Where are the Moms and Dads these days?

I hope you can forgive that neither Shannon nor I have written on the blog. There has been so much happening that it has been hard to keep up with. I took a brief break from blogging, actually. I needed to consider how to write this. There is just no way to make it polished the way I want. So, here:

Several weeks ago, I had a very difficult Friday. Reading the news and researching some contemporary issue at the time, I came across a radical feminist site that was commenting on the "justifiable shooting" of the Tennessee minister by his wife.

This justification, as it was detailed, was based upon (are you ready?) a single picture of the whole family where the second youngest daughter is the only one not smiling. From this out of context picture came some of the most loathsome comments directed at a man who is not alive to defend his name. They were certain, based on that picture "which tells the whole story" that he had abused her, and he had abused his wife, and she did what any mother would do to defend her girls and killed him. She was a martyr (if a martyr can be so while still alive).

Stunned that anyone would make such irrational claims because of their masterful clairvoyance into the matter by a snapshot of a girl not smiling (because she was...sick...grounded...recently pinched by her sister...any other option here?) I reeled even further when I found out that they iconized Andrea Yates as well. They claimed she was abused and that her husband was to blamed, and they continually wrote to her to encourage her to live (women have got to stick together, we are told). Additionally, they offered further disdain for Yates' ex-husband who recently got married. "He was smugly smiling there on his wedding day while Andrea rots in jail somewhere" was one of the comments. Imagine that: A man smiling on his wedding day.

Here is where this blog becomes serious for a moment.

I had only heard, in times past, that Andrea Yates killed her children. In fairness to that web forum, since I never followed the case, I decided to look up recent details of the case since, perhaps, there were details that were not known by the press that may have come up.

I found a website that detailed everything, using her confession as the basis of the reconstruction. You may know the details, I did not. Andrea Yates deliberately and methodically drowned her five children without mercy or compassion.

Andrea called her oldest son in last. He was a good brother, concerned over his siblings and asking how the baby was. He realized something was wrong and tried to run for his life. She caught him, dragged him in the bathroom where she had filled the tub, and forced him under. He put up a fight and got away more than once, coming up for air. Then, just before he went down for the last time, he managed to mutter, "I'm sorry!" He was so scared that he could not even control his bodily functions.

I sit in tears recounting this. A baby boy had no idea what he had done wrong, but asked forgiveness anyway, afraid to die; knowing he would die after seeing his siblings already dead. It just should not be. When a child is scared, he should be able to cry out, "Mommy!" That's what mine do. Mommy is supposed to make everything right--everything safe. That's what a Mommy does.

I could never conceive my wife doing anything like this. Not she who broke her arm while protecting her son from a fall the day before she gave birth to him. Not she who stayed up all night with him when he was sick and could not breathe well. Not she who nurtured her little girl to health recently when Alexa was sick (as well as Shannon, BTW). My wife is a lioness to her cubs and will protect them with her life.

But, I am a new father, with a son of two years and a girl of one. When I read that account, I could not see any other child than my own son in the grips of that mad woman. And, as I fought my tears, while still at work, I must confess that the wrath of this father wanted to come down like Thor's hammer in a way you simply cannot imagine.

It took me a few seconds to get that image out of my head. I immediately called Shannon for no other reason but to hear her tell me what the kids were doing. Alexa was in her lap trying to type on the computer and Timmy was jumping up and down shouting something about Rocket from Little Einsteins.

That night, Shannon, who has never seen me take the ugliness of mankind so personally before, took us out to eat at a pizza place, just so I could watch the kids run around and play, giggle, laugh, and make friends with other kids who were also happy (what a sweet and wise woman).

How could anyone do that what Yates did? I simply cannot fathom. I simply cannot fathom.

I do understand she had been off some prescription drugs and I am aware of how that can drastically affect someone to the point that you believe another person is in your presence (I have seen it in my own wife). I would like to think that this was the thing that drove her to madness. However, this death by drowning was something she had attempted two years prior.

I will not dwell on the case.

I have recently followed a number of articles where children had been killed by parents or adults in cold calculated ways. I recall a certain Smith drowning her children in a car, I recall a newborn baby found in a canal right down the street of a California hotel I was at (three blocks away), dead and decaying, said to have been dumped while still alive. In the last few months, I have read of newborns being dumped in dumpsters, toilets, trashcans, in a bunch of trees, in canals, and in cars during summer.

All this happens in Arizona as well (all stories mentioned in the last sentence of the previous paragraph were local), a state where someone can drop off a child in a safe environment with no accountability or responsibility and the child will be cared for. No prosecution will occur. It was designed to prevent the very thing we see on a routine basis (is this not the way of man that even laws in their favor are broken?).

In such an environment, why do we see what we see? I must observe that life has been devalued and subordinated to the convenience and "rights" of bigger and more powerful people called adults. Is not the ease of killing babies who are born and alive the natural outcome of the arguments for abortion?

Children die by the millions because of the selfishness of men and women who value their lifestyles over life itself.

It may have been one thing to have Andrea Yates, affected by some type of drug, or the reduction thereof, but everyday with full faculties involved, our babies are put to death.

I just put my daughter to bed. When Shannon was still pregnant with her, our doctor told us of some abnormalities within Shannon's blood work, which indicated a strong likelihood that Alexa would have developed abnormally if she even made it at all. He started to bring up the subject of termination (our sanitized and emotionally neutral word for killing) and Shannon interrupted him with utter rejection. That is our baby, don't you even talk to us about that!

Oh, how I wish parents would have such love.

My final rant (and, this is truly Rant Proper since there is no cohesive flow) is just a simple thought.

Perhaps life had to be devalued so that sex could remain meaningless and worry-free. Perhaps, since sex is for fun and pretended intimacy these days, and the responsibilities of sex get in the way of such "fun" that a strategic and methodic justification of getting rid of the problem (rather than, of course, simply controlling ourselves) had to be developed under the guise of "rights" and "freedom" and "reproductive liberty."

Is there any irony to the thought, "Give me reproductive liberty and give me death"?

My son came up to me today and for no immediate reason said, "I love you, Dad!" My daughter does her best to say things like that but can only blurt out, "Daddy!" Last night, Tim climbed up in my lap and watched TV with me. Alexa joined Timmy and me for "Storytime with Daddy." She is old enough. I plan to order a special Daddy and daughter book I saw, just for us.

I could fill pages and pages of how happy they make Shannon and me. I could write volumes of how happy I am because of Shannon, Timothy, and Alexa. I could just go on and on. Never once in my life did I consider them an inconvenience. When I found out that they were on their way, I simply grew up and made sure that my life joined me.

For all the pretended excuses for why children are killed, whether in the womb or out, whether by an Andrea, Deborah, some lame excuse for a father, or doctor, I must say the beautiful baby boy jumping up and down to the Wiggles right now, and the baby girl hugging her "baby" in her toddler bed this very moment are the most compelling reasons why life is simply beautiful. It should never be considered a choice. That is just dumb, I do not apologize. It really is dumb and perverse. It should always be considered a reason to rejoice.