Dear Inner Circle,

At our Sunday service in Bondi this week, for an hour I nursed a little boy who was just seven days old. I’m in love! What an honour! At one point he squirmed a bit and I naturally assumed his Mum would take him back. Instead she produced a little bottle of expressed breast milk and I fed this little man. Mum was pretty laid back for a first-time mum and I was blown away to be absorbed in the mystery and wonder of life. That which is most precious is also most fragile.

A woman sat in front of me this week and asked if I knew a counsellor that would help her sort through some of the issues she’s carried since childhood. This woman is tough enough to make the Bandidos behave at a strip club and yet there has always been something fragile about her. She’s raised a crop of kids who are bright and independent, and she should be proud that she fought hard to educate herself and stay in work. Yet mostly when we talk, she tells me what is wrong with the world and 95% of the time she tells me that people should, “toughen up” and make the most of what they have. But I know that her desperate tears have been heard by no-one. I know that she left home in her early teens, not because she was in love but to escape a pathetic human being that didn’t deserve the title of ‘Dad’. I know that all of her failed relationships happened not because she failed to try with all of her might, but because she seemed destined to be drawn to men who would abuse her. I never thought this day would come, but she realised that all her messages of “toughen up” were really her message to the little girl within. This week, it looks like she’s found a bit of compassion for that little girl and wants to seek help in knowing how to befriend her. Those things that are most precious are also most fragile.

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