In the Dark

I stood in the dark, dingy house that reeked of old food, pet odors, and bodily fluids. A crying baby lay by a wall, his timid wails going unnoticed. I peered over at him; there he lay, 5 months old, his mother told me, and yet so very very tiny and frail looking, with eyes so big that they seemed to make up the majority of his face.

I closed my eyes. This is how I expected Africa.

Except I wasn't in Africa. I wasn't in India, Mexico, or a shanty in the Appalachians of America. This was no city in a third-world country. This was Colorado Springs.

And, once again, like so many other times in my life, my racing mind stopped, as if in slow motion, to ask myself, "How on earth did I get here? And why me? What am I doing? What privilege...? What oddity?"

Oh, it wasn't as if I had magically appeared on the doorstep of this house, as if moved by the Holy Spirit in a dream in some sci-fi-like, twilight-zone experience. I knew exactly what had brought me here. I had driven myself, under the careful navigation of one of the youth girls, a girl who, 1 ½ years earlier, had met me on her doorstep in circumstances very similar to this. On this particular night, we were here to invite some of her classmates to come to youth group.

As I stood in the house, I heard the boyish looking teenage girl in front of me, who I had never seen before today, announce, "I don't go to church." She watched my reaction carefully. "I've never set foot in a church in my life." And then--the real kicker, the one that was sure to get me riled and shocked--"I've never even been baptized." She searched my face, gauging my reaction. Surely, I'm convinced she thought, I had never met someone as heathen as she.

I laughed lightly and smiled at her. "I don't care. You should just come. Church is amazing." I didn't know what I was saying, quite. I wanted to be sure I steered clear of giving her the impression that I was someone who was all about Church, all about rituals and method and stoicism. I wasn't. I was all about a God, who was all about a Son, who was all about a person, a single person, who wanted to return to Him, their originally intended place, that had been upset so many thousands of years ago by a seeping darkness that pervaded the world.

The baby continued crying in the background.

I walked over to him and leaned gently over his dingy crib. His wimpers didn't subside. "Can I hold him?" I turned towards the girl who was presumably his mother, who sat at a nearby computer, doing computer classes online. "Sure, if you want. I don't care. He probably needs a diaper change." When she spoke, her mangled and disfigured teeth caught my attention, no matter how much I tried so hard to look into her crystal blue eyes instead.

I picked him up, but when I scooped him I felt something wet. Urine dribbled down his leg, oozing out of a diaper that weighed almost as much as he. My arm, sweater, and jeans reeked of pee. I was tempted to be momentarily disgusted, and could almost, though not quite, picture myself hastily putting him back into the crib and rushing to the bathroom to disinfect.

Oh, we germ conscious Americans. I thought distinctly back to the time when, at a compound for children in Africa, my team leader had been cradling a baby boy, only to sit him up and realize he had wet his pants (no diaper), and it had soaked through her clothes. She had laughed it off. The rest of the team was slightly disgusted at the thought, granted, but we too had shaken off the disgusting-ness of it. No matter that that baby boy could have had any number of parasites or STDs from his mother; the wet spot on her pants was a badge of honor almost. She could tolerate pee for Christ.

But I wasn't in Africa anymore. I was in the U.S. And I wasn't on a two-week mission field that I had trained for for 6 months. I was in my hometown. And I wasn't holding an orphaned African baby, feeling like the "work" of holding that child was the gratifying culmination of almost a year of preparation, prayer, money-earning, saving, collecting. I was holding a most likely fatherless (or soon to be fatherless, abandoned by a young man who didn't really understand what it was to be a father, something I had seen too many times before) 5-month old, brown-haired, blue-eyed little American child, born to a young teenage mother, sopping in urine, soaked down to his onesie, scared and confused, but somehow quiet in my arms. I remembered reading an article some time ago that had said little babies need to be held, because the feeling of safety and security brought on by a caring person was crucial to their early development. I hugged him and his dripping diaper just a little closer to me. And I felt, so softly, ever so softly, a whisper. Maybe my imagination, or maybe it really was Jesus who was in the room with me, say, This...is My work.

I changed his diaper and his clothes. The soggy diaper couldn't even be properly sealed up; it threatened to ring out bodily fluids each time I tried to wrap it shut. He clung to me and sucked on my sweater.

"That's so bizarre," said another young teenager, his aunt, dressed in baggy and dirty t-shirt and shorts. "He never lets anyone hold him or change his diaper. All he does is cry." But he was silent as he held on to me, as if for dear life.

Forty-five minutes after arriving at the house, I was now on my way out. None of the kids we had come to invite to church could come. Their parents objected. They didn't understand. They had chores to do. But they all promised me they would for sure come next week. Promises I had heard before from many kids I had met in passing. But no matter. I had come to do the work of Christ and felt I had done exactly what He wanted me to.

Forty-five minutes was also how late I was getting to church that night. I could distinctly remember a couple weeks before, having forgotten the announcement that church was starting earlier now on Wednesday nights, coming in late, and coming through the front door, like I always did. One of the church leaders had stopped me and the youth kids I had in tow. "The pastor asked that everyone who comes in late use the back door from now on. He doesn't want people disturbed. I'm really sorry." I assured him it was no problem, and angrily vowed to myself to try to be more on time from now on.

But here I was. I had zipped home from work, changed my clothes, skipped dinner, prayed in my car before heading over. I was on schedule to be on time, so proud. And now I was once again late, by 45 minutes. I stole through the back door and pleaded with the kids to not be so loud as we walked up the stairs.

I remembered a conversation I had had with my supervisor at work a few days previous. We were talking about pastors because we were in the process of trying to locate a pastor in North Carolina who could counsel a suicidal man. "Sometimes," I had remarked, "Pastors are too busy pastoring to care for people." Sometimes, I wondered at this moment, are youth leaders and volunteers too busy leading (showing up on time, looking pristine, maybe not smelling of urine) to care for youth?

There are worse things, I realized, than being late to church. Like, neglecting crying babies, chiding unsaved teens for making you late, caring more for reputation than lost and hurting people. There are worse feelings than to be stared down by pastors and deacons and church members alike and hearing their thoughts so loudly: "She's late. Again." It would have been far worse to have felt like I was being stared down by the Holy Spirit and hearing Him say, "Amy, Amy, you are worried and troubled over many things...but you could have chosen the best part if you chose to listen to Me." But... in that moment, I felt so sincerely that the Holy Spirit was saying nothing of the sort. And that, I realized, was all I could ever ask.