c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Dale Hanson Bourke is publisher of RNS.)

UNDATED _ I was so young _ barely 4 _ when the abuse began.

It came at the hands of my mother, the woman I expected to protect me. Instead, she looked at my long, flowing hair and something snapped. She announced her intentions to tame it and me.

I can hardly describe what followed. Each morning the torture began. Inch by inch she inflicted pain. I would beg her to stop, but she only became more determined.

Sometimes she would end a session by tying ribbons at the ends of my braids as if to deny the excruciating pain she had inflicted. Finally, one day I could not take it anymore.”Stop!”I cried. She had finally won.

There are few pictures of me at the age of 5. I am hiding or have a hat pulled low over my face. I am trying to escape the camera and the shame.

For under that hat is a pixie, that horrible haircut inflicted on young girls of my era. The haircut had no purpose but to rob us of self-esteem.

Forty years later, I still feel the pain. Whenever I enter a hair salon a small voice inside cries out,”Not a pixie. Please, not a pixie.” When our family gets together and recounts the”traumas”of childhood, this is my story. My sister’s has to do with the time she got hives while on vacation. She thought she was dying. I may have helped the theory along.

Both incidents truly were traumatic at the time. But we were kids. It never occurred to me to blame any recent behavior on my pixie haircut. Maybe I should try it.

It seems to work for Bill Clinton. He got a smart woman like Hillary to fall for his poor-little-Billy line. She’s even repeating it. Poor little Hillary.

But here’s the problem: If a guy can overcome poverty and obscurity to become the leader of the free world, can’t he get over two women fighting about him?

Sadly, many functioning adults were abused as children. Really abused. Physically. Sexually. Emotionally. I’m not a psychologist, but having two women love you so much neither wants to give you up hardly seems to fall into the same category.

And there’s another issue. The Clintons both claim to have faith. Life-changing, death-defying faith. Faith that is greater than all our sin, as the song goes.

Faith of that sort doesn’t just make everything right. It isn’t a magic wand to wave at your problems. But it is a place to go when you are tempted or confused. It is a way to face your darkest side and not be so frightened by it that you blame your faults on others.

Faith gives you the guts to walk away from power or fame if that’s what it takes to get your head and heart straightened out. Faith enables you to do what you have to do to make things right.

But faith does not enable sin. And faith does not excuse it.

If Mrs. Clinton chooses to forgive her husband for his behavior, that’s her choice. But she should know better than to blame President Clinton’s present behavior on his past. It’s bad psychology and even worse theology.

DEA END BOURKE