Heartbreak 2: Electric Boogaloo

Joe’s done a runner and I don’t think I have the strength to deal with him for another day. The deputy principal’s out chasing him, and so is his poor grandfather, who spends most days with him at school too.

*sigh* And things had seemed to be on the upswing. I had introduced Joe to the Bible, and he ate up the copy I gave him. We talked about his having been rescued from his terrible circumstances by God, and he seemed to get it. He even had great questions about it, and toted his bible around for days.

He was more polite, and spent almost entire days in class, slowly becoming socialized and learning to sit attentively and even learn a bit in class. He was doing fine in his special reading and math classes. He was playing with other kids, and no fights broke out; and yesterday he even taught me to play handball.

That in itself is quite miraculous.

But Joe has been spending the week with his elderly grandparents. Why? Because his 7 year old sister has gone “crazy”. She’s begun exhibiting sudden mood swings, unexplained bouts of rage, and had begun destroying Joe’s things in her hysteria. For those of us familiar with the symptoms of sexual molestation – that’s set alarm bells ringing right left and center. And the cruel tragedy is that she won’t be the first little girl he’s hurt in this way.

Joe’s begun to tell me about his drug use – both the forced overdoses of his prescription medication at his biological mother’s hands; and his own illegal use of inhalants. He’s still on about knives, and how he misses his flick knife. He waxes rhapsodic about his bio-father’s immense hunting knife, and the really cool fish paring knife his Uncle Wayne has. He tells me that he hopes that someone will give him a knife as a present.

Joe’s begun to make disturbing comments about wanting to go back into his natural mother’s care, and even asking if he can phone her from school. He tells me that she’s “changed” since his bio-father has taken a job up north as a trucker; and that her voice is now ‘nice’ where it always used to be ‘nasty’ to him. He tells me that she’s promised him a PSP if he comes home; and she’s already given his 8-year old brother his own phone. To Joe, that’s the coolest thing in the world. His foster-mother tells me that when he talks to his bio-mum on the phone, he tells her that he’ll be home ‘soon’, when ‘all this is over’.

But Joe’s really made me think about love and God’s love, especially. I’ll admit there are times I have walked away from Joe in complete anger and frustration. There have been times I have been unable to love him – not even as God loves him – because he is so difficult, obnoxious and incredibly time-consuming. And I realize that as a spiritual failing that I need God’s help to close.

And Joe highlights something for me I have always struggled with: it’s so easy to love the children that have been truly victimized, that are helpless in their pain and want to be helped out of their darkness by the kindness and love of those around them.

But what happens when that little victim isn’t so innocent? When he too becomes the monster? When you can see the poison and darkness in him, mingled with the rage and the shame of what was done to him?

Well, I will admit I am not finding that so easy. I find the smugness with which he talks about “kissing” girls, and getting into fights, reprehensible. I find his descriptions of his bio-mother video taping him wearing her underwear repulsive. I find his unwillingness to participate in his own salvation to be baffling; and I find the pain and shame that he is putting his family through to be appalling.

And yet, he’s not even 11. What ever did this to him was not of his choosing, and the monster in him was something that was forced on him, I believe.

But how do you love the monster?

See, this is why I never went into prison ministry – although there are aspects of children’s ministry that aren’t very different.