Ghost No More, my review

This is my journey back from fear and hopelessness, and how I went from feeling like a ghost, to realizing my voice and value.

I once hated my past. It had broken and twisted me, but now I appreciate all the beauty and redemption God has brought from each broken area.

Those words are from the introduction to CeeCee James' powerful memoir, Ghost No More, in which she details her life as an only child not valued by the parents who manipulate, abuse, and hold her hostage to their whims because of their insane selfishness and brokenness.

CeeCee's mother loves animals and values friends' company but isolates and torments her own daughter. Seemingly jealous of any attention her daughter receives from the people in their lives, even relatives, she compels her daughter to jump through hoop after emotional hoop in order to be rewarded with some attention from her, mostly negative. Usually she confines her daughter to a room or space out of her way, viciously uses the denial of food as punishment, and only welcomes the caresses of a little girl desperate for acknowledgement and love when she finds herself too ill to cope. The contrast between the mother's habitual neglect and CeeCee tender care of her ill mother is painful.

CeeCee's dad and mom are an unhealthy combination. Their own distrust of and disdain for each other fuels the mistreatment of their only child. Early on we read of the bizarre incident of the Easter candy, and how CeeCee's dad punishes her for sneaking it. Later we must witness her mother's response to a complaint by hitting her daughter across the jaw with a wooden spoon. As with many other cases of child abuse, the "discipline" that CeeCee's parents choose for her is always extreme and harsh without any loving effort to correct behavior. More heartbreaking still is the fact that often there is no behavior to correct, only an imaginary offence that seems concocted as an excuse for doing harm.

Despite the lack of love and respect in her life, CeeCee has a powerful awareness of God's presence. However, because she is consistently fed the idea of her worthlessness, her first prayers are for God to make her "a good girl".

"Please God, let me start over...I will be good this time. I will be a good girl."

This is always a horrific effect of child abuse: the child feels they are somehow to blame for how they are treated. They are punished merely for being human, and they suffer because of their parents' inhumanity.

When the mother finally leaves the father, she tells CeeCee it is her fault that she stayed with him so long. She also childishly tells CeeCee not to talk to her friends and demeans her little girl anytime others praise her or even acknowledge her. Or she ridicules her simply for breathing funny. The mother places inhumane pressure on CeeCee to not "shame" her, the definition of such shaming defined entirely by the woman's utter self-absorption. She smothers her pet kittens and emotionally starves her daughter, leaving others to offer her the phantom of a mother's care.

Each slapping and spanking is gut-wrenchingly painful in its cruelty, as is the mortification that CeeCee suffers as she grows older. Each fleeting, small kindness is painful, too, because the reader learns to recognize the patterns of eventual abandonment.

When people enter CeeCee's life with some understanding of what her familial life is like, recognizing her mother's nature despite the false persona she chooses to present, the reader feels relieved that CeeCee has encountered kindness. When CeeCee spends time in nature away from her mother, a weight is lifted momentarily, but as she grows older, the outdoors becomes just another form of isolation enforced by her mother.

There is a term, "throw-away children" that describes not what the children are but how their parents and others treat them and what misfortune finds them because of the lack of parental concern for their welfare. CeeCee suffers abuse not only at her mother's hands but also at the hands of others, particularly her grandfather. When her mother discovers it, her response is a self-centered one, and she only addresses her daughter's psychological scars when forced to do so by Child Protection Services.

Unfortunately, in all this CeeCee cannot turn to her father, because their relationship, reestablished in her teenage years, is made awkward by distance and the memory of past intimidation and neglect. But when she visits him during summer and holiday vacations there's at least more peace, more care and more food.

There are more glimmers of hope in this memoir as CeeCee is shielded from her mother and aided and encouraged by neighbors, her friend Sandy's family, and the school librarian who recognizes her gift with words. CeeCee also experiences unusual consolation in prayer, an embracing and calming warmth, during desperate moments when she fears for her mother's health or fearfully prays for protection from her mother.

