Rachel weeping for her children

A mother's lament for the safety of her child

I was asked to read something from my book at a service of lament last week, and I tried. I swear I tried. But I have never been very impressed with talking about a thing when you could instead do the thing, and I had some lamenting to do. I live in the state of Georgia, and I parent the child who told us at 11 they were non-binary. I, like many parents in America, am raising my kid in a state that is becoming hostile to them. I hate it. And I hate it even more because most of the people who are writing these bills are doing it in the name of God.

In between writing this and publishing it the Covenant School shooting in Nashville happened. It is not lost on my that very few of these words needs changed in order to be about school shootings. Bad actors are trying to use this tragedy to tell us Trans people are dangerous. They are not. Mothers want the same thing, our kids to have the opportunity to thrive.

This is what the LORD says: “A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”

The laws of my land, of the state that I live in, the place we call home has declared my child no more.

Children who refuse boxes, resist labels, re-imagine what it is to be a person made in the image of God are told they do not get to exist here. Not in the ways they want to, not in the ways God has created them to be.

The politicians have instead, refused reality, resisted human history, and re-written humanity. Black and white, left or right, straight edges and sharp corners flattening any nuance. No shades between begging us to see the goodness of God’s imagination. All that is erased.

God forbid we make anyone uncomfortable with our humble right to raise our kids without government over-reach. God forbid we ask people to please let us parent the ways we see fit. The ways that give our kids the greatest chance of even surviving to adult hood. Turns out trans-rights are a pro-life issue, we too just want to save the babies.

But speaking of God, or perhaps to Them: Here I am, here are the mothers of all trans children, who bore them once in the midst of contractions and crescendos, and bore witness once again when we were told who they really were, who God always intended them to be.

God where are you? Where are you when I wonder if my child will be safe at school, when I google where to move, when I am scared to listen to the new in my car on the way to choir practice because I am terrified my trans-kid will hear someone report that the way you designed them is currently out-lawed in their home state.

Do you hear us Lord? We are Rachel weeping for her children. Deliver us oh Lord. Deliver our children, who are not mistakes, from being mis-gendered and mis-identified as anything but prisms that point to the entirety of love.

Deliver us oh Lord, the mothers weeping for their children, for we refuse to be comforted until our children are safe and protected from ignorant laws. We refuse to to be comforted until our children are celebrated as the gifts to the world that they are. We will weep until they are allowed to flourish in the land of Ramah. Oh God do you hear, Rachel weeping for her children.