The Violence of Love

You can never really tell where life will go on a given day.

I have a lot of mornings where I schedule out where I think my story is heading, and about how I am going to go out into the world and accomplish X, Y, and Z.  It’s going to be a great day!

I feel like God just laughs a lot and winks at me.  We will see Joel, but I think I have something better for you today…

It happens more often than I am sure I realize.

Take last Thursday for example…

Now to set up this story, I need to give a few details about me, but the primary one is this: I am one of the whitest people I have ever heard of.

I like wearing khaki shorts and usually only dance at weddings-and always to the chicken dance.  I listen to rap with my windows rolled up.  I wear too many V-Necks and consider a trip to Lowes on a Saturday morning just about the best thing ever.  I talk too much about how I love snowboarding and for a decade, I used to vote only Republican.

It is a little bit of a problem…and not just because my dancing looks like controlled seizures.

It is a problem because I live in a very culturally diverse community, and yet I can actually intentionally plan out my day so that I never have to open myself to anyone not like me.  I can go from church to Starbucks to Raley’s and back home and never have to be challenged ever in my thinking.  I doubt it is just me that can do this.

About five years ago, in one of those weird things that you sometimes get swept up into in life, I began to volunteer with an organization in town called Lifeline.  They work with people in the community that need someone to believe in them.  That need someone to believe that everyone has a gift to share.  That everyone has power.

I think it started with me playing soccer for two hours at a BBQ we helped organize at a local apartment complex, and from then on I was hooked.  It was so not my world, that I fell in love with it.  I was able to learn and begin to understand so many cultures, play games with adorable kids and feel what happens when God grows your heart.

And it was all in my own city, only a few miles from my house, yet in a world I rarely see.

A few years ago, Monika, the head of Lifeline and a guy named Tunde that worked with AmeriCorps and I started to put together a plan to have a summer program for the kids at a local apartment complex called the Meadows.  We wanted to help facilitate a place to learn and grow and laugh and not worry about things like gangs.

It started out on a grass lawn in the middle of the complex, grew to an upstairs room above the apartment main office and now is held in a two story apartment in the middle of the complex.  God has been really good and blessed Monika and Tunde’s hard work in amazing ways.  I don’t make it over that often during the school year, but in the summer, I get to go about two days a week to hang out with the adorable kids and take them to see the dollar movies and do little projects with them at the center.  A couple weeks ago we made a garden in the back…

It is a lot of fun and the kids are just so amazing.

There are too many stories to tell right now, but I can tell one that happened, you probably guessed it, last Thursday…

Tunde and I and the kids were out doing an art project in one of the common areas between the buildings and having a great time.  It mainly involved a Polaroid camera and a lot of sidewalk chalk, but the end results were like this:

We were out taking the pictures and drawing when some guy dressed all in red and carrying a bottle of liquor wandered through our group.

I rarely have moments in life where I feel super scared, but this was one of them.  I was out there by myself at that moment (Tunde had gone inside to get another camera), and had about 7 little kids and one drunk gang banger.

I was mostly screaming, OH CRAP OHCRAPOHCRAP in my head, when one of the coolest things happened.

From seemingly out of nowhere, a guy from one of the apartments nearby came out of his place and walked straight up to me…and I was terrified.

I never feel small in life.  I am 6’6″.  I am always the tallest in most every group, but this guy looked like from another planet.  He could have broken me straight in half.  He was my height and had at least a hundred more pounds of muscle on him.  He was also covered in tattoos and possibly did not know how to smile.

He walks up to me, and says, “It’s cool what you guys are doing, but we need to get these kids inside right now.  This is not safe.”  I nodded and the kids and I picked up all our stuff and headed into the apartment and the whole time…Tattoo guy stood there between us and the wandering drunk gang banger.

He never left.

He stood there until we were all inside and safe.  Protecting us.  Then without a word, Tattoo guy turned and walked back to his place.  Possibly to break rocks in half with his stare…

People say a lot of ignorant things about the Meadows.

It is commonly known as a place of poverty, gangs and an occasional shooting or two.  Most of those people who talk about it have either never been there, or only read police reports.  Shootings sell papers, but there are much better stories going on.  There are families that do not want to repeat the cycle.  They want something more than violence and gangs, and when no one helped them out, they rolled up their sleeves and got work done.  They break down walls with the violence of love and Lifeline gets to come along with them and keep whispering, “We can do this…”

Because sometimes all that someone needs is for us to show with our lives that we believe you can too…

 To find out more about Lifeline Community Development or how you can donate your time, gifts, prayer and $$, please visit Lifeline CDC

Thanks.