Life.

It’s been said to be fragile, full, fleeting.

Funny how we spend our years trying to avoid our very destiny.  In a world of diversity and social separation, one thing renders us all the same: the fact that we live and we die. King Solomon reminds us that whether we sleep in a mansion or on a street corner, our final resting place is six feet under the ground, neighboring with the worms. 

This is a story of a friend of mine. Well, really it’s an age old story about how something old can be made new. It’s an example of family in a whole new way and the changing power of grace.

I met David Dickey amongst Fort Worth’s lowest of low. You see, there are three shelters in the homeless corridor, two being called the "Hiltons" of E. Lancaster. The third is the emergency night shelter.  We are always warned of the rodents, spiders and diseases that mark the walls and corners of that place. My dad met David there before any of us. This was during football season, so come game day you could always count on David and my dad to be on the couch, doing the guy thing.  The two met another man named Ross, or "Pops", as some call him. Ross is a 76-year old man that was living on the streets. The three became quite a sight. One night, Ross landed himself in the hospital with a heart attack. For the next two weeks we cared for Ross, taking turns staying with him at night. David was such a trooper. He hadn’t been on the streets very long and he was working his butt off to get back on his feet. Every day he would head up to Day Labor and get some work.  When Ross was in the hospital, he dropped everything to come help us take care of him. Because all of us had jobs that we were tied down to, David became a lifesaver! Ross had a love for country western music, and was teaching David how to sing his favorite, "Your Cheatin’ Heart". One night as Ross was really struggling, David bust out singing the classic. Surprised, we all just smiled at his precious gesture. Before he could get to the chorus he stopped and said "Aw Ross, I’m too embarrassed!" Through this, we discovered why he had become my dad’s best friend. After two weeks of chaotically taking care of each other, there was no way my family could drop him off at the shelter. My parents opened up their guest room and did everything they could to help David prepare for trucking school. Before long, David was just another person in our family, as if he’d been there all along. Thanksgiving came and went and he got the divine blessing of my Mamaw’s cooking. Anywhere we went as a family, David came too. He doesn’t have the prettiest past, but that didn’t matter. All he needed was a second chance. My family has known second chances all too well, so there was no way we could keep that from him. More than anything I was just grateful my daddy had a best friend again. You see, a friendship like this doesn’t come often for my dad. He’s older and wiser, so he’s had many figurative "sons" or "disciples". He’s the one you go to for advice or lean on when you’re hurting. I don’t think he ever felt the freedom to lean back. I’m not sure where he has gone for his advice over the years, but David seemed to change him just as much as he changed David. In the beginning it was pretty clear David didn’t know Jesus, but we could tell he was searching. America tells us to "pray a prayer" and then just like that, we have our ticket to heaven. The scriptures, however, talk about salvation being something that is worked out in us. A process of seeing who Jesus is and learning how to believe in Him. There was a time in the hospital that Ross wasn’t doing too well. As we all stood around you could feel the heaviness of our hearts in the air. David spoke up urgently, as if he’d just had a revelation. "Let’s pray". Oh…yeah. We should pray. Tears of awe made their way down our cheeks as our precious friend begged Jesus to bring life and healing to Ross. In the meantime, Jesus was bringing life and healing to David’s soul. He began asking my dad questions about how to know God. My sweet parents would never take credit for this, but they were conduits of Christ’s grace. Through offering David a fresh start, he could see how the Lord was offering him the same. Soon afterwards David’s nose was always in his Bible. I would walk in and he would grab my attention like the world was ending. "Keri, have you ever read this?! Do you know what Jesus said about religious people? Man, he really pissed people off!" I would laugh and sit down as we talked about how Jesus’ teachings went directly against culture. He would dream about making his way back to E. Lancaster, just to show his friends there that there’s hope. Recently, I caught that flu bug (which quickly turned into pneumonia) and stayed at my parents house for two weeks. Before I could even bring my bag in, David had changed the sheets on his bed and cleaned it all up for me. I kept telling him I fit better on the couch, but he insisted. While I was sick I let him use my car to go to work. One evening he came in from work with tears in his eyes. "The car got hit". We went outside to see the damage. The poor guy was stressing over a dent in the front side of my fancy-shmancy Ford. I asked him if it was running ok. "Well, yeah, but I’ll pay for this. Just give me a few days and it will be fixed". I told him all that matters was that it was running and turned to go back inside. He couldn’t accept the fact that I wasn’t mad at him.

