I really stink at games of chance, including blackjack. But the opportunity to use the metaphor comes along only once.
Each of the children we feature here have a past that’s been a series of busted hands until they became part of Healing Haiti and Grace Village. Since then the odds have changed and a lot of them have doubled down on their futures. I see winners all around when you help these children with your sponsorship.
I’d love to tell you about Lovena‘s interests and hopes for the future. But her biography is missing from the site and I want to focus on what she means to me, instead. Each of the children at Grace Village treated me with kindness and joy. A nicer bunch you’d be hard pressed to find anywhere on the planet. Lovena has been at Grace Village for a few years and while I don’t have a specific memory of her to share, I can tell you that she’s well cared for and loved by the staff. This is your chance to expand that circle of love and bring her into your heart with your gift of sponsorship.
Lovena came to Healing Haiti in May, 2010. Lovena was abandoned by her mother and her father is unknown.
Birth Info
Birthdate: July 13, 1999
Place of Birth: Port au Prince, Haiti
It is my hope that one of you will find your heart touched by this child and take up a bit of Christ’s work by sponsoring them for an extended period. My wife and I are sponsoring a pair of sisters and we took on the commitment based on having to only gave up a fast-food dinner each day to change the life of a child. God came through with a very lucrative bit of voice over work for me that covered the bill that same day, but it really is as easy as skipping a value meal. Healing Haiti will do the right things for these children and I have full confidence in their work. I am not affiliated with them, they don’t endorse this blog, nothing like that at all. I just love kids (can’t be Santa and not love children) and know that Grace Village is the difference between life and death for many of these children. Please open your heart and prayerfully reflect on the opportunity God’s giving us to sponsor these children. Some of them have come out of slavery and have some of the toughest lives you could imagine prior to Grace Village.
I’ve posted on this topic every year around this time, but the topic needs to be addressed often. Consequently, I’m updating the post and adding some new material. But the message is the same – suicide can be prevented!
The post from last year appears below. I was prompted to drag it out today because I had an encounter with a suicidal person yesterday. The details are irrelevant but the conversation itself was important – to me and the person threatening suicide.
What did I do to react? I kept the conversation calm. I expressed love and concern and tried to diffuse their anger. I offered roads to solutions, not solutions. I showed respect and kindness. And, finally, I referred them to a competent authority who could do ministerial follow up with them. I’m good with a lot of things, but this person needed more help than I could provide.
For the time I was with them, however, I think I was able to soften the rage and hurt just a bit. Like some other suicidal people I’ve dealt with they were in so much pain that they wanted to inflict this pain on others to teach a lesson. The only lesson taught by suicide is that it is a tragedy for all involved.
I’m fond of recycling good material. The post below qualifies. I’ve updated links where needed, and while it’s directed at active duty and veterans the concepts apply to all of us. I hope that suicide isn’t a part of your experience. I pray that you can bring the light of hope that is Christ to anyone who is in this dire frame of mind. I hope that you can bring them back from the brink. I pray that the information below puts a few arrows in your quiver.
This post occured to me the other day while I was watching Sons of Guns on television. The show is interesting if you’re a shooter or vet. This episode featured the greatest sniper in U.S. history, Chris Kyle, and a rifle he was having customized for his foundation FITCO. He worked with the team at Red Jacket, in particular Glenn “Flem” Fleming, one of the gunsmiths. Flem (as he’s known on the show) is an Air Force vet who said he had to leave active duty due to P.T.S.D. and T.B.I. (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Traumatic Brain Injury.)
I watched the episode with great interest. Chris was my hero the minute I found out he’d punched Jesse Ventura in the mouth. Props attached right from that moment. Jesse was out-gassing about S.E.A.L. team members dying in the sandbox and how they “deserved it.” Chris took exception and calibrated Jesse. Don’t get me wrong – Jesse could whup me any day of the week. But wrong is wrong and I admired Chris’ style.
There was a poignant moment when Chris and Flem were talking about all the feelings that you experience when you leave the service. Watch the episode for the full impact. The thoughts they expressed were the same ones I’ve heard hundreds of vets talk about over the years. I’ve had them run through my mind as well. Both men talked about the depression and isolation that comes from leaving your friends in harm’s way. Even if you’re not in combat you leave behind friends who are truly your brothers and sisters. It’s lonely in “the world” no matter how good your support system is compared to everyone else. It’s a very dramatic change. Even if you’re in a unit like S.E.A.L. teams (or my little band of misfits – the former Naval Security Group) where there’s a lot of lattitude, it’s still the military. Civilian life is so alien that it’s as close as you can get to being sprung from prison after doing a five, ten, or thirty year stretch. (No, the military is not populated with criminals and it is not prison – but the institutionalization is similar. Besides, we used to joke that the difference between being on a ship/sub and being in prison was that prisoners got cable t.v. and fresh produce.)
