Category — Spiritual Journey

to talk to my daughter about rape?

This visceral question posed by a sincere, blogging mother in, “What is the Right Age To Talk to My Daughter About Rape?” blocks an airway quicker and more completely than a too hastily chewed chunk of steak.  Her most accurate, chilling and speak-for-themselves-statistics about violence against young girls furthers the gasping need for an emotional Heimlich maneuver.

This gestalt of revulsion, however sincere, is not enough to protect our daughters unless we leverage the valuable information Lisen provides and communicate with our daughters.

I have three daughters, 10, 8 and 5.  Would I prefer to chat with them about Because of Winn Dixie, or plot delicious excuses to creatively infuse a recipe with Scharffen Berger Bittersweet Baking Chunks than discuss rape?  Absolutely.  Nothing hard about that math.

However, I’d rather prompt some uncomfortable conversations than hold any one of their hands in an Emergency Room as a physician completes a rape kit.

And that’s what it boils down to… the deferral of denial… that this tragic offense can happen to me or mine. It’s the real life version of the willing suspension of disbelief in reverse.  Instead of the maintenance of the happily ever after story line, we must acknowledge that rape isn’t something that only happens to other women or other people’s children.

It’s what a Mamma must be willing to acknowledge if she wants to protect her kids.

In most families, I expect it wouldn’t be starting a discussion from whole cloth either.  Parents have been teaching their kids about Stranger Danger for generations now.  I can’t be the only Mamma that’s been asked what might bad strangers do.  However vague the language, most of us have already seeded the idea that there are people out there that might want to do children harm.  This assertion is reinforced by our pediatrician.  Every time she does an annual exam on one of the kids, when the time comes to check his/her “private place,” she will state, “You know that no one should touch you here except Mom or Dad or a doctor.”

After every physical for years,  I add to the doctor’s statement, “You know that no one should touch you there except Mamma or Papa, or a doctor with Mamma or Papa’s permission.”

I have already begun to talk to my son and daughters about rape.  We need to talk to our boys too as the sad reality is, they can also be victimized.  In our family, we talk about how they are in charge of their bodies. We teach them that they own the permission of who can and cannot touch them, hug them, or offer them physical attention. Recently, one of my daughters expressed discomfort about an extended family member hugging her when she didn’t want to be hugged and holding her hand when she wanted to let go.  We discussed as a family that this was good practice for us all to consider how to tell a person verbally and nonverbally that we don’t want to be touched. As a shockingly high incidence of rape occurs by an assailant known or related to the victim, this kind of preparation is fundamental.

What is the right age to talk to our children about rape?  I think we begin to indirectly talk to them about rape, the threat of rape and abduction as early as preschool. For that age group, it is age appropriate to employ other language like Stranger Danger and personal safety.  Shocking as it is to assert, however, I believe that children should learn about the threat of date rape and rape before Middle School.

That said, I also assert children should be educated in STDs, birth control, drugs and tobacco, and the warning signs of suicide before Middle School.  I expect this list to outrage some… and I accept that.  However, children can’t make informed personal decisions without information to balance and make them critical of their feeling.  Middle School is a completely inward, ego centric, identity defining time in an individual’s architecture.  Without a map to help create context to their roller coaster reactions, tweens and teens can make big mistakes.  Worse yet, the mistakes they make can promote them relationally, sexually, or legally into adult situations that they do not have the life skills, maturity or experience base to bear.

We need to fortify our children with appropriate, timely, factual information so that they don’t get ensnared in the shadows and dragged away.

We also need to pray a fortification of protection and wisdom around their precious hearts, bodies, minds and relationships.

Speak the truth, row, pray.  Pray, row, speak the truth…

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Baby I have been here before
I know this room, I’ve walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you.
I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch
Love is not a victory march
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

In Latent Adoloscence, I shared my heart about The Boy’s uneven legs as he navigates the physical, emotional and spiritual journey of adolescence.

My post suggested there was more pain than poetry in the process.

Imagine my surprise then, when today, in the middle of soccer Saturday as our family juggles four games and I was manning a volunteer gig at a local grocery store for one of the kids’ schools, I get the following text with form The Boy.

Used with his permission, I stand corrected.

There is also poetry:

untitled 1

What once was shall be again.
The past shall bring pain.

Secrets and lies once buried deep
shall return from their troubled sleep.

untitled 2

Who can truly say what a man
will pay for his shot at glory?

