So why didn’t God answer my prayer?

 This coming Monday marks the 30th anniversary of my father’s death from ALS. 

Exactly four weeks later, I got married. 

In the years between my dad’s death and now, I’ve kicked myself for not getting married sooner so my father could see me get married and I’ve also been angry at God for allowing my father to die at the time he died. 

Daddy was diagnosed at the end of 1991. I learned of his diagnosis on February 29, 1992. (I even still remember the drive home; I’d had to work that Saturday and I remember taking State Road 826 north in Dade County, Florida; I drove by the Office Depot sign in Hialeah, took my exit, and arrived at my parking lot.) 

The answering machine was flashing when I got home on that February day. It was my mother; I called her back, Daddy answered, saying, I haven’t heard from you in a while; and after a short chat, he handed the phone to Mom . . . who said six words that ended my life as I knew it up to that point. 

“Your father has Lou Gehrig’s disease.”

My reaction: “Oh, my God!” 

We talked for a while, and then after I hung up, I was on the phone for the next hour with my now-husband and my two best friends. 

My husband and I had been dating since 1987. In fact, he proposed on Valentine’s Day 1990; and I was shocked. It was something I had not expected, and after a long conversation, we decided it wasn’t a good time right now. And I believe we made the right decision, because I started developing the disease I have now, interstitial cystitis, and trying to plan a wedding in the middle of navigating my own health struggle would have been difficult. 

When husband proposed again in May of 1993, I accepted. And one of the first things I thought of was, please let my father live long enough to see me get married. 

I prayed for God to heal my father. I prayed for him to live long enough to see me get married. 

Neither of those things happened.  

My sister called me on September 11th and told me that they didn’t think it would be much longer. 

I called my husband after that, in minor hysteria. I called a couple of friends, and friends called me. 

But in the middle of that hysteria, I suddenly had a moment of clarity and said, “But God, if you’re going to take him, take him quickly and please let it be as peaceful as possible.”

That night, I heard the phone ring but didn’t answer it.  I was in bed and didn’t feel like getting the phone. 

Mom called the next morning and told me, “Your Daddy’s gone.” 

I immediately called my husband, who came and said, I’ll either drive you or take you to the airport. You’re not driving alone. (He drove me.)

One of the more surreal experiences of my life was accepting congratulations on my engagement with my father’s coffin around ten feet away. I mean, how do you celebrate what should be a happy time in your life when you are in such close proximity to your father’s body? 

Not only that, I made a phone call from my parents’ house regarding my bridesmaids’ dresses.  I think I may given information over the phone; I know I told them we’d had an emergency in the family. 

The funeral was on September 15. My husband and I left the next day and I immediately plunged back into planning a wedding. That wedding happened on October 9th. On October 11th, a month to the day after my father died, I boarded a plane to Cancun, Mexico, for my honeymoon. 

Since then, like I’ve said above, I’ve wondered why God said “no” to my prayer for “let my dad live long enough to see me get married.” 

In my nastier moments, I wonder if God was just mad and he wanted to punish me for some reason. But when I think about God as being kind, compassionate, and loving, I just can’t see him doing something like this just because he was in a bad mood. 

But if God is kind, compassionate, and loving, why did he let my father die when he did and how he did?

Then I’ve also told myself, you should have gotten married earlier. You should have pushed your husband into having a wedding earlier. 

There were two reasons I didn’t do that: 1. I didn’t think that “letting my dad see me get married” was a good enough reason to push my husband into marriage, and 2. I knew someone who’d been in a similar position - in her case, her mother had cancer and the girl got engaged not too long afterwards - and right after the honeymoon, the girl I knew left her husband. (I’ve since learned that there were other circumstances involving the couple’s relationship that probably led to their divorce.) But at the time, I thought, “So and so got married when her mother was so sick, and look what happened. Do I want to do the same thing?” 

After 30 years, I have no solid answers to, why did God allow all of this to happen the way it did and how it did? The only solid answer I really have is: I don’t know. 

The longer I am a Christian, the more I believe that the most humble and honest answer I can give to the question, why did God let this happen? is, “I don’t know.” I can come up with the Christian cliches of, “God needed another angel in heaven,” or, “It must have been God’s will,” or, “At least he’s in a better place.” I can give the broad answer of, trials come to increase our faith, to prove that our faith is genuine, etc. But the specific answer of “why this trial, why now?” I don’t know. 

I can tell you that from the time my father was diagnosed until he died, I never heard him complain or feel sorry for himself. He never talked about being sick with me. He had to leave teaching, and when I asked if he regretted not teaching, he said, “No. It was getting pretty bad.” (I didn’t blame him for feeling that way.)