I could have been standing there with them. And right now you might be standing next to someone with the same feelings. If you know anyone who’s been in the military in the last few years, or even longer in some cases, you probably recognize some of those thoughts and ideas from talking to them. And here’s a few more things they might be going through – substance abuse, suicidal thoughts, extreme anger or sadness, lonliness, and a sense of loss that’s so overwhelming that it physically hurts.
How do most vets deal with it? For many of us that are blessed we can get past it and move onward. We just shrug it off and try to keep the brooding from coming too close to the surface. Sometimes we dont’ do a very good job. We find ourselves all choked up and crying in the shower when we hear “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” on the radio. We know that feeling the song conveys. Sometimes we just smile over absent comrades. And sometimes, when the darkness closes in, we kill ourselves. And recently it’s been in larger numbers than ever before.
There’s a thing called “The Spartan Pledge” that I’m endorsing as of this moment. The video is below. Watch it and then continue reading for more information.
But, you might wonder, you just said you brush on past it. Most do. Some don’t. The thing is you can’t tell by looking at somebody if they’re feeling so low that suicide is an option for them. But you might suspect. You will probably hesitate to bring it up. Even if you’re the closest friend they have and you’ve know them for years. Or served in the same unit. Especially men. We hate that touchy-feely stuff.
So what do you do? First, if you are feeling suicidal quit reading my nonsense and pick up the phone to a suicide hot-line. 1-800-273-8255. You are precious and irreplaceable and … well, suicide truly has never made anything better for anyone.
For those of you who know someone who has been acting out of sorts lately, depressed, distant, dark and moody, etc., find out why. You might really annoy them by asking, but if they kill themselves you will never have the chance to ask or annoy them again. Is your dignity worth more than their life?
You are probably wondering why this is on my mind? Too many people I know have taken their own lives. Too many people I know are in the process of taking their lives and I’m not yet aware of their plight. I wish I was. I’d drop to my knees and start praying for each of them right now. I’d beg them to get help.
Suicide is preventable. It is only a fatal issue if nothing is done to prevent it.
So, pay attention to those around you and make sure that the troubled ones get some help. Sometimes just your asking how they are and probing a bit can bring the darkness to the surface and allow you to help the person. Knock on their door and drag them out to breakfast. Make them be a part of life before death claims them.
If you are in need of help, get it right now. My friends know they can call me for that help. You have a friend that will do that for you. The people at the hotlines are there because they love you and want to help. They don’t need to know you to love you. Call 1-800-273-8255 and talk to someone today.
And, for those whom we’ve lost to suicide, our memories are tinged and darkened. We all wish we’d known so that we could have helped. But since there are no time machines available, go and help those in need today.
Finally, and perhaps the second most important point of this post: Mental Illness is not contagious. Reach out today. You don’t have to be a veteran to help a veteran. You just have to have the love in your heart to extend that hand. Most vets do fine. But there’s no shame in saying that it’s rough “on the outside” and getting help.
To be truthful, it put me in mind of the word dialectic. And when I think of dialectic, I think of communism and Marx.
When I think of communism and Marx, I think about useful idiots. And it seems to me that we’ve just exchanged one set of pro-communist useful idiots for another set of them who are pro-Islam/everything. Strangely enough, many of the idiots are the same people.
It may shock and horrify some of my readers to find out that I don’t think Jesus wants us all to be foolish sheep led to the slaughter. In fact, I think that one of the tenets of Christianity that is often misrepresented is that we must be preachers of the Word and cling to our faith – not abandon it in favor of political correctness.
This will, inevitably, lead you to a dialectical moment – Do I follow my faith and adhere to my principles, or do I cave in and pay lip service to the society and laws of men?
I am not widely renowned as a deep thinker and philosopher. More of a smart-aleck with a beard. I do, however, use my little noggin on occasion and this will be one of them. So, standby for what passes as profundity on this blog.
The primary difference in religious suasion employed by Islam and Christianity in the modern era is the use of violence. Christianity has eschewed violence as a model of conversion and argument unless it’s in self-defense. Islam has continued it’s centuries long tradition of conversion and punishment at the tip of the sword.
Christians can live their own lives and allow others around them to practice a different religion without an ethical dilemma. If you do not drink, you do not drink but do not expect others to follow your lead by legal imposition. If you choose to smoke and are not a Christian you can do so legally (let’s see how long the nanny-state lets that one slide.) If you wish to honor a pagan god and worship naked in your basement with a Star Trek phaser as your idol, go for it – the local Baptists don’t really care as long as you stay away from the windows.
Islam, on the other hand, will enforce the law via Sharia law and punish you for stepping outside of Islam. It is that simple.
In the Christian world, particularly so in The United States, we let just about anything slide as long as nobody pokes out an eye – we even let people kill babies in abortions. I think we’ve gone too far with the pendulum, but once again if you hold deep religious beliefs you simply don’t have to participate. In Islamic societies you don’t get that option.
So where does the dialectic come in? In our world moral relativism has taken hold and the argument is that there should be no argument – anything goes, all cultures are equal, all religions are valid, and all actions are acceptable. That’s the useful idiot’s stance. Sadly, the useful idiots will not be on the front lines defending the rest of us when they weaken our civilization to the point where barbaric sorts can take the helm and impose their will on the rest of us. The first to go, not in defense of our lifestyle and values but as victims, will be the useful idiots. They are known to bring down those around them and their behavior will brand them as heretics right out of the gate.
