So, you take it a lot harder

There have been a few cases lately in the news that involve children being casualties of adult mental illness, immorality, amorality, or stupidity, or all of the aforementioned. Now as a parent, I am more scarred by these horror stories than I ever use to be. Take the international child porn ring that was broken up recently- over SEVEN HUNDRED disgusting excuses for human beings were arrested for buying, selling, and making that filth and over 30 children were rescued from their respective nightmares. I was physically ill thinking about what constituted the “severe sexual abuse” that these people so enjoyed watching or participating in. My heart breaks for what those children were subjected to and what their parents must be going through now…and I can’t imagine how many years of therapy their once completely innocent children will have to endure to become functional again. As I look at my precious, still pure-as-snow baby girl, I can’t imagine anyone hurting her that way, or looking at her and wanting to. It enrages me. Make no mistake-I wouldn’t hesitate taking someone out with those intentions for my child if such a situation arose. It is one of the incomprehensible things-that dark, festering ugliness-in this human life…how and why someone could choose or be reduced to indulging in it. My general thought about these people is that they are the worst kind of criminals. I don’t buy in to the “poor guys probably were abused as kids”, because there are plenty of us that were abused as kids that don’t go around robbing, beating, abusing, raping, murdering, or otherwise hurting other people (I won't get on my personal responsibility soap box, so I digress). In my mind, there is no excuse to justify the actions of these monsters. One day they will stand in judgment in front of God, but until then, I hope the karma police will take them to task.

And yet another pregnant woman who was murdered by the child’s father…a vibrant mother who had a loving family and a 9-month (gestational age) baby already completely viable outside the womb, both found dead. Or the father who somehow was only shot in the thigh while the rest of his family-his wife and three beautiful children-were fatally shot in their SUV off some remote highway. Besides being completely STUPID for thinking they would get away with it, how did murder seem like the only option for those fathers? Or this story, “HUDSON OAKS, Texas - A relative found the bodies of a 23-year-old woman and her four small daughters hanging in a closet in their mobile home Tuesday morning, all of them dead but an 8-month-old, who was taken to a hospital...” The mother hung them, all her babies…she went completely nuts, Andrea Yates style. When did life get so complicated for these people that their only choice was murdering their families? Or better yet-how did no one notice when mental illness started creeping in to the psyches of these people?

It just makes me sick and sad. How do people get to that place? How could they look at their children (or someone else’s) and wish them harm? I have only been at this for 9 months, but children are an investment, and they are hard work…and I can’t imagine snuffing out years of memories with them in a cloud of rage or incoherence, wasting months and years of the nurturing and loving, and cultivating those children.

Out there-in this beautiful and MAD world, the best we can do is to try and to shield our sweet girl from physical or emotional harm-having an ever watchful eye on her comings and goings, being vigilant when she is right in front of us, and risking being very unpopular with her when we have to make decisions that we think are in her best interest. G-we apologize in advance, but the never-ending barrage of these stories are why...