For the glory and wealth
a man will forfeit his life.

He will pay all that he has,
and never suspect
that he has been had.

When he realizes
competitors are a dozen a dime,
he is fit to eat only with swine.

The Boy

Once again, marvel at the valor of his process.

Now I’ve heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don’t really care for music, do you?
It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Like my recent bout with vertigo, my son’s full immersion into the transformation of adolescence has spun the balance of many family dynamics.

The Husband and I sprint to shift our parenting to meet the needs of this new kind of man-child. The Boy calls for respect and space as we maintain new parental roles that are more like consultants than coaches. His experiences are profound, uneven and difficult for us to fully understand. As such, we try to listen more and speak less. Last night, however, he returned home clearly disheartened. He shared his perceptions about some of the experiences that he had encountered during his day and felt discouraged in his evaluation of his progress.

As an outside observer, I of course perceived many of the situations much more positively, and from a different and pro-The Boy perspective. I challenged him to consider that the thoughts he chose to dwell upon were like fireflies in a net. I suggested to him that with practice, he could light up his thoughts and dwell upon other things. For example, instead of the identification of the social interactions or moments of the day that made him feel uncomfortable, he could consider those things from his day that he felt good about, was pleased by or had done well. I told him that I knew it was not as simple as that, but that I believed with practice he could dwell on possibilities.

He is a kind lad, and didn’t tell me what he thought of the idea. However clumsy my attempts to make him feel better, he still trusts that I am trying to help. He offered a hug and shuffled off to bed.

After the day that I have had, I imagine that had he told me what he thought, he would have said it was a load of human fertilizer.

I am one of the “grown-ups” who live in my house, and I had a day that was uneven and profoundly difficult for me to understand. As if the vertigo flipped my insecurity switch to high, every time I left our home I felt like a giant and idiotic loser. In an almost paranoid fashion, I stressed out that people were unhappy with me, didn’t want to associate with me, and/or thought I was crazy. I felt small and unimportant. I felt useless and alone. I began to build a case about how I am not as good as other moms and how every other woman who has ever crowned a head does it better and with more joy and less stretch marks than I muster. As I began to convince myself that I was less than those around me, my self-loathing escaped like a ravenous beast too long starved by self-control. It wanted to eat! It wanted to chew my confidence! It wanted to drink my hope like warm blood.

I had to quiet the beast. I had to assure it that everything was okay. I had to promise that I no longer needed its brutal protection. I struggled with my own thoughts to make it stand-down.

“Stand down,” I told it, “it’s my watch now.”

All the while its insidious rant echoed in my own head like a grenade, I thought about the casual challenge I so piously tossed to The Boy last night. “Capture other thoughts,” I told him. “Dwell on other things.” “If you don’t like the song, change the station.”

I spent the better part of my afternoon and evening trying myself to capture other thoughts, dwell on other things, and change my own damn song! Supposedly I know how to do it, and have a good work history. I confess, even as I type, about the best I have mustered is that I know that I can create a shift in my focus. I haven’t entirely turned the corner on how I’m telling myself the story of my day.

There’s a line from an old hymn that sings, “Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble.”

I tremble for The Boy tonight. Not in fear, I shake in epiphany. If the best that I can metacognitvely achieve in a long afternoon is to identify that I need to shift my attitude (without success), how daunting must it be to The Boy to be flooded by the tsunami Adolescence? How feeble must it seem to him to be counseled about changing his tape?

Man! I not only remember how much it sometimes hurt to be a teen, I experienced full-blown, latent adolescence today.

I need to dwell on how real and large not only his experience is, but his inexperience in dealing with such new thoughts, hormones and uncertainties.

My success today amid my cluttered, internal dialog was that it did not come out of my mouth or show in my behaviors (I hope…!). My neurotic station sings upon the stage of my own choppy mind.

I pray that the next time The Boy’s song hits the air, or manifests through his behavior, that I will be more genuinely sympathetic.

I pray the next time we share that kind of space that I will be able to better honor his experience as he so valorously does the noble work of building up the kind of man he will become.

It’s his watch now.

