Hear Me Out

Today, something truly horrific happened in Connecticut. So much pain and sadness has been sown, and so much fear and hate has surfaced and bubbled over. Hearts have been moved, and voices are shouting.

Mostly, I have been inundated with social media messages about gun control. Don’t get me wrong; I am 110% behind that; gun control will vastly decrease the ease with which such atrocities can be committed, but that is only half the story.

Everyone’s hearts are breaking for the innocent victims, the children in particular, but they are not the only ones to be mourned. People need someone or something to blame when tragedy strikes, a vessel for the negative emotions. Sometimes, we forget that the man who committed this crime was that: a man. 

We’re always told to hate the sin, not the sinner, in the Christian faith. That is what it means to walk in the image of God. Yes, this man did something unspeakably evil. Yes, it is perfectly valid to react to that with fear and anger and hate for the action. But the man himself, we ought to love.

So what is the other half of the story, if gun control is only a part? How can we love someone so broken that he would massacre children? We can start by examining something else that is broken in our world: the way we treat those who are mentally ill. Obviously this man was sick. Mentally healthy individuals do not commit mass murder. I don’t pretend to know what precisely in this man’s brain chemistry didn’t add up, but I would be willing to bet he was not receiving adequate treatment for it. So, yes, we do need better gun control, but on the other side, we also need better mental health care. Prevention is not just making it harder for sick people to obtain weapons. Prevention is trying to heal the sick, make it so that they do not feel compelled to use weapons. We’re not all doctors and we’re not all politicians. We don’t all have the power to pass laws and give therapy, but we all have one thing we can use to make this world a better, safer place: Love.

Let’s start loving one another, through and through. Let’s remember that we’re all imperfect people, no matter how hard it is to do so. 

Anemia, The Crying Baby

This past fall was a rough time for me. I’m not going to go into details, but I was having a lot of problems in my family and personal life. There was, however, an event I was looking forward to: donating blood. I had been trying for several months to gain enough weight to be able to donate. My friends were plotting to force-feed me cheeseburgers until I outweighed them. I did not have to resort to that, but I really wanted to be able to donate when the blood people came to my school in October, so it was definitely a conscious effort. I figured I was healthy and therefore ought to do what I could to help those who were less healthy. I was wrong.

I’m not a fan of needles, so I wasn’t surprised when I started to feel faint even before they stuck me. The last thing I heard as I lost consciousness was “Oh, she’s a spurter!” I came to quickly only to fill a unit in 4 minutes, which is about 3 minutes too fast. I fainted again when they pulled the needle out, but as I sat on the floor in the corner munching cookies and slurping juice, I figured it was just the needles. For the second time, I was wrong.

For the next three weeks, I had horrible, skull-splitting headaches, every day, without fail. Due to various issues, as previously mentioned, my planned doctor visits were pushed back until fate decided I really needed to see someone. During church the Sunday of the fourth week of headaches, a woman fainted in the middle of the service. Unfortunately, I am a sympathy fainter. Luckily there are a number of doctors and nurses at my church, so while the woman who fainted initially had to be taken out on a stretcher by the ambulance drivers, much to her protest, I was simply given water and made to sit down for the rest of the day. The next morning I found myself in the doctor’s office, being diagnosed with anemia and being scolded for donating my blood when I couldn’t produce enough blood cells for myself, let alone donate any. I’d lost almost 10 pounds, which was more than I had gained in the first place.

I have an iron deficiency-caused anemia. My doctor said the solution was to eat a lot of protein to balance out the gratuitous amount of exercise I naturally encounter on a daily basis. This works, to a point. I gained the weight back, my cheeks no longer look like paper, and the headaches stopped, but every month is two steps forward, one step back. If you know what I mean…

How is this a food issue? Well, it drastically changed my diet. I had been eating what I thought was a balanced and healthy diet, fruits, vegetables, grains, light meats like poultry, occasional red meat, lots of beans and rice, and of course, obscene amounts of junk food. I now eat beef jerky, protein bars, nuts, and eggs in addition to many of those other foods; the ratios just shifted. Here’s the catch: if I stop eating these foods, my anemia rears its ugly head, and punches the inside of my brain. So when I had to have FES surgery and lost a lot of blood, slept for four days without eating much more than yogurt and a burrito, I got the headaches again.

What have I learned from this? The medical people are like vampires: they suck your blood and leave you anemic. Anemia is like a screaming baby in your head, only the screams are silent, and the only thing that shuts that baby up is a nice, juicy hamburger. Looks like my friends were right all along.