The characters in this neck of the woods were a cross section of urban life that usually gets ignored and discarded. Much of their clothing was mismatched, tattered, coarse and varied as were the folks who wore them. The people themselves ranged from tough-eyed and street-wise to the haggardly and homeless. Mostly out of work, poor and with little hope for a life beyond this hellhole, these were the outcasts that almost every city across the world has.
They are tough though, amazingly so, and often possess a wisdom that is easily overlooked by the high and mighty of the uptown social cliques. Growing up without makes one learn to do without, but it can also teach us to find certain bits of joy that the rich and famous will likely never know. There was a depth within the eyes of these folks to which I found myself in odd admiration.
That said, the spirit of darkness also finds itself a place within the streets. There are violent gangs, predators of all sorts, and a lion’s share of mental sickness. Theft, murder and crime of every color littered this slum and I took no pleasure in navigating its tangle of treachery.
I pondered what it would be like to lie homeless in an alley here for even a single night. No doubt I could survive the woodlands and mountains as good as any, but this place was a horse of a different color. Here i was a duck out of water and admittedly a bit nervous as almost every street corner had a collection of hoodlums. They were like tigers waiting in ambush for a hapless straggler such as myself.
Any little mistake or mishap could be deadly in a place like that. As bad luck would have it, the truck was down to a quarter tank of gas and running a bit rough that day, putting my nerves even further on edge. The last thing I needed was for it to quit in the middle of a four-way, thus I rolled through as many intersections as I could so as to prevent just such an incident. My only option at the time was to keep driving, taking random turns and traversing the labyrinth of backstreets until hopefully finding the familiar.
However, it was upon this unpleasant detour in which something happened that would change my outlook and life forever. While slowly cruising one of many dark, dank and polluted back-streets that day, I beheld to my right a small girl, perhaps not over five or six years old, sitting on the concrete step just outside the door of an old broken-down row house. She looked to be in a pitiful state. Her face was devoid of the joy and curiosity as any small child should hope to have. Her hair was dirty and tangled. Her face too was darkened with dirt as she stared with empty eyes at the sidewalk beneath her feet, hands trembling from the cold or maybe something worse.
What struck me as hard as anything, however, were the cigarette burns on her face and arms. Standing a couple of feet over and leaning on the house was a haggardly, toothless woman. She was grossly overweight and wearing what looked as much like a sheet as it did a baggy old dress. I could see that the woman was verbally assaulting the child, pointing to her with the smoke she held between her two fingers.
She furiously wagged her arm back and forth in contempt from just behind the child’s position on the step. God only knows what she was saying, but by the look of things it was unlikely to be a loving parental scolding or discipline. It was out and out abuse and though I knew it in my heart, I so wanted to make a more pleasant excuse for what I saw.
Next to her, lying on the sidewalk, was a drunken sot of man, equally as haggard as the woman. He propped his head with one arm while grotesquely rubbing the girl’s thigh with a sickly sensual persuasion. Within easy reach of his other hand was a half-empty bottle of whiskey. My fatherly instinct wanted to jump out, grab the girl and take her to safety; and I fought every bit of reaction in me to do exactly that. A part of me was wondering if somehow I was really seeing this correctly, that perhaps I misinterpreted the situation, that perhaps there was some logical explanation for what I beheld.
Thus I slowed the truck while passing in front of the child’s position so as to hopefully get a better look at her condition. I somehow wanted to see into her eyes, to somehow make contact, to let her know that I saw her and cared. I’m not sure what I expected, but what I saw in her eyes was terrifying and while the glance likely did nothing for her, something within me snapped. What I beheld was an emptiness that I’d never seen. It was a hollow and broken soul without love or hope. She was in terrible physical condition, obviously and beyond doubt, a victim of physical abuse and God knows what else…
How could this be? I pondered. Why would anyone do that to another being? Why would someone burn a little child’s face? Why would they treat her this way? It made no sense. I’d never seen anything like this before and the insanity and cruelty of it simply didn’t compute in my brain. My emotions were somewhere between shock and anger. It literally took my breath away, but it infuriated me at the same time.
In the sake of self-preservation, it occurred to me that if I got out and made a scene, perhaps those bums might call the cops. That would have been a good thing however. What else occurred to me, though, is that one of these guttersnipes might also be packing a pistol. The woman was just plain crazy in her eyes and seemed like the type that would be all too glad to end my life on a whim, especially seeing her total lack of empathy for the child. I had a wife and child as well who needed me home that night, and thus I considered my options.
Perhaps if nothing else I could continue to drive around until I found a cop and then return to the scene with the police in control. That seemed like a plan and so I sped up in pursuit of the same. However, after another 15 minutes of becoming even more lost and with no police in sight, I was feeling ever more hopeless about the situation.
Ironically it was then, by complete accident that I actually happened upon the parts house that was the original goal of this trip to begin with. It was an odd stroke of luck as not only could I now get the parts I needed, but also I could call the police while I was there. I did call too, but was heartbroken by their response. In my shock of the moment I had failed to get the street name. I offered to try to find it of course, with the help of the police, but they’d have none of it.
