No More Bullying

My girls were 8 and 10 years old when they had their first experience with being bullied. A new school year had begun, and with it came new students that had moved in over the summer.

I picked them up from school everyday, so they waited for me, along with other children waiting for rides, in front of the main entrance to the school. This particular day, as I drove up, I saw that my younger daughter was crying uncontrollably. I immediately hurried to get out to see why.

My older daughter relayed how they had just come from the girl's bathroom. While in there an older girl, a new student, had blocked their exit when they were done. My older daughter stood up against her, telling her to leave them alone, but it scared my younger girl.  

I went directly into the principal's office, who was sitting behind her desk. My daughters told her what happened. When she asked where the girl was now, they said she was still in the bathroom. She had us wait in the lobby while she went into the girl's bathroom. Seconds later, she and the girl passed by us, and was made to wait for her mother in the principal's office.

A while later, the girl came out crying harder than my daughter had been earlier, and apologized for her behavior. The mother reassured me that nothing like that would ever happen again. It didn't.

Children who are bullies are usually the children of bullies. It is a learned trait, and is a cover for the insecurity they feel inside. They fall into the categories mentioned in Romans 1:29-32, particularly verse 30. They are, among the other things, inventors of evil things and disobedient to parents.

We find that in Genesis that Ishmael mocked Isaac, who was 14 years younger than him. For that, he and his mother was cast out, because Sarah saw that the bullying would continue if they stayed. We find this pattern all down through history...the bullies always pick on the younger and/or weaker. The only way for bullying to stop is for adults, parents, and peer groups to get involved in children's lives.

Resources for help:

http://www.stopbullying.gov/

http://kidshealth.org/parent/emotions/behavior/bullies.html

http://www.nobully.org.nz/advicek.htm
https://www.wizcase.com/blog/a-comprehensive-cyberbullying-guide-for-parents/ 

Cut To The Quick

In the spring of 2012, where we were ministering at an emerging skate church, my husband would walk the perimeter of the grounds praying for the youth. In the group of teens that came daily after school to skate, there were quite a few that needed to hear that Jesus loved them. For the time we were there, we labored in a field of white, ready to harvest.

There was also a home school program run in the morning hours fours days a week by the pastor's mother. One particular mother in the program had two teenage daughters, a pre-teen daughter, and a six year old son. It was plain that something was not quite right about the family, and soon enough we saw what it was.

One morning, when the oldest daughter was taking too long to solve a math problem, the mother let loose a tirade of insults, so loud that everyone could hear her. Some of us went into a room close by and prayed for this woman while another interrupted the math lesson and talked privately with her.

On many occasions, when my husband would walk the property any pray, he would find wads of paper towels~lots of them~with brown stains. We reported our findings to the leadership, but all were puzzled as to what it could be. It wasn't until one day, soon after the math incident, that my husband was walking and praying that he found 'fresh' paper towels and realized the brown stains had been dried blood.

When the ugly truth came out, both of the older girls were being physically and verbally abused by their mother. At that point, social workers came into the picture, and we lost contact with the family, but it was obvious that the cutting was an attempt to deal with the pain inflicted by the mother.



Jesus dealt with a 'cutter' when He went into the Gadarenes. This man lived among the tombs, had been bound by the people by shackles and chains, but had broken them easily. He was 'always, night and day, in the mountains, and in the tombs, crying, and cutting himself with stones.' (Mark 5:1-20)

This is a grown man who was in so much emotional pain, manifested by demons, that he cut himself, and lived naked in the tombs. Was it because he was physically or verbally abused as a child? Was it because he saw no hope for his future, and this was the only way of relieving himself from the pain? This sounds very much like the girl mentioned above.

The key to the hope of the future is putting the demons in the presence of Jesus Christ. In the scripture, as soon as Jesus' presence was perceived by the demons, they immediately called out to Him. For those people, no matter their age, who cut themselves to try to get rid of the pain, they need to be put in the presence of Jesus, just as the man in the tombs was. This can be achieved through intercessory prayer, to lift up the abused and neglected.

When the demons were cast out, the man was 'sitting, and clothed, and in his right mind.' How great a miracle would it be to see today's young people experience the same thing? How great would it be for all those people to proclaim that Jesus healed them? That's what Jesus told the man to do-share his experience.

We need to pray for our youth, and those that abuse them. The troubled mind of anyone that has to deal with abuse of any kind gives the perfect conditions for demons to take over and manifest themselves so that people try to destroy themselves. Some wounds cut to the quick, so deep that only Jesus can heal them.