A Mother's Perspective

Good morning…

The quilt of our common ground is knit together with colorfully diverse patches. One subscriber’s initial email, my response, and her return email below were exchanged after this week’s post, The Fierce Urgency Of Now, a post which shed light on the death of Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta on Friday night.

She wrote…

As the protestors are “tired,” so are the relatives of honest policemen and police women, Sue. And those of our police heroes across our nation.

Sue, in your initial few sentences, you emotionally highlighted the effect, not the tumultuous cause. The “lost soul” Mr. Brooks, and I do think that with compassion, wrestled with police in the parking lot, which is ILLEGAL, grabbed the police officer’s taser, which is ILLEGAL, (which despite if you want to declare, it can be a lethal weapon), ran with cops in pursuit, which is ILLEGAL, AND THEN TURNED AROUND AND POINTED AND FIRED IT AT THE POLICEMAN. THE POLICEMAN’S LIFE WAS THREATENED. IF IT HAD TASED HIM JUST RIGHT, IT COULD KILLED HIM, OR HE COULD HAVE RETURNED AND TAKEN HIS REVOLVER AND KILLED HIM!

I do not want ANYONE killed, however, thankfully the headlines did not say “Policeman of __ children and loving wife killed, by an inebriated lawless person, who REPEATEDLY broke the law and tried to escape.” Yes, the facts. Not feelings.

Your initial voice, always written to grab the attention of the reader, is truly typical of so many newspaper headlines. “Cop killed.” “So many cop shootings in GA.” . . . never leading the story with what the victim did first. Thus, Satan wins again, as victimhood rather than let’s change the cause is streamed all over.

Sue, have you ever reflected on how most all (not all, I agree) men RUN!!! I would love to have slogans and signs all over FB, Instagram, in protests, etc. blaring, “DON’T RUN”! Almost 100 % of these deaths would not have happened.

I, too, pray for the family. And I definitely also pray for the policeman who is caught up in the politics and fear of the city. So sad. And for former now, Police Erika Shields. A 20 year veteran serving to protect.

And as you know, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s urgency would include not to attack a policeman, the physical protector of us all.

It is time for prayer, indeed. And also for honest talk. Do not throw urine on police, spit in their faces, RUN FROM THEM, etc. You would NEVER do that following their arrival after your 911 call. Few officials want to publicly support our police force. Let’s just quickly fire them for “urgency”.

In closing, Sue, my feeling is not nurtured by racism. My life story speaks for itself. God knows my heart and actions.

Sue, if your son were an Officer Garrett Rolfe??? Our son is.

I responded…

I truly thank you for sharing your perspective. When writing in the middle of the night, I researched the few facts that were available about the incident online and shared the facts I found. Your loving, well-informed thoughts add so much to our collective quilt of experience. Engaging in these conversations will help us move forward into a more balanced, more conscientious, more loving response to all. Anything that divides us, labels some “good” and some “bad”, pitting “us” against “them” is part of an old, outdated system of viewing one another. We are in this together and each voice needs to be heard. With your permission, leaving out your name, might I post your thoughts so our readers can wrestle with the impact of them?

My voice is just one voice. Yours is another. Fortunately, I receive lots of voices from our online community. With God’s guidance I take various perspectives into prayer and see what rises to the top of my typing fingertips morning after morning. It would be so much easier to avoid these hard emotions, to ignore these difficult tensions. I have never been very socially or politically aware, but I can no longer look away from the challenges we face. Pain stands screaming on our doorstep. One thing that is mine to do in this season of my life is to write every day into this online community. With God, I seek to knit together the rich redeeming tapestry of what our living LORD is doing in our midst, right before our very eyes. As we each share our own personal truth from the core of our being, the center of our soul, I trust God to integrate our scraps of understanding and enlivens the eclectic body of Christ, the resurrected Christ who came as God-with-skin-on to make “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” This is what I believe is happening and we are witnesses to God’s saving work, which is messy and mysterious and beyond our individual comprehension. But together we can be a part of God’s masterful mosaic.

I love being in honest relationship with you. Let me know if I might share our interchange anonymously.

She wrote back…

Sue, thank you for your heartfelt response. And I would welcome your using all my email. For my son’s protection and privacy, I thank you for not using our names. Otherwise, it would be fine.

Opening the AJC online following writing my email to you, the headlines supported my thoughts 100%. Amazing, kiddo!

Sue, I had no idea what police face with some of the public, even when just pulling them over for a tail light or expired tag. A greater respect for them would prevail, if truly revealed. Police have to internalize so many emotions. Trust me, they are real heroes with their ability to overlook it and move on to the matter at hand. Truthfully, I am beginning to wonder WHY anyone would want to face this, day in and day out. But my son and thousands of others discover such value in it, and desire to protect the law-abiding citizen. Sue, my son just told me on his visit last week, that before he leaves their auto or takes them to jail, he most often tells them, “You still have good in you, you just made a bad choice. I will pray for you.” And, he is just one of many who do so. Yes, a calling.

I am glad we can be honest with our thoughts, Sue. We have to keep praying. So much of our country’s issues stems from a long-growing culture of family without God. A friend wrote in a text to me late last night that she was praying for our son, and she added this Alfred Tennyson quote: “More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice rise like a fountain for me night and day.” Grateful to be a prayer partner with you.

And [I pray] that the eyes of your heart [the very center and core of your being] may be enlightened [flooded with light by the Holy Spirit], so that you will know and cherish the hope [the divine guarantee, the confident expectation] to which He has called you, the riches of His glorious inheritance in (God’s people) (Ephesians 1:18, AMP).

…Sue…

P.S. Photo courtesy of Unsplash.com.