Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid.
~ Frederick Buechner
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| Source |
Yesterday was heavy with hopelessness
for humanity.
I feared for the life of my boys last
night inside a fast food joint where an agitated, mentally unstable
man paced the floor and rallied angry, held his fist in his pocket
grasping what might have been a weapon...and everything I thought I
believed about nonresistance challenged me the instant my faith came
up against my fear.
Our french fries sat steaming but
untouched. We were, in a sense, held hostage. The man's writhing
angry body draped across the dirty floor, blocking that swinging door
with its golden arches cursing and forbidding any of us to leave, his
guttural groans bouncing off walls and tables. My heart beat for the
Lord's touch of grace upon this man, for God's will in this scary thing,
but when the man pointed and laughed maniacally directly at me,
singling me out with a terrifying glare, first I wished my
husband was there—a military-trained expert marksman—with
the concealed weapon he used to carry.
With careful hands I texted
Ryan, telling him I loved him and that I was scared, and avoided the
foreboding words I wanted to say:
If I shouldn't come home, take care
of our babies. Make sure they know I love them.
“I want you to get a pistol
again...soon,” I texted instead, knowing the words would surprise
and sober him as much as they did me. I was afraid for our lives, and
I wished both for peace and for pistol. He has rallied for having one again,
a pistol I know he would never use to harm unless an innocent
person's life was at stake.
Unless.
It breaks my heart all the same.
We are none of us innocent people.
I do not like guns in general and I do
not believe they are the answer to an epidemic of hate and hurt. I don't honestly know how you can turn the other cheek toward Jesus, toward peace, with a pistol in your pocket. I
grieve today that my heart reached for violence in the gripping midst of last night's fear, that it leapt for safety and not first for salvation.
This is
not about politics; it is about peace. Peace that transcends all
understanding.
So I muddied the waters of what once
was crystal clear because when the fire got hot, I valued my life and
the lives of my family more than I trusted in the name of Jesus. I
trusted the assurance of my husband's expertise, trusted that a
bullet in a crazy man's thigh might really save our lives...every one of
them already saved.
Yesterday, I saw humanity at its
bleakest, a gray haze over the world I'm tempted to call home.
But it isn't.
It isn't home, this earthen-house, so
broken and blood-soaked. It's so tempting to forget its temporal nature
when the days run long and the body aches hard and I forget the joys
of this life are only notes in an orchestra of heavenly preview. I
forget that I am in this broken world only on official business...my
passport stamped with redeeming blood, my permanent address given at
Calvary.
In fear, I forget.
The police took twenty minutes to
arrive, minutes I spent texting my husband, praying beggy prayers of
safety and desperation, eyeing the crazy man's pocket and planning
our escape at the first glint of gunmetal. By the time the lone
officer pulled slowly into the restaurant, armed and heroic, the
crazy man had been swallowed by night. Only then did I pray for this man's healing, for his safety, for his soul if it needs it, and his hurt
and his life worth much as mine.
He was gone and life went on. No fanfare. No media. The police took interviews. The fry machine sizzled and sparked into business as usual. Hamburgers were chewed by teeth still fear-chattering while we strangers all looked around at each other's goosebumps and stunned faces and wondered what we were supposed to do now, our frail makeshift family, united in an instant over terror and iced tea.
The boys and I got to the car and headed back
southward, silent and shaken on the highway. The scene recurred through my conscious on a loop, restarting every mile until my husband's call broke through.
He announced that the two kids at home needed an immediate treatment
for head lice, which we later learn were passed on by my daughter's cherub-faced friend, curls always adorably tangled, whose home is filled with filth and animal feces but is starkly empty of a mother. Hers is just another kind of broken
home, I know, reminiscent of this earth which stinks and crawls with
the infestation of destruction. I groaned with the inconvenient
timing of this minor plague, so desperately needing something of
beauty to redeem.
I stopped at a store and scanned grocery shelves for the
three-step RID kit in the white box, the one that makes me nauseous to purchase, but a woman, worn with wrinkles and raspy cigarette-stale breath, began yelling at her husband and the pharmacist behind the counter beside me.
“CANCER?! When did I have cancer? I DIDN'T have cancer, you
lying sack of shit! I'm perfectly healthy! I'm FINE, damn it! I WILL
NOT DIE!”
She thrashed tearful at her husband's shirtsleeves; misty-eyed man hushing
and pulling her close, the woman swinging and spitting on them both.
So much hurt, here. So much darkness.
Have mercy.
Forty seconds later, a different woman
passed by, crying into a cell phone that her husband had started
making meth again, that she didn't want to live anymore, and the
whole black night reeked hard and heavy of Hell on Earth. I wanted to give up my citizenship right then and there in the Beauty department, to cash in the earthly heartbeat I'd
been so scared to lose hours earlier just to make the madness stop.
I tried to muster hope, to bring a holy
thought to mind that could bring me back from this nightmare, but I could land on nothing but the question of where gunmetal fits into grace.
...where gunmetal fits into grace.
Recoiling again at the darkness that flooded
these desperate lives, I feared despite truth that evil could triumph
on a night like this, and I wept.
Just a few blocks from home the radio sang
loud, “Though darkness fills the night, it cannot hide the light.
Whom shall I fear?” but the song ended before the darkness did, so
the music faded into a radio interview. A meek and whisper-thin voice
gathered strength in narrating her own horrific survival story
through the car speakers, and our scathed spirits sat seatbelted
stiff in our bodies, wincing at the endless grief of the night.
“I love Jesus,” the woman declared
in shaky whispers, “because I know He forgives me for being a
battered woman.”
The airwaves went silent; the
interviewer, wordless.
Did you catch that?
She
loves the Lord who forgives her for being
battered...beaten and stabbed by a man whose heroin addiction split her lips and broke her legs, whose violence killed their unborn child.
Forgiven. For being battered.
After hearing the story, I only know what I don't know at all.
I don't know what forgiveness even is for a
God like that, for a person like me. I don't know what it looks like
to act justly and to love mercy anymore, when evil breathes near
enough to tickle my neck hair.
I don't know what faith looks like so
full there is no fear. I don't know how to long for the heart of
Jesus more than I do, how to gather trust up around my neck and
settle into its warmth and assurance when it's all I can do but to
whisper, "My God," at the madness. "Have mercy."
I don't know how to pray or what to
pray for when the world seems eclipsed with suffering. I only know
that no bullet can take me. No bullet will save me because a nail
already has.
What I know—all I I know—is that
there is no genesis in wickedness. Evil cannot create. It can only
destroy. Darkness disintegrates and deteriorates the sound of that
angel orchestra, the familiar melody of home still faint in the
weariness of my heart.
Demolition does not stop demolition. In
response to creation, we create. In response to destruction, we
create even more. We can cover gray haze with orange paint, redeem
hopelessness with the redemption and beauty of words made gospel, songs
and movement and laughter and wonder that shines pinholes of
grace-light through cloaks of fear, singing the joy-song of home.
In creation alone, I stop wishing for safety
and start seeking my Savior. I call Him in with words in graphite,
words of sacrifice, of love, of the home my heart sings for. Evil
destroys but holy creates. Holy redeems and holy survives. Holy glimmers bright with glory, brighter
than bullets and gunmetal, brighter than anger, brighter than fear.
Have mercy.
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