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Why You Should Read the Stanford Victim’s Letter

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I didn’t want to read it.

The injustice is getting enough play on the news. The Stanford rapist who will go to jail for only six months because he’s white and wealthy and the judge felt sorry for him and his dad asked for leniency.

That’s all I’m going to say about him, because it’s not about him.

His victim, she wrote a letter. You’ve probably heard that by now too. I didn’t want to read it because I don’t like to step into that kind of pain unless I have to.

At 2:30 yesterday afternoon, I realized something. I have two daughters. I live in a world of injustice. My God calls me to justice.

I have to read it.

So I did.

In college, the nights I was in that same situation are too numerous to count. The mornings I woke up not remembering a thing—not a thing—of how I got home or who brought me.

Me and all my friends. Every one of us. Over and over.

It’s blind, stupid luck that I did not become a victim. This is not to say that she is at fault. Only to second what she says in the letter—that she was the “wounded antelope of the herd”. And that hunters know what they’re looking for.

I think if you have college aged kids, maybe even high school aged, they should read this letter after you do.

Then you should talk about what it means.

The part where she realizes that she isn’t wearing her underwear anymore and understands how she’s been assaulted. Where she says the man who rescued her was crying too hard to give a statement to the police, because of what he’d seen.

How she found out the details of her assault from a TV news report.

The questions she was asked on the witness stand.

The picture of bicycles she has posted above her bed.

And don’t miss the part where she says she told the probation officer that she didn’t want her assailant to rot away in prison. She reached for mercy. They used it against her.

All of it. Talk about all of it. The drinking. The guilt her sister feels. The frat party where it went down. The judge, and how his justice is not blind, but sees skin color and wealth and privilege. All the things that could have been different, should have been different.

It raises a lot of questions. And the answers are hard. But we have to talk about it.

 

For the full text of her letter: Here’s the Powerful Letter The Stanford Victim Read Aloud to Her Attacker 

To sign a petition to have the judge recalled from his elected position: Remove Judge Aaron Persky From the Bench

 

I’m Boycotting the Leprechaun

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I’m all about celebrating holidays. And as most of you know, I really love Christmas. We do trees, hang lights, string garland, bake cookies, take Santa pictures, and I cry. I actually cry about how I love Christmas. And I love Easter. We’ve got eggs galore strewn about the house, along with bunnies, nests with little birds in them, and stuffed baby ducks. We don’t go as large as I’d like for Halloween, but give it some time.

But here’s the thing. I’m boycotting the Leprechaun. And the Ginger Bread Man. Seriously. Here’s something you need to know about Jen and me. We don’t do goodie bags at parties. We don’t do crafts at home.   We don’t fill our children’s every waking moment with some kind of contrived, magical activity. Because we’re tired. And they’re kids. And we’re tired of making every stinking moment magical. (This coming from a woman who’s had a Disneyland pass for 20 years.)

When I was in elementary school, I remember St. Patrick’s Day. You wore green. And if you didn’t, you got pinched. That was about the extent of it. But let me tell you what happened at preschool Monday. The Leprechaun happened. The story was leaked a few weeks ago (yes, weeks) that on St. Patrick’s Day, the Leprechaun was going to come and play tricks on us, and that the kids were going to try to catch him.   So that started spinning my Mazie up something fierce.   (This is a piggy-back on them chasing the Ginger Bread Man around the school, after he escaped from the oven, which ended in the snack lady “catching him” back in the oven and screaming in dramatic fashion, “I got him! I got him!” Which left poor Kingston in tears.) So Monday they made paper shamrocks with scary faces to scare him away, they made little traps with Lucky Charms to catch him, and when they got back into the classroom after recess, that darned leprechaun had upended all the chairs and made a mess of the blocks. And the kids went wild.

After a whole afternoon of my girls running around the house and obsessively searching for the leprechaun, thinking they had seen him, Mazie had a little break down at night. She was really tired because she hadn’t been able to nap, and she was really upset. I asked her how she was feeling. “Tired and nervous.” Nervous? About what? “The leprechaun coming into our house.” And there it is folks.

