Suffer the Little Children...

     I know I have not written in a VERY long time, and honestly this post is not about my depression at all.  That is generally under control and I have been thinking about reformatting this blog for awhile.  It is still a challenge to manage along with my family and I have plenty to write about along those lines, so once school starts I think that I might change things up with the blog and get writing again.  In the mean time I do have something to write about today, somebody actually, someone that has been popping up in my mind a lot lately, so there must be a reason why...

    When I was 22 years old, the year after I graduated from college, I spent one year in NYC volunteering as a full time staff member at a homeless shelter for young mothers (under age 21) and their children.  This was the most life changing experience of my life.  Now this was 20 years ago, but there are still some moments that I remember like they were last week.   There are also certain residents of that shelter that I have carried in my heart with me for the past 20 years.  I think of them often and wonder what became of them.  It baffles my mind to think that those babies and toddlers are the age of my oldest nieces and nephews now.  Even though they are forever babies in my mind, they are all young adults now, the age that their Mamas were, the age that I was, when I knew them.

    One particular boy has been on my mind quite often lately.  He showed up in a dream a month or so ago and then I couldn't go back to sleep because I couldn't stop thinking about him.  Ever since then he keeps coming back into my mind.  I just feel like he is going through something big right now and God wants me to pray for him so I just keep praying and worrying and wondering and praying.  So this boy....we will call him Donny, would be 24 years old now.  He came through the shelter twice in the year I was there and was there about four or five months in total.  He was four years old and had a two year old sister.  His mother took decent care of the children.  They were always clean and fed, but she seemed to keep them at arms length.  It was clear after awhile that they had all been in some very abusive situations and although she knew how to take care of their basic needs, I am not sure that she really knew how to love them.  She was often very hurried and short with them.  She seemed more tender with the younger sister than she was with Donny.  He always just trailed along behind them, very quiet.

      I have two very distinct memories of Donny.  The first happened one evening as dinner was wrapping up in the cafeteria.  A fight broke out between two of the mothers.  Some of the staff and other mothers were trying to get the fighters to stop, while another staff went for security.  Other moms were making sure the children were out of the way.  Donny's Mother was front and center in the middle of the drama trying to talk down the two girls that were fighting.  I guess in some way that was a good thing.  But this fight was bad.  As a mother wouldn't your first instinct be to make sure your kids were out of harms way.  That is what my first instinct was.  There were already staff involved trying to break up the fight and someone had already gone for security.  I was scanning the room making sure that all the little ones were out of harms way.   Most of of the mothers had taken care of this, in fact all of them had, except Donny's mother and the two that were fighting.  They had their kids out of the way.  They had the babies of the two fighters out of the way, and one of them had Donny's sister.  But where was Donny?  I saw him behind the serving line.  He was huddled up against a cabinet, rocking and crying.  The fight was headed straight towards the serving line.  Now the serving line was not bolted to the floor in our cafeteria, it was on wheels.  If the fighting girls slammed into it, Donny would be crushed up against the wall.  Thank God I saw him soon enough.  It was like a scene out a movie where someone gets pulled out the wrecked car just before it explodes.  I ran over there and snatched him up and yanked him out of the way right before those girls smashed into the serving line.  Donny was terrified and he did not want to be picked up.  He was screaming and kicking and crying.  My adrenaline was going pretty good at that point.  I realized that he was hiding back there because he had obviously witnessed enough violence that he was terrified enough to hide.  In retrospect now, with more experience under my belt, the poor thing probably had PTSD and nobody realized it.  He probably needed more help than he ever got.  One of the other mothers took him from me as we worked on resolving the rest of the crisis.  Later I told his mother what had happened and she just kind of shrugged her shoulders and told me that he gets like that.  She didn't seem to realize the danger that her son had been in.  

     The second memory I have of Donny is even more heart wrenching.  One afternoon his mother was in the staff office using the phone to try to make some housing arrangements.  Donny was napping in their room just down the hall.  While she was on the phone he woke up screaming with a nightmare.  I went to get him for her.  I picked him up and brought him into the office and sat down with him on my lap.  He was still crying so I just hugged him and patted him on the back.  His body was all tense.  I remember thinking that I was holding a child that has never felt love before.  That thought hit me so strongly.  I could feel it in his body, the way his body was tensed up.  So I just held him and prayed that he would feel my love.  I just wanted this little unloved, terrified, four year old boy to feel loved for once in his life.   After a while I felt his body relax and melt into mine.  He never said a word but I held him for the longest time.  I don't remember what happened next or what his mother and I talked about, I just remember holding him.   It was such and incredibly sad and powerful feeling all at once holding a child that had never been loved. 

      I wonder what happened to Donny after he left the shelter.  I wonder what the rest of his childhood was like, what kind of man he grew up to be.  I wonder why he is weighing so heavily on my mind and heart right now.  Donny, where ever you are I hope you know that you have always been loved, not just by me, but by God.  He has always been with you and he has always loved you. 

