Family

I’m going to write about God is this eulogy to the victims at Sandy Hook, but you must remember that I live in assisted living, where most of the people here are at the threshold of their own death, and, after all, what comfort is there to be offered to anyone, having to deal with death himself, if it is not a discussion and comforting by God Himself? If not even violence and murder can be dealt with in a sober and reverent fashion, what else is there to offer such people as the survivors of such an atrocity? Is it really appropriate to write about any kind of vulgarity, except in righteous outrage?

There were an awful lot of sanctities that were violated at Sandy Hook Elementary. For one thing, there was the most obvious sanctity of all – the sanctity of childhood itself, was totally violated by this brutal and senseless attack on innocence itself. Another thing that was definitely violated was the sanctity of the family, of fatherhood and motherhood, of the trust in the institution of the elementary schools of this country, in general – all of these things were violated by that one nobody, who took it upon himself to perpetrate a senseless act, to go out of this life, with a loud, obscene noise, as if just killing himself wasn’t enough to destroy him?

God’s judgment is on that man, and he killed himself, which means there is no way he escaped the immediate wrath of his Maker, right away after these atrocities were perpetrated. There is a God, and human beings are not it. The only way to obtain any peace about this unspeakable occurrence is to take confidence in the idea that the same God who helped me gain peace about my personal issues, is at work punishing this man for his obscenely vulgar behavior. God does exist, and He is always close by, to be consulted and counted on when some moron perpetrates an absurdity like was done at Sandy Hook.

God is all powerful, and He does meat out judgments on people like this man, no doubt about it.

We may not witness what this person is required to go through after all the shooting is over and done with, after the man disappears into his death. That man took it upon himself to kill all these innocent human beings in their childhood. We don’t see what God did to the guy, but that doesn’t mean God did nothing whatsoever. I feel especially empowered to speak to this specific issue, because of the fact that my own childhood was so thoroughly abused and ill-used, when I suffered the injustices I went through as a child, myself, and my attackers were never brought to give me any retribution whatsoever.

But they did not get this world without consequences to have to answer to.

I find comfort in the idea that even though those people got away from me scott free, they didn’t get away from the judgment and punishment of Almighty God. I’m not pontificating theoretical nonsense here. When I realized how thoroughly God dealt with my attackers since I was little, I managed to find solace in the idea that God took care of it; that it was not my responsibility to exact retribution from those people. You can bet your bottom dollar that when my memories of the brutality that I was forced to deal with in my childhood, when I was seven, and again when I was thirteen, I realized that my abusers did not get away from me scott free.

Nonetheless, my God is a powerful and just God, who can exact his judgment on people who do such things as disregard and disrespect the sanctity of childhood itself, which is the greatest sanctity of every one of the sanctities involved in being human. That man may have evaded human judgment and human punishment by taking his own life, but with all the issues that the man took on himself, to his immediate death right after his hideous criminal acts, will keep him under the strictest sanctions of Almighty God for a long time to come, probably for all of eternity, like I have the luxury to believe of my own attackers.

This may just sound like a bunch of preaching to some of my readers, but I’m writing as sincerely and as openly as I can muster, to reassure among all the victims and the survivors of Sandy Hook, that I seriously doubt that any of them would be willing to reject my statement of faith in the act of retribution on the part of Almighty God, Himself, against that gunman, just like I had to revert to trusting a Higher Authority when my amnesia was finally lifted, and I had to survive the memories of the atrocities I was faced with by my own memory, without making an attempt against my own life.

I’m not writing what I believe. I’m writing what I know. I was sexually molested when I was seven, by an adult man, and I was brutally, sexually taken to task by a gang of dangerous boys, again when I was thirteen. I came home to a beating by my irrationally violent father, and imprisoned in my room for two weeks, in the summer I was thirteen. I’ve been battling suicidal feelings ever since I was a young adult. I hid in the bottle, and in the dope from the dope man for a long time, and I had to make contact with the Almighty to survive my own obsession with self-destruction.

The families of those little children, and of those brave adults who lost their lives in that senseless act of atrocity, can never find themselves beguiled out of the tormented hearts and minds of the loss of their loved ones by simply words alone. What each of them needs to grasp is develop a faith in the fact that God is rock solid, and is capable of accomplishing anything, including exacting retribution for such senseless behavior as that gunman to it upon himself to do.

The only solace and comfort available enough, as well as effective enough, to deal with such overwhelming outrage, after such a horrible event as this, can only be achieved by seeking and obtaining the comfort and kindness of the Lord God Himself. I spent my entire youth destroying my memory on alcohol and drugs, trying desperately to kill the memories of the things that had happened to me as a child. I did not know what was there, except for my basic instincts, but I worked rigorously to destroy my ability to remember my own life, and destroy my own life, until God gave me a wake-up call.

In the final analysis, I found comfort and deliverance through my own conception of God, who helped me understand that my attackers did not manage to escape His wrath and His retribution in the process of me achieving and maintaining long term sobriety. God was so kind to me. He continued to shelter me from my memories until I was a full, twenty years sober, when I was finally strong enough to handle the truth about my own childhood. I found that I could finally face my memories with His help, which delivered me from jumping off the tallest bridge I could find in my neighborhood.

The abused child seeks to destroy himself, because the sanctity of his own childhood has been violated. It’s a process of a natural reaction to such horrors as I realize these people, who are the survivors of this horrible act are faced with, twenty-four hours a day, since that senseless crime was committed. I can only offer these acutely bereaved people the one piece of advice that helped me when I was faced with the impossible task of dealing with an impossible dynamic of what had happened to me when I was little. Call on your own, personal concept of Whomever you might think of as God, and ask Him to comfort you. He is willing and able to comfort you.

The Christ, Himself, said that if anyone offend one of these little ones, it were better for him if a mill stone were hung around his neck, and he were cast into the sea. This gunman not only offended the little ones, he murdered them. Surely, the Lord my God will not omit making good on his Word now, as He ever has. When I was extremely suicidal and psychiatrically very unstable, about ready to go jump off one of the tallest bridges in Baltimore City, the Lord my God came to my heart and said that, of course, I was free to do as I pleased, but what I intended to do next would not get me anything that I wanted.

I have enough of a relationship with the Almighty that He was able to minister to my extremely troubled heart, when my amnesia finally broke, and I ultimately recalled what had been done to me as a child for the first time in my adult life. Unfortunately, this gunman had no relationship with the Almighty, and God found it impossible to tell the young man the consequences of what he was planning to do before he did those ghastly things, apparently. But that’s not to say that the Lord our God has no recourse in a situation like this.

In fact, He has more recourse in a situation like this one, than any of us mortals can imagine.

I have every confidence that the response of Almighty God in this situation, was swift and just, such that the man in question was dealt with most severely, as soon as the life went out of his own body. I’m certain the Lord took care of that creep with surety and dispatch, and all of our outrage was responded to with decisive action by the Lord our God, Himself immediately. Rest easy, my friends, and settle into the responsible care of the God so many fools in this world say does not exist. He most certainly does not only exist, but has all power and authority over every living thing.