I have been tossing this around in my head all night…it is weighing heavy on my soul and even though it probably won’t affect what anyone else thinks…I have to go with my gut…I have to write about what happened…

Last night as my daughter was rehearsing for an upcoming holiday performance at a well known theater, the parents were asked to sit in the audience and wait. The lights were off and many people who did not know each other were thrown together for nearly three hours. Most people kept to themselves looking at the glowing phones or tablets…strangely enough, some were not even watching the rehearsal…which I  didn’t understand…we’d been driving our children back and forth to and from practice for months on end, week after week…and during the dress rehearsal the parents were texting and searching the web on their phones…some even waited in the lobby…with their tablets plugged into outlets….ugh…I guess  I tend to be a bit old fashioned about such things…but I was there to watch.

Anyway, after we had been sitting in the dark for several minutes and the rehearsal was under way, the two women behind me started to talk…not whisper…but talk…I would have had to move if I didn’t want to hear what they were saying. Honestly, I kept thinking about getting up and moving, but it was almost like a train wreck….even though I was shocked at what I was hearing…I stayed put.  I was beginning to feel like I was eaves-dropping right outside the confessional, except this woman wasn’t confessing…she was bragging, and in the end I wound up getting more than I bargained for ….

After the two women introduced themselves and found  out whose children were doing what in the performance, one of the mother’s starting talking about her son. “This year my daughter and I convinced my youngest son, that he needs to be in the show…he’s been ‘Flaming’ since he was two, and I wanted to expose him to this sort of thing….”

I had to bite my tongue, I couldn’t believe what I hearing… She then continued on,

“He was leery about the whole idea at first, because he is still very young and shy.  It took a bit of work, but after awhile we were able to convince him that it would be fun. Then tonight, he was concerned about wearing makeup because he’s a boy, but once again, I was able to convince him that it’s fine for boys to wear makeup. My daughter even told him that a boy at her school wears lipstick everyday.” She then added,” It was so exciting that he was able to wear makeup for the first time.”

Honestly, it sounded like she was so determined in developing the mannerism of a homosexual in her young son, that she didn’t even notice from her tone, that it seemed like she was pushing this onto her young son….The other woman just laughed and nodded but wasn’t saying a whole lot at this time. The mother of the young boy said that her older daughter had a friend who was telling everyone he was bisexual. She went on to explain that the friend’s  mother was hoping that it was just a phase, but that she thought it was great. She said ” Kids need to be exposed to all different types of people….they need to be able to be who they are…”

Really??? It seems to me that this woman had already labeled her poor son as “Flaming” when he was just two! The longer I sat there, the more upset I became. I wanted to scream at the woman and tell her that she was a complete fool! I was having a hard time believing that a mother…who loves her son….would encourage such behavior. I quickly scanned all of the young boys on the stage…trying to pick out the one who was “flaming”…but they all looked like regular little boys to me…Young boys running around have a great time in the play.

The conversation continued for a few more minutes with the woman telling the other mom that she had been a single mom for a couple of years, but now she was married again. She also said that even though being a ‘single parent’ was hard, that she actually liked it, because then she got to make all the decisions concerning her children. She said it was great not having to listen to any one else…(Oh like the boy’s father?!) The longer I listened, the more it seemed that this mother was pushing an agenda onto her son…an agenda that would ultimately bring more harm to him than good…It was more than I could bear to hear. I was getting so upset… furious, really…it was then that I lost it… I leaned over to my son and said “This woman is a complete idiot.”

Immediately, I heard a small voice in my head asking me what was I going to do.. How exactly, was my anger going to help this woman… and this boy???  The truth was….it wasn’t. My anger was a selfish response that wasn’t going to solve anything. In my angered state, I knew better than to open my mouth again, because anything I may have said to her would have surely just caused a scene…I was pretty upset, so I left the theater and headed for the lobby (so much for watching the rehearsal...) trying to cool my head.

As I stood looking out onto the road, watching cars whiz by, I realized that in a world without God, and the guidance He gives us…it is hard to navigate our way through all the garbage. If we don’t adhere to His Laws…and follow Him… it can be a difficult journey. Trying to do the right thing gets blurry and it becomes almost impossible to tell the darkness from light… The Truth from the lies…One thing is for certain…We can’t trust ourselves on this. It is precisely what makes the secular world so lost...so wrong in their thinking about so many different things.

Because these people have no God to follow…no God to adore…they turn to pleasing the world…An empty world that has been fashioned into their god…And whether they realize it or not, by following the current trends of moral decay,  these parents, in their need to show the rest of society how progressive they are… How unbridled they are in their thinking….And how cool they are….have unwittingly thrown their children into the dens of beasts. They have become like the ancient Aztecs who sacrificed their children trying to appease the erupting volcanoes. Today’s parents may not be throwing them into an actual volcano, but without a doubt, by destroying the innocence of their children, they are sacrificing them to the world. And just like the volcanoes, which erupted anyway, oftentimes taking whole villages with them…this world…this godless world, doesn’t give one iota about their children and will continue to chew them up and rip them to shreds….robbing them of their purity. Woe unto them…

“But if you cause one of these little ones who trusts in me to fall into sin, it would be better for you to have a large millstone tied around your neck and be drowned in the depths of the sea.” –Matthew 18:6

As I stood there, God in His goodness, eased my anger.  Again, in the quiet of my heart, He asked me what was I going to do. I was reminded that as a Christian it is my responsibility to shine Christ’s Light in the darkness of the world. I was humbled…and  felt ashamed of my words to my son. What was I thinking?  After all, I am a Christian … I am living with the benefit of a great and loving God to guide me…this poor woman was obviously caught up in the lies of the world…and this poor child…well, he was caught up in the confusion of his mother. It is a cold cruel world…eagerly waiting to devour what rightly belongs to God…the souls of our precious children. As Christians, we have a responsibility to guide them in His ways.

Not knowing what to do I stood there for a few more minutes. Then I started to pray. First, for forgiveness for jumping right into anger…for my lack of charity towards this woman. Then, as God gave me the grace…I prayed for the woman and her son….I prayed for her daughters and for her ex-husband, that God would give him the strength he needed to guide his son to be the man that God intended. It was a long prayer…God in His wonderful goodness helped me see the errors of my ways, reminding me that I could do nothing by myself. I brought it to Him, and  laying it at His feet, I prayed. I prayed from my soul that God would help them…that God would not abandon them to the world.

When the rehearsal was over, we we drove to a nearby  chapel to do a few minutes of Eucharistic adoration. As we drove, I carried this family with me. I asked God to heal their hurts. I asked Him to give the parents the strength they needed to not throw their children to the world. There was an ache in my heart, knowing what I know…and feeling totally helpless…but I also knew, that if I remain devoted, God would not let me down.

Since we have just entered into the season of advent, a time of prayer and conversion, what better way for us Christians to observe the season…than to pray and fast for the conversion of sinners everywhere. We may not always meet them in darkened theaters, were they freely share their stories in the cover of darkness…but they are out there….waiting for us...God’s disciples here on earth...to do battle for them and lead them out of the valley of darkness. We should put our Faith into practice as we try to help them find their way to God and make their way to heaven… because sometimes, all we can do…all we really need to do, is pray.