister who slept above me. Yes, I wanted to protect her from the abuse, but I also wanted to protect her from being aware of what was going on in the dark just beneath her. I also worried that if she knew, she might tell our mother, and I'd been threatened that if our mother found out, we would all be left homeless and hungry.
You might ask, how does a 5, 8, 11, 14 year old stay awake all night? How does she keep silent through years of serial assault. How can she calmly wait through the long hours, suffer, and then unwaveringly respond "fine, thank you," to the question, "How did you sleep last night?" the next morning. I can only answer -- love.
Love is the answer to every one of those question. It began with love for my sister. I wanted to protect her from what I had learned about the level of cruelty that humans were capable of -- even the humans who said that they loved you. But once I was introduced to the concept of a loving God, it became much more.
I stayed awake contemplating a real relationship. A loving relationship with a Father-Mother God who was all-powerful, all-knowing, always present. I steeped myself in an understanding that "this" was not about me. It was about "him." It was about the abuser's false sense of himself as broken, sick, damaged, angry, disappointed. And this false view of himself could never really touch me where I lived -- in the consciousness of God's goodness. A goodness that I was learning about in Sunday School. I was inspired and comforted by the example of Jesus -- who was crucified, and yet who's ability to love was never diminished by violence or hatred.
Love is still the answer to every question for me. We cannot govern or control the thoughts or behaviors of others. Only God, divine Love, can do that. But we can deepen our relationship to our divine Source, and find an unbroken peace, an irrefutable grace, the changeless might of stillness, right in the midst of terror, cruelty, and fear.
In his epistle to the Romans, Paul writes:
"Who shall separate us
from the love of Christ?
Shall tribulation, or distress,
or persecution, or famine,
or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
Nay, in all these things
we are more than conquerors
through him that loved us.
For I am persuaded,
that neither death, nor life,
nor angels, nor principalities,
nor powers, nor things present,
nor things to come, nor height,
nor depth, nor any other creature,
shall be able to separate us
from the love of God..."
I can recall my earliest memory of feeling this sense calm in the midst of this terror. I was five. We'd moved to a rural community where my parents had leased a farm. The early days were filled with planting potato starts, the scent of freshly turned black earth, and the mewing of baby calves.
But the nights were a vacuum filled with dread. I would lay awake, waiting for the house to grow dark, cold, and silent. Listening for the sound of footsteps. Night after night. Spring, summer, fall, then winter. One very cold night as I lay awake in terror, snow began to fall outside the rippled glass in the old farmhouse windows. I didn't know about God, but I knew about love. I watched the snow fall and I felt a gentle peace descend on my heart. I felt safe. I felt calm.
This didn't stop the visits, but it gave me a place to go when terror slinked around the dark corners of my mind, and threatened to shatter my heart -- and my life. When the abuse did stop, I still had so much to work out as I sought healing -- but I was not broken. I had not -- ever -- be separated from my capacity to love, to put another's needs before my own, to show compassion. This was my miracle of grace.
When I did learn about God's love, I understood exactly where that earliest memory of peace came from. I knew that what I had felt one snowy winter night was the presence of something pure, good, and innocent -- something that could never be touched, or taken from me.
I don't know if this will be the response my young friend was asking for when she said, "please write something." But I do know that it comes from my heart. I don't know that it will help. But I do know that it is true. It is my truth. It is what I have to give. Nakedly, honestly, purely. It is a gift of love. And of this, I am absolutely sure -- Love is the answer.
offered with all the love in my heart,
Kate
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