I know not all the kids are scared about the leprechaun. But let me tell you, when I was 5, I would have been freaked out about a little red-headed elf coming into my house and running amok while I slept. And before you get all up in arms about one kid ruining all the fun for everyone, let me just pose this… Why do we have to make such a big deal about every stinking thing? I mean, we take these fake holidays and blow them up into huge ordeals. We manufacture “Hallmark Holidays” then complain about our society being too materialistic. Can’t we save the big stuff for, you know, the big stuff? Like the birth and resurrection of Christ, perhaps?

Right now, I’m sick of St. Patrick’s Day. And I even love a good party. In fact, I’m cooking up a corned beef on Thursday and baking some soda bread (here’s my recipe, Irish-tested). Most people don’t even know who St. Patrick was. They just drink green beer and wear stupid “Kiss me, I’m Irish” t-shirts, even though they aren’t Irish. And all this leprechaun stuff? This isn’t for the kids… it’s for the moms. Just like the out of control party bags, the catered croissant sandwiches that showed up for the “snack” at the Christmas party for a bunch of 4 year olds, and Elf on a Shelf. Yep, I went there. Elf. On. A. Shelf.

Parents, for the love of humanity, can we just dial it back a notch? Can we not wind our kids up at every opportunity?  Because you know what your kids want tonight? They want to eat dinner with you. You know what they want to do after? They want you to read a book to them, or watch their favorite show with them. They want to take a walk around the block with you. And hold hands. And kick the gosh-darned soccer ball in the front yard. And play Chutes and Ladders, even though you hate that dumb game.

Tales From the Third Row

 

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I’ve been doing after school care for my neighbor whose sweet kids go to the same school as Gabe. This means that Tuesday-Wednesday, I have a full car. My mom has always said that she learned everything she needed to know about our lives by driving us around with our friends. I get it now. It has been fascinating and funny. If you follow us on Facebook, you know that last week, they worked together to figure out how old I was in dog years.

The next day, there was a conversation about Minecraft. I was not really listening to it but then I heard this: “It’s not that bad. Not as bad as Slender Man.”

I broke every smooth mom rule by screeching “WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY???”

The children went very still like robots powered down into sleep mode. The rest of the conversation happened under duress, a cross between “You aren’t in trouble” and “You WILL tell me”.

Luckily, their knowledge of Slender Man was playground level. The child who brought it up was throwing around a name he’d heard enough to know it was bad. Probably a little showing off. No way did he expect me to lose my mama cool.

Then another child in the backseat said “Well, if you think that’s bad, you probably don’t want to know how many kids at school play Five Nights With Freddie.”

What in sam hill is THAT? I thought to myself.

Five minutes on my phone told me that it’s a “point and click survival horror video game” where you are the security guard in a pizza joint that becomes over run by murderous animatronic animals at night.

The goal is to survive the night. And then the next one. And so on.

This game is described as a “point and click survival horror video game” where the one thing everyone agrees on is that you will be scared out of your shoes.

I’m all for corrective behavior fairy tales. But this is something else. Now the monsters have come to life with Facebook pages and Twitters.

Awesome.

I sat on my phone on the drive home so that I wouldn’t text my friend in the middle of her meeting. There was no good way to tell her our kids had more than a passing knowledge of survival horror video games, especially one infamous for attempted murder committed by 13 year olds in its name.

But I definitely felt like I was sitting at PARCon 4 all by myself.

I know that the kids have got to walk in the world. And I am confident that we are doing all we can to grow them with strong warrior hearts for Jesus.

But that doesn’t stop me from dreaming of a world where I am in charge and all parents have to do what I say, like pay stricter attention to the games their children play and follow the age limitations and not let 8 years old have phones and emails and Facebook accounts.  Just in case.

The next day it was business as usual in the back seats. My friend’s son has decided to pool all his money and buy donuts for when he and Gabe play their 30 minutes of Minecraft. And not one donut each, either. As many donuts as $20 will buy.

