Some preliminary thoughts.

I’ve spent about about an hour perusing my Facebook feed and the more I read the larger the lump in my throat has become. Does English have a word for the hot tears that come when intense frustration with injustice has boiled over? (Do other languages?) That’s not a rhetorical question; I really want to know if someone clever has figured out a concise way of describing it. You see it with someone wrongfully convicted of a crime, or with a strong child who’s kept their hardened exterior as long as possible but the bullying continues. Sometimes you see it with people who are grossly and/or repeatedly misunderstood. You certainly see it with people who are being gaslighted. It comes with verbal abuse from someone close to you. I once cried them for over an hour on the evening I finally opened the denial vault to soberly face the sexual and verbal abuses of my past. (I imagined a princess—a daughter to the King of kings—being treated that way and it tore me apart.) It starts in your stomach and pours out in seething anger; it feels like lava and it needs to come out but you barely feel relief—and don’t expect to. It’s only a relief of pressure for now. I suppose there is a commonality of human beings being degraded that elicits this response.

The last time I cried these hot, nauseating tears was when I thought about the young victims of sex-trafficking that I had recently learned about. Normally I can keep it emotionally distanced enough that I can be only angry and disgusted, prayerful and financially supportive of organisations that are rescuing victims and prosecuting perpetrators. But that day something broke through and I felt like my whole body was trying to turn inside out. I wanted to throw up and scream but alas I was in public so I just sobbed. It’s too much. There’s too much in our ugly world.

Today I’m trying not to open the latch because I don’t want those burning tears. I don’t want to sob knowing HOW LONG the fight for justice will be. Given the proclivities of the human heart, it will probably be a fight til the end of time. But still, we fight. I want to beg Jesus to return. He brings the end of suffering AND He brings perfect justice. I. long. for. the. day. when. suffering. ends. I’m sure you do, too.

What happened in Minnesota is ugly. It’s so ugly and language-defying. My heart hurts and I still want to throw up. But... I am thankful that change seems to be in the air. I’m thankful that so many are fed up. I’m still perplexed by the amount of relief I felt when I heard there would be a charge of third-degree murder. Maybe it should be a different degree murder charge but it is still a billion leaps and bounds better than a paid suspension or closing ranks or any kind of excuse.

I’m very sad today. But I am very hopeful for tomorrow.

Here is a photo of something not-yucky.