And even though
It all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah!

she swims our circle
in full spotlight
yet somehow lingers
still hidden
in the shadows
like a dolphin

carefully
she calculates
each graceful dip and dive
to a privileged audience
she can jump from her deep blue water
in a lithe arch
as visible as the sun on a june morning
with similar ease
she can plunge silently
and disappear into her depths
she chooses just when and where
she wants to be seen

she speaks softly
with a poet’s voice
her sassy verse shocks satan
and builds whole cities
on the coast

with bucket and shovel
she walks the beach alone
she erects castles in the sand
and paints driftwood art
a muse who splashes
the seashore with color

she teeters tall
in platform pumps
the wind playfully whips
her fair hair
across her face
like a shade
that eclipses her
intelligent deep brown eyes

she turns to the sea
her deeds here now done
she squints as the bright sun shines
and stands proud
bathed in full light
like a mermaid
beauty in silence

In keeping with a dizzying trend with the women of my father’s side of the family, I experienced my second, significant bout of vertigo this morning.  My beloved grandmother, Beauty, was prone to it, and I recall her saying that she wouldn’t wish it on her worst enemy.  What compels about this quip is that not only did my Beauty not have any enemies, she never-ever complained.  For her to mention something was unpleasant was unusual. For her to actually confess an encounter was loathsome, well, that just didn’t happen…. at least not in front of the grandchildren.

I actually wondered yesterday if I was physically off, and felt fuzzy and overtired all day.  I knew when I woke  this morning that something was wrong.  The ceiling fan seemed to dart down toward me like a 3-D, horror film blade, and my head felt sloshy.  For those of you medical types out there, I respect this is an imprecise diagnostic term, but it’s the correct word.  My head felt wet.  It slipped like blurred vision, but I could clearly see.  It brought to mind pears in a mason jar.  The Husband had already gotten up, so I tried to get out of bed.

I immediately fell.  My legs couldn’t hold me up.  It took me a too-long moment to perceive that it was imbalance that threw me off my legs, and not weakness.  My step-mom had a couple of strokes in March, my step-father lost his best friend in a single car accident in July, and a dear family friend had a stroke in August.  The fragility of health has been firmly cataloged and rehearsed by my family circle over the past eight months. I confess, as I laid there on the bedroom floor, and the room swam in circles in front of my eyes, I was afraid.

I couldn’t walk, so I crawled out of the bedroom and called for The Husband.  I knew before he came around the corner that he was concerned.  I heard the haste in his fast steps and alarm in his voice before he knelt down to level his most welcome face to mine.

“What, Baby?  What is it?” he inquired as he put his arms around me like a shield.  I felt his eyes assess my condition even as his words ministered their comfort.

“Vertigo?” I said as I pulled myself in a ball against his chest.

The Husband did what he does.  He helped me.  He was my responsive and calm, steady port.  His arms were safety and home.

Vertigo is like a gale that flips a ship off course.  All of a sudden, the internal compass simply spins.

It leaves me feeling like someone put my brain in a jar and gave it a good shake like a holiday snow globe.

If you didn’t know, there are postures you can assume to help recalibrate balance in response to vertigo.  They make the room spin even worse, and I always feel like I need to throw up, but they help, as does a long nap.

As such, today I was low and slow, and sometimes spinning.   I briefly put my head up to attend to critical emails  I hadn’t addressed all day.  Naturally, my inbox was pregnant and bloated with messages.

I found I message from a dear friend’s mother.  She explained that her daughter and grandchildren were in a dangerous, potentially tragic situation.

The whirl of this most unwelcome news was the emotional equivalent of vertigo like PTSD.

Two short years ago, this dear friend was in the middle of a similar situation.  It took a full-scale intervention to extricate her and her children.

Like an unwelcome gale, it spins my compass to learn they are in the middle of another sea of abuse.

If you didn’t know, abuse postures you to assume debasement, to forcibly recalibrate worth in response to isolated helplessness.  It assaults the spirit to split from the body, and begins a cycle that uproots families.

There is no more insidious snare.

The fragility of her  choices has been firmly cataloged, and I confess I am afraid for her.

I did my best, it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah!

An industrial-sized bag of Sam’s Club candy bars,

LAST year’s left-overs,

and assorted Dollar Store novelties were not enough to fend the number of trick-or-treaters driven into our neighborhood…

2 years ago, we were egged and had a window smashed with a rock, even though we gave out candy…

I am turning out the light at 8:45 p.m., despite our best efforts to have enough goods…

and wonder about the Spirit of things….

i am my brother..

BOO!

