Thursday, July 7, 2011

Danieal Kelly

She was stuck to the bed of the room she died in. Bed sores infested with maggots. She was 14, with cerebral palsy, and 40-something pounds, having been starved to death by her mother, abandoned by her father, and forsaken by social workers.

Her mother is in jail. Her father is on trial.

And I want to know. Where was God in that room? Was he there? Did he talk to her, as her body metabolized itself, as her organs shut down?

Did he whisper that he loved her? That all would soon be love, and peace and light? That suffering was transient? That mourning would be replaced by laughter? That the kingdom of heaven would be hers?

I find myself struck that the universe can know one child, and another can be forgotten, discarded like trash. Did she at least know one Father, after having been left by the other?

I want to know this. I need to have this answered.

And I feel horrible for even asking it. Because I don't know where God is, and can't say for sure that even in the most deplorable conditions, He is absent. Who am I to say?

I am just someone who hopes that child was held and loved, that she sat in the arms of the Father or Mother, as she slipped from a life she didn't ask for into the eternal one that she deserved.

5 comments:

Fran said...

I'm at work... I will be back. Oh Kelly...

Fran said...

I'm back but I don't really have any words, there are no words.

I have hope eternal but reading this... well, it is gut wrenching. I do believe God was there, but it sounds awfully empty, doesn't it?

I feel sick, what do we do?

De said...

Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep instead for yourselves and for your children, ...for if these things are done when the wood is green what will happen when it is dry?

Pray the sorrowful mysteries of the rosary today. I read this post yesterday afternoon and I thought about over night, but I couldn't find the words until I started to listen to the rosary this morning(I "cheat" and listen to it on MP3).

Jesus did not rid the world of sin. He suffered massively to teach us a way to reconcile with the creator - a way so simple it gets overlooked: Love God and one another.

But it's deceptively simple, because it's not a passive measure. We must actively get out there and LOVE so much that we convince others to stop sinning and love as well.

That's how it works. And it is work. We have to choose it and do it. God works through us.

Lora said...

Oh Kel. I think of this exact thing every day with so many children.

It's hard to believe God cares about every single person when you see so many children suffer. I don't have an answer.

painted maypole said...

That's the promise, isn't it? it's hard to hold on to that, to see it, to trust in, through so much sorrow.