As CeeCee develops into a young woman, we walk with her as she faces her demons. Part of that entails confronting her grandfather and refusing to let him harm her again. How she copes with the continuing abuse, derision and neglect of her mother, although not surprising, is heartbreaking. It is only after she is removed from that woman's poisoning influence and meets a young man who loves Jesus and loves her that she eventually stops harming herself and begins slowly healing while learning to value and love herself.

I am always amazed by the power of the human spirit when I read such testimonies as that of CeeCee James in Ghost No More. I am always awed by how God can sustain and bolster us in the bleakest and most disordered circumstances and environments, environments alien to His love and mercy. Love does not suppress our pain. It does not erase it. It does not blind us to its causes. But it can renew and strengthen us while bringing something achingly beautiful and startling clear from our experience, and by doing so gives us something enlightening to share with others who know little hope and hardly any comfort in confronting their own history or present circumstances. I think this is what CeeCee James has done with Ghost No More.

That is invaluable. That is realizing your voice and value.

May God bless her for it.

My Reaction to A Child Called It by David Pelzer

My husband was out one night before Thanksgiving, and as I sat in a chair reading, I forgot that my oldest boy was still in the dining room. He was up way past his bedtime. He must have made a noise, because I was surprised and exclaimed, "Berto, what are you doing? Go to bed!"

He then slowly came over to me and said, "Mama, you won't believe this book I'm reading. This boy's mom is normal and then one day she changes for no reason and starts doing crazy stuff. She even stabs him!"

As a parent you don't look forward to your children saying such things about a book they've been reading - of which you had no knowledge.

"What? Let me see that."

He handed over the paperback. It was A Child Called It by David Pelzer.

I glanced at the pages where my boy was, examined the face of the little boy on the cover and asked, "Where did you get this, Berto?"

He told me a friend at school had been talking about it obsessively, how no one could believe what this boy's mother made him do. She piqued Berto's interest; he must have been listening and asking questions, because she offered to lend it to him.

As he was telling me this I was reading the words at the place he left off. He saw my face.

"You have to go back and read the beginning first," he insisted. "He gets rescued."

If I had known about its content, it was not a book I would have let him read at 12 years of age. I sent him to bed, and I was alone with this story of which I had never heard but knew with certainty had opened my son's eyes irreversibly to the bizarre, absolute evil in this world.

When my husband came home, I had read about half of it.

"We have to talk about this book our son is reading," I said. Then I, too, added, "You won't believe it."

My husband listened as I revealed the terrible details of this little boy's life, all the abhorrent, twisted punishments he suffered at his mother's hands, how his dad did nothing, and how his brothers ignored him or joined in tormenting him.

"It's awful. It's really bad. I can't believe Berto is reading this. Should we let him?"

"Well, it's too late now, isn't it?"

"Honey, it's really bad."

"It'll make him realize how lucky he is. We just have to make sure to talk to him about it."

I don't think lucky is the word, but I knew what he meant.

Sucked into David Pelzer's story by the need to speak with my son about the evil people do to one another, I was horrified and demoralized by what Pelzer endured as a child. The effect the book had on me was so apparent that my husband said, "No more for tonight. Let's go to bed. Come on."

I wept as I revealed more details to my husband. Then I tried to fall asleep. It was of no use. I couldn't stop thinking about Pelzer's excruciatingly long childhood nightmare. I crawled out of bed, grabbed the book and took it to our bathroom. Sitting on the hard floor, finishing that book, I sobbed as I dwelt on Pelzer's pain, mourned for every hurting child, and longed to wrap every abused kid in the world in my arms.

Such was the power of his story that I had many uncomfortable thoughts. I found myself regretting times when I lost my temper with my own kids, gave into anger and yelled so badly, I frightened them, and those thoughts caused me to regret any unpleasant memories I have given my children. I found myself regretting times when I noticed things that seemed off or suspicious in the life of another child and didn't say or do anything. At one point Pelzer reveals that his heart was flooded with hate for his mother, for his dad, for his brothers, and for every person who knew something of his situation and did nothing. And he said that he hated God most of all, because if anyone knew what he was going through, it was God, and I thought, I can't blame him for thinking that in his situation.

