March 24, 2003

CYBERCOLUMN:
Sometimes doing right is painful
___By Donna Van Cleve
___"Our son, Van, is 24 now and was home for a visit recently. He couldn't sleep because of a bad sore throat he'd been fighting all week. I don't like pain, but I especially don't like to see my children in pain—no matter how old they are.
___"Did you take some medicine?"
___"Yes."
___"Is it working?"
___ "No."
___ "Did you get any sleep last night?"

Donna Van Cleve

___"No."
___ "You sound like you're talking with a mouthful of cotton. Can you swallow?"
___ "No."
___ "Well, I think it's way beyond me kissing it and making it better. In fact, it's probably going to get worse. But let's just ignore it, and hope it goes away."
___ I really didn't tell my son that. He had already tried ignoring it, but it just got worse. It must have been bad, because he normally has a high tolerance for pain. He's broken his arms on three occasions and almost cut his big toe off dropping a 25-pound weight on it back in high school, and I never once saw him cry.
___ But these last two weeks have been tough on him. That Sunday, I actually went with him to the emergency room 30 miles away, where they gave him a shot and a prescription for some high-powered antibiotics to fight the infection and help start the healing process. And it still took five more days for the pain to start subsiding.
___ I don't know anybody who likes pain. We do everything we can to prevent it or get rid of it. No one wants to see footage of all those daddies and mommas and sons and daughters in the military shipping off to war or being interviewed on the other side of the world away from home. I don't like the fact that it's usually our country that has to be the freedom fighters and liberators of the oppressed in our world and is now the leader in this war against terrorism. But if we didn't, who would?
___ Would the problem of terror just go away if we turned our backs and ignored it? Or would it grow worse and eventually cause more pain for all of us? What is feeding the hearts and minds of terrorists? Will they ever reach a point where their fundamental dogma to annihilate Israel and her allies is changed to peace and a willingness to co-exist with other belief systems?
___Saddam Hussein has chosen not to spare his country by stepping down. He's invested too many years building his iron-fisted reign on the misery and deaths of thousands of his own people. No one has stood up to him since the Gulf War, and now that the Bush administration has had the courage to do just that, we are depicted as the aggressors and warmongers. Right is wrong, and wrong is right.
___My son called today after visiting an ear, nose and throat doctor. His tonsils are huge, and they've been a recurring problem for years and are steadily getting worse. The prognosis? They have to be taken out. The process will be painful again for a little while, but it will eventually prevent even more pain and problems in the future. The operation will put him out of commission for a few days, but then he'll be back at his job, part of which is protecting visiting foreign diplomats from potential terrorist attacks.
___ I don't know anybody who doesn't want peace, but throwing paper resolutions at evil for years and then turning a blind eye to avoid confrontation when evil continued its reign unchecked is not peace. We all want an end to terrorism and oppression in the world, but too many have come to believe that if it involves us, it had better be pain- and sacrifice-free, or the cost is too great.
___ How quickly we forget the tremendous sacrifices for peace and freedom that established and sustained this great nation throughout its history. We live in a free country because of those sacrifices, and they were never achieved without pain—nor was the greatest act of sacrifice for peace and reconciliation of all mankind towards God.


___ Donna Van Cleve is a writer and wife of one, mother of two, and grandmother of Audrie, and is a new member of Great Hills Baptist Church in Austin.






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