Where is God in the Shaniya Davis case?
Posted by Melinda | Filed under Life
In my christian walk, I had made the decision to stop watching so much news. The news is filled with coverage of negative stories and always something bad. Someone has been shot, hurt, killed. I think I was much happier when I wasn’t watching the news.
Well I drifted back into the habit of watching the news in the morning while getting ready for work in the past month or so. Last week I got sucked into this story of missing 5 year old Shaniya Davis from Fayetteville.
I honestly wish I had never followed it. With the terrible ending to the search in the finding of the body of that beautiful angel preceded by the arrests of the man last seen on surveillance camera taking the girl to a hotel room and the arrest of her mother for her involvement I was absolutely sickened, heartbroken, disgusted and devastated by this case. Her mother is charged with human trafficking with a child as a victim (her daughter) with the intent that she be held in sexual servitude and child abuse by prostitution. And that information came before the discovery of that angel’s body. The man last seen with her was in police custody, but still it was not known where Shaniya was and there was hope that she was somewhere alive.
But every day I checked the headlines in hopes that they would find that little girl alive. And yet when I heard they were searching a heavily vegetated area on a tip..I knew they were most likely in search of a bodyand not holding hope that she was going to be found alive and that was heartbreaking. And then…she was found.
There’s stories every day of missing children, abused chilrden, murders….but this one really has hit a spot in my heart I wish I could let go of. I actually cried when I found out they found her body as if I knew this little girl personally….as if I knew the father who had raised her for years and unknowingly in trying to let her “mother” BE a “mother let her go live in a situation that would end up like this. This story put such a lump in my throat and a knot in my stomach…I went to bed thinking of it and woke up thinking of it and that’s why I’m blogging about it.
It’s stories like this that put that big question mark on your heart for God. It’s stories like this that test your ability to see a greater purpose for the events. It’s stories like this that make it hard to pray for anything positive for those involved in conspiring in the unimaginable and unfathomable events that took place in this little girl’s last few days of life. Honestly my heart says “Rest in Peace Shaniyah…burn in Hell Antoinette Davis, Mario Andretti McNeil and anyone else who played a part in this.” I know that is not how God wants us to feel and that there’s supposed to be some sort of compassion in praying for the souls that committed this terrible sin to be Saved and NOT to burn in hell. But that doesn’t mean we can’t feel that way at least for a minute or two or….
In our anger we are led to think..why should they have the right to have a chance to redeem themselves to know our Lord and Savior? We know that beatiful and bright little Angel who is seen smiling and happy in pictures from years prior to this is now safely in his arms. But we have to find the “purpose’. Maybe the purpose in all this was to prevent her from having to live with the trauma of what happened to her…as anyone who has suffered at the hands of violation knows that is no easy feat in itself. Maybe the purpose was in intervention to save the life that now grows inside of that little gir’s mother. Maybe to intervene in whatever in that mother’s life would put her in a position to make such a terrible and tragic decision to traffick her own 5 year old daughter for unspeakable purposes.
Yet you can’t help think of the people closest to that little girl who loved her so and the pain and hurt in their heart. This father now has to struggle with the decision he made in trying to be a good father when his daughter’s mother asked if she could BE a mother.
But I think it’s evident from this little girl’s father that God is there. Last night at a candle light vigil, held up by friends he cried out…
”Lord, I come to you with open arms and it is hard. It is hard,” Lockhart said, his legs shaking and tears in his eyes as he spoke to the crowd of about 500. “Don’t give up on me and don’t give up on Shaniya.”
I think that this father, crying out to God even after all this happened to him speaks a mountain. And it makes you examine yourself, too. If that happened to you….do you have the faith in your Lord and Savior to still cry out to Him and ask him not to give up on you!!!
LOVE YA!!...