The last time I visited, in August of 1993, I had written down the directions from my parents’ home in St. Petersburg to the hotel I was having everyone stay in. I had asked my father’s younger brother, my Uncle Jerry, to give me away if Daddy couldn’t. His answer:  “I’d be honored.” Uncle Jerry would end up driving my mother and sister to Miami.

Getting them down to Miami would be the easy part. 

Getting them to the hotel would be the hard part. 

It took me one full paragraph to get them through a particular portion of Freeway Hell known as the Golden Glades Interchange, where the following highways merge:  Interstate 95, State Road 826, State Road 9, Florida’s Turnpike, and NW 167th Street. So I was writing, this is the sign you will see, this is the lane you need to get in, this is the turn you will have to make.

When I showed the directions to my dad - who, by this time, had lost all power of speech - his eyes widened and he pulled the paper away from his face.

I burst out laughing. Because even though my father couldn’t talk, the expression on his face said everything. “All that?” 

The very last time I saw him, he was taking a nap and I was debating, do I go wake him up and tell him that I’m leaving to go back to Miami, or do I not disturb him? I’ll feel bad if I wake him up . . . but if I don’t go in there and it turns out I should have . . .

So I went into the bedroom, told Daddy good-bye, he gave me a hug, and when I walked out of the room, I said, “That’s the last time I’ll see my father alive.”

He would die in that bedroom about two weeks later. 

I am fortunate to have one of my last memories of my dad be a happy one. 

I am also fortunate to have his example of not complaining, although I hope he was at least able to talk to Mom. 

So why did God let my dad die when he did and how he did? 

I don’t know. 

The one conclusion I have come to in 30 years is that God is God, I am not, and I will not know until I ask God directly why he allowed things to happen the way they did. I jokingly refer to this as my “beef with God”. 

But God is still God. Even when a prayer does not get answered in the way you wanted it to be. 

God is God, even when your dad dies before your wedding, even when you feel cheated by the fact he never gave you away at your wedding; even when you realize he did not see his other daughter’s remarriage, even when you know that he has two grandchildren that he will never know . . . God is God. 

Right now, my answer to “why didn’t God answer my prayer?” is, “God is God, he is in charge. I am not.”

And I pray that I will remember that.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation. 

The Scoop on Scrupe

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines “scrupulosity” as “the quality or state of being scrupulous”; “scrupulous” being defined as “having moral integrity, acting in strict regard for what is considered right or proper, punctiliously exact, painstaking.”

I, along with several thousand others, can add one more part to that definition:

“A manifestation of obsessive-compulsive disorder concerning all things religious that makes the sufferer’s life a living hell.”

My name is Tina, and I am scrupulous. 

While I do hope I have moral integrity, and I can be punctiliously exact and painstaking, depending on the task (I’m a proofreader, and being scrupulous is important there), I also have OCD that often manifests itself into scrupulosity, and it does make my life a living hell at times. 

The International OCD Foundation (iocdf.org) defines scrupulosity as “a form of obsessive compulsive disorder involving religious or moral obsessions. Scrupulous individuals are overly concerned that something they thought or did might be a sin or other violation of religious or moral doctrine.” Symptoms includ excessive concerns about blasphemy, having committed a sin, behaving morally, purity, going to hell, death, a loss of impulse control. Compulsions can include: excessive trips to confession, repeatedly seeking reassurance from religious leader and loved ones, repeated cleanings and purifying rituals, acts of self-sacrifice, avoiding situations where they believe a religious or moral error could be especially likely or cause something i bad to happen. Mental compulsions could include excessive praying (sometimes with the emphasis on the prayer needed to be perfect), repeating passages from sacred scripture in one’s head; making pacts with God.

I can relate.

The OCD I deal with is called “pure O”, the obsessive, intrusive thoughts without the compulsive actions; or at least obvious compulsive actions. I believe I’ve had this since I was about 14, when swear words started dropping into my head. I’m not a fan of swearing; but having said that, I have let loose with certain swear words on occasion. I had my first real bout of depression at around 14 as well, just a very deep sadness that I was drowning in. 

The scrupulosity began during a church service, where, out of the blue, I took the name of the Lord in vain in my head. I was horrified. I mean, this was church, and one of the Ten Commandments is, thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain! So I quickly said a prayer:  “Dear God, I did this! I’m so sorry! Please forgive me and help me not to do it again. In Jesus’ name I pray, Amen.”

Can you guess what happened after I said the prayer?

If you guessed, “she thought the word again,” you’d be right. 

