I remember being captured by a moment that would change my life forever. I was fourteen years old and it was summer. I was playing near the sugar beat factory at the Delta in Tracy, California. The Delta is a waterway used to irrigate crops and flows directly out to Pacific Ocean. I used to go there often with friends to get away from the noise of my brothers and the closed confined spaces of the very small apartment we lived in. I grew up poor in the central valley of Northern California and would go to the sugar beat factory to think, reflect, hunt for crawdads, and be stupid with my friends; we would even kiss girls and smoke cigarettes for fun there.
My heart was beating faster than usual and the wind blew hard against my skin. There was always this strong smell at the sugar beat factory near the Delta that gave me the chills; the kind of chills that those sour candies would give me when I ate them. On that day I distinctly remember feeling my heart beating within my chest. I realized that life was sacred! Not like those little wax Jesus figurines, or rosary bead necklaces… but sacred like the first time I met my wife, or when my brother got married. This was a defining time in my life; it was the day where things would really change for me.
My friends and I went out to the sugar beat factory after school was over that day to light bottle rockets and talk about the girls we all had crushes on. We were typical kids; curious, and pushing the envelope in everything we did. We were never satisfied though. We would try something and move on to the next thing as soon as we had it mastered. It was only a matter of time before life in our two square mile radius would begin to get old, and we would need something new.
On this day our newest challenge to conquer would appear to us in a clear plastic bottle labeled Jose Cuervo on the side. My friend had “borrowed” a bottle of his dads Tequila. While my friends were taking drinks of it I was trying to figure out what I was going to tell my mom when she asked why I smelled like alcohol. I spent a few minutes painfully deciding if I really wanted to do this. “I mean, do I really want to take a drink of this stuff?” In all my rational I decided that it would be much better for me to get grounded for a few weeks then to lose all my friends respect at school? So I determined that it would be best to come up with a good story to tell my mom as to why I smelled like the inside of a bar on a Saturday night. I decided that I had the perfect story to give her, so I quickly grabbed the bottle out of my friend’s hand and took my first drink… “Yuk! You’ve got to kidding me. Why would anyone want to do this to themselves on purpose? This is disgusting!” I remember being very disappointed at this new experience. It was nothing like I had expected, and certainly not anything I would be interested in trying again… at least this is what I thought at the time.
I suddenly had this sinking feeling inside. I felt myself saying, “Jesse what the heck are ya doing? You know better than this! Why are you doing this anyway?” I didn’t feel right about it at all… but at the same time I knew I could not take it back. I knew that I had committed to it, and now I was going to have to live with the consequences. Luckily it wasn’t anything that a long walk and a bottle of mouthwash couldn’t hide. This was at least what I thought at the time, all the while I was unaware of how I was slowly breaking down the beauty of innocence in my life.
As I walked home that afternoon I felt guilty and knew that what I had done was wrong. I didn’t realize that drinking alcohol that afternoon was the preface for what was to come. There was no way to fully prepare my heart for the blow that was waiting for me on the other side of the door of my house. I was trying to hold back the tears of what I had done as I got home that evening mainly out of fear of being caught. I kept telling myself, “be strong Jesse, don’t let mom find out, you’ll be so busted if mom finds out…” I wanted to tell mom everything that I was feeling. But I knew that I couldn’t, it would break her heart too much and I didn’t want to be responsible for that.
When I got home I looked around and something was in the air. It was a strange sort of feeling, the kind you don’t really want to face. The kind that makes you want to pull the blankets over your head and hide away for a while until the danger passes. It’s as if my parents had just made a decision that was going to affect me. I looked over at my mom and saw that she was a wreck; I figured my dad had pissed her off by spending all the money or something? But this was far worse than that and I knew it. I looked at my dad and he had this look on his face that he was sorry; sorry for what he was about to do, and sorry for what he had already done, but not sorry enough to make things right. He was too tired for that, and he had gone way too far for that.
My father grabbed a few things and left us alone at the house. I heard my mom up all night crying. I tried to comfort her by telling her that everything was going to be all right, but everything wasn’t all right and we both knew it. Something had been desecrated, defiled, and things in our home would never be the same again. The fall out would be thick, the night would be dark, and the pain would sink deep. I had to be strong for her, I had to stand tall and be her knight in shining armor; but something told me that even I couldn’t be that person. My heart was torn out of my chest. I didn’t know what to do so I ran back to the Delta and cried. I laid my head back against the root of this large tree, and prayed to God. Something in all of this left me feeling hollow. The axe had split the crown of my heart and the pain would soon be buried by anything and everything at arms length to suppress the levy from giving way any further.
After my parents’ divorce I would spend the next few years of my life making decisions; some good, some bad, but mostly all with the intent of trying to cover up a wound from my parents’ divorce that would never fully recover. I medicated the pain inside my heart while searching for answers. I would often scream out loud, “God, why did my family fall apart? What kind of a world am I living in? How could you allow this to happen to us?”
I think this was the first time I saw the affects of the broken and shattered world that I lived in. I somehow believed I was immunized to the messed up world around me, I never thought it would find me the way it did. But I soon realized that the world has ways of breaking down what God intended to be made strong.
Here are some insightful words from C.S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain. “We humans have deliberately abused our free-will, one of God’s best gifts to us. And we are not getting any better - not even the animals treat other creatures as badly as humans sometimes treat other humans. From the moment a creature becomes aware of God as God, and of itself as self, there is the danger of self-idolatry, pride. But God has the antidote: he saw the crucufixion of his Son in the act of creating the first nebulae. God himself assumes the suffering nature which evil produces, and offers forgiveness, and life in Christ.”
I have since learned to trust God unconditionally and have allowed Jesus to become my source of strength and confidence because pain is a part of life that we all must endure. The Apostle Paul teaches us that earthly pain is momentary. In 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 the Apostle Paul says, “Therefore we do not despair, but even if our physical body is wearing away, our inner person is being renewed day by day. For our momentary, light suffering is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison because we are not looking at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen. For what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.”
I am constantly learning that we aren’t aware of the glory that lies ahead for us; the living on earth nor the glory that awaits us in heaven -therefore many of us never pursue faith in Jesus. We are mostly unaware that God is calling us to live a life that is reckless in its pursuit to know Jesus intimately and to abandon all that stands between us and the perfection we find when we give our lives to Jesus. We are paralyzed in the absence of truth that has decayed the beauty meant for our earthly existence; and in our paralysis we are pinned by the weight of brokenness, suffering, pain, and grief with no way out but self medication and loathing that leads to deeper depths of despair. But there is power and healing through Jesus name that promises healing.
Mark 2:6-12 says: Now some of the experts in the law were sitting there, turning these things over in their minds: “Why does this man speak this way? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” Now immediately, when Jesus realized in his spirit that they were contemplating such thoughts, he said to them, “Why are you thinking such things in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up, take your stretcher, and walk’? But so that you may know that the Son of Man 9 has authority on earth to forgive sins,” – he said to the paralytic “I tell you, stand up, take your stretcher, and go home.” And immediately the man stood up, took his stretcher, and went out in front of them all. They were all amazed and glorified God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this!”
When we are in relationship with Jesus we have power over all decay and can finally live in freedom. I love this because it speaks to my current messed up condition. It reminds me that no matter how far away I am from God, He is never far from me.