     If you are reading this, say a prayer for Donny.  That isn't his real name, but God knows who he is.  Pray that he gets through whatever trials he is going through right now.  Pray that he has love in his life, that he finds love in his life.  Pray that he knows God or that he is led to find the love of God in his life.  Just pray for Donny.  Pray for all those lost and unloved kids out there who have never felt love from another human being before. 

   

Choose to be Kind

I have been wanting to write for awhile now, but it has been hard for me.  This depression has changed me.  It has changed how I process things, and I think even how deeply I feel things. I am more guarded about putting my emotions out there then I used to be.  This is the careful walk I walk to keep myself from going over the edge.

 I am generally a glass half full kind of girl.  I always see the positive in things, I can help other people see the positive in things.  But the world is so DARK.  So many terrible things have happened, and are happening.  So I haven't written in a while.  I had to spend some time really thinking things through and processing my thoughts. 

The truth is there is are a lot of bad things happening in this small world of ours.  Some of these things we hear about and some of the things we don't.  Some things seem small, and others seem so big that there can't possibly be a positive solution to the problem.  I think we all need to remind ourselves that the bad stuff is not the only stuff that is happening.  Our world is run by the media these days, the news outlets and social media.  Stories get shared and spread across the globe like wildfire.  One of the big problems that I have noticed is that not all of the information being spread is actually true.  I don't believe everything I read online, but I am afraid that there are other people who do. 

The Paris Terrorist attack happened, and the world got all riled up.  But the world also didn't notice very similar attacks going on in Lebanon and Nigeria. The fact is violence is happening all over the world and all of the time and has since the beginning of time.  That is the part that I have to remind myself of.  The world seems so dark right now because of the speed in which the news travels, and what is chosen to be shared.  It isn't just Radical Muslims committing these crimes.  There are people competing for power all over the world committing atrocities in the name of whatever they believe is right.  War and violence have always existed unfortunately.  Then there is just the general bad stuff going on here in the United States.  Mass shootings all the time.  Violence is everywhere, from smaller domestic incidents to incidents like the one that happened this week in California.  There are more mass shootings in the US than anywhere else in the world.  That is pretty sad. 

Then there is just the general selfishness and greed in the world, and the judgement and the hate.  If you doubt this exists, go to Facebook and pick any general public site that holds some kind of news story and you will see people just ripping other people to shreds with their hurtful and judgemental comments.  This type of stuff just breaks my heart.  Fear and Hate cannot be allowed to win.  The refugee crisis is a perfect example of this.  People are up in arms and don't want to allow people who desperately need help to come here because they are afraid that they are all terrorists, yet we Americans are literally killing each other every day anyway.  It is true that only a very small fraction of the mass shootings in the United States have been committed by Muslims.  Most of the time it is just an everyday, average American.  Everyone who knows them are always shocked that they could commit such acts.


This is the simple conclusion that I have come to.  We are all human beings and we all have the capacity to grow up and do great things for others, and we all have to capacity to grow up and do hurtful and murderous things to others.  America grows people just as capable of committing violence as any other nation in the world. 

After the Paris Attacks happened I did two things:  First I intervened when my kids were just being generally terrible and mean to each other and I told them this "We all have a choice to be kind or be mean, every single day, in every situation.  I want you to always try to choose to be kind, even when someone else is not kind to you."  I have stressed this with them over and over again.  The second thing I did was make a more conscious effort to do what I always try to do.  I felt so helpless after the attacks, when I was reading all the hate and fear on the internet, and feeling completely unable to do anything about the darkness that felt like it was taking over the whole world.  So I pulled myself back into my own circle, of my own family and friends.  This was the world I could touch, so I did.  I try to always show love and support whenever I can, but I purposely found more ways that week, and I am still trying to do just that.  I am trying to do things to show love to whoever I can, whenever I can. 

I think about the Apostle Paul a lot.  It says in the Bible that he had some kind of affliction that was chronic and very bothersome to him.  We don't know exactly what this was.  He repeatedly asks God to lift this affliction from him and God tells him no.  I have asked God the same question over and over about this Depression that I still struggle with on a daily basis.  I want so much to be free of it.   I try to remember that it has changed me.  God laid this answer on my heart in the wee hours this morning.  He said "I made you to be empathetic and encouraging."  I sat with that for a bit.  I realized that my own personal struggles have made me able to feel things so deeply when others are struggling, but it has also made me more aware when others are struggling.  There have been times that this has allowed me to pick up on a situation that someone else is dealing with, that others might not notice, and I have been able to offer support and encouragement.  This depression has been many things for me.  It has been hard, it has been exhausting and it still continues to be EVERY SINGLE DAY.  But it has also been a gift.  Through this darkness that I struggle with, I have been able to bring tiny bits of light to this world.  Why would I want to change that?

I have vowed to try to stop reading comments on things on line, to stop reading negative news stories and seek out positive stories.  There are good things happening in this world every day.  There are hearts all over the world full of love and cheerful giving, through small acts or big ones.  Tiny bits of light all over the world.  Love is the only thing that will drive out the darkness.  So be mindful of that.  When you are online be careful of what you post.  Don't post things driven by fear or hate.  Don't be judgmental.  As Thumper says in Bambi, "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all."  Choose to spread  Light and Love, choose to be Kind.  It will make the world better.