He constantly told me about his three girls and how I would just love them. Every time I came over he would break out the pictures just like every time before. He knew I’d seen them a hundred times but that didn’t matter. He was a proud poppa.

Last Friday morning my dad called to tell me that David was in the ICU because of a heart attack. He’d stayed the night at a friend’s house so they could go to work together the next day. When I got to the hospital, his heart had already crashed four times. My mind raced with the reality of the situation. I’ve grown up in and out of hospitals. Received too many dreaded phone calls and sat in too many waiting rooms. But it’s always been ok. Not too many funerals. Surely this would be the same. Surely he was strong enough to make it. Saturday morning his heart crashed one more time, and his visit with us was over.

Grief is such a foreign thing to me. My mind doesn’t really comprehend death too well. It’s always as if I’m in a dream. Tendency, especially as Christ followers, is to put on our church smile. Besides, God is good and even Job praised him through his deepest trials. All of us find ways to distract ourselves from pain. For instance, in times of mourning, my kitchen becomes my vice. My instinct is to pick up my hands and get to cooking or cleaning or something! I wonder how Jesus grieved. You would think he would be the master of the Christian smile. Wear the thickest mask. I imagine him floating around on a cloud of glory, praising God for death and pain. Hm…the story of Lazarus shows a very different Jesus. We find that when Jesus lost his best friend, he wept and moaned with grief.

 He wept and moaned.

He didn’t plaster on a smile or pretend that he wasn’t dying on the inside. He publicly bawled his eyes out so hard it pushed out a groaning sound from his gut. What an example to follow. And, why should we follow this example? Well, Jesus tells us "blessed are those that mourn". I don’t know about you, but I’ve always wondered how in the hell Christ could look into the eyes of a weeping widow or a parent burying their child and call them blessed. Have you ever noticed how some people don’t believe in luck? You casually tell them they are lucky and they quickly correct you by saying they are "blessed". So, could we then assume that we who grieve are "lucky"? It almost makes me angry. Can you imagine shaking the hand of the griever and saying "Congratualtions! Lucky you!"  I have come to trust Jesus even when he makes absurd comments like this. I’ve found that there is always a deeper truth than what my mind can comprehend. There must be more to this teaching. "Blessed (Amplified Bible adds "fortunate, to be envied") are those who mourn". Why?

"…for they will be comforted"

Have you ever experienced the comfort of the one who mapped our very emotions?  There is a place where pain, anger and hope all collide resulting in a belly wrenching sorrow. For myself, its been these times that Jesus has so sweetly met me. He whispers to my heart in the way that only he can. Its as if he wraps his arms around me, just like my daddy does whenever I cry. The pain doesn’t reside. It still feels as though my insides are on fire and rescue is ages away, but when I let myself feel and welcome the pain, the Holy Spirit comes and comforts. I experience the power of God in a way I never could if I weren’t grieving.  I believe we see a different side of our God when we hurt and let him heal.  So Jesus says we are fortunate to mourn because its in that place of darkness he gets to hold us.

From this thought, the Lord begins to prod at me. "Keri, I want to comfort you. I want to hold you. But you’re going to have to hurt. You’re going to have to feel. You have to mourn." I believe the enemy’s scheme is to keep us from really grieving. If we don’t grieve, we won’t experience the true comfort of Jesus. So up our defenses go. We use whatever we can find to numb the pain. We let anger and bitterness replace sorrow and sadness, and the enemy wins a round.

We miss our friend. It’s hard to see his girls process the idea of not having a daddy anymore. Waves of memories, anger, love and peace all come at their own pace and sweep us off the ground. I don’t know everything about David, and there are a lot of people that sat in a pew a couple hours ago that do. But what I do know is that he was an honorable man. He had experienced grace and he knew how to love. It wasn’t his huge heart or his kind acts that make him honorable, but  the fact that about four months ago David decided to be transformed. He believed that Jesus could make him whole. He knew at his core he was weak and wicked and very much in need of saving. He became of friend of the Holy Spirit, and an heir to God…an honorable man.