Hallelujah, Hallelujah,
Hallelujah, Hallelujah,
Hallelujah, Hallelujah,
Hallelujah, Hallelujah!

The iconic Hallelujah breaker of violence against women is considered in another woman.
Michelle’s story remains incomplete.
I continue to dwell upon her Hallelujah vacuum that risks entropy.
Thus, a fourth window into Michelle’s life.
( For the first pieces of the story, see: Quiet Rage, part i , Quiet Rage, part ii, and Quiet Rage, part iii)

And even though
It all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah!

_quiet rage, part iv_

Michelle was no stranger to feeling flat. She’d spent the better part of her adolescence leveled and two-dimensional on the 4-D stage of dysfunction that played out in her parents’ divorces and remarriages. It wasn’t the first time she collapsed onto herself.

She remembered well the first time. It happened on the day after her thirteenth birthday.

“Given this most recent cluster fuck occurred on my birthday,” she mused somewhat bitterly as she stiffly shifted her covers, “I gotta wonder if my birthdays are cursed.”

You didn’t need to be a lawyer to prove that she’d been the second accident of parents married too young. Their ore hasty marriage in a rural, Catholic church barely kept her brother from being born a bastard, but, like an heir apparent prince, he was one entitled son-of-a-bitch.

Michelle actually deeply respected her only brother, Eli. They were as different from each other in affect and space as the sunrise and the sunset. She often thought that the fourteen months that separated them were much like the number of hours between the changing of guard of the sun to the moon. Only son, Eli was easy going and warm. Michelle had always admired his easy laid-back nature, such a contrast to her own vibrant intensity. More water repellent than a duck on a pond, she wondered how her life could have been different if she were more like her brother. Her parents had posed this question to her so often since her 13th birthday that it was as reflexive of her to ask it of herself as was the mole that perched high on her left cheek bone like a sparrow was an aspect of how the mirror reflected the portrait of her face.

It all had happened yesterday, a mere blink, a pathetic, staggering breath ago that Michelle was barely thirteen, just a day plus twelve. Since then, even then, she’d always maintained in retrospect, that she should have known something was awry. Michelle never got what she asked for as birthday gifts. True, she opened approximations, clearance substitutions, and filler crap she could have cared less about, but this was the first time that she not only opened gifts that were exactly what she wanted, but received everything that she had asked for that year.

Like the harbinger it was, the next day seared upon her heart to never, ever hope to enjoy too much for herself. She was not worth it, and if she got it, Michelle certainly knew by now, it would never last.

“You have heard…”
a personal invitation
from Jesus
to believers
to live their lives differently.

_Beatitudes_
poor riches,
comforted poor,
humble heirs,
slaked thirst,
meek muscles
grow active God view
and peace makers.

Relational transparency
crowns spiritual poverty
as Mitzvah
serves the law
and pours the character of God
into hearts like high tea.

Be different,
read deeply,
delight to know Him,
LOVE,
move,
serve,
be His salty covenant keeper,
bear His image well,
honor its reflection in others
through word,
thought,
and respect of woman,
fellowship deeds.

Tabernacle Light,
shines through
seekers eyes and
Holy Fruit.

Fear No Evil Person,
Turn the other cheek
Open up texts
burst forth the Word
and open souls anew forever
as new creation,
reborn.

I am the Truth
Who’s on the throne?
Let yes be your yes and
no be your no.
Seek deeper relationship
and abide with Me-
scandalous grace!

There’s a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn’t matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah!

I took The Oldest Girl on a date today.

Unlike The Boy, I had made arrangements in advance with The Oldest Girl to take her out to dinner and encouraged her to use her gift card from her Mamma G for a new outfit to wear at her first school dance.  To her credit, she was effusive, and even greeted me at the door with a handmade, thank-you card book before we ever left the driveway.

Dinner was pleasant.  Nothing lubricates conversation among the girls in our family like beans and sour cream.  Thank you Chipotle!  Conversation was easy and blessedly without an agenda.  The Oldest girl shocks me with her ability to embrace the moment and create a memorable event from the simplest of things.  It was fun.

Tight tummied, we made the drive to the mall.  In constant gestures of sincere affection, The Oldest Girl maintained physical contact with me at all times.  She held my hand, or tucked her arm around my waist, or pressed her head onto my shoulder.  She delighted in everything that sparkled and was the shiniest pretty in the store.

