Broken
The young French girl was fast asleep when the walls of her house seemed to shake. She then heard loud voices and got out of bed to see what was happening. The nine-year-old Marie-T Lavieille opened the door to the kitchen and saw a strange sight. A large man was seated in the middle of the room. His face was painted black, and he was wearing a helmet with leaves and a khaki uniform full of pockets. He was holding his right arm and speaking words that she could not understand. Her mother and brothers stood around him as he kept saying over and over, “Broken, broken.” After a while, the injured man bandaged his own shoulder and gave Marie a chocolate bar from one of his pockets. One of her brothers drove him somewhere to get medical attention. It was a night she would never forget. Her family had helped an American paratrooper of the 82nd Airborne Division. Marie later said of the incident:
‘Broken’—this first English word remains burned in my memory. For me, I was just 9 years old—and because of this extraordinary experience—I became an English professor, often serving as an interpreter during ceremonies of the anniversary of D-Day.423
Sometimes we forget how impressionable a child can be. My wife and I once met an extremely talented illustrator of children’s books. I will never forget his concern for how a young mind might perceive his artwork. He was convinced that a violent image could be fixed in the memory of a child, with lasting consequences. In our present age of television and video games this seems like an almost quaint notion: to guard the images and protect the minds of our children. The story of Marie and the paratrooper is a reminder of how important it is to keep trying, no matter how difficult is seems. A child’s images are lasting. We need to make sure that as many as possible are wholesome and uplifting.
But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.
—Matthew 18:6