To be fair, the police don’t typically dispatch a patrol car to follow someone who themselves is lost and on a wild goose chase. Then came the questions:
“Were they hitting her?”
“No.”
“Was she trying to get away?”
“No.”
“Was she injured?”
“Yes, she had at least a dozen cigarette burns”
“How do you know they were cigarette burns?”
“Because they were!”
“Are you sure it wasn’t chicken pox or something else?”
“Yes”
“How do you know?”…
By no means am I throwing the police under the bus. Their questions were simply the nature of police protocol and entirely legitimate at that. I get it. Police can’t make determinations based upon what you feel, but upon the facts. That said, I know what I saw and the defiled nature of that situation. If every other part of the girl’s condition could somehow be explained as innocent, the spirit of abuse and neglect was still guilty as charged.
Defeated, I got the parts for which I came and left. The drive back to the concrete plant was surreal; a snapshot of the girls face and eyes permanently etched in my mind. I had already challenged my religious beliefs, but I was now questioning my belief in the justice and love of an almighty god. How could he allow such a thing?
I found a cognitive disconnect in my beliefs: that a loving God was watching over us all the time, that He was always making the world right even when it was wrong, that God created us and even showed me the mysteries of the universe, only to thereafter allow such doom upon the innocent. Worse yet, I realized in that moment that the child I had seen was in all probability only one of millions in similar or worse conditions around the world.
I made it through the work day but was only too glad to get home that afternoon. Instead of going straight to the cabin as usual, however, I instead drove to a remote dirt road at the back of t
he farm and parked. I needed to be by myself for a bit and sort this out in my mind. There I sat for at least 20 minutes, fidgeting and nervous, desperately trying to make sense of this in context to my beliefs and what I had thus far learned from the little old man.
A storm was brewing in the clouds overhead as a front moved across the farm and quickly darkened the skies above. Within it were the powerful rumble of thunder and lightning; the wind also swaying the trees seemingly to the point of breaking. It was to be indicative however of the real storm that was building in me.
Something was happening; something was churning within me—a love for that little girl, a love so strong that I could not let go, a love I had never felt before in my life. It was a love more powerful than anything I’d ever known, but with it, within me, was a rage. I felt betrayed by God and I wasn’t humble about it in the least. In fact, I was mad as hell.
Where was His great concern? Where was His compassion, I marveled? He created us. He created her, but for what? For her to be a dog at the feet of the devil; a drunken molester and despicable wench? I spoke aloud:
(Trembling and vindictive in tone): How wonderful my own blessings; thank you, dear God for all the wonderful mysteries you’ve revealed to me. Weren’t you so thoughtful…You’ve given me everything; a wife, a child, a house, a home... I’ve got money… I’ve got a job, food, and, never mind the people in my life who love me…That’s great, just special. Lucky me, right?
(A brief pause, then screaming at the top of my lungs): How dare you! How dare you give to me without cease yet take from her, the helpless.
(I burst forth from the truck, now yelling at the sky): How dare you bring a soul into this world and allow it to be treated this way! Nice of you, dear Lord. Thank you for my salvation that you promised, and the curse you’ve laid upon one more worthy of blessing than myself!
(Picking up rocks now and throwing them at the sky): She’s done nothing to deserve this, and you’ve done absolutely nothing—nothing to fix it!
The more I spoke, the madder I got, tears of indignation dripping from my eyes:
Oh, “Show respect” I hear. No, -you show respect. (Another rock at the sky) An all-powerful creator who showed himself once 2,000 years ago, supposedly, and then went AWOL. You think I’m afraid of you because of a threat of hell-fire and brimstone? You can’t intimidate me—not now, not after what I saw today. You want somebody to pick on, somebody to curse? (Poking myself in the chest as if to dare God) You want to burn me in hell for speaking what I know to be the truth?! Then do it! You do what you think you have to do, and I will do the same *** **** thing! But I will not believe in a god that does this. Because if she can’t have you, then I don’t want you!
And I meant what I said too…
And wouldn’t ya know it, my friend, but at that exact moment, in that same instant in which those words left my mouth, something really did, for real, leave me. Hope left me. All hope, beyond all doubt, vacated my very being. All I could see in that moment was darkness, not outside, but inside myself. My whole outlook on life changed in that moment: all of my aspirations, all the good feelings and vision for tomorrow—these were gone but in a blink. The significance of my past and future, meaningless. Every bit of everything in me was over, done, finished. I had nothing. I was empty; my body was alive, but my soul, dead.
I fell to the ground, limp with desperation, every ounce of energy and self-preservation abandoned. There I lay in the mud, in the rain and lightning, groaning the genuine call of one who lie in hell. It was the groaning of the my spirit, the sorrow I felt, the pity. I felt the horror; I felt her horror. I lost cognizance of where I was or what I was doing. All I saw was her face and now my own nothing. I felt no responsibility to family or friends. I saw no need to move from where I was; the instinct for survival, gone.
