Mondok Blog

God's good future flowing into the present

Heaven's Currency

2011-08-15T22:54:00.002-04:00

And he said to them, “When you pray, say:

“Father, hallowed be your name.

Your kingdom come.

Give us each day our daily bread,

and forgive us our sins,

for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us.

And lead us not into temptation.”

(Luke 11:2-4 ESV)

Forgiveness is currency. It keeps the economy humming in heaven. The gold we men value is used for asphalt in heaven; that's the only good it does there. Heaven's values spill over into this present age in the form of forgiveness currency . God shows me forgiveness daily; it's my allowance and I can spread it around or I can bury it.

When I am abused by someone who should care or robbed of something precious or persecuted senselessly, I bury what God gives me. There's no way I'm going to share it. Why waste it on a project that will probably fail?

I forget, when I'm cruelly victimized, that I was once a failing project; a ship going down. Please don't remind me of the victims I left in my wake.

Forgiveness is the only currency heaven accepts from me. When Jesus said lay up riches in heaven where there's no corruption, this the currency I need to be piling up there.

The devil has no access to this currency. That is why our adversary is so busy making sure we don't trade in the forgiveness economy. It's his economic strategy to have us trade in a debt-bloated false economy of anger, revenge, lust, drunkenness, bitterness and cynicism. These end in death; the enemy's greatest weapon. But forgiveness has the ability to revive and revitalize the most depraved, empty loser-life.

Sometimes it feels good to partner with God in this, and sometimes it feels like following stupid orders.

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His Crime Our Punishment

Forgive How?

God's good future flowing into the present

His Crime Our Punishment

2011-08-13T23:07:00.003-04:00

We got word this week that Paul will be free in October 2012. I know, hard to swallow, right?

I came to terms early in this ordeal that the most time he would serve is eleven years. That was the maximum according to sentencing guidelines judges adhere to when doling out justice.

He was sentenced to six years. Time served in the county jail waiting for trial reduced the total he had left to under two more years as of this past spring. Doesn't seem right does it? Allie will never be a normal little girl. She will always be horribly handicapped and limited in so many ways. Susan and I have had to radically change our lives to care for this little girl including loss of home and income to intervene before Allie was put into the California foster system as a quadriplegic. And my daughter Charity has endured irreversible psychological damage through the ordeal of having her child shaken and suffocated and then having her parental rights terminated. Not to mention violence inflicted on her that went unreported. Our lives are forever altered.

The life altering effects of the crime weren't even considered in court. Shaken baby syndrome is a controversial medical diagnosis. The medical community is split over whether it should be discussed in open court. So Paul was only charged with the assault on Allie that put her in the hospital. Not the regular abuse and assault that he confessed to that occurred over a three month period. The only admissible part of his confession was the corroboration the injuries Allie had when she was admitted into the hospital a comatose little ten month old baby girl.

We put together a video of a day in the life of Allie that the judge would not permit the jury to see. The judge looked at it. And you can see it, too. But it had no bearing on Paul's sentence. Only ours.

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Forgive How?

Forgive How?

2011-08-11T22:37:00.002-04:00

Forgive us our sins,

for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.

Luke 11: 4 (NIV)

This is a tough bit of prayer. Extending forgiveness is so difficult. I would rather this verse say: "Forgive us our unforgiveness." Period. End of prayer.

What if the offender never asks to be forgiven?
What if what the offender did can ever be repaired?
What if the offender lives a life of freedom while the offended live in bondage to the damage inflicted by the offender?

How does one exercise forgiveness in the above scenarios? Does God hold the offended one responsible while he lives through the consequences of the offender's offensiveness?

These are questions I wrestle with. Here's C.S. Lewis's answer to the question:

"We believe that God forgives us our sins; but also that He will not do so unless we forgive other people their sins against us. There is no doubt about the second part of this statement. It is in the Lord's Prayer, it was emphatically stated by our Lord. If you don't forgive you will not be forgiven. No exceptions to it. He doesn't say that we are to forgive other people's sins, provided they are not too frightful, or provided there are extenuating circumstances, or anything of that sort. We are to forgive them all, however spiteful, however mean, however often they are repeated. If we don't we shall be forgiven none of our own."

God's good future flowing into the present

2011-08-08T22:48:00.001-04:00

For the past few posts, these beginning writings of my memories of Allie's tragic abuse and it's affects on our family, I've only really explored one theme: my own pain; with it you've become acquainted. There are two other strands to our story, however: 1) Allie's suffering and disfigurement, and, 2) Christ working to draw all men to himself.

Number one is obvious. Allie suffered tremendously. This is something that we'll look at and discuss at length. The initial incident in a the bathroom of a rundown San Francisco tenement is only the genesis of the crippling of a perfect little girl. The long lasting result of this devastating event is multiple lives irreversibly altered.

Number two is less obvious. In fact, Christ working to draw men to himself runs a jagged, zigzagging course that runs from fury with God to absolute doubt and abandonment to awe-filled appreciation for the inconceivable wisdom and provision of God. Fury comes easy and is even easier to express. Noticing the wisdom and provision of God is not easy. In fact, to get there, you have to through the experience of doubt and abandonment to arrive at the realization that God is indeed wise and good all the time.