Her only moment of disappointment was when we found what she considered to be, “The most perfect outfit ever,” too soon and clearly wanted to linger.  I suggested we head over the Claire’s to find a necklace to go with her new look.  She giggled as her enthusiasm made precious faux pearls and the most gauche of rhinestones.

As we headed out through the food court exit, I asked her if she might have enough time to enjoy an ice cream.  We read every flavor on both sides of the counters before she made her selection.  We chatted as she labored over her cup, finally conceding that perhaps she better take the rest home to her sisters and brother.  “They will be so surprised,” she predicted.

Once again, The Oldest Girl pulled me close as we made our way to the parking lot.  She told me, “When I was a little girl, I used to dream about going out to buy an outfit for my first dance!  This was all I ever imagined it could be and more!  It was better than perfect!”

Sometimes math is really simple.  I had one, really thrilled girl who was happy with the outcome of a date with her mamma.  She enjoyed the food, the perks and an unexpected surprise ending.  Her joy was sincere and contagious and equaled the unequivocal success of maternal effort.

The Oldest Girl never left my side, and it was one of the best dates of my entire life.

I did my best, it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah!

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah!

I took The Boy on a date today.

The Husband and I decided we wanted to interject more whimsy into our family routine.  Our calendar has many blocked and iterative events dictated by outside organizations like school hours, assigned homework, sports practices, lessons, games and tournaments, music lessons and performances, as well as church and community events.  Though we are in almost constant motion, we realized there’s sometimes more march than joy in our steps.

Our parental plan was a simple one.  When they were least expectant, we would bombard them with the unexpected.

As such, this morning, I enjoyed an iBed breakfast while The Husband took a sleepy-eyed crew to Spudnuts.  For the uninitiated, Spudnut donuts are made with potato flour.  A moist, sweet delight, they blissfully surrender a happy, glazed melt down the eager throat of each blitzed-out consumer.  Spudnut donuts are more than donuts, they are holy confections with a sense of history in our small town.  The Husband took happy kids to school who were thrilled to further anticipate an early dismissal at noon.

Unbeknownst to The Boy, I had made arrangements for all the other children to be playdate engaged so that I could surprise him with a lunch invitation.  To his credit, he was more than amiable, even before he learned Five Guys and a trip to Barnes & Noble were on the itinerary.

Lunch was pleasant.  Nothing lubricates adolescent conversation like hot grease and ketchup.  Conversation was easy and blessedly without an agenda.  The Boys shocks me these days as he has so experienced such dramatic physical changes in the past couple of months.   Even his face has taken on the angles of a man’s chisel, complete with <gasp> a discernable mustache.  However, as he greedily slurped his root beer, I could almost see the little boy I remembered hiding just behind his red straw.  It was fun.

Tight tummied, we made the short drive to Barnes & Noble.  In a gesture I mistook for chivalry, The Boy preceeded me to the door excitedly telling me, “Look!” as he opened the door for us.  He opened the door and stepped in so quickly that the door literally closed in my face.  What I mistook as excitement over a book display or café novely was actually his joy to find one of his best buds in the store.  As it happened, his buddy was there alone waiting for his mother, and really appreciated the company.

Again, to The Boy’s credit, he apologized to me before he ditched me cold for his friend.  He said, “I know we are on a date, and I didn’t think it would end this way, but, well, we can finish our date later and…. I gotta go!”

I assured The Boy that I understood and went to the café to sketch a couple of ideas I had from the night before.  When it was time for me to go, The Boy’s friend was still solo, so I allowed my son to stay so that his friend would have a buddy.  The Boy used his Barnes & Noble gift card to buy his friend a drink (that he had promised to treat me with) at the café.  I don’t know he could have looked more pleased with himself if he had used a Visa to buy concert tickets.

When I returned for him, his friend’s mom was there to pick up her son.  A spontaneous overnight invitation was extended to The Boy, “We’d love to have him,” the mom agreed,  grateful that her son had company while he waited for her return.

Once again, The Boy pulled me aside to apologize our date had been interrupted, but he really, really wanted to go.

Sometimes math is really simple.  I had one really thrilled boy who was happy with the outcome of a date with his mamma.  He enjoyed the food, the perks and an unexpected surprise ending.  His joy was sincere and contagious and equaled a successful maternal mission.

I got stood up in the middle, but it was one of the best dates of my entire life.

I did my best, it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah!

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah!