Bruises

I held him in my lap. He gulped whole milk from the neon green and blue sippy cup I was holding for him. He wanted to be the one to hold the cup. But one of his arms was encaged in a foam arm restraint meant to protect his IV, and the other arm was encased in a hard plastic and an ACE wrap, meant to protect his broken bones. The result was him reaching for the sippy with his pudgy fingers and pitifully trying to get it to his mouth without the use of elbows. So I held it for him as he drank deeply.

He was thirsty and hungry because in the course of events in his tiny life last night, he had missed dinner. The rest of those even I chose not to replay in my mind.

I held him facing the desk that had become our makeshift table at midnight. It was easier that way. That way his inquisitive blue-grey eyes did not meet mine so often.

He had beautiful eyes. That wasn't the problem. Looking at his chubby one-and-a-half year old face, my gaze was drawn from his eyes, to the dark purple marks on his forehead, cheeks, and chin, and to the red scrapes and cuts the dotted his scalp, his nose, ears, and spilled down onto his neck and chest. Looking at his face, the effect was almost like a palate of purples, reds, pinks, and flesh, mingled together, with a terribly darker theme that I wanted to see.

Sitting with him in my lap, I was caught in a strange tension. A sweet boy, eating, drinking, babbling, playing, whose face conjured up the awful images of the blows that marred it. He made me want to cry, to hold him, to protect him. He made me want to look away. Looking at him forced the reality: Someone did this to me.

So the reaction is then, why? How could a person unleash such brutality upon this defenseless, fragile child? What on earth would motivate a person to this evil? How is it possible? I don't particularly care to know, to be honest. The fact that it happened, it does happen, and it will happen was sitting in my lap.

What do I believe about life that helps me to face this little boy and care for him? The fact that men are wretched, and are capable of things like this. That I know. The fact that one day, the Avenger of the weak, the marginalized, the abused, will come to make all things new, and to bring justice, that I also know. YHWH says that bad things will happen, but that in the end, they will not have been so for nothing.

This doesn't mean I can make sense of why this particular child, these blows, this night. And the lack of those specific answers leaves in me in the tension of faith. Do I believe what I know to be true, when it hurts?

I am thankful I live in country where children have rights, and abuse is a crime. I am thankful that when this happens in Chicago, there is a justice system to step in and punish the ones who are responsible. I am thankful for hospitals, where children can come to be safe. And I am thankful for social workers, who try to find a safe place for these precious ones.

I write this mostly for myself, and for my coworkers, who face the same things that I do. Keep loving the least of these, keep caring for them. It's good work.