Nails Lent Day 35

Ok so I'm actually going to use this post as a form of processing, therapy, because I don't know how I feel about the subject yet but I need to hash it out. Call it a stream of consciousness. 

So as a teacher I have had to teach some pretty torrid pieces of literature - both novels and plays. One year the set works at one of my previous schools included 'The Kite Runner', 'The Smell of Apples' and 'Disgrace'. That's a lot of hectic subject matter blitzing its way around a classroom. This year one of our matric setworks in Drama is 'Tshepang'. If you are unfamiliar with these pieces Google them because I don't have the emotional capacity to go into any of them. 

I am, by and large, probably more sensitive than most. I feel things more intensely than most and if it is an issue that affects children there are no bounds to how I respond. I feel it to my core. It's why I chose to work with children in the first place.

I know a woman who is so maternal and connected to babies that when she is exposed to anything to do with babies in peril, or needing homes or suffering she immediately starts lactating. Some might be totally grossed out by this but for me it speaks of the primal urge some of us have for the care of vulnerable children. Our bodies literally unconsciously do whatever they can to try and provide comfort and nurture for small people. I think this woman is remarkable.

A few year ago, before I had children, I started a project at my previous school called 'Project Hope' where we sewed and created hundreds of 'rape kit bags' for Bobbi Bear - a phenomenal organization that rescues, supports, fights for and councils children who are victims of sexual abuse. We made hundreds of bags and it was a life changing project to run. But it also completely broke me. When Stephen and I dropped off food for their end of year Christmas party we were told a particularly harrowing story. We sat in the car afterwards and I was sobbing. I was inconsolable. In his wisdom Stephen said that if we were to have children I would have to dial back on my direct connection to the organization because it would be impossible for me to be a mother and be exposed to the stories of this place. And he was completely right. There is no way that I can be a functional mother who encourages independence, resilience and joy in her children if I am trying to protect them for some of the things I have been exposed to or could potentially be exposed to.  

As an academic I am required to teach a text so that my students can understand the socio-political, personal and psychological context of why characters do what they do. No one becomes a psychopath in a vacuum and it is my job to facilitate learning that doesn't immediately condemn but that takes into account the bigger picture. And so even if it is hard to forgive at least it becomes easier for us to understand. 

As a person I find this to be by far the most difficult and painful part of my job. I don't like going into those broken societies and homes and psyches. But that's why we create stories and plays and paintings and songs. We use art as a way to try and make sense of the senseless. 

I have no choice in the subject matter that I teach but I have a choice how I can respond to it. And this is my choice. I can let it poison and paralyze me, I can fight with the people who set these texts (because it seems I am in the minority here) or I can call on Christ. I can remember that it was this darkness that He took to the cross. I can remember that he loves all of us and that only he understand the bigger picture of why broken people break other people. I can use these stories to broker in myself an empathy for humanity and a willingness to understand that we were all once children. Some of us were raised by women who lactate on command and some of us were raised in silenced warzones. And instead of letting my anguish poison me I can take it and nail it into the cross. 

Because there is space for all of us on Golgotha and we are all invited to visit the empty tomb.