So, as we lower our defenses and begin to feel the sting, we cling to the promise of comfort. We weep and we moan and we crawl into the lap of Jesus.  We are blessed.

-Keri

To make donations to the David Dickey Memorial Fund, email intentionalgatherings@gmail.com

Two months ago my friend Jackie set out on quite an adventure. You would think Jackie would be your average Longhorn, living in Austin and working her way through college. About thirty seconds into a conversation with her, however, and you will see through very different eyes. My sweet friend carries a heavy burden for the inner city of Austin, called St. Johns. Crammed with immigrants from Mexico, St Johns is home to loads of children, some of which don’t even get to go to school because of legal issues. This week I met a group of fellow 20-somethings who were ready to make some change in this neighborhood. While most brush up on their Spanish and head to Mexico for the beaches and resorts, this gang is spending their spring break right in their home town. For the past two months, Jackie has been rallying together volunteers to do a children’s spring break day camp in a Spanish church in St. John’s. Someone from her church had opened up one of their homes in the inner city for the volunteers to take over for the week. Not only were they planning on pouring into kiddos, but they were committed to living in community for the entire week. Sunday night, Aaron, Morgan and I went to hang out with the eager group. We told our story of searching for more in church, when we happened to open the Bible and read about the church in the New Testament. We shared how we began to beg the Lord to change our idea of church as it was and teach us what it looked like to be His hands and feet. The look on their faces was priceless. I haven’t seen such unbridled passion in quite some time. I guess it wasn’t too long ago that my eyes were filled with the same shock. Their eagerness was that of a dog’s, just waiting for the frisbee to fly into the air. As Aaron, Morgan and I drove to Austin we began to remember the times and places the Lord started prodding at our heart. It was so beautiful to wrestle through what living missional means to us and what that looks like for us today. My fear is that, with pure intentions, our focus will turn from Jesus and his essence, to this thing we have called community. Community, missions, simple living, selflessness…these things are all just symptoms of a greater love. This life is truly all about Jesus. Shame the day when we claim to have a blueprint or think we have figured something out. This concept is age old. In our moments of pride I can picture Jesus chuckling. "I’ve been waiting for you to catch on, Dufus". Sometimes I feel as though I’m preaching "missional community" rather than simply, the gospel. I am confident that if we commit to wasting our lives and love on Jesus, that his life will influence ours in an undeniable way. I can’t help but believe these things we do…community, befriending the homeless, caring for the sick, adopting the widows…will all become who we are as we gaze into the eyes of Christ. This week in Austin I sat face to face with a living room packed with new friends who are gazing into the eyes of Christ. Not only are they passionate, they are obedient. When I think of them I am constantly reminded of God’s word to Esther. "You very well may die doing this but for such a time as this I have ordained you here and now" (Keri’s paraphrase). For such a time as this! For such a time as March of 2008 thirty college students were placed in the dirtiest part of Austin, not only to impart the Holy Spirit to a dying generation, but to grasp the hope of BEing the Church, the Bride, the hands and feet of the Savior! My desperate prayer for my new friends is spiritual marriage. I beg that this camp would not be a spring break, one night stand with the gospel. Oh, may they be captured! May they be sucked into the love affair of Jesus and his radical ways! May they be partnered for life with the Holy Spirit and his daring call. I had the privilege of hearing stories of what’s going on in some of their own communities and neighborhoods. Hearing of what Jesus is doing through people who will follow him beyond "safety" has pushed me on this week. I’m so grateful that he uses us.

What a glorious life.

What a glorious Lover.

This morning was different.

For over a year now, my Saturdays have consisted of one thing: the streets and people of what they call the "Homeless Corridor". In the ever blossoming cove of downtown Fort Worth, sky rise lofts and booming businesses paint the perfect picture of any big city. Now we Texans know good and well that while everything may be bigger, our pace and accents are just a tad slower than that of competing cities. But still, head to Sundance Square around lunch time and you'll see the suit clad, blue-toothed men scurrying about the sidewalks, eager to work their way to the weekend. Aging architectures with missing windows are being restored into $250,000 havens. Quaint corner café's and high class dining peek between the walls of steel. Museums, monuments, gardens and galleries pose an invitation for natives and tourists alike. Good 'ole Cow Town has become quite the town.

Take a wrong