I’m about to turn 60, and the intrusive thoughts have been with me for around 45 years now. I struggle with shame around what I call “the thoughts”. It was not until a couple of decades ago that I did a Google search on “the thoughts” and I discovered not only the subject of pure O, I discovered the subject of scrupulosity. It took me longer to admit that, this is me, I think this is what I have. 

I’ve been in counseling off and on since I’ve been in my 20’s. Every time I go, I peel off another onion layer. The woman I’m currently seeing has expertise in OCD, and together we’ve been talking about thoughts. 

I grew up in a church environment where I absorbed that thinking about something was just as bad as doing it; so you’d better not be even thinking about sex, cuss words, or other sinful things. Sex was something you didn’t even think about until you were married, because thinking about having sex was a sin (the same as lust.) Hearing swear words and reading swear words were bad, so you needed to avoid scenes where there was a lot of swearing, do not read books with a lot of swearing (I even tried to mark out swear words in a book I was reading) and do not look at the screen when there is a sex scene in a movie and/or on TV!

In my opinion, all of that backfired on me. Because even though I could stay away from certain media, it didn’t stop the swearing and other thoughts from running around in my head. And in college, I don’t think it helped that the church I was part of emphasized doing everything “right”. It was camouflaged as “doing it by the Bible”, but it came off as, if you don’t do such and such, or if you don’t do such and such in this particular way, you’re going to hell. And you were asked about actions such as, did you have a quiet time (a period of prayer and Bible study) every day? What are you studying? How many people have you invited to church? Why didn’t you invite more people to church or Bible study? Where are your visitors? Then the ultimate question:  Do you love God? Well, if you did, you’d be doing this, this, and this. 

There’s also a group of opinion leaders in my group of believers that believe in something called “precision obedience,” meaning, God has exact requirements and he expects you to fulfill them exactly. (I looked up that phrase a while back and the subject that came up the most was . . . dog training.) 

So, when performance is emphasized, and nothing is ever good enough, that produces an environment ripe for scrupe to develop. Did I do enough? Did I do it right? What if I didn’t do it right? I’d better ask someone to tell me if I did it right or not. The Bible says such-and-such, but does it really mean that? I’d better look up the original languages, the context, and the original audiences. But what if I get those wrong, too? God is pure and holy and he demands that I do certain things in certain ways. Will he send me to hell if I get his requirements wrong? I remembered something that happened when I was 10 and I got angry about it? Have I not confessed that sin to God, because I’m still angry? Have I not really forgiven because I’m angry about what happened? God demands that you forgive or he won’t forgive you. So if you haven’t forgiven, you won’t be forgiven. Did I just sin? I’d better pray now to be forgiven because if I don’t say I’m sorry and ask to be forgiven, and I die in that sin, I’ll end up going to hell. I read swear words in a book. Did I pollute my mind? There was a bunch of cussing in a movie; but I really liked the movie. Did I sin? And oh my gosh, you just thought a big bunch of swear words. Hurry and ask for forgiveness! 

It is exhausting living like this. It’s why I say that scrupe is its own living hell. It keeps me in a state of constant anxiety of “getting it wrong and going to hell”. 

So what do you do? Is there any hope?

One recommendation is, “just let the thought be. A thought is a thought is a thought. It’s dwelling on that thought that may get you into trouble.” 

So sometimes I will go, “hmm, interesting,” when a bad thought comes up. Or I may think, “That sounds like a good idea. Let me try it in ten minutes.” When the ten minutes are up, I’ve usually forgotten about the thought or decided, I don’t want to act on the thought. I read an idea that I’ve put into practice: give your OCD a name you don’t like. So, with apologies to all the people with the following names:  My OCD is Hubert, my depression is Elmer, my anxiety is Agnes, and my inner bully/critic is Bertha. They have signed an oath in blood to make my life miserable. They especially like to come to church with me. So I’ll say stuff like, “You go sit on the end of the pew while I listen to the sermon.” This past Sunday I told them to go sit in the balcony. With certain thoughts, I’ll take the idea to a ridiculous extreme.  That appeals to my sense of humor and reduces the power of the thoughts over me. 

Scrupe is not easy. It is a mental disorder that, as I mentioned before, puts the sufferer through a living hell. My counselor has told me that OCD latches on to the worst fear you can have and multiplies it. I wish my OCD fed on pictures of puppies or kittens or beautiful nature scenes or funny movies. Instead, it decides to feed on fears of “getting Christianity wrong and being punished for it.” 

I do not know of a “cure” for OCD that will stop the obsessions. Some people do use medication. What I am using is cognitive behavioral therapy; a “rewiring” of my thoughts, so to speak. 