That was a very uncomfortable thought, for I love my Heavenly Father and know he is not indifferent, and I am not trying to be blasphemous, just honest about a reaction. I understood how a child could think that in Pelzer's chronically endangered situation. I know what Christians believe about free will, Original Sin, and Satan, the fallen angel whom Jesus described as a "murderer and liar from the beginning", but I also know that we address the problem of evil as "The Problem of evil" for a reason. We cannot fully explain it with our theology. There is no pat answer.

But I feel, too, that every person who was aware that something was terribly wrong in that young boy's life and did nothing failed as a child of God when they were so desperately needed. God uses us in community to help one another. We must be in tune to our heavenly Father's nudges. This is why I do not believe we should ignore the urge to do something or to speak to someone, even if we don't fully understand it.

I couldn't comprehend the horror to which Pelzer's spiritually and mentally ill mother subjected her son, but I did recognize in his story the truth of how evil breeds ever greater evil; it is never satisfied. We can't feed it by dismissing our vices or by giving power to an addiction that weakens us and alters us in increasingly terrible ways.

The only hope in the story is found when he writes of the courage and the wits he always kept about him to survive, the will and wits that bought him time when his mother attempted to burn him on a gas stove; when he sat in a cold, dirty bathroom and pushed all the puss from his stab wound while wiping off the infection with dirty rags; when he repeatedly scrounged for food while on the brink of starvation; and when he used his imagination to sustain hope as he sat on his hands for hours in some starkly inhospitable place, purposefully isolated from the other members of his family

How my heart ached and broke for this child! I can still see images from the book that distress me, such as the times when he lay submerged for hours in an ice-cold tub of water at his mother's command. Pelzer's mother attacked his dignity, his natural right to happiness, and his health in such vile ways that it seems miraculous he lived to write about it. His case apparently was the worst recorded case in California history, and one can easily believe it.

There is hardly any love mentioned, except his painful love for and misplaced trust in a very broken, cowardly father and his fascination with a baby brother with whom he was not allowed to interact. In the prologue he acknowledges that by the grace of God, he is able to know what love is through his relationship with his own son.

After his father left the family, abandoning his son to his evil mother, Pelzer wrote of desperately clinging to a package his dad had given him and, as his brothers ate their fast food in the car beside his starving frame, bowing his head and saying the Lord's Prayer. A couple of months later, he was finally rescued through the efforts of brave and compassionate teachers, a nurse, and administrators at his school.

A Child Called It haunted my Thanksgiving. Recalling vivid scenes of torment from its pages, I wept often that long weekend for David Pelzer and every child who has ever known anything like what he knew.

My husband and I both agreed that this book wasn't something we would have handed to our son, but we also believed that it would enkindle in him greater compassion for other children, that when he meets a kid who is dirty, smelly, wearing old or too-small clothes, or one who is being ostracized by other students because they're "weird" or "different" or just "not cool" he will remember David Pelzer's story and consider his actions more carefully, more fully respecting the dignity of everyone whom he encounters.

As for me, this is a book I could never forget, and I hope it will make many of us more aware, more courageous and more compassionate in confronting evil in our community and in protecting each child's rights to emotional, physical and spiritual health.

A Lady in France

Every great story is a love story.

And every story of conversion is the greatest love story of all.

Today I was talking to one of my dearest friends, Camille, and during the course of our conversation about life, faith, work and family, I found myself alluding to various things I had read in Jennie Goutet's memoir, A Lady in France.

Have you ever read a book and thought, Oh! So-and-so would just love this story! Once finished with a tale, the urge to share it with friends or loved ones or pure strangers is an obvious sign of its value to inspire or entertain. That's why I have a Kelven's Riddle page on this blog, even though the latest book broke my heart (and I relished it). That's why my friend Holly and I bond over Jane Austen novels and Downton Abbey episodes. That's why I've passed Dad's books on to friends and why I told Camille today I would be sending her A Lady in France.

