January 16: Saint Fursey

Last weekend, there was a story in my local newspaper about a mother from my hometown who stabbed her 11-year-old daughter in the chest and abdomen.  The article quoted the police, saying that drugs and alcohol were not a factor in the incident.  The little girl was rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery (she survived), and the mother was arrested.  A picture of the mother accompanied the report.  I'm assuming it was the photo taken when she was booked.  The mother looked numb or stunned.  She didn't look like a person who knew she had almost fatally wounded her child.  Her affect was flat and calm, almost disconnected from the horror of her circumstances.

I have to admit, when I first read the newspaper story, my initial reaction was, "How in the hell could a mother do that to her child?"  It goes against all of my morals/mores/instincts as a father of a ten-year-old girl.  Granted, at times my daughter can drive me to the point of wanting to abandon her at a rest area in a remote section of Utah, but I always come to my senses.  This circumstance verges on horror-movie standards.  I have visions of Gregory Peck trying to stab his tiny son, who happens to be the spawn of Satan, in The Omen.  Somehow, it feels like something only Hollywood could dream up.

Later in the week, my daughter came home from school and told me, "You know that girl, the one that got stabbed by her mommy?"

I nodded.

"She goes to my school," she said.  "I don't know her, though."  She paused for a second.  "Her mommy has some kind of mental disease.  That's why she did what she did."

"That's very sad," I said.

"Yeah," my daughter said.  "My teacher said her mommy didn't know what she was doing."

I didn't know what to say.  I knew I had to respond in some way, but I was at a loss for how to explain to my daughter that the chemistry of the human brain can shift, the perception of reality become clouded and confused.  I hunted for the right words that would make sense of an incomprehensible act of violence committed by a mother against her young daughter.

Fursey is today's saint.  He was an Irish priest born around 567.  He spent a lot of his life travelling in Ireland and England and France, establishing monasteries.  He also had prophetic visions of heaven and hell, saw the "struggle between the forces of evil and the power of God."  The book based on his revelations, The Visions of Fursey, had a huge impact on Dante's writing of the Divine Comedy.

I wonder how the stabbing of a little girl by her mentally ill mother fits into Fursey's vision of the battle between good and evil.  On the outside, the act seems completely evil, an instance of violence against an innocent child.  Nobody is questioning whether or not the mother actually wielded the knife against her daughter.  The questions that remain are the "why" and "how."  Why did the mother do it?  How could she attack her own child so savagely?  It seems like the ultimate act of betrayal.  A parent, the person a child trusts and loves implicitly, becomes an instrument of death.  It's like the Virgin Mary trying to drown the infant Jesus in the town well.

But it's not that simple.

I have no idea what "mental disease" this mother has, or if she even has a mental illness at all.  Those are my daughter's words.  Words that she heard in school from someone trying to provide comfort to some confused children.

Perhaps having a person in my life who suffers from a mental illness predisposes me to compassion in this case.  I can't immediately blame the devil for this one.  It's not that black-and-white.  The world is a broken place filled with broken people.  Horrible things are said and done every day.  Some of these horrible things are said and done in God's name--wars, terrorism, genocide, hatred.  Condemning people because of what their skin color is, who they choose to love, or what God they worship is, at best, ignorant, and, at worst, completely unchristian.  It's a symptom of the world's brokenness.  God doesn't want us to judge and condemn.  That's not our job in the struggle between the forces of evil and the power of God.  I'm sure Fursey would agree with me.

Here's what I said to my daughter:

"Her mommy is just really sick and needs help to get better."  I paused for a second, and then I added, "Her mommy loves her.  I'm sure of it."

In the face of broken lives, broken families, broken minds, our job as followers of Christ is to provide one thing:  a promise of love.