Not Good Enough

This past week I was fortunate enough to attend a conference about abuse of people with disabilities. It was meant to be a conference focused on hope and what is happening to protect those who are at highest risk of abuse. The feeling that I was overwhelmed with at the end of the conference is that while there are good things that are happening in the field of protection and social work, it is not good enough.

It is not good enough when the response to sexual assault and rape is that it can't be "that bad" for someone who doesn't always understand what is happening.

It is not good enough when women are not able to leave abusive situations because of lack of resources.

It is not good enough when abuse is justified by the idea that people with disabilities are "less than."

It is not good enough when we respond by saying we don't know what to do.

What we have now is not "good enough." What we have now is not even marginally acceptable. What we have can change and it will change. However long it takes, it will change because to leave it the way it is now is not good enough.

Coming Home

It is a strange feeling, coming home. Especially when home is a place that you have never been and is half way across the country from where you have spent your entire life. I am used to the feeling of coming home. It has happened to me many times over the past years as I have moved between my parents home, my university home and my community homes. I have made home and found home in surprising places, but none of them have surprised me quite as much as this one.

Most couples, at the beginning of their lives together, get to choose what city they are going to live in, what house they would like and what sort of career they would like to pursue. We got none of those choices. I am going back to school in a week, as I am not qualified to do anything else in the area in which we are living. My husband is in charge of four churches, which is more than he asked for or desired and we are quite far away from the city which had desired to live in. The house was not our choice either, and with countertops too low for us to comfortably stand at and not really enough room for our books or my musical instruments, I am not certain that it would have been chosen had we the opportunity, but somehow, after breaking into the house due to forgotten keys, this place has become home.

It may because it is the first place where I have been able to establish my own space as I would like it to be. I only have to work with the desires of one other person and that feels pretty easy after living in a house with ten other people from many other countries and different backgrounds. As with many of the other places I have called home, there is not a set time line for my inhabitance of this place. I am sure that it will become one of many places in a long list of places that I can call home.

It is nice to have a place to be home, even if it is just for a little while.