No, he hasn’t run it by his mom. I told him I wasn’t saying no, but he should ask his mom first and then have her come talk to me about it.

Then he wondered if they should get cookies instead, maybe to make it more palatable to the mamas. Or maybe cookies and donuts? Or maybe–

“Hey, what do you call a donut crossed with a cookie?” he asked Gabe.

“A DOOOOOOOKIE!!!!!” Gabe yelled. And the backseats erupted into raucous laughter.

I put my head on the steering wheel and thanked God for the attention spans of 8 and 9 year olds.

#talesfromthethirdrow

 

Hurricane Mama

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Why are we changing the rules? Did something happen when I looked the other way? Why do things feel different? Are we ok?

This is what anxiety sisters do when the applecart is upset. We ask a lot of questions, rapid-fire. We wait a good 1.5 seconds for answers. When they don’t come, we know this is a sign of the apocalypse.

I’m going to give you a moment to send blessings on my husband.  Especially since most anxiety sisters are of average size and turn into Category 3 hurricanes at the most.

Not me. I am six feet of Category 5 coming at you.

The last seven days have been stormy in my house.

I have a child in a new school through no fault of his own. Because he came from me, he also hates change. And now he is the new kid. Again. In the middle of the school year. Again. He doesn’t know where the pencils are. Again.

Plus, when you’ve been bullied repeatedly over a long period of time, you may come out of that with some anger. You may have a really short trigger when you think people are not listening to you. You may even feel guilty that all of this is somehow your fault.

Then, it was Thanksgiving. We do it small but still. There’s shopping and parties and 3 year olds who run fevers right before the whole world goes on vacation for four days.

To call the pediatrician or not call the pediatrician?  That is the question that will spin a tropical storm mama into a Category 2.

Then on Friday after dinner my mom was crying into the phone. I think the number of times this has happened in my life is less than the fingers on one hand. My dad—who’d had surgery ten days before—was experiencing a complication that required another emergency surgery. They’d been up since 4 am, sitting at the ER since 10 and my dad was so hopped up on pain meds that he was barely awake as they rolled him away.

WEATHER BULLETIN: Hurricane Mama is now Category 5 with winds in excess of 200 mph and a 100% chance of precipitation. All humans living within the affected area are directed to take shelter immediately. And STAY there, for the love of God.

It was a dodgy 12 hours. I activated every prayer chain I know, and women all over the country called down the power of heaven to be with my family.

My dad came through surgery like a champ and is on the road to recovery. My mom got some sleep and her feet back under her. Gabriel came home from school with an invitation to a birthday party. Some might even say that things are looking up.

Hurricane Mama is not so sure. Or maybe it’s that the stress of it all seems to linger. Why these things seem to come in clumps, I’ll never understand. I am grateful for the calm after the storm, I truly am. I revel in it.

But it takes me a minute to get there.

If you have an anxiety sister in your life, can I make a plea on her behalf? This is a tough time of year. Chances are, she’s had it planned out in her head for months, but life happens, like last week. She’s going to need a minute to reorder it in her head and her heart, and there may be wind and rain before she does.

Tell the kids to take shelter, because we don’t need to add guilt to the storm. Then help her by doing something, by taking something off her list. The fastest way to calm the storm is by controlling the things that are easy to control. I can’t explain why, but it makes the big, out of our control things seem so much easier to bear when the little things are going right.

It will pass and she will be your uber-competent, joyful wife-daughter-sister-friend again before you know it

And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. (1 Peter 5:10)

 

 

 

Welcome the Stranger

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I stopped and started this 12 times, trying to find the right words, until I gave up. My words are not called.

We need the words of Jesus.

‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me. ‘Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.’”  (Matthew 25)

Those poor people, the mothers and fathers and babies and grandparents fleeing from the very evil that struck Paris?

We have to shelter them. Here or there, no matter. Somewhere. Because those people are Christ walking in the world and if we turn our backs we fail our Christ.

This is our prayer: Open. Soften. Lighten.