Slow to Grace

Just before the school shooting this week in Marysville, WA, there was another sinister incident at my daughter’s high school.  Reportedly, four freshmen football players sexually assaulted a senior involved with the football team.  All four students were arrested and immediately expelled.  Other student/s walked in on the attack and immediately got help.  I’m thankful there was a witness or two so there is no question as to what happened for the sake of the victim who’s clearly been traumatized enough.

Obviously, this hits close to home – logistically, less than a quarter mile, emotionally, right through my heart. I’m having a hard time with this, not just emotionally, but spiritually too.

Grace is hard to come by.

I keep thinking of my anger, how I want to punish those punk-ass perps. I keep picturing what I would do to ‘show them’, to humiliate, degrade, demoralize, and scare the piss out of them.  And I realize, my own depravity.  My own desire to pick up the proverbial pitchfork and sink to a despicable level of mob mentality to deliver justice.  This is so, so wrong.

Where’s my humanity?  Where’s my spiritual connection?  The perps are about the same age as my kid, yet, even as a mom, I can’t find any kind of understand – much less compassion – for these kids.  I feel for their parents.  Four sets of parents have to come to grips with the truth that their children are brutal sex offenders whose lives are ruined.  But I’m still struggling to see these kids as someone’s treasured child – not even a child of God, as I wrote about recently – and not the monsters they showed themselves to be earlier this week.

As all of this is parked at the forefront of my mind, I wonder about what spurs such depravity at any age, but especially at such a young age, and by most indications, no kind of mental illness.  And I am honestly taking a hard look at myself and my own struggle to find grace.