At some point in God's ultimate plan for mankind and his good creation, the whole earth will be flooded with God's goodness and wisdom the oceans are filled with water. This is the future. We need to live now as if we believe the truth about the future. We need to borrow the unlimited goodness that will flood the future and redistribute it here in the present wherever we can. This is the kind of borrowing and redistribution that we will never find the bottom of. That's how Jesus lived when he walked the earth.

· When he reached out to touch a leper, instead of him becoming infected, he transmitted his abundant cleanness to eradicate the leper's disease.

· In the case of an unclean woman with an issue of blood making Jesus unclean as she would have done to others, transformation flows the other way and has the opposite affect; power flow from Jesus to the woman instead of uncleanness flowing from the woman to Jesus. She becomes clean for the first time in twelve (think of it!) years.

· How can Jesus be made unclean? Take that thought further. If Jesus has made us clean, what outside force can make us unclean. Indeed, Jesus said that it wasn't what went into a man that made him unclean, but what came out of him.

· Instead of a dead widow's son at Nain making Jesus unclean, the dead son lived again.

· God's good future is now when Christ is at work. Our lives aren't supposed to be about (only about) managing our own sin and morality. Our lives are supposed to be about changing our world. Allowing power to sacrificially leave ourselves and change lives -really change lives- around us.

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Guilt

2011-08-06T22:49:00.002-04:00

This conversation with Jim (see how previous post ended) was a precursor to many difficult conversations to follow. I've labored about how I tell this and not make myself look like the good guy. I've blamed Jim's parenting; he's blamed me. I've blamed his kid; he's blamed mine. I've blamed Charity; he's blamed Paul. I doubt either one of us has ever felt more cornered than we did in those early moments when we played back events of our parenting and thought about what we should or shouldn't have done. We wished we could erase sins of commission and omission.

So we pointed out everyone else's mistakes rather than our own. In a time like this who can stand the additional pain of truthful self-examination? The instinct is to find a way to numb this kind of hurt. I don't need anyone to remind me of the guilt I carry.

The most depressing day of my life prior to this incident was the day I drove Charity to airport when she moved to San Francisco to be with Paul. I knew I was losing my little girl. This wasn't the happy kind of losing your child as she moves out to go to college. This was a deep, heavy sadness. My child picked a path in life I hoped she would never go down. I felt numb.

The plan was to have Allie stay with Susan and I until Charity found a job and figured things out. She found a job right away and was missing Allie after only a week. She called and asked if I would bring Allie out as soon as I could.

It was the longest flight ever. I never knew flying by myself with a six month old was such a chore. I really had my hands full.

Allie did not fly well. She cried and howled for about half the flight before she finally fell asleep. The guy in the seat behind me moved to another seat in a huff. Good riddance. It was the longest cross-country flight of my life.

Paul and Charity met me at the Oakland Airport and we took the train into San Francisco to their Golden Gate Avenue apartment in the infamous Tender Loin district. The apartment was small. Four people shared the fifth floor apartment's two rooms. I looked out the window and saw a drug deal go down on the street. How could I leave Allie here? I hoped my daughter could keep my granddaughter safe.

The flight back to Florida was a sad one. My hands never felt so empty.

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The beginning of San Francisco days

2011-08-04T23:15:00.001-04:00

I only put down a couple of thoughts, tonight. Work creeped into my time of writing. But I still wrote down what I could remember.

I reviewed this blog post:

I'm in San Fransisco. I was with Ali and Charity today. I spent about three hours at Ali's side this afternoon after I arrived. She is in a coma.

read more

Here's what I recall:

This was one of the heaviest days of my life. The day started very early on a Monday morning. I booked the earliest flight I could get. My friend, Dave, drove me 60 miles to the Fort Lauderdale airport which wasn't the closest airport, but it was the only flight I could get on such short notice. This is when the Lord started to minister to me through friends.

Dave and Lyette cried with me, prayed with me, and talked me through the first few days of this ordeal. Lyette, a true champion of faith, fed me a steady diet of faith-filled words. I kept up a tough front, but I was completely shattered; shell-shocked. I remember the first time I was ever around the thumping impact of a hand-grenade or claymore mine explosion in basic training. It was that kind of ear-ringing shock, only sustained. Dave and Lyette nursed me through it.

When I opened my back pack to run my laptop through TSA's x-ray machine, a cash-filled envelope fell out. Dave snuck $1,200 into my bag to help cover expenses while I was in San Francisco.

The plane ride was a blur. When I landed and my phone signal was restored, I noticed I had a voice mail. It was Paul's father, Jim. His message was un-intelligible and frantic. I did not need this. But I dialed him back anyway.

Jim answered his phone after the first couple of rings. He was beside himself. My heart was broken but somehow from reserves I was unaware existed, I found empathy.

