Broken: A story of hope and forgiveness

by Kevin Mark Smith

  Chapter 38

  Spiritual Healing

  It was 9:00 A.M. on a Tuesday, the day before Pastor Rick planned to tell his staff about his plans to resign, and the Tuesday preceding the Wednesday night sermon he would deliver to the congregation telling them the same thing. It would be his last sermon behind a podium. A feeling of guilt hit him as he wondered that the Elders would do to fill the pulpit the next Sunday. The thought made him sad and mad at the same time. The latter emotion momentarily moved him away from guilt and toward a much more selfish feeling. Forty-three years old, he had spent more than twenty years of his life preaching the gospel and it was about to end. He felt like he had wasted most of his life. Since he’d made the decision to resign, the finality was all he could think about. Though he was certain it was what he had to do, he had yet to feel any peace about it. He felt so uneasy that he hadn’t even shared his decision with his wife and family. Indeed, his stomach churned every time he thought about a future without God being such an integral a part of his life. He did look forward to the month or so he intended to take off before embarking on his new career plans as an insurance salesman or perhaps real estate agent, but that was just about the only thing he looked forward to. For the first time in his life, Pastor Rick’s spirit was deeply disturbed about someone besides a member of his flock—himself.

  Sitting in an incredibly uncomfortable, hard plastic chair in the reception area of the Darkwell County Jail, Pastor Rick’s uneasy spirit had another unintended effect. He was at a loss for what he would say to Michael Thomas, convict and soon-to-be resident of the Oklahoma penal system. He always knew how to share the gospel with those in need of salvation, and even those sitting in prison or jail cells. He had even made visits to inmates in jails and prisons on occasion. But this time was different. This time he was there to offer spiritual counseling to a man who had almost killed one of the sheep in his own flock. This time it was personal. Would a shepherd offer comfort to a wolf that attacked his own sheep? He chuckled under his breath as he had a brief, non-resignation thought, though the laughter was quickly replaced by the fear of not knowing what he would say when facing Robert’s assailant for the first time.

  “I can’t believe this,” he said to himself, not loud enough for anyone else to hear. “A hundred jail visits where I can’t shut up and now I’m speechless.”

  A crying mother sitting next to him looked over and winced.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Just thinking out loud.” He was tempted to ask her if there was something he could do to help her, pray for her maybe. But he didn’t. He just look at the floor and closed his eyes.

  He imagined a session with Michael filled with total and utter silence. Michael, a young man he’d never met before, on one side of a glass wall with a phone plastered to his ear, and him on the other, neither saying a word. One of the two hoping desperately for words of hope, though at the moment Pastor Rick was uncertain which of the two needed such words the most.

  What am I doing here? His thoughts screamed.

  He was grasping his well-worn, leather-covered Bible firmly in his tightly clenched, sweaty-palmed right hand, unconsciously hoping that God’s Word would seep into his spirit via osmosis. He had no desire at the moment to open it, mostly for fear that God would tell him to stay at Stonelee. Turning back from his decision to resign was a prospect that terrified him more than the unknown direction his broken spirit was leading him.

  He wanted to stand up and leave, but his rump felt glued to the chair.

  He opened his eyes and looked at his watch. It was 9:25. “What’s taking so long?” he said aloud, this time loud enough to be heard by everyone else in the room, including the tearful mother. They each rolled their eyes at one another. One actually responded, “Tell me about it.”

  He heard a crackle in the speaker implanted in the glass separating the visitors from the desk sergeant. “Pastor Rick?” the voice emitted.

  He stood and approached the desk. “Yes?”

  Motioning to Pastor Rick’s right, toward a large steel door, he said, “I’ll buzz you in. Mr. Thomas will be in cubicle four.”

  “Thanks,” he said as he walked toward the door.

  He waited for the buzz and then pulled the door open. Moments later he was sitting in a chair just like the one he’d been sitting in moments before. Michael was not yet sitting on the other side, so he sat, wondering if he would have to wait another half hour or more. Thinking he might have a few more minutes, he glanced down at his Bible. The book’s worn and cracked spine was now soaked with nervous sweat. He opened the cover and read the very first passage his eyes caught. “Oh, my God,” he gasped.

  He heard a tap on the window in front of him and looked up. A young man, probably not much older than Robert, sat before him tapping the glass with his telephone handset. Michael put his handset to his right cheek and Pastor Rick took his off its hook and did the same.

  “Are you okay?” Michael asked.

  The question startled him until he felt a tear slide down his cheek and fall onto the Bible’s opened pages, directly on the passage that had caught his attention.

  “Yeah,” he replied. “I’m fine. How about you?”

  Michael shrugged his shoulders as pride put up its usual defense. “Who are you?” he asked.

  “Pastor Rick Matthews,” he answered as he wiped his face dry with a handkerchief that he’d just pulled out of his left pants pocket. “Robert Baxter told me you might want to talk.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, really.”

  “About what?”

  “You tell me.”

  He didn’t, not at first. For the first five of their maximum of fifteen minutes together per jail policy, they were mostly silent. The last ten, however, were very emotional, with Michael spilling his guts. He told him everything about his life, such as three different stepfathers over the years, two of which had abused him mercilessly, both physically and emotionally. He told him about the uncle that lived with him, his mother, and stepfather number two for three years beginning shortly after his tenth birthday. The uncle had begun molesting him in the middle of the night almost immediately, and didn’t stop until his mom kicked him out for a wholly unrelated reason. He refused to share his drugs with her and her husband.

  There was also the addiction problem.