I was wet and cold and didn’t care. Something in me had snapped. I passed out, even in the cold. I’m not sure how much time transpired, maybe an hour or two perhaps. I finally awoke still hopeless but bored, unsure what to do. I was unsettled where I was, as where I would be; this emptiness, a seemingly perpetual condition that I knew would follow me.
As much out of habit as to duty, however, I returned to the cabin soaked to the bone. I was home yet feeling so far away from everything. My wife also was home, fixing dinner—the routine. She was accustomed to me working in the rain, yet somehow noticed the glazed look in my eyes as I passed.
It was the 10,000-yard stare and straight to the fake-rain of my shower. My mind was demented now and disconnected. I felt nothing as I sat on the shower floor staring upward at the scalding spray that thawed by body but could not thaw my soul. I had ignored my daughter on my way in and now she too knocked on the shower door. Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, daddy. I never responded, nor could I. I was somewhere else, lost in a hellish mindset that words can never truly describe…
Later that night, I explained to my wife what had happened. She of course heard but didn’t listen, which only served to deepen my depression. Later I arose from bed, still tormented by the image of injustice. I made it about as far as the family room before lying in the middle of its hardwood floor. Oblivious to its discomfort, my mind still spinning as in a never-ending fall, I again passed out in the groaning of one so lost.
My spirit was crossing the great nothing, its own dark night of the soul. Regardless of what you may imagine that place is like, until you’ve actually been there, you can never truly know how empty it really is. Many people have been there since the beginning, but not all. Once there, very few ever make it out. It was forever in every direction and now I was smack-dab in the middle of it.
There was no horizon there, but only dark gray, with no earth beneath me and no sky above. In that place there was no right side up or upside down. It was endless and without the possibility of hope. I no longer cared if, or what, the Almighty took from me nor that He apparently did take something, my hope, the very thing that we so often take for granted on a daily basis.
There, the game of life is over; in that place there is no rescue. My salvation too was gone and I knew it, yet in the very middle of that great abyss was still me, lost, and the image of that little girl. No matter how I got there in that awful, awful place, no matter the power that put me there, there was no power powerful enough to take her from me. Somehow, I found myself caring more for her than I did for escape from the hell in which I now lived.
I fell asleep on that floor. I remember nothing of that night till the next morning. I didn’t dream or toss or turn, but was just completely out. I awoke to the call of my name, my wife looking down in bewilderment as she tried to wake the dead; Daniel, Daniel, Daniel! As I arose and wiped the drool from my mouth, the first image I saw in my mind was that same girl.
And so that day was the same as the last. That night, however, I called and spoke with a relative about the incident. It was difficult in my zombie-like state of mind, but I managed as best I could. After talking for a bit, I seemed to recall a verse in which the apostle Paul spoke of sacrifice. She remembered it off the top of her head: Romans 9:3, in which Paul stated that he wished himself accursed from Christ (i.e.,-salvation), for the sake of his kinsmen.
It is a bold statement to wish for such things, but oddly was exactly what I found myself doing only the day before.
“Paul actually said that?” I asked.
I suppose in all my years of indoctrination, I had come to believe that only one person, two thousand years ago, could do such a thing as that. That was Jesus’ job, wasn’t it? Beyond that and then, it was unthinkable that anyone else was in need of such a gesture as forfeiting a prize such as salvation.
Yet in all my learnings and revelations, it was the one thing I missed about the true nature of God, in fact, the biggest thing of all about God: that it’s not about what you have, a hope and salvation, but about whether or not the love in your heart is powerful enough to lay it all down for the ones you love; in this case, the person God put in front of me t
o love, that little girl.
Yet with nothing more than that realization, my sanity began to return. I just kind of snapped out of it. Still dazed a bit, I pondered for the next few hours and, honestly, till the dawning of the next day, but I awoke the following morning feeling somewhat better, though still deeply concerned for the child’s welfare. I so wanted to believe that maybe, just maybe, there was something more to God than mere vain blessings of health, wealth and wisdom; that maybe the lesson of the cross wasn’t just a one-off deal; that maybe something unlikely and good did happen to that child as a result of the very real, though short-lived, hell I suffered.
I would never again have validation though. What became of the child or whether or not she was still in that horrible situation was as much your guess as it was mine. I did drive back to that area of the city again that Saturday, but once again became lost without ever finding that same street and house.
Weeks went by, and so life goes on. Most of what my job entailed at the concrete plant was changing truck tires, yet the day would come, almost a year to the day later, when I would again find myself making a parts run to the same place I had the year before.
I suppose because I hadn’t found the parts-house correctly the last time, I had programmed nothing to memory about how to get there correctly this time either. I really hated driving in the city and by no large stretch of the imagination was once again lost. Here I was again in the same slums as last time and with no idea how to navigate the labyrinth of roads.
You can only imagine what I was thinking, however: Not again. My hands began to sweat, and I was itching from head to toe. I was nervous but was beginning to realize that God doesn’t do accidents and coincidences. I was nowhere near the mark of perfection in this respect, but was learning to go with the flow of what life/God put in front of me instead of fighting such circumstances.
The Book of Daniel and the Mystery of the Resurrection Machine Page 5
