today was a bit discouraging. i guess i shouldn't have expected a child abuse conference to be really upbeat and exciting, but it did start out hopeful, it was just the ending that was a bit of a debbie downer.
the presenter described arizona as "a land of isolation" and i agreed. i experience pieces of community throughout my life here in arizona, and there are some that do it well, but overall, i can see that i live in a state that is less about community with it's fenced in yards and concrete buildings. it was interesting to hear this coming from community workers and not the church. i thought only the church was preaching the concept of community, but it appears that the world is aware, those that are involved in social change do care...but fear and resistance reign. the lady said that several years ago phoenix actually handed out porch benches to families to encourage community and get people out of their houses. who knew?! i thought that was really interesting.
this conversation about our "land of isolation" started with a woman presenting a new statistic...maricopa county has the highest divorce rate in the nation. 74%. terrifying. and so we started to process the "why".
it came down to community. we separate ourselves from others here and don't get the support we need. community. this seemed to be the overarching theme of the day, at least in my heart.
we were speaking about the topic of "adverse childhood events". ace. there are statistics on how the higher the number of ace's we have in our lives directly correlate to the higher rates of addiction, promiscuity, suicide attempts, and all sorts of really depressing things including a 20 year shorter life span. and it wasn't like a high number of ace's was 10 or 20, it was more like 3 - 7. and the presenters made it sound like there was just no hope - these challenges are inevitable. and as i was growing a bit melancholy with my inevitable demise i started wondering where redemption and love fit into these statistics. and maybe this was the whole point of their presentation as they encouraged us to be the "mother" or "father" some children never had. love. in community we find healing, God redeems those broken places by allowing others to show us the love we missed in one or more areas of our lives.
i pray that we as christians would allow God to work his redemption, even of others, through us. i pray that these statistics wouldn't disillusion us (me) to the point of forgetting God's ability to do more that we (i) can comprehend. i pray that we (i) would be willing to risk to hope.
what's awesome is that my ace score was not 0. i fell into the category of "at risk" or likely to be____ insert any type of negative label here but God has redeemed my life, is in the process of redeeming my life, my heart, my future. and there is hope. i am not alone. and that. is really sweet.
