One time when I lived in Toronto, I was walking across a parking lot. There were these two guys, leaning against a car eating sandwiches. One of them saw me coming and whistled. The other one looked up, turned to his companion and said, loudly enough that I could hear him, "No," in the inflection you use for a ridiculous suggestion. The first replied, "Yeah," in a defensive tone. I kept walking, happy to know that I may not be gorgeous, but at least I'm debatable.
The most Canadian thing I've ever done is sing the anthem at a hockey game. This being a smallish town, I found my name in the paper the next day in the sentence, "RW -- sang the anthem last night and it was clearly audible." Um. Thanks?
Last night the GTI had a meeting, as we sometimes do. Meetings usually consist of equal parts planning, venting and hope.
We talked a bit about our friend R. who we're so FREAKIN proud of. He's got his 6-month sober pin which is beyond belief. I first met him almost 3 years ago when B., one of the singers in our worship band, brought him to a practice. This guy had been to visit R. on his way to the church and R. was so down and discouraged by his inability to get cleaned up that B. brought him along so we could pray with him. And we did. We stopped practicing and sat in a circle, listened to R. pour out his heart and then we all prayed. I think people all over town had been praying for him for years. It's not a big town.
Now that he's sober, R. is remembering all of the people who helped him out over the years. Y., who has the dubious distinction of being a Rev., started coming to dinners last year. He says that R. reminded him of a time several years ago when Y. bought R. a burger.
R. hitchhiked to the town next door last Sunday to go to a particular church to find a particular man who, last year, had invited him home for a meal. R. was able to thank the man's widow for her husband's kindness.
R. told us that recently he'd been walking along the sidewalk and a cop car pulled up next to him. The cop called him over and told him how great it was to see him sober and doing well.
He credits God with his success, but he does work hard. He goes to AA meetings almost every day, hitchhiking if he can't get a ride.
Some people, when the conversation is over, say goodbye or see ya or gotta go. R. says, "God is good." He used to say the same thing when he was drinking. It sounds different now.
We also talked about another friend. She'd been away for a while at rehab. She's been working hard at getting cleaned up from her addiction and was doing really well. Problem is, when she got out of rehab she had no where to go except back to the Motel. For reasons which escape me, she was assigned a room in crack alley. We're very concerned. We keep thinking, after all she went through to get clean, now this.
This is one of the most difficult things for a post-evangelical girl in loving these people. I've said, and still do, that they're both miracles. They've both looked for and received strength from God to break free. They've both had miraculous turn-arounds. But what do you do when the miracle is temporary?
What do you do when it seems like miracles are just in the eye of the beholder?
It's not how I was raised. The stories I heard about lives like this were spectacular successes where people were delivered from addictions and lifestyles and never looked back. These stories fed us on the power of God to heal and perfect.
It's a lot more difficult to see the power in the life of a woman who knows God loves her and who loves him back and who reads the Bible more consistently than I do and whose faith seems unshakeable, but who only surfaces long enough to learn to breathe again and then gets sucked back under.
It's exhausting. Like watching your team in the Stanley Cup finals, almost win. So close. Well maybe next year.
I want to see her free. No more relative miracles. No more debatable victories. No more "Nice try". No more almost.
I want to weep.
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