Chapter Seven
It seemed appropriate somehow that I would spend the day before my trip playing basketball. The cold weather didn’t stop us all from being out in shorts and short sleeves on that beautiful Friday, the motion and activity keeping us warm enough. I was guarding Stanley, and even though he was older and less mobile, he played smart, leaning on his positioning and creative passing to get things done. He faked one way, then charged the other, and just when I started moving toward the basket, he pulled up and sank a wide-open shot. I watched it go in, hanging my head sheepishly.
“That’s game,” he said, giving me a conciliatory pat on the back as he walked past. “Five minute break and then rematch?”
“You know it,” Jarrius answered, as eager as I was for a chance to do better.
Stanley and I sat next to each other on the bench, guzzling water and trying to find some way of breathing that didn’t involve getting our lungs scorched with near-freezing air. “Got some news for you, Eli,” Stanley told me.
“Oh really? What’s that?”
“I told these guys my testimony. All of it.”
I looked up at the court, where Jarrius, Julius, DeRon, and Willy were laughing together. “Seriously? How’d they react?”
“Blew ‘em away. They never guessed it. You know the one thing that really clicked with them, though? The bit about growing up without a dad. You know Willy’s the only one of those four who’s got a dad at home, and even that’s not his real dad?”
“That’s incredible to me. There were some broken families where I came from, but I’ve never heard of so many people just plain missing fathers. It was way more common to have two parents who just didn’t care about each other anymore, and stayed married out of habit or something.” I paused, thinking. “Not to say that’s really any better.”
“I think you’re good proof that either is destructive,” Stanley observed.
“You would think,” I said with a raised eyebrow, “that a God who prided himself on being father would make sure our actual fathers did a better job of showing what that means.”
“Maybe. I think it proves the Bible, honestly. Look how far short your father and mine fell of God’s standard. That’s the best answer I have to someone who asks why we need God. Look how things go when we try to do life without him.” Stanley took a long sip from his bottle. “Your life, my life. It’s like we built museums to human failure.”
“That’s pretty pessimistic.”
“It’s pretty realistic, Eli. Humans have had thousands of years to figure out our problems and prove that we don’t need God, and look at us now. Are we really any better off? Doesn’t it strike you as odd that the United States today still has all the same problems as Israel did in the Old Testament, corruption and exploitation and lying and cheating and stealing? So much for progress.”
“Right. But back to your story. Who else are you going to tell?”
Stanley chuckled, shaking his head. “This reversal of roles is throwing me off. You’re not supposed to be the one pushing me to open up.”
“God loves irony, or something like that. I’m pretty sure it’s in the Bible.”
“You’re more right than you know. I want to ask Danny if I can tell my story in front of the church some Sunday. I think God wants to tell those people something about love and forgiveness.” He frowned at the top of his water bottle. “Eli, I feel so dumb. I can’t believe I was embarrassed of my story for so long. You don’t even know how it felt when I was telling the guys there. I want to say it was freeing, but it was more like realizing I was the only one who’d been keeping myself behind the bars, you know?”
“I think I felt something like that the night I came to God,” I said.
“Maybe so. It’s strange, Eli, but I like it.” He looked up at the others, who were waiting for us to come back onto the court. “Ready to get schooled again?”
“I’m ready for you to try.”
An hour later, with four more games under our belts, the others were ready to quit. Julius, DeRon, and Willy said their goodbyes and headed off, while Jarrius stuck around to talk with Stanley and me.
“I heard about this trip you’re about to make,” Jarrius told me. “I’ll be praying for you.”
“Yeah, thanks. I don’t know what to expect. Stanley told me that you and Julius grew up without a dad?”
Jarrius nodded. “Was rough, man. A lot of the things I was supposed to learn from him, I learned from the other kids around me, and they was all growing up without dads too, so none of us knew much of anything. My life was built around respect, you know, who was respecting me and who was disrespecting me, and how I could beat people up so they would respect me. Jesus wrecked my life, changed everything about the way I thought.”
“What about your father? You ever talk to him?”
“Got no clue where he is. I’d like to meet him someday, you know, let him know that I forgive him and that God loves him. I’m kind of jealous you get the chance to have that talk with your parents.”
“I never thought of it that way.”
“It’s a blessing, bro. A real blessing.” Jarrius went silent, maybe thinking back to long ago, or to what he might say if he ever got the chance to have that talk with his own dad.
We sat for several minutes, just listening to the light breeze whispering through the maple trees that ringed the park. The sun was visible today, a nice change from the gray and cloudy weather that would no doubt await me back in Indiana.
“Well,” Jarrius announced, “I’ve got class in the afternoon. I’ll see you two later. Let me know how your visit goes, Eli.”
“You got it.” I stood and shook his hand. “Take care of yourself.”
“Peace, brother.”
Stanley watched him go. “That boy could have been me, you know, if he hadn’t met Jesus in time. A lot of the kids he grew up with are in jail or on probation cause they grew up without dads around to show them the right way to be.”
“I can’t get over it, Stanley. I had no idea…”
“What, that Christian folk had problems too? Sin is universal, Eli. All the pain you see in the world is from people trying to live their own way, and getting stuck with the consequences of other people trying to live their own way. That’s why everybody needs Jesus. That’s also why it’s silly to blame God for all the pain in the world.”
“I guess so.”
“By the way,” Stanley added, “I got in touch with that family from New York. The family of the guy I…killed.” There was still the slightest hesitation when he said it, but he had said it, which was the important thing. He wasn’t running from his story. “I can’t believe it, Eli. They want me to come up there for Christmas. They didn’t sound surprised, didn’t sound like I would be imposing on them. It sounded,” he swallowed, trying to keep his composure, “sounded like they’d been waiting for that call. They told me to come on up and we’d all have Christmas together.” He chewed on the inside of his lip, nodding slowly. “I can’t believe it.”
“So you’re going to go?”
“I feel like I have to. I think it’s the next step in my story.” He stood up. “Well, I’ve got places to go this afternoon. I reckon I’ll catch you later. Be safe. I’ll be praying for you.”
“Thanks. I’ll be praying for you too.”
He wandered off back toward the apartment, leaving me by myself in the park, looking up at the sun and beginning to shiver now that I wasn’t moving around as much. As I started to walk back home, I found that I noticed people. There was a woman not much older than me walking on the other side of the road, pushing her two toddlers in a stroller. She saw me staring at her and glanced away quickly, as if she was embarrassed at being noticed. What was her story? Why was she by herself? Was her husband at work providing for her, or halfway across the country with another woman? And the ma
n walking behind her; was he unemployed, or did he work nights, or was he in school?
I couldn’t even remember seeing other people most of the time when I was walking. I’m sure I saw them, but I didn’t really see them; their existence didn’t register on my brain. Now I saw them, and I was curious. Everyone that I saw had a story, like mine, like Stanley’s, like Abbie’s, like Jarrius’. Somehow I’d never realized that before.
I wanted to stop and talk to all of them, to find out their story, but I knew that, for the moment, my own was more important. I had to go home and pack for my trip, to get ready to leave and make things right with my parents. This was it. This was when I would get out from under all the stuff they’d left me with, the consequences of their own sin and maybe the consequences of mine too.
In less than a day I’d be on my way home.
Part Six
New Heart Church Page 33