What I’ve Learned Since I Launched My Blog in 2020: It’s All About the Child

When I launched Like Sheep Among Wolves in January of 2020, I did so with the intention of sharing my story to show the goodness of the Church despite the ways many of been wounded within it. I wanted to change the narrative around the sexual abuse crisis by allowing others see the good I found in the Church that propelled me into healing, a look into the Heart of Christ. However, since launching my blog the goals have changed or perhaps become even bigger! I know- #calmdownMariah

In the last 4 years, God has connected me with incredible people some of whom share my experience as a victim of sexual abuse, others who are leading initiatives of healing the Church that are truly confronting the defining wounds of our time! Amidst this, I’ve also had to personally confront some of the most difficult moral issues we face in the Church today and how these issues interface with our society at large. The order of the events and relationships in my life in the last 4 years only emphasize that: “There are no accidents in God’s providence!”

A Look Back

Only 3 months after launching my site, I had an ectopic pregnancy. And 2 years later at the overturning of Roe V. Wade, this would become hot button issue for the Pro-Abortion movement. At the same time, I’ve been learning how to raise and protect my kids in a world that doesn’t like making space for the chaos that they inherently bring to the table (figuratively and literally). Among one of the most difficult challenges I’ve faced as a parent, and perhaps one that I’m even more vigilant about because of my history with sexual abuse, is the hyper-sexualization of the human person that is occurring in our society. We seem to be defining people by what or who they are attracted to and are teaching kids to do the same. We are more than our sexuality. More on that later.

In all of these connections, conversations, life experiences and by observing reactions to this blog, I discovered the issue that I initially set out to confront goes much deeper than I could have ever imagined. It encompasses issues that seemingly have nothing to do with the abuse crisis but everything to do with how we view the human person in our culture. And I discovered this culture, in many areas, is deeply ingrained in the heart of our Church because it is deeply ingrained in the hearts that compose it to the point in which we have lost our awareness that it is even an issue. Sin does indeed dim the wit.

Let’s Get To Work

But my mission hasn’t changed, it has simply expanded. All of these problems do not give us an excuse to cease our faith and abandon our Church. She is still, Our Mother, a beacon of truth and the only one, in my opinion, where any lasting light remains in our world today. On the same token, we have a grave duty to get to work and clean up the mess we find ourselves in. And I firmly believe that the best way to clean this mess up is to look at our children and once again model our society around their development. They protect us from ourselves because they demand our virtue. They test our patience, humility, and courage. For so long we have modeled and been told to model our society with emphasis on filling our woundedness with temporary solaces. We have found ourselves in a cycle of medicating reactions to traumas in our lives rather than getting to the root of the problem. This manifests as broken homes, hyper-sexualization, women who are told from a young age that they must suppress their feminine gifts if they want to be anything in this world, and outright abuse of the innocent. Enough is enough.

As we wait in darkness this Advent for the coming of the Christ-Child, let us realize that He, the Infant Child, is the answer to our problems!