#IWill #IHave #IWillContinueTo

A long time ago, in a galaxy about 1200 miles south of where I live now, I had a friend- a brother, really- let's call him "Joe"- who was an extremely dear friend.  We were close - REALLY close - we lived next door, we went to church together (played on the same worship team- he was a guitarist) and, well- you get the idea.  I knew this guy- I mean I REALLY knew this guy.  And his wife, "Mona" and my wife were good friends.

About 10 months after the birth of 4th child, Joe's wife let us know that they were having problems.  No details given.  I talked with Joe, and it was one of those "it's just something we all go through" kind of things, and he was pretty sure that they'd get thru it.

Except they didn't.

Within 4 months, they were separated.  2 months after that, Mona filed for divorce.  Again- no reasons given, which was getting weirder and weirder because they knew everything about us (we had recently suffered the loss of our youngest son, Stephen) and we knew darned near everything there was to know about them.  Or so we thought.  Joe was asked to leave the house, and he did (I helped him move to an apartment near by) and my wife and I tried to support them as best we could.

No sooner was Joe out of the house that Mona finally told us what was going on.  Sexual impropriety.  Oh, great.  I approach Joe - "There's two sides to every story, Marc, and I'm just not ready to go into it right now" was all he said.  Mona would not give details.  We were left to jump to conclusions- which was easy to do since Joe had a new girlfriend less than 2 weeks after he moved out, and his girlfriend had a couple of small children.  While it was "bad", we had no idea how bad it really was.

One night, there was yelling from their house.  This was very uncharacteristic, and for awhile, Deb and I didn't do anything, until we heard some crashes in their house.  I went over, and found Joe smashing things in their front room and Mona literally cowering in the corner.  Without qualification or thinking, I literally grabbed Joe and threw him out the front door and slammed it in his face and barred the door with my foot.  The whole time he was yelling at me, telling me that "if you've ever been my friend, you're gonna let me back in and let me settle this".  I responded by locking the front door and calling the cops who showed up immediately and took my friend away, back to his house.  Mona swore out a temporary restraining order on Joe right then and there.

After things calmed down, I asked Mona what the hell was going on.  She broke down and while sobbing, she said, "go look at Sarah's throat".  (Sarah was their 3 year old daughter)  I looked in her throat and saw several large, inflamed blisters in her throat with white heads on them- they looked like big pimples.

"She's a little old to be having thrush" I said.

"It's not thrush.  It's warts" Mona said.

And before I could ask, she said, "Penile warts.  Joe has them, too."

The blood in my veins turned to ice.  I literally felt like I was going to faint, and I did gag visibly.

This is what had been going on FOR YEARS with them.  I lived next door, and I never knew.  There was no way to know, but what I did know was that I was gonna get involved.  And I did, as did my wife.  There was no way in hell we weren't gonna get involved.  I'll save you the rest of the story here, because this isn't about how magnaminous I am/I'm not or how I got on a high horse- suffice it to say however that my relationship with Joe changed *just a bit*.  (VAST UNDERSTATEMENT)

The reason I'm writing this is because with all the #MeToo posts out there, I haven't seen a ton of warning- the warning that there are a lot of people who have stood ground here and whether or not they were trying to appear mighty or not, they weren't gonna put up with this.  In my heart of hearts, I truly believe that in order to stop this absolute bullshit of physical/sexual abuse, warnings should be given from people that let them know that you are not a safe haven for this kind of thing.  While I am a Christian man and I take my faith very seriously, all that "meekness" goes right out the window where things like this are involved.  People who do these things are sick animals who are deserving of nothing but the swift employment of the law, and let the chips fall where they may.  It's not enough to say "#IWill" if when presented with behavior like this we fail to act RAPIDLY. 

At least part of the reason why this behavior continues to exist is because our society seems to be caught up in the reasons why the perpetrator of the act would do such a thing.  I'm not saying that we shouldn't be interested in that, but I am saying that I'm not qualified to do anything with that information, and the vast majority of people are right there where I am.  That is something that is probably best left to mental health professionals and the police.  What I am qualified to do as a human being is to actively steer right into the skid and stop the inevitable accident from happening, by whatever means are necessary- and, yeah- I'll put relationships I hold dear right up to the fire and let them burn.  That isn't happening on my watch, and what's required of all of us as human beings is to take a 0% tolerance view on this sort of thing.  I'll go further and acknowledge that I realize that my actions will not stop the root cause and may force it back into the darkness- but if that means that my 3 year old next door neighbor has no penile warts in her throat from her father, I'm gonna sleep well.

So, for all the guys and gals out there that are posting #IWill right now, I am imploring you to really mean it.  Don't just jump on a bandwagon if you don't have the intention of putting your own skin in this game.  I would ask that you post nothing rather than make what might be an empty promise.