It is not wrong, it is not mean, it is not shallow or evil to point out that there is a profound difference in world view between Christianity and Islam. Yesterday I asked where the protests were from the “moderate” Islamic population. The answer is very simple – there is no moderate Islam. There is total adherence and there is laxity that will be punished if you call attention to yourself. Perhaps not in your household, perhaps not by your neighbors, but by millions of other adherents who will find you apostate for your lack of faith. Christianity will, at worst, kick you out of the church in America if you don’t hew the line – and that’s a pretty rare occurence outside of The Amish and a few other groups. When was the last time you heard of a Catholic or a Lutheran being shunned?
If you are a Muslim, the cost can be very high. It can be your life. And that’s why the silence is so deafening in the wake of any terrorist attack involving Islam.
It’s your choice how you want to handle it. But the question you will have to answer on Judgement Day is how closely you adhered to your profession of faith. Did you spread the Word, did you live the life Christ asked you to (working on it, not there by a long shot) or did you let it slide and condone evil and death in this world in hopes of avoiding attention.
This weekend was just the most recent in a series of attacks against Christianity, freedom, the west, and anyone not devout enough in the long and bloody history of Islam. Before anybody rushes to pull the alarm near the door and label me, let me point out that I’m excluding many of the adherents of that faith from my diatribe.
It is a reflexive action to say, “But Christianity had the Crusades!” or some other stupid thing that you learned in the 7th grade. The Crusades, just by the by, were a response to Islamic attacks on Christians. But why should facts intrude here?
I’m usually loathe to quote Facebook wisdom, but I saw a rarified gem there yesterday – It said, “Long before the United States existed and Israel was formed, Mohammed drove his armies across the known world to conquer, pillage, and convert others at the tip of the sword.” It is right on the money.
So, having laid out my nifty little bit of pith, I am going to point out, again, that the threat to the entire world at the hands of Islamic warriors is an ongoing thing. These are the people who find justice in attacking shoppers at a mall. Give that a moment’s thought before we move on – you don’t have to be in the military to be a valid target, you just have to be at Target.
The same group of enlightened adherents attacked a Christian church in Pakistan this weekend. They didn’t protest, they didn’t burn Bibles… well, maybe they did in the course of the attack. I guess when you blow down the church goers some Bibles will go up in smoke as well.
Did I mention the ongoing persecution of the Coptic Christians in Egypt? Or perchance the slaughter of Christians in Syria at the hands of Al Qaeda? Maybe my mind was fuzzed by the deaths in Nigeria when they burned down the churches with people inside of them and attacked the Christian school this summer.
It’s so terribly hard to remember which atrocity I’m most concerned with when dealing with the assault on our world by Islam. I mentioned that many adherents of that faith don’t participate in these attrocities – and that’s true. Like many Christians they are adherents in name only. Content to live a peaceful life on their own without donning a bomb vest or gunning down shoppers in a mall. But do they speak out regarding the atrocities? Do they protest against this “perversion” of their religion?
Not so much. And that’s the cautionary tale here. I can be as angry as I can muster but until each and every one of you start to think about the onslaught of violence, the murder of innocents, and the need to defend our way of life against Sharia law, we are doomed.
We will not survive if we do not recognize the threat. Wake up, America. It was a mall in Kenya this time around. But some of the attackers are rumored to have come from a neighborhood just five miles from where I write this blog. It’s a lot shorter trip to the Mall of America.
The answer is – like me. It’s clear that Stormy focuses on one thing at a time, but flitters of distraction pass across her face as though she just remembered something important on the other side of the house. That’s about as far as it gets indoors.
Take her out in the back yard and all bets are off. It’s tough to do, but she can patrol the yard, void her bladder, and glare at sparrows all at the same time. Once she’s done with the second item she can do the other two with additional tasks in the mix – hating squirrels and listening for garbage trucks. With school back in sesson she’s added schoolbuses to the list of things she despises. Nothing can evoke quite the reaction that a bird covered school bus, full of trash, driven by a squirrel, and driving near her alley would bring. I’m pretty sure her head would explode like she was in the movie Scanners.
We try to deprogram her from time to time, but she’s up to about 5 tasks at once now and any hope of going back to the old days are gone. That’s part of the bargain with her other social skills improving. I pine for the days of Edzell laying on the rug in the living room plotting against Maisie. You could hear the wheels turning as he submerged deep in the pool of thought from whence his greatest hits emerged. He’d get up with purpose and go about laying the trap he’d created.
Stormy? Well, she runs down the back steps and charges around the yard barking to make sure she gets all of her enemies on notice right away. Different dogs, different goals.
I miss Ed’s thoughtful approach to life. I don’t always laugh when Stormy goes ballistic. But I’m blessed to have such creatures in my life.
Thank You, God, for creating such wonderful companions.
