I have a confession.
This isn't one of those deep, down hidden confessions that will make
people look at me differently. Nothing
like that. You're not going to get
scarred for life by reading this. I
promise. Maybe I don't want to confess
this. I'm kind of psyching myself out
with all of the buildup. Forget it, I've
got to get it out there. I am guilty of
lying to Ellie. Yes, I've been lying to
my three month old daughter. Feels good
to get it off my chest. What's
that? You want to know what lie I could
possibly be telling her? Simple. Whenever she's upset and I'm trying to
comfort her, I simply tell her, "Don't worry Ellie. Daddy's here and he'd never let anything bad
happen to you." I mean, that's just
honestly one of those things that people say when trying to comfort an
infant. The truth is that I cannot keep
that promise to her though. I'm utterly
incapable of keeping bad things from happening to Ellie during the course of
her life and last night made me think of that very clearly.
For a little background, I've been helping out with the
teenage ministry at Northland Baptist Church for the past two and a half
years. It's one of those things that I
just began doing because I wanted an opportunity but I have seen it become one
of the highlights of my week. I've
developed friendships with a lot of the students there over that time and it's
allowed me the chance to try and speak into their lives and be there for them
when they need it. You might think it's
simply church kids participating but that's not true. We have had a longstanding partnership with
one of the toughest neighborhoods in the city which is home to a large number
of refugees from various countries. We
run a school bus to the neighborhood to pick up both teens and younger children
for Wednesday night groups. We also feed
them to boot. Normally things go well,
but there are times when issues erupt and last night was one of those evenings.
I came into the situation relatively late as I was finishing
up with my normal responsibilities, but was asked by another adult to head down
the hill to the road running right by the church. A group of teens had gotten into an argument
with some other adults and decided to walk themselves home. As that's definitely not safe, four of the
adult leaders headed down the hill to try to defuse the situation. As we were talking with the teens, they quickly
accused us of being racist to them and not treating them fairly. We worked to let them know that was not the
case and convinced them to get on the bus so that they could be taken home
safely. Before the teens would board the
bus, they began grabbing all of their younger relatives
and yanking them out of their classess with no warning. Once we began getting students on the bus,
one of the girls actually "took the bus hostage" by grabbing the
handle operating the bus door and refusing to let go. Once we finally got the bus moving, I headed
to the back where younger children were sitting in tears, both confused and
frightened by the hostile situation. As
I tried to calm them, I was told by teens to "Get the **bleep** away from
them" and that "No white **bleep** was going to be talking to their
brother/sister/cousin."
This situation made me really realize that I can never tell
Ellie that nothing bad will ever happen to her.
I fear what things will be like for her in thirteen years. Who even knows if I'll still be around? We live in a world now where races are
seemingly becoming more and more divided every day. Obviously, I will never understand what it's
like to be a black male like most of these students. Still my heart aches for the evil and the
hatred that is festering inside some of these kids towards the world right
now. I feel powerless to do anything to
help which is the hardest part. All I
can do is pray for the students that I am interacting with, for the state of
the world, and for my daughter's own future.
#DaddyWrite
No comments:
Post a Comment