And I also remind myself that God is a good God, slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiveness. I think he understands OCD, depression, etc. I don’t understand why I have to deal with mental illness and I would like to be healed. God, in his sovereignty, has not chosen to do so right now. 

In the meantime, I and my fellow scrupes continue to navigate this condition, this attack on the brain, knowing that we will never do it “right” and “perfectly” and learning to be content with our imperfection.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Lessons taught, lessons caught

It's been about two decades since my husband and I visited a Sunday School class while we were on vacation. 

I'm sure the teacher, as all good Sunday School teachers do, spent plenty of time preparing his lessons in hopes that his class would appreciate it and that they'd also participate. 

Unfortunately, I don't remember a single point of his lesson.

I do, however, remember that he spent the first five to ten minutes of class explaining who their church was and was not in fellowship with. 

The lesson I caught that day was not, I'm sure, the lesson that the teacher taught. 

Contrast that with a church service I attended some weeks ago. 

The minister of this congregation prefers to travel around the front of the church rather than staying firmly planted behind the pulpit. On this day, he was standing in the aisle, preaching, when a toddler came up to him saying, "Here," and holding out a piece of paper he'd drawn on. 

To be honest, I was thinking, where is this kid's mom? and expecting the minister to tell the kid, "not right now!"

Instead, he stopped, sat down on the floor, looked at the picture, asked the child a few questions, and then said, "Thank you!" 

And continued the sermon from where he'd left off. 

I'm embarrassed to say that I don't remember very much about the sermon that was preached. 

But I remember very well the lesson that was caught and not necessarily the lesson that was taught. 

It makes me wonder:  What are we teaching, and what are the people around us catching? 

Good question.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Jennifer Wilbanks, redux?

 On April 26, 2005, 32-year-old Jennifer Wilbanks disappeared from Duluth, Georgia, a suburb from Atlanta. Her fiancé, John Mason, reported her missing when she didn’t come back from an evening jog. 

Evidence including clumps of dark brown hair, clothing, and alleged murder weapons were later found near a retention pond. Since the police had no other explanation, they treated her disappearance as a criminal case. 

I live not very far from Duluth.  During those days she was missing, I drove by the parking lot of an abandoned strip mall and saw it covered with a sea of media trucks. Her case hit the national news, and why wouldn’t it?  It was perfect: young, beautiful woman, just days away from her wedding, goes missing? And the police think it was foul play? Let’s jump on it. 

I fully expected her body to be found. 

That weekend, I spent the night with some ladies from my church. On Saturday morning, April 30, one of the women jerked open the door of my room and yelled, “How about that Jennifer Wilbanks?” She was alive. She was in Alberquerque, New Mexico, claiming to have been kidnapped and sexually assaulted by an Hispanic man and Caucasian woman driving a blue van with ladders on top. I live in a neighborhood that is mostly Hispanic, and “van with ladders on top” describes a fair number of vehicles here. 

I was relieved. 

And then, Jennifer Wilbanks’ story fell apart.  She admitted to the FBI that she’d faked it, that she’d needed time and space to deal with the pressure of her upcoming wedding to John Mason.  Among other things, her wedding would have 28 bridesmaids. 

I was furious. 

Local and federal authorities, as well as the general public, spent time, money, and energy trying to find a woman they thought was in danger, and it turns out she just faked a kidnapping to run away from a wedding? 

She called off her engagement, pled guilty to a charge of making a false statement, and served two years of probation and 120 hours of community service. 

And the moniker “runaway bride” was slapped on her.

(According to a People magazine article dated August 5, 2021, Wilbanks married another man in 2010 and divorced him 11 years later.) 

After her return, the city of Duluth put up another sign over the one they’d posted with Jennifer Wilbanks’ picture and description, along with the number to call if anyone had any information about her. 

It was a picture of two feet in heels, running, with the caption:  “Case solved. Cold feet.” 

****

On July 13, 2023, a Hoover, Alabama woman, Carlee Russell, called 911 to report a toddler on the highway. Then she called a family member.  While on the phone with Carlee, the family member heard her scream.   

Police got to the scene within five minutes of being dispatched. In Carlee’s car, they found her cell phone, wig, purse, and Apple Watch. 

When Carlee’s disappearance hit the news, the social media world went abuzz. “Woman finding abandoned toddler” is allegedly a prime way to kidnap women and either sexually assault them or sell them to a sex trafficker. A woman gone missing under suspicious circumstances is - or should be - a priority for the police, and from what I have read of the case, the police jumped on it quickly. 

