Reflections; Kony 2012

Have you seen this?




It is such a senseless, terrible thing that I'm not sure I can allow my mind to fathom the terror that is within that video. Sadly, the Kony story isn't anything new. Child sex trafficking, mutilation, and murder happen every day all around the world. It even happened in my husband's home country. It doesn't make it any less evil or any less tolerable. It just means that it hits closer to home for our family than it likely does for most people who hear about Kony and other like stories but never have a loved one go through it.

Seeing those children suffer and cry that they welcome death because it would be much better than the terror they feel breaks my heart. The hurt that they feel touches me to my core, as I cannot ever imagine -and never want to- know or experience all that they feel and deal with on a daily basis. These are children with more put on them than most could never even mentally handle much less physically be undergoing. To imagine being awakened by my son, who is being forced to murder both his daddy and myself, or watching my family be mutilated and murdered while I am being raped and then left for dead is painful enough to imagine. To actually have gone through, I do not know how these children cope. It makes me want to go pick up my sleeping BubbyBear, cradle him in my arms, and hold him tighter than I ever have.

We complain about how life isn't fair, how the bills keep piling up one after another, how we cannot have that new car we want, how our white couch has a stain on it. We think that we have it so bad, yet we are not the ones sleeping in jungles praying to survive the night while hoping to die because death would be better than carrying on another day.

I am thankful. Grateful, I am, that my family and I have never had to go through anything even remotely close to what these children have. I am hopeful that justice will be brought to them soon, even though any justice carried out will never be enough to fill the void in their lives and rid them of the pain and torment they have endured. I pray that these children find peace, healing, and strength, that they are protected, that they are OK.

Take time to love each other. Take time to pray, to think, and to reflect. Say a prayer for your loved ones, for your not-so-loved ones, and for the ones you don't know to love. Hold your children a bit tighter. Wrap your arms around your spouse a little longer. Make a difference where you can, doing what you can, always doing the right thing, even when facing opposition. A little love goes a long way. Love deeply, fiercely, passionately. Love long, strong, and hard. Love.