And amazingly, when Tina bounced down to her apartment to ask Alicia (whom we rarely saw) if she could go with us on Sunday, she said yes. Not only that, she told Tina that she planned to start going with us. And she did! As a result, we started seeing more of Alicia. She began to eat dinner with our missional community, and she started asking questions about God. Suprisingly, she took notes during the teachings and then sat on our couch and pelted us with questions.
It’s important to note that Alicia, Michael, and Tina have some disturbing though sadly common pieces to their story. Alicia has recently divorced her drug-addicted, abusive husband (also Tina’s dad). He’s been in jail most of the time we’ve known her. Michael was also abused, and Tina saw things no child should. As a result, our girls now know that drugs can make people violent; I certainly never expected to broach that topic at ages four and six.
Now Alicia is permanently disabled and survives on state and federal aid and a little bit of money that her dad left her. She spends the bulk of her time in bed, feeling too bad to get up, feed the kids…do anything. She doesn’t drink or do drugs, but she takes enough prescription medication to fill her entire bathroom drawer (she showed me). And despite repeated efforts to quit, she still smokes. When I met Alicia, she had a sign on her door that let the UPS guy know what to do with any boxes if she didn’t answer the door; the last sentence on it said, “I’m disabled.” And that’s how Alicia saw herself. That’s who she thought she was.
About the third Sunday Alicia attended the Gathering with us, one of our elders taught on the power of the Gospel. He talked about God creating us to love and enjoy him and about how we rebelled against that plan. He told us about Jesus coming to purchase our lives from death and give us back our original identities as daughters and sons of God. He talked to us about faith and repentance and lies and truth. I watched Alicia cry when she heard that truth. When the teaching was finished, I turned to Alicia and asked her if she believed everything she’d just heard. She said yes, and I was overjoyed!
It took me about six months in our apartment before I gave God credit for his genius. Most healthyish families in the U.S. have a plan that goes something like this: We’re going to save our money/leverage ourselves so that we can move into a nice home where everyone has his or her own bedroom, and we have a yard for the kids. It makes sense. Our chief goal as Americans is intellectual, emotional, and financial independence. Period. And why on Earth would I rent if I could own (current housing market excepted), and why would I stay in a loud apartment complex with who knows what kind of people in it when I could move my kids to a safe, quiet environment with other nice families?
Read Page 3 >>
