Last Monday, my friend Paul Perkins was standing on a street corner in Washington, DC, breathing hard and feeling very annoyed. He had just run after a taxi, which he was afraid was carrying his keys, but the driver didn’t stop when Paul ran after him.
There is a little girl in Washington, DC, whose face is badly bruised this morning. I’m not sure what she will tell her teachers today if they ask what happened, but my dear friend Paul Perkins knows. He witnessed it. So did a number of other people, but Paul was the only one who did anything about it. And thanks to Paul’s relentless efforts, DC authorities know what happened – but unfortunately, they chose to ignore it. Below is the email Paul sent to DC Metro’s Office of Customer Relations this morning. He received an auto-response assigning his complaint the number…
This post is written in memory of the countless infants who were murdered at the hands of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, who was convicted of their deaths in 2013. You can read more about the trial here. We do not know how many thousands of you there are; nor do we know the names God has now given you. But what we do know is that your lives on this earth were far too short, that you deserved better than you got – and today, we want you to know this: we remember you.
As a parent of toddlers, I hear it every week: “They’re gonna be all grown up before you know it.” I could be wrong, but when people say that to me, shaking their heads and looking down, I feel like the implication is, “. . . and you’re going to feel so guilty that you didn’t appreciate every one of these precious moments when you had the chance.” No, I won’t. If I remember the moments accurately, I won’t.
I thought Anna and Don Walker* had the kind of marriage I wanted – maybe they did at the time. That was 15 years ago, when I was in college. Back then, Anna and Don were the kind of couple you never dreamed would divorce. They were steady, salt-of-the-earth folks who effortlessly served others and gave the impression that they really liked each other.
It was April of 2002. I was single, living alone, and had no prospect of marriage in sight (nor would I for several years). But for some reason, I felt compelled to pick up my journal and write a prayer for my future wife. I prayed that if she was going through a hard time or making any bad decisions that God would give her the grace to move on and forgive herself. It seemed like the right thing to pray at that moment.
It was a Friday night; I was in the first few weeks of my freshman year of college, and I had nothing to do. I needed some friends. To be fair, I had actually made some friends at my new church, but I wasn’t sure I fit in there. Everyone was nice to me at church activities, but our friendships didn’t go much further than that.
Christmas was missing. Gone. I had looked everywhere, and he was nowhere to be found. “Christmas” is my daughter’s favorite toy – a stuffed dog we bought her on Christmas Eve, just a few days before she was born.
I used to judge people with small children pretty harshly. Their children ruined my dinner, made my flights miserable, woke me up, and made for poor house guests. Why don’t they do something with those kids? I wondered with contempt. As if they weren’t trying.
“Daddy!” my two-year-old daughter yelled from her bed last Friday morning after she woke up. I hadn’t gotten to see her the day before, so I was looking forward to spending time with her before heading to work. I went into her room and picked her up, expecting her to squirm around and ask for her favorite stuffed animal. Instead, she wrapped her arms around my neck and put her head on my shoulder.
All I wanted to do was vote in peace. Not this Election Day. It all started when my wife went to the bathroom while I waited in line with a few hundred other people to vote. The poll worker came out and appeared to split the line in two – or something – I couldn’t tell, because I was just trying to keep an eye on my two daughters who were playing on the lawn.
“Joshua, you need to come home,” my wife said over the phone. She sounded scared. For some reason, the previous owners of our home had installed a deadbolt lock on the master bedroom door, and my two-year-old had managed to lock herself and our one-year-old inside.
I think it’s childish, unkind, and pathetic for a man to raise his voice at his wife, but last week, in a moment of weakness, I let her (and myself) down. And in that ugly moment, God was there. My wife was very sick, so I had spent most of the day taking care of our daughters, ages one and two. I had gotten them dressed, made them breakfast and lunch, played with them, put them down for naps, played with them some more, and generally felt upbeat about it the whole time, despite the messy house.
Erin was my best friend in middle school, and God knows I needed one. I was getting bullied at school and lagging behind in my efforts to make friends with the boys in my grade. But she was a better friend—male or female—than most kids ever have. When my parents separated in eighth grade, she was the only person to whom I revealed that I had actually spent a couple of hours crying about it. She told me she felt honored that I trusted her.
I know my reaction to my brother’s homecoming today probably seems a little cold. He’s been gone for months, shows up halfway dead, and I crash his welcome home party. Let me assure you, there is more to the story.
Joshua Rogers 