Divine Suffering

After 30 years of working for the interest of children I thought I could get used to seeing children in all forms of abuse and neglect. Believe me it really doesn't get any easier. Last weekend I met 22 pregnant unwed teenagers. They were just about 15 to 16 years. They were small sized and if not for the bulge they would just have been any teenagers set to have their adrelanine pumping and easily distracted by silly naïve games. They could not move as fast as they would like to and as one of my friends commented, instead of playing with their handphones, their hands were constantly rubbing their tummy. I couldn't help asking myself why this had to happen. I kept telling myself there was a divine reason that these girls had to go through this just as they were about to start life like new bloom in the morning over the lotus pond. I talked to them about moving on and I said whatever happened they still have a place in society to work, to grow and to be somebody. But I didn't tell them it'll probably be as painful a struggle as child birth itself. And I told them families ties are important. But I did not pay much attention to the fact that they may not have many family members to call on. Most of them were abandoned by their parents n brought up by their grandmothers. I just knew I had to present hope and that's the surest platform to work from.

If being pregnant was to make these teenagers stronger people to take on life challenges later then what happened to the ten odd kids who got buried in a landslide in hulu langat last weekend? Again I reasoned that there could be a divine purpose to this. It sounds like a defeatist way of looking at life. Giving this as a reason for all the wrongs we could have done, intentionally or not, because we could not identify or accept that it's all our faults that this is happening to the children, we just didn't protect them enough.
Perhaps there is no need to know why, perhaps we just need to keep salvaging their spirit to pick up n move on.

I try very hard to be patient, forgiving and understanding, and all the other virtues that everyone says I must have. Crap! People around me not helping with their snails pace and indecisiveness. Then again I tell myself not everyone needs to zoom about life like me.

Lately I've been pretty good especially after having flipped through the holy pages abit. Yes, yes, they call it the Bible too. It reminds me about a whole lot of things I ought to try and achieve. It really isn't that bad. I hit the wall less and I have learnt to consciously step back and take a breather eventhough sometimes it kills me.

And I also remember to make lemonade cos I seem to be getting a lot of lemons lately from people I used to call friends. So lemonade it is to chill and move on.