Exhausted in the Midst of Scandals

I am exhausted.

I’m completely exhausted.

I promised myself I wouldn’t watch the hearings, but of course I watched hours of them. I felt every feeling imaginable.

I don’t honestly think anything was really changed, today. It’s a wash. People who had no empathy for women to begin with didn’t suddenly find it at Dr. Christine Ford’s testimony. Those who believed Ford before, believe her now. Those who think Kavanaugh’s appointment is more important, despite not being able to give any reason for that, still do. The vote is going to happen. Sick and perverse men like Frank Pavone will call it a “pro-life victory” if they vote in Kavanaugh’s favor, because appointing a man who ruled in favor of caregivers who forced an abortion on a disabled woman is a pro-life victory. Anything is a pro-life victory if Republican political shills say it’s a pro-life victory. It’s not allowed to be a real pro-life victory, a victory for an ethical person who will fight for a consistent life ethic including the belief that women are human. That’s something we’re not allowed to have. And things will go on from there.

Or maybe not.

I can’t say for sure, I can only guess. But whatever happens today and tomorrow, we still have a president in the White House who treats women worse than garbage, and people write that off as pro-life. We still have a church hierarchy which, as far as I have seen, wants to jockey for power rather than actually protecting victims of abuse, and people write that whole culture off as “traditional.” I tried not to think about that today, but that ridiculous tabloid LifeSite came out with yet another completely unsubstantiated Vigano letter within hours of the Kavanaugh hearings being over, and here we go again. We still live in a world where one in five women and one in 71 men are raped. Children and adults are abused, they bear the shame their whole lives, they try to keep it secret because if they speak out it gets so much worse for them. And the abusers can reasonably expect to get away with it. They usually do. If they don’t, they get slaps on the wrist– a three-to-ten-year sentence like Cosby got yesterday. Was that only yesterday?

I’m exhausted just writing that paragraph.

The blows keep coming, for months now. Since the beginning of the summer, I have seen the worst of people, again and again and again, all over the internet and in person  and I only have reason to believe that people will prove to be worse still. I’ve had the worst anxiety I’ve suffered in 25 years since May, and it keeps getting worse, and I’ve seen other survivors around me go through far worse than mine.  I am, if anything, a mild case. I’ve had friends who love Christ deeply give up going to church because they can’t take it anymore, and I don’t blame them. It has been a hell of a year for survivors.

Let me tell you what else I’ve seen, what else I’ve done, what else has happened to me.

I have wailed and cried at Christ quite a bit, which is always a good thing. All prayer is good.

I have, somewhere in the midst of all the crying, felt Christ looking back at me, and I haven’t found myself in the presence of an abuser.