My friend Peter’s writing his life story – his childhood in Southwold, life at sea in the merchant navy, painting and decorating business… joy and sorrow, love and heartbreak, triumph and error, predictable and unexpected…
His story is for his children and their children.
The Biblical prophet Joel: ‘Tell it to your children, and let your children tell it to their children, and their children to the next generation.’ Joel’s message of judgement and mercy, warning and hope, devastation and transformation needed to be told to children and future generations.
Last night we watched the deeply disturbing ‘Nowhere to Run: Abused by Our Coach’. Charlie Webster described her experiences as a teenager, sexually abused by her coach at her running club…
Her coach is now in prison, guilty of many offences with many girls… her friends also suffered abuse but kept it secret… one friend committed suicide… many girls in other clubs across the country have also been abused… campaigning continues…
Tell it to your children… tell them of potential danger.
Yesterday I read of 18-year-old Chloe Butcher who lost her provisional driving licence in Lowestoft. She was panicking…
The next day in the post she received her licence, two £10 notes and a note: ‘I noticed that it was a provisional licence so please put the enclosed towards a lesson. I know how expensive they are. I hope it helps.’
Tell it to your children… alongside Charlie’s shameful abusers are Chloe’s kind and generous ‘Good Samaritans’.
After 33 chapters and 300 pages Peter goes back to the lowest point in his life. His mother had died and his wife left him, a single parent with two young children: ‘In agony and desperation I cried out to the God my mother believed in and I didn’t. I had nowhere else to go… He was my last resort. In my arrogance and disbelief he came to me…’
Tell it to your children… That’s Peter’s message.
malcolmsmusings.org 