Social media also played a part in drawing attention to Carlee’s case. And because Carlee is Black, many posts mentioned that the disappearances of Black women are not taken as seriously or investigated as thoroughly as the disappearances of White women (and unfortunately, that is too often the case.) 

I did forward Carlee’s picture on social media. But to be honest, something about the story felt “off”. 

Carlee made it home on Saturday evening, July 15th. Her family called the police and Carlee was taken to a hospital to be evaluated. She told the police that she’d been forced into a car and then into a truck trailer with a man that had orange hair, and also with a woman. She was taken to a house and undressed; then put back into a vehicle. She escaped while the vehicle was in West Hoover and ran through the woods to get home. 

Her parents, during a July 17th appearance on the “Today” show, stated that there were moments when Carlee “fought for her life” both physically and mentally. 

But on Wednesday, July 19th, the police said that elements of Carlee’s story just didn’t add up. 

One, they couldn’t find any evidence that a toddler was on the side of the road where Carlee stopped. Nor was any toddler reported missing. 

Two, an investigations of Carlee’s online history came up with the following searches:  “Do you have to pay for an Amber Alert,” “How to take money from a register without being caught,” Birmingham bus station,” “one way bus ticket from Birmingham to Nashville” departing July 13, “the movie ‘Taken’.”

Three, while Carlee was on the phone with 911 reporting the toddler on the side of the road, she said she’d stopped to check on him. During that phone call, she traveled about 600 yards; the distance of six football fields. So no, she hadn’t stopped at all. 

Right now, Carlee herself has not confessed to faking a kidnapping. 

But if she did, it makes me angry. 

Faked crime makes me angry mainly because you have just made it that much more difficult for real victims to be believed when they do report a crime. Next time someone reports a missing person, will the family/friends of the missing person be believed? If the person is found alive, will they be believed when they tell what happened to them? 

Carlee Russell is a nursing student. Maybe she was running away from the pressures of the classroom, just like Jennifer Wilbanks ran away from the pressures of an upcoming large wedding. 

I don’t know why people fake crimes. Is it to cover their tracks? Or do they want attention so badly that they’re willing to fake a crime? Is it a cry for help from someone who’s desperate and doesn’t see a way out? Are they looking for sympathy?

I don’t know.  What I do know is that every faked crime makes it that much harder for real victims of real crimes to be believed. 

Jennifer Wilbanks now works in relative obscurity in metro Atlanta, according to the People article I referenced above. Unfortunately, her name will forever be linked to a fake crime. 

If Carlee Russell’s story is proven false, she, too, will be forever linked to a fake crime. 

Is that the sort of legacy you want to leave?

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation. 

Boxes in the . . . bathroom?

On June 13th, 2023, Donald Trump, in a scene reminiscent of the infamous "slow speed chase" of OJ Simpson, was transported via black SUV and a police escort to the Miami-Dade courthouse, where he was arrested, processed, and then escorted to a courtroom. He sat at a table, silent (and according to some reports, scowling) and watched as his attorney, Todd Blanche, entered a plea of not guilty to 37 federal charges involving his possession of documents that the National Archives had repeatedly asked for.

I'm not going to comment on Trump's guilt or innocence. That will be for a jury to decide. 

But I am going to comment on two infamous -- to me -- pictures of the boxes allegedly filled with documents.

The first photo shows boxes stacked on the stage of a ballroom. 

I believe that Trump held events in that ballroom, and when you go to Mar-a-Lago, I assume that there is a formal dress code. My walking shoes and jeans would not fit that dress code. 

So you walk into Mar-a-Lago, in a silk or satin dress probably purchased at Norstrom's or Bloomingdale's, wearing shoes that hurt your feet, ready for an evening of dinner and maybe dancing . . . and on the stage, you see a bunch of boxes piled up?
I'm sorry, but that's just plain tacky. It gives the impression of, "I'm sorry for the mess; we just moved in and we haven't had time to put everything away." Or, "We're getting ready to move and we're packing." 

I'd have a hard time concentrating on the caviar in that setting. I'd find myself staring at the stage and wondering, why are those boxes up there and what's in them? 

The second photo is the one that shocks me the most.

I'm a former librarian. One of the core classes I had to take was on document preservation; how to keep and store documents so that they are kept in good condition. This is why there are places like the National Archives and Presidential libraries, and why there are archives and special collections sections in university libraries. (I worked for a few weeks in Florida State University's subbasement, sorting newspaper articles into folders. If you want to be alone, it's a good job to have!) It's why certain documents are stored in acid-free boxes and why, in some cases, you have to put on cotton gloves before you open the boxes and read through the pages.  It's also why important papers are stored in climate-controlled rooms. 

