Childhood Trauma

I stopped breathing. At least it felt as though I did. The moment I realized that Rory had been born – after a complicated emergency C section – without any breath himself. Presenting bright blue and unable to breath, doctors and nurses worked franticly trying to get that first cry. Wrestling inside my soul felt like a panicked raid on what to do – care for my anesthetized wife, weep for my son, attempt to help somehow, scream at God for mercy – but the truth is I didn’t move. I felt tears stream down my cheeks and I bargained with God in my head, but I didn’t make a single move. Terrified that my son would be taken from me, I lost all composure and sanity. I would have done anything, in that moment, to change the reality it seemed we faced – anything not to lose my child.

That’s all I see when I turn on the news and look at children stripped from their parents, put in some ‘polished’ and ‘prettied up’ cage. I weep for the parents who sleep tonight believing they’ve failed their daughters and sons, desperate to know where and how they are. I rage with anger at our southern neighbours still standing for leadership who don’t condemn this policy. I remember what it was like to think I might not see Rory again, and I can’t imagine my life if I hadn’t got to witness that first breath and so many of them since. And I barely knew him yet.

Romans 13? I don’t need the Bible to know this inhumane and criminal practice is wrong. I don’t need the bible to know that the American government is traumatizing a community of children – and parents – who will never be the same because of what they've done. I don’t need the bible to know that American moral authority in the world ended some time ago.

You are moving in the direction of Boko Haram, Mr. Trump – although I’m not sure you care. Enforce your laws, protect your borders – fine – but kidnapping children against their parents will, frankly, it’s beyond the pale. It isn’t just God who condemns these actions, much of humanity, thank God, seems ready to as well.

Maybe this Father's day, we could join our voices to demand that children be reunited with theirs.

"He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt." - Deuteronomy 10:18-19

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