When I think of Jennie Goutet's story, I think of a prayer that I have been praying lately, trying to build trust and courage, Cast me to the wind, Lord Jesus. Of course, I then immediately add, But keep me in the palm of your hand!

I believe Jesus is able to do these seemingly contradictory things, and Jennie's story feels like proof. If anyone has said yes to being cast on the wind, it is she! Yet, if anyone has found herself being sheltered and pulled by God while in strange places and unusual circumstances, it is also Jennie.

I recently commented on her blog, on one of her Monday faith posts which I love, that I have to struggle daily to some degree with my personal fears. In her reply she confessed that she is also a fearful person. You would not know it to read of the many adventures she embarked upon before settling with her growing family in France. The woman said yes to studying abroad in France during college. She said yes to teaching in Taiwan - twice - immediately after graduation. She said yes to ministry in Africa just a few months into marriage with her wonderful French husband.

Of course, willingness to be cast to the wind doesn't consist in being fearless but in being courageous despite fear. Because Jennie said yes to all these challenging and sometimes frightening opportunities and experiences, she is able to take us with her on an exotic journey in her memoir, and she has the great privilege of sharing the compelling stories of those with whom she built community for a time. We connect with these people through her eyes.

We're righteously angry with her first French boyfriend, sometimes appalled by his words and actions and her desire to stick by him. We're surprised by the generosity of her good friends as they all pitch in to pay for her wedding dress when she finally finds a good man who was, as she put it, "not her type". We admire her husband Matthieu, once an atheist, as he walks seven times around Lower Manhattan and prays for a job in fearless imitation of Joshua's march around the walls of Jericho. We mourn for her brother Mark, shocked and deeply saddened by his choice, and ache for Jennie as she recovers from a serious car accident and from her emotionally and physically devastating miscarriage. We love the babies Khadra and Moguay, orphans in Somaliland, whom Jennie tries to nourish back to health. We are inspired by the difficult but blessed work of her friends Malinda, Hannah and Edna for the poor in Africa.

Often people talk about whether a piece of writing is honest - brutally honest - as a way to gage the depth of the piece. Heck, we even recognize it as a way to rate humor. And, of course, we are absolutely right to do so. Only when a writer is heart-rendingly honest can readers say, I've been there!, or I thought I was the only one who felt like that!, or Oh my gosh, I can't believe she is telling me this! Wow...

And, after all, what is a memoir for if not to lay your heart bare to your readers, if not to share the saddest, most desperate periods of your life and the grandest, most joyful triumphs? Jennie does this with humor and humility and with superb storytelling. I knew Jennie could write from reading her blog, but I was astounded by the elegance of her writing in this book, and, I'll confess, at times I was amazed by what she revealed. Things that she had hinted at in pieces on her blog are absolutely exposed here, and we appreciate being admitted to her world even if it makes us cringe, weep, almost faint or want to yell, "Stop wasting your time on that man!"

What do I love most about this book? It is a story of conversion, of spiritual awakening. I eat up faith stories, and the best ones are often told by those who tried very hard to eschew God for some time. In the end they are the best witnesses, I believe. He calls and keeps dialing no matter how many times they hang up, but what happens when they finally answer, like St. Augustine or C.S. Lewis, is always extraordinary and encouraging, miraculous. Jennie found God in an appreciation of Scripture, and though the words "the Living Word" may seem foolish to those who do not have such an appreciation, Jennie illustrates just how God's Word speaks to us throughout the ever-changing circumstances of our lives as she opens each chapter with a beautiful verse that shines light on her personal revelations.

So how does Jennie go from a little girl who feels God's presence and invites Jesus to lay down on her pillow beside her to a young woman who can't bear the idea of religion to a wife and mother who, once settled in France (the place she felt she was destined to be), hosts weekly Bible studies and monthly home church? Well, you must read A Lady in France to find out, and I hope you will be inspired and amazed by Jennie's story - just as I was.