So why in the name of document preservation would someone store boxes of paper -- especially paper with allegedly sensitive information on it -- in a bathroom?

During the coverage of the Trump indictment/arrest, one of CNN's guest commented that there were 33 bathrooms in Mar-a-Lago. I don't know how true that is. But when I saw that picture, my first question was, "Were people using that bathroom?"

Think about it.  What do you do in the bathroom? Usually you shower, shave, take a bath, use the toilet, brush your teeth, etc. 

When you shower, depending on how hot you like your water, steam comes up. 

Who here has ever fought mold and mildew in a bathroom?

Well, mold and mildew are caused by moisture. And that same moisture can affect and ultimately ruin documents that are not properly stored. Yes, mold, mildew, and other stuff can get on paper. And have you ever seen a book that was damaged by spilled water? You know how the pages swell up or crinkle up? Or stick together?

Do you want mold, mildew, or other water damage on the pages that may contain secret plans on how to deal with a foreign country that's just attacked you? (I can just see it now:  "There's a water spot right here at the end of this country's name. Are we supposed to attack Iran or Iraq?")

Not only is storing documents in a bathroom also tacky, it's just plain stupid. 

If Trump wanted to keep documents so badly, and if he'd been smart, he would have rented a climate-controlled storage area in someone else's name, or in the name of a shell corporation, and put all the boxes there. Not left them out in public for his Mar-a-Lago guests to see. 

Do we really want to trust the Oval Office to a man who cannot store important documents properly? 

In my opinion, we shouldn't.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

A happy funeral . . . and then bloody reality

I helped at and attended a happy funeral on Saturday, May 6. 

Then I came home and was slapped in the face with bloody reality. 

First, the funeral; then, the bloody reality.

My husband and I, on May 6, spent four hours at our church helping to set up and clean up for a funeral. In between, we attended the funeral. 

It was the happiest funeral I'd ever attended. 

Not because we were happy the deceased was no longer with us, but because we were celebrating a life that was lived well.

Keith Johnson attended my church for a number of years, and among other things, he sang on our church's praise team. Fewer people had a wider smile than Keith, and fewer people could encourage you like he could. So I think it was appropriate that the funeral began with a video clip of the three Johnson brothers, including Keith, singing "Mansion, Robe and Crown" at their father's funeral. 

Brother #1 ratted out brother #2 by telling of a time when brother #2 would "terrorize" baby Keith. One day, Keith settled the matter by taking a Fisher-Price toy and bopping brother #2 on the side of the head. Problem solved.

Later in the funeral, tears surfaced as one of the two brothers stopped in the middle of his speech.  The other brother came up to give him silent encouragement and the speaker was finally able to go on. 

Tears also surfaced when one of Keith's daughters spoke of what a wonderful father he was to her. Another daughter shared the same sentiments. 

Keith had been an athlete throughout his childhood and high school. But he developed heart problems in his life, and then later, cancer hit and eventually killed him. 

Despite his heart problems, I never heard Keith complain. He continued to greet everyone with a smile, and Don, our preacher, spoke about how Keith did the encouraging when Don would ask how he, Keith, was doing. 

I enjoyed the genuine affection and love the family had for each other and for Keith.  And not only did his family have that genuine affection, so did his friends.  So many people that I had not seen in months and years came to our church to honor Keith. 

That attitude of respect and affection overflowed into the reception after the funeral. Volunteers made sure that our fellowship hall was set up and filled with food. And we left plenty over for the family (I said to several people, they will not feel like cooking for the next few days.)  At one point, an elderly couple came up to my husband and me (we happened to be standing at the pass-through between the kitchen and the fellowship hall) and wanted to know if we were in charge of the operation.  We looked at each other and said, "Well . . ." The man went on to compliment everything as a "well-oiled machine".  I said, "Keith loved us, and this was our way of loving him back." (I immediately went to the elder's wife that was mainly in charge of asking for volunteers and told him what he'd said. She was one of those people responsible for that "well-oiled machine".) 

Exhausted after four hours of serving, my husband and I elected to forego cooking and picked up dinner from Chick-Fil-A. 

It was after I ate and was checking my phone for Kentucky Derby results that the first reports came in of a shooting in Allen, Texas, at a shopping mall.  I'm ashamed to admit that my reaction at first was, "Again?" It's mid-May and I have already lost count of the number of mass shootings there have been in this country. Midtown Atlanta, about 20 miles from where I live, had their own on May 3rd, just three days prior. 

Then I started seeing the casualty reports:   Nine dead, including the shooter; and at least seven wounded. 

And some of them were children. 