  At twelve Michael learned that he could sneak into his mother’s whiskey stash and take daily swigs without her knowing. She drank out of it so often that she assumed it was her and no one else in the household consuming it. By the time he entered high school, he stopped remembering what it felt like to be sober. He was always at least a little buzzed.

  It became harder and harder to numb the feeling of helplessness his horrible existence gave him. That’s when illegal drugs entered his life. At fifteen the daily whiskey shots weren’t enough, so one day he drank the whole bottle, too much for his mother to miss. The confrontation was violent and immediate.

  “Michael!” she yelled when she pulled the bottle out of her top dresser drawer after arriving home from a long day at work.

  He was sitting in the living room, almost unconscious, with MTV videos blaring through the speakers that were placed five feet from each side of a large-screen, rear projection television. The music was loud and obnoxious, but Becky, his mom, had stopped complaining years before. It was easier to get drunk and pass out behind her closed bedroom door than to argue with a rebellious teenage boy.

  On this evening the music was louder than usual, though he seemed oblivious to the music or his mom’s screams from behind. She walked into the living room, stepped in between the TV and her son, and glared at him. His eyes were glossed over, still staring straight ahead. “Michael!” she yelled again, holding the empty whiskey bottle in her left hand and pointing at him with her right index finger, jabbing at the air violently. “What are you doing drinking my whiskey?”

  He felt numb all over, much more so than the relatively small amount
he had previously drank daily had made him. He heard a rumbling in his ears that barely resembled his mom’s voice, its definition made fuzzy by the incessant humming in his head, a humming that sounded like a hundred florescent lights buzzing at the same time. It was a surreal, distant experience that frightened and excited him at the same time.

  He looked up but said nothing.

  “Michael!” she yelled. “I’m talking to you!”

  He heard that one. “Huh?” he said, barely audible over the din of a Metallica song blaring through the speakers.

  She grabbed the remote control off the end table and punched the off button.

  “I said,” she repeated, in a normal tone of voice this time, “what are you doing getting in my stuff?”

  He dropped his chin into his chest and closed his eyes as his body lost the ability to stay awake and alert. Back in the moment, Michael told Pastor Rick, “I could barely stay awake to answer her and I’m sure she must have seen how stoned I was. A normal mother would have feared for her son’s life, right? But not Mom. Her only concern was replacing the whiskey. Maybe so she could close herself off from the mistakes of her past, I don’t know. Maybe so she could do what I was doing already: getting drunk and passing out. She stormed out of the house and drove to the liquor store—”

  Pastor Rick interrupted Michael’s retelling of his tragic past. “Drugs, too?”

  “Yeah. Mostly meth and pot, but I’ve never been in any trouble over that.”

  “It’s all the same, you know?”

  Michael pondered the question for a few moments, trying to understand what Pastor Rick meant by it. “I can walk away from the drugs, but not the alcohol.”

  Pastor Rick smiled quizzically. He knew better—he had seen the destruction in the shattered careers, families, and even lives of people he had counseled. He knew that methamphetamine was the most addictive substance on the planet and the most destructive. It not only took down the addict, but his family and friends. The meth head would do anything to get his hands on more meth, including making the drug in his own home, kids or not, and almost guaranteeing that eventually his kids would end up being raised by some other relative or perhaps social services. Then there are the unrelated, faceless victims, the ones whose homes are ransacked as the addict struggles to obtain the funds needed to buy the drug when making it isn’t an option.

  “That’s a lie and you know it.”

  Michael didn’t say a thing in response. He just shook his head in denial.

  “Besides, that’s not what I’m talking about,” continued Pastor Rick.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Addiction is about emptiness, and the addict’s hopeless attempts to fill that emptiness.”

  Over his shoulder Pastor Rick heard the door open and a cough. He looked over at the source, a sheriff’s deputy. “Your time is up.”

  “Okay,” he replied. “I’ll wrap it up.”

  “Sure, but keep it short.”

  He turned toward Michael. “It’s spiritual emptiness.”

  Michael couldn’t deny it, so he nodded in agreement.

  “Do you want to pray?”

  “Yeah.”

  Pastor Rick closed his eyes and nodded his head in reverence. “Dear Jesus, please help Michael see the purpose to his recent troubles. Help him to see that you are the only solution to his problems, not alcohol or drugs. Show him how this recent situation can lead him to find the only truth he can rely on, that his emptiness can only be filled by you. Amen.”

  They looked up at each other. Pastor Rick noted to himself that Michael’s eyes were wetter now than before they prayed, though tears had yet to fall. “Do you want to have the love of Christ in your heart?”

  He snickered, and that was all Pastor Rick needed to know that the time wasn’t right.

  “Would you like me to come back next week?”

  “Yeah,” he said, not hesitating. “That would be nice.”

  They hung up their handsets and stood. Michael waved goodbye as he turned around and walked to his exit.

  Pastor Rick left the jail feeling something he hadn’t experienced in a long time: a sense of purpose. After he sat behind the wheel of his white Oldsmobile Aurora and started the engine, he opened his Bible to the passage that had shocked him back to life.

  He read aloud from Psalm 34:18: “The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” He sat in silence for a few moments and then bowed his head to pray. “Thank you, God, for showing me what I needed to see. Thank you for helping me see that all of us need you and that sometimes even your own children need to be broken to draw closer to you. And thank you for showing me that you’re not yet done with me and my ministry. Amen.”

  He started the car and drove home. His time at Stonelee was not yet done. There were far too many Michaels out there needing to be saved, and he was the one God would use to save them.