I feel a need to write about my experience this past week in serving the young mothers and children of the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints (FLDS). I won't bore you with the background...it's been in the news for over two weeks now and our little hometown has become known around the country and around the world. But I want to express a personal view from me...a wife, mother, and grandmother.
Our church has had the privilege of serving meals to one of the two groups being housed at the coliseum. It is the smaller of the two groups and seems to be made up of the younger mothers and children. Actually, they are all children...no one in this group is over 17, yet they have babies and small children. Kerry and I helped serve the evening meal last Thursday, and then I went again on Friday morning to serve breakfast. Most of them had been there since Monday, so I think they were beginning to get used to the routine. I smiled and spoke to them gently as they filed through for their dinner. The younger ones, especially the boys, were a little more open with their return smiles and questions about what we were serving. The young mothers were polite and smiled, but you could tell that their focus was on getting plates filled for their little ones.
Kerry and I went back this evening (Sunday) to serve dinner. I had wondered if there would be a change in their attitude after the judge's ruling on Friday. What I found for the most part was that there was little difference. In fact, if there was much difference at all, it was in a positive light. The children were more talkative, the boys more boisterous, their attitudes more accepting. But then I realized that this was really only a surface attitude when I began looking in their eyes.
I remember last week there was a certain curiousness in their eyes...they are as curious about us as we are about them! That was still there tonight…a couple of them asked about my earrings. I also saw a hint of wonder still in the eyes of the younger ones. I suspect they feel like all of this is a grand adventure, not really knowing the importance nor the possible outcome of it all. The babies still clung to their young mothers, but it was the eyes of these young mothers that were the saddest of all. While I saw a smile on their face, and a politeness in their demeanor, the eyes held the real story. While too young by law to be mothers, they were not too young to know what was going on. And not too young to remember what they had been taught about the outside world. There was almost a sense of defiance in their eyes, a look of contempt, an expression of scorn.
There was one girl in particular that I can’t seem to shake from my memory. She was probably 17, one of the oldest ones in this group. She was beautiful…dark, silky hair styled perfectly…beautiful, clear complexion without needing help from cosmetics…tall and slender. She carried a baby on her hip and a little one (about 2 or 3) clung to her skirt. When I asked her tonight how many hotdogs she would like, she smiled and answered politely. Yet I will never forget her eyes. They were deep, and it seemed I could see a whole world in there. A world that said, “Leave us alone; we don’t need you.” My heart breaks as I realize that she doesn’t even understand that the world she knows is not only an abusive world, but it is a dark world…a world where men have placed themselves as gods…a world that has no room for the one true God, the God who created them and who loves them and who sent His Son to die for them. All I can do is pray for her and for the other 415 children and their mothers. I can pray that somehow, somewhere they will understand.
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