With Healing in His Wings (Gabrielle)
August 23, 2007 by Gabrielle
I am in the middle of writing a story. I’ve been in the middle of writing this story for about a month now. And I just don’t want to go back to it. I know what will happen next; it isn’t that hard to describe. But it’s heart-breaking. And I just don’t want to go through it.
This is the second time I’ve sat down to write without any thought in my mind as to what story I’ll write. I start typing and just let words and thoughts wander out my fingers. Last time a little boy lost his voice, couldn’t communicate with his mother and was about to be evicted from his home. I made myself cry with that story. It ended happily, but I dragged these poor people through the dirt to get there. And now I’m in the middle of another story with another character who is about to be shown yet again that her father hates her. I am pretty sure the story will end up okay for her, but I just don’t want to write this next part. I sit down at my computer, I open the file, picture what happens next and just freeze. I want to swoop into my own story and rescue this sweet child.
I’ve wondered why I write sad stories. In fact, I’ve had some very harsh conversations with myself about why my brain seems stuck on the vale of tears. I don’t actually enjoy suffering, you know. So why is it that sorrow and sadness are what I write about if I don’t focus very hard on something else?
I said to Seth once that I was glad he was finishing up Dirty Secrets because now he could get himself out of the gutter and stop seeing all the evil committed under the sun all the time. He told me that in some ways constantly seeing evil and sorrow is the life he’s chosen. He has chosen to see the evil people do to each other and to notice the broken left in its wake. And he has chosen to put himself and his family right in the midst of those broken people so that we show them the love of the Healer Who puts people back together.
I chose to live in the same place. It wasn’t ultimately my decision, but Seth and Crystal asked my opinion and I said I would follow them where ever. And I asked God to mold me to fit where I ended up. And right now I live in the midst of broken people who have been brutally hurt by those who were supposed to protect them. Sometimes they have been so hurt they don’t even understand that they’re wounded. For them life consists of broken promises, broken hearts, and broken skin. And we are here to tell them it doesn’t have to.
Sadly, I don’t think many Christians look for the broken or love them when confronted by them. The world certainly doesn’t care about the broken. I know there are some in our neighborhood who see the drug dealers and drug users as completely worthless. “If we could just get rid of the roaches and fill the neighborhood with good people like me then Heaven will have come to earth†pretty much sums up this opinion. But “roaches” are people too and they bear the image of the Healer. Roaches are just people who are broken and need someone to love them enough to put them back together. But the “good peopleâ€, whether Christian or not, just turn their eyes away.
So I write stories. I write stories that break my heart because I know they aren’t fantastical or exaggerated. I write stories so that maybe someone else will read them, see the image of God in the broken and want to go love them. I write stories so that maybe the broken will see the healing that could be. I write stories because in the middle of evil and sadness is where I have chosen to live and I must never forget that or the One Who called me here. And I pray that He would use my stories and my life to show healing and love to the poor, the weak, the oppressed, to those world calls worthless who have never known either.
It is sad, but for many of us the “roaches” take their toll. I spent four years in a neighborhood even rougher than yours. In the end I belive that the time made me mean. I never had a bad temper or was easy to anger but the time made me both.
I live in Eureka now and it is still strange. If I go out to my car at night and see someone walking down the sidewalk in my direction I still tense up. In Peoira that guy on the sidewalk was a real danger. In Eureka its just a guy walking home.
I guess my only point is that you may be there to shine a light for others, but always rember that some of what they are may also rub off on you. If the old guy calls them roaches understand that this comes from him spending years being afraid to walk to his car at night.
I spent years living in a university town. People used to bitch about the students but they were not roaches for students are no real danger. The old man is afraid (rightly so), and that fear is rotting his soul.
Please do not take this as a move out of the hood note. Just like doing mission work in some far off local some are called and god gives them the strength.