Their pain is not my pain. I repeat that to myself after a couple of days like these. Most of the time I manage to believe it. Other times, I'm not so easily convinced.
One would think after so many versions of the same sort of stories, they would grow less difficult to hear. Seems as if literally 9 out of 10 tales involve severe and repeated molestation and physical abuse. Watching parents pummeling one another, cousins and aunts and uncles gathered partying and getting promiscuous with one another. How many such scenes must a five-six-seven year old witness before one reaches the apparent conclusion all this is normal, just the way every family does things...here. Normal the pain and fear. Normal the isolating shame. Normal the sense of being violated, betrayed.
My mind reels at the thought: normal. Here the abandonment, neglect, terrible fear of one's own mama and papa in the moments of drunken rage. Not normal, perhaps. Common, though. Lack of such childhood memories is by far the great exception.
Somewhere in the early days such a norm gets established, like the scars I see fill with tears on their faces as they tell me of the things they've survived -- and often enough repeated themselves as they became young parents.
There are other tales too: a kind grandparent, a concerned teacher, a brief respite during foster parent years. Yet these tales seldom end well, usually in the untimely death of that one or two people who managed to bring just a bit of light and love into a life turned inside and out all black and blue and cold.
I've been here long enough that as the tales get told of parents and grandparents, I know their faces too. I've had substantial conversations over the years with many of the relatives of whom they speak good and ill. Is five years so long?
I feel sometimes like I'm wading through a thick and stagnant swamp of social ills and shattered lives, in some desperate search for survivors. The mournful whispers and sighs of the soul sound softly all around. Wounded spirits all.
It is not given to me from on high to dull or remove pain. I cannot issue commands. I have no powers to coerce. I am utterly unable to cause that once-for-all cure. All these are God's alone to give.
Yet I have ears with which to listen to those things otherwise untold, unbearable cancerous secrets. And I have lips to speak a Word of forgiveness, guidance and hope. This, then, must be enough for us all. To forgive even grievous wrongs, and be freed from the prison of the past. To guide and lead and follow in turn as best we can, but traveling together. Together humbly to hope in the One who alone can heal and restore fully in the end. And the whole while to love with a love that does no harm. A patient love, one which endures all things in faith alone, though perhaps no longer so terribly alone in Christ.
