Before I get into the meat of this blog, I think I need to explain some things. Way back when I was in kindergarten we all went to the post office in our county seat. In the process of showing us around, the postmaster showed us the mailboxes. On the backside they had no doors and the person loading them just went from one to the next putting the mail for that box inside. Then the postmaster took us around to the public side. There we saw the doors. Open the door and inside was the mail. Nothing earthshattering there, but to a five year old with an imagination, I must have applied it to myself. Thereafter, I found I could take anything that happened and put it in the back of a huge collection of compartments, or boxes, and then later unlock the door to that box and take the memory out. Just as if it happened earlier in the day. Smells, lighting, conversations. All of it. This is a good thing and a bad thing. Most of my life has been interesting and good. But then there have been a few things that have not been good, and those things I have locked away until needed, because to do otherwise brings the memory back full force.

    But then, as I aged, something changed. I lost control of the doors. A word, an action or something else could make a door pop open without the mental key. I had little control over it. It is not always a bad thing. In fact, it rarely is a bad thing. As I said, most of my life has been interesting and good. But there have been things, deaths, actions of others, mistakes on my part and other bad things that I would have just preferred locked down. One of those things is in the news right now.

    Back on January 24, 2023, a young mother of three strangled her three kids. Amazing that it is just now in trial. People have very strong feelings about Lindsey Clancy. Many feel she was driven by her own mental health problems and should be acquitted. Others feel she should be punished to the full extent, which in Massachusetts would be, I believe, life in prison. You feel however you want. All I know is that it completely blows the door off one of my mailboxes. Just like it was yesterday.....

    1989. I was pastoring a church in Warren, Ohio. I was always putting myself out there for people. And it wasn't always the folks in my church. The Lord gave me a deep desire to help those in painful situations. It opened a pathway to present the Gospel to someone who otherwise would never hear. And I stayed very busy because of it. Particularly through one of the hospitals in the city. I received calls from them at least twice a month for people not affiliated with any church. And so it was on a warm summer day in 1989.

    The call was from the psych ward. "Pastor Wade, I was told I could call you. One of our patients here needs to talk to a minster and her minister will not come." I was interested. "Sure, I'll come down. What is the patient in for?" "Well, actually, I would rather not say just now." 

    So I went. Reported to security and was escorted to the top floor of the hospital where the psych ward was located. There I was presented to the psychologist who had called me. A very tired looking lady in her 50s. She led me into a room with a table and a couple of chairs on each side. There she told me. "We have a woman here who killed her three week old baby yesterday. She is asking for her pastor, but as I told you, he won't come. Please talk to her." Understand, for me a baby's life, whether born or unborn, is the most precious thing I can conceive. And now they want me to talk to a mother who has just killed her baby? I just dropped into the chair. Not in readiness to meet this woman, but in shock. The psychologist walked out and I imagine I sat there with my mouth hanging open. I wanted to get up and walk out. I didn't want to meet this monster! I wanted out! But I couldn't move. The magnitude of this was more than I could process. In retrospect there was something else at work, as well.

    The first person into the room was a police officer. Following him was the psychologist and following her, in a hospital gown and handcuffs, was a woman with her head down. When she looked up we were both surprised. "Pastor Wade?" One of our ladies lived across the street from her and her husband. I had met them both before and just over a month earlier, while I was visiting our lady, I had seen them both in their front yard. I had walked across the street to talk with them. They were excited about the first born child. I had invited them to church before, but they were Catholic and locked into that. As I looked at her I understood why her priest had refused to come. Emotions surged through me. MONSTER! Yet so happy about the coming baby. For a moment I could say nothing. And then the Holy Spirit kicked me good and hard and I remembered who I was and why I was there. "Susan, come sit." I held her hands across the table. She cried. She told me about feeling overwhelmed. Unable to think, feeling unable to care for that little person. It was a struggle. And then, just the day before, husband at work, the baby would not stop crying. She remembered it all. She got a pillow off her bed and went into the nursery and pressed it down on the baby's face. Long after the crying stopped. Then she called her husband and then the police. Now, today, she wanted to die, to be punished and put to death. No excuses, no reasons. Just kill me. At some point I had gotten up and come around the table. Sat next to her. Put my arm around her shoulders. Held her shackled hands. She cried and cried. The police officer was not too happy with me, but the psychologist put a hand on his forearm and he said nothing. 

    After a while it ended. They led Susan back. When I left the room, I was met by met by someone who interviewed me. Not a reporter, but someone filling out a form. As I was leaving the ward, Susan's husband was coming in. He was shattered. We sat down and talked. Finally, I was able to leave. The security officer who had escorted the husband up, escorted me down. 

    She pleaded guilty. No muss, no fuss no real trial. She was sent to a mental health facility just south of Cleveland. She was there just over three years. You can feel about that however you want, but that was the way it came down. I had the opportunity to share the Gospel with both husband and wife and they both came to Christ. When she got out her husband brought her home. Her husband told me he loved her and that was what he was going to do. She had her tubes tied and they started over. Last I heard, they were doing fine.

    The point is it is never as cut and dried as we tend to think. Susan did not get a team of lawyers and try to fight it. Just guilty. Take me away. Shoot me. The political climate has exploded the Clancy case way out of proportion. Liberal vs conservative. It isn't about that. I always look at things like this; they need Jesus and we need to pray. 

    Susan and Jeff will one day see their child again. Heaven will be joyous. But for me looking back on it, it was a dark, dark time. One of only a few times I just wanted to quit and walk away. Even knowing how it ended... A baby, a distraught mother, a father torn up inside. Since then, I have seen some terrible things, but nothing compares to that. And if I was ever to face the same situation, well, I hope I would man up and be a pastor. 

    You hear about it occasionally. A parent snaps. Or maybe not. Sometimes the unwanted child is just tossed into dumpster, alive. The world is full of evil. Forget your politics. Give it to the Lord.

    Be blessed.