"I can't believe he did this!" Jim yelled. "I hope he rots in jail!" His words pummeled me. I was too dazed to think. I can't believe what I said back.

"Jim, your son needs you right now. You need to be the best dad you can be."

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How do we live life? Risk it all.

2011-08-02T23:03:00.001-04:00

Here are some thoughts I put down tonight...

There is no risk bigger than deciding to love someone beyond all capacity. When we decided to adopt Allie, my wife and I went to war with each other over private moments of peace. Our days and nights were filled with fiery battles. We both claimed that the other wasn't shouldering a fair share of the load. I was a selfless martyr and she was a slacker. We tore into each other like wounded animals. I wanted to leave.

“If you’re leaving, don’t wait,” Susan said. “If you’re going to do it, do it now so I can get on with figuring out how life is going to work.”

This wasn’t living. It wasn’t even surviving. I had to make some kind of decision. I was looking for an option that was void of pain. But an option like that didn't exist. If I left, I would be miserable knowing I shrank from my clear call to duty. If I stayed, I would have to sacrifice everything I hoped to have at this time in my life. I hoped that Susan and I would have the freedom to come and go as we pleased. We could have been empty nesters.

I made a decision to serve my wife and Allie no matter what the cost. This was the only clear, common-sense option. I couldn’t get Romans 12 out of my head. I needed to become a living sacrifice. The only way our little family unit would weather this was to serve selflessly, expecting nothing in return. This isn't personal piety and this isn’t an attempt at superior spirituality. It was the only rational thing I could do to survive. This is what God was waiting for me to discover. Being a living sacrifice isn’t just a mystical way of doing Christianity. It’s not a life of simply reading the Bible, memorizing a few verses, singing songs, going to church, and obeying a few rules. The way Christianity works was summed up best by Jesus when he said, “…whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it (Matthew 16:25 ESV).”

Check out this quote from C.S. Lewis

Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket-safe, dark, motionless, airless-it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation.

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A Start

2011-07-31T22:33:00.001-04:00

I'm plugging away at this. Everyday since I announced that I was going to write a book, I've received encouraging emails and comments. A couple of people even approached me at a wedding I attended over the weekend and said they'd own a copy if available. I can't tell you how much that encourages me.

So again, tonight I'm posting a little excerpt from random writing about things. What I've been doing is reading back through blog posts that were published in real time during the event. As I went through things, I didn't share too much about what I was really going through; I tried to stay up beat and positive. But that was four years ago and now I've had tons of information to process and experiences to walk through. My emotions were out of control. My faith was stretched beyond anything I thought imaginable. So much more was happening than I could convey at the time.

The blog post:

A quick update on Ali: her vital signs are normal right now, but she's being transferred to an intensive care unit for testing and observation.
Please continue to pray for Ali, my daughter, Charity, and Ali's father, Paul. Pray that the Lord would intervene in this situation and in their lives.
Thank you for your prayers on behalf of our family.
Bryon and Susan Mondok

The rough draft:

This is the report I put on my blog after the second call from Charity. She confirmed what Susan and I were afraid to even speak: abuse. Charity told me in frantic shock that Paul, Allie's father and Charity's roommate, had shaken and squeezed Allie until she was no longer breathing.

It was Paul's night to watch Allie while Charity worked. At this point in the relationship between Paul and Charity, there was no longer a romantic spark or even a hope of one. They're relationship was pragmatic. The relationship was strained. Neither of them was getting out of the relationship what they had hoped. They lived together but dated whomever they wished. They had a kid together but that was all they shared.

They arranged alternating work schedules so while one worked and the other watched Allie. Then they switched. That was the relationship. Neither one of them was making much money. Certainly not enough to afford a San Francisco apartment even in the worst part of town. So there were two other adult roommates that shared the tiny apartment.

Allie's room was a small walk-in closet. Her portable crib took up most of the little space. There was no way this arrangement would end well.

That night, it was Paul's turn to watch Allie, give her a bath, and put her to bed. She was not cooperative. Not many ten month olds are at bath time. According to hospital and police reports, to get control of her, Paul shook and squeezed her. A breathless, lifeless Allie was received into the emergency room. Hospital records also indicated that Allie had a broken rib, broken shoulder and broken leg - all in different stages of healing.

When Allie first stopped breathing, Paul didn't know what to do. He had no idea that the abuse he later confessed to would have this result. He laid Allie on the floor in a panic. He yelled for his roommate who was in the next room. Paul wanted to call Charity but the roommate called 911. "We'll call Charity later," he said. Paramedics were dispatched and the 911 operator talked the two men through cardiopulmonary resuscitation of a baby. Allie didn't breathe on her own for about a week. She arrived at the hospital unconscious and remained in a coma for ten days.

Charity was in denial about Allie's true condition. She only relayed to me what she thought she heard from the medical staff on the scene. Later conversations with the doctor present revealed that Charity was in a shock and not really processing the night's events accurately. There was no way she would have the details right.

It's difficult to process horrific news. That's why a mother's legs give out when she first hears of the death of a child. No one is ever ready for truly bad news.

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