I turned to Twitter, which is often where I get my breaking news these days (which may or may not be a good thing). 

In the tweets dealing with the Allen shooting, I saw approximately 5-10 seconds of a video I wasn't sure was real:  a group lying on the ground, blood smearing at least one person's legs, and a face that I am not sure was open in an eternal, permanent scream, or that had the lower half of it blown away. This is allegedly a video taken of certain victims at the Allen mall, a very graphic and gruesome video that probably should not have been on Twitter in the first place and that took over 24 hours to get taken down. 

From a happy funeral, where I was reminded of the value of a life well-lived, I was plunged back into the bloody reality of sudden, violent, needless death. 

What more can I say? What more can anyone say? 

I refuse to say "thoughts and prayers" (although I believe prayers can help), but we're thinking and praying when we ought to be acting. 

I don't have solutions.

I'm at the age where I'm going to more funerals than I am baby showers and weddings. When I go to funerals, I want them to be "happy funerals", i.e. funerals that truly are a celebration of someone's life, where the preacher doesn't have to lie or gloss over the bad parts of your life.  

I do not want to go to a funeral that, while it may be a celebration of a life well-lived, was caused by someone who, for whatever reason, took a deadly weapon and senselessly murdered eight people, wounded seven others, and whose bloody reality was splattered all over social media for the world to see. 

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

And now it's our turn

This speech is from the Congressional Record of May 3, 2023, p. S1489.  The formatting is mine. Any emphasis is mine. All the words belong to Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock.

 Madam President, I rise today in shock and sorrow and in grief for my home State. And, if I am honest, I rise really with a deep sense of anger about what is happening in our country in the area of gun violence and death.

I stood here in March of 2021 after a gunman went on a rampage across Metro Atlanta and snatched eight precious souls—people with families and friends who loved them dearly. And here I am standing again, this time with the tragedy having occurred in midtown Atlanta, right in my own backyard. 

While this is still a developing situation, according to media reports, so far, at least five people were shot— five—on a random afternoon. There has been one fatality. The others were taken to the hospital. 

I want to take a moment and thank law enforcement officials for keeping us as safe as they can. I want to thank them for their work trying to apprehend this individual. 

I am also thankful for local media who are keeping all of us informed, and I am grateful for our first responders, the people in healthcare, the people on the front lines. We count on them every day to care for those who are injured, to respond to people in peril.  

That is what makes this particular shooting ironic and deeply upsetting, because it underscores the fact that none of us is safe no matter where we are. This happened in a medical facility where people are trying to find healing.r

So I want to underscore that, because there have been so many mass shootings—in fact, about one every day in this country this year—that, tragically, we act as if this is routine. We behave as if this is normal. It is not normal. It is not right for us to live in a nation where nobody is safe no matter where they are. We are not safe in our schools; we are not safe in our workplaces; we are not safe at the grocery store; we are not safe at movie theaters; we are not safe at spas; we are not safe in our houses of worship. There is no sanctuary in the sanctuary. We are not safe at concerts; we are not safe at banks; we are not safe at parades; we are not safe in our own yards and in our own homes. Now, today, we can add medical facilities to that list. 

And, still, we have done so very little in this building to respond—and in the American political square at large. I think there is an unspoken assumption. I think that the unspoken assumption is that ‘‘This can’t happen to me. This won’t happen to me. It won’t happen to people that I love.’’ But, with a mass shooting every day, the truth is the chances are great.  

I shudder to say it, but the truth is, in a real sense, it is only a matter of time that this kind of tragedy comes knocking on your door. Then, in a deeper sense, I think it is important for us to recognize that it is already happening to you. You may not be the victim of a mass shooting. You may not know anyone who is the victim of a mass shooting yet, but in a real sense, it is already happening to all of us.  

Dr. King was right: We are tied in a single garment of destiny, caught up in an inescapable network of mutuality. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. This is knocking on all of our doors, and I feel this this afternoon in a very real sense—I feel it in my bones—because my own two children were on lockdown this afternoon. I have two small children, and their schools are on lockdown in response to this tragedy. They are there. I am here. I am hoping and praying that they are safe, but the truth is none of us are safe.  

As a pastor, I am praying for those who are affected by this tragedy, but I hasten to say that thoughts and prayers are not enough. In fact, it is a contradiction to say that you are thinking and praying and then doing nothing. It is to make a mockery of prayer. It is to trivialize faith. We pray not only with our lips; we pray with our legs. We pray by taking action. Still there are those who want to convince us that this is the cost of freedom. To them, we have to say no.  This ongoing, slow-moving tragedy in our country—mass shootings as routine—is not the cost of freedom; it is the cost of blind obstinance, a refusal to change course even when the evidence suggests we must do something different. It is the cost of demagoguery--those who want to convince us that commonsense gun reform is somehow a call to take everybody’s guns. This is not the cost of freedom. Dare I say it is the cost of greed—gun lobbyists willing to line their pockets even at the cost of our children.

 And so we must act.

 I am proud of the fact that we did, after 30 years, pass some gun safety legislation here in the last Congress. It was a significant piece of legislation, but, obviously, it was not enough.

There are 87 percent or more of Americans who believe that we ought to have universal background checks, and still we can’t get it. Think about that. In a country where everybody says we are divided—and there are deep divisions, to be sure. There is disagreement on this issue, to be sure. But in a country where there is 87-percent agreement on something, there is no movement on it in Congress, which means that that is a problem with our democracy. The people’s voices have been squeezed out of their democracy, and there is a growing chasm between what the people actually want and what they can get from their government. We saw it in a stark and ugly way a few weeks ago when we had two brave, young legislators stand up in Tennessee—three, in fact. The same legislature that refused to do anything on gun violence came down on them with all of their might and expelled them from the legislature. 

We have to stand up against these anti-democratic forces at work in our country, and we have to give the people their voices back. If we refuse to act while our children are dying and in a moment when no one is safe, then shame on us. Shame on us if we allow this to happen, and we do absolutely nothing. 

Saint Augustine, the African bishop of the early church, said that hope has two beautiful daughters. He said they are both beautiful, Anger and Courage--anger with the way things are and courage to see that they do not remain as they are. 

I am pleading; I am begging all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to remember the covenant that we have with one another as an American people. Stand up in this defining moment, and let’s do everything we can to protect all of us and, certainly, all of our children. We owe it to the people who have sent us here. 

I know there are those who will look at this moment and say: Politically, do you really think we can get anything done here? They will ask if this is the time given the state of politics in our country right now.

 I respond with the words of Dr. King, who said that the time is always right to do what is right, and that time is right now.

I am an occasional writer with a blog that reaches very few people. 

What Senator Rafael Warnock spoke about yesterday was yet another mass shooting (and right now, I don't have the energy to look up my sources), but there have been more mass shootings this year than there have been days in the year so far. 

Senator Warnock is right.

We are not safe in our homes.
We are not safe in our schools.
We are not safe in our workplaces. 
We are not safe at the grocery store.
We are not safe in our houses of worship.
We are not safe at concerts. (I will add, we are not safe in movie theaters, either.)
We are not safe at banks.
We are not safe at parades. 
We are not safe in our yards.
We are not safe in medical facilities. 
(There are too many people who can add, "We are not safe from the police.")

And those who can do something  . . . do nothing. Except instruct us to "run, hide, fight" or put children through traumatizing shooting drills, or put the burden on employers to come up with a safety plan in case someone does come in armed.

Warnock is one of the two senators from my home state of Georgia. Yesterday, while he spoke in the Senate and worried about his children on lockdown, I streamed live coverage on Atlanta TV and wondered if the shooter might come here.  I thought about Brian Nichols, whose shooting rampage in 2005 killed a judge, a court reporter, a deputy, an ICE officer, and nearly killed a young widow, Ashley Smith (now Ashley Smith Robinson.) 

Warnock is a man of faith who believes in prayers. 

He also believes that "thoughts and prayers are not enough."

So do I, Senator Warnock. You say that "we pray with our legs." So where do our legs need to go?

One place is to the ballot box.  I think we've forgotten that we the people do have the power to vote out the politicians we disagree with. The problem, I think, is that we believe "everyone's representative/senator is a jerk . . .  except for mine." And so we keep pulling the lever, touching the screen, punching ballots (and hopefully not leaving hanging chads or pregnant chads) for the same candidates. And decent people who want to make a difference, who might run for office, find themselves having to play a game that requires a HAZMAT suit to protect them from all the mudslinging that goes on during a campaign. 

I live in a neighborhood where we have not had a mass shooting, but since around Thanksgiving, we've have two police-involved shootings, an overdose of a teenage boy, and a young girl murdered who may have been murdered by a cop. And while I refuse to keep these incidents from living my life, it is scary to think that yes, someone could have a gun and start shooting. I've even thought about, what would I do if I were in church and someone started shooting? Our children's minister held training for people who wanted to work in the children's ministry, and she choked up when she started talking about "what to do if an intruder comes in" . It is something we should never have to tell our children.

Yesterday, it was Atlanta's turn to be added to the list of "mass shootings for the year". 

Whose turn is it going to be today? 

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.