UPDATE!
The letter to the Higher Learning Commission (referenced below) will be posted this weekend, along with a letter to Rev. Billy Russell, the pastor of First Baptist Church of Bolivar.
Some have requested information on the death of Marie's widowed sister, Teresa (also referenced below), which may be located in the archives.
In the Spring of 2007, after several years of anticipation and planning, Marie and her sister, Teresa, and family were making plans to move together to Montana.
Teresa had already visited their new hometown, put money down on a rental apartment in Montana, secured a good job as a nursing assistant at a local hospital, and found a church ... when, in March 2007, she was diagnosed with kidney cancer.
Teresa underwent surgery within the week, but had a heart attack and "died" while on the operating table, though she was revived.
Based on the severity of Marie's disability, the court denied her sister, Marie, guardianship over her sister's care.
As a result, Teresa was placed under Medicare, denied rehabilitation, and slowly starved to death.
Likewise, due to her disability, Marie was denied guardianship over the four children, Marie's niece and three nephews.
[In 1996, a fifth child, the oldest son, Chon Chon (Ascension, Jr.), was killed by a drunk driver -- along with Teresa's husband, the father of all of the siblings. The two remaining older boys survived the crash -- at least physically.]
As far as Marie knows, the two youngest children are in foster care and she has some limited communication with her niece. She has not heard from the two older nephews, who were left homeless after the foreclosure of the family's farm.
For the Archive of this: Scroll down to the March 5, 2007 entry and work back up to June 5, 2007. It's in a backwards jumble, but none of us has had the heart to reread and reorder the posts by date. (here).
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A POINT IN PAIN
(posted Friday, February 27, 2007)
When asked why she had apparently changed course (see "Re-formation" here and "Confirmation" here), Marie replied, this morning:Again, I was torn last night by nightmares of my sister's suffering and death ... and my own hot tears upon waking only worsened the torment that I could not be there to defend her from the abuse, to wipe away her tears and to hold her as she died.
And, I can not even think of her remaining four children -- who have been orphaned, torn apart and thrown into the foster care system, or onto the streets -- without being consumed with grief and despair.
My own pain was one thing, but there comes a point in pain when the truth about Southwest Baptist University needs to be told, the truth about how my family has been savaged and destroyed by my experience at Southwest Baptist University.
Others families need to be warned.
Reasonable people, I believe, will quickly reach a simple conclusion: Given their record of sociopathic organizational incompetence, is Southwest Baptist University even qualified to provide academic services?
This is not a personal vendetta; it is irrelevant to me how the change of leadership is brought about -- whether by a change in philosophies, procedures, and policies, or by a change in personnel.
It is not enough to wave a wand over the ego-ridden incompetence and arrogance of decades of abuses and claim it is now "under the blood."
Such self-serving nonsense is madness and blasphemy, which diminishes Christianity and Baptist principles to no more than the egoistic ravings of a wanton blood cult.
It can't go on.
This needs to be addressed in a mature and orderly fashion.
Southwest Baptist University has seen my medical records; they know that my condition is permanent and most likely terminal.
Beyond that, they know that it is simply a matter of time -- without the extraordinary and specific medical intervention, such as that care which is available at my new university, which is currently researching and treating organophosphate and solvent poisoning.
Further, they know that the medical degeneration process can be (and certainly been) hastened by the petty tyrannies and the privation, which have been unscrupulously and viciously imposed for years.
It is only the miraculous Grace of God and the harrowing sacrifice of friends and family that, as a result of those privations, I have not already perished.
And, yes, be assured that when I do finally succumb to their abuses, they will slander me all the more heartily and gleefully when I can't defend myself.
If I must die for their sins, at least I want the comfort that others will not suffer from their madness.
This morning, I have begun to pray a new blessing for Southwest Baptist University and the Missouri Baptist Convention: that they and their families receive from God -- the God of Justice and Mercy -- the same Mercies that they have shown to me and my family.
If that prayer be a curse and not a blessing, then it is a curse of their own devising.
What Southwest Baptist University and their allies have done, what they have BECOME, is not "alright"; it was not -- and IS not -- an "accident."
Some reasonable and moral authority needs to address this: that is why I am asking for the intervention of the Higher Learning Commission, which is SBU's accreditation authority.
The letter to the Higher Learning Commission will be posted shortly, along with a letter to Rev. Billy Russell.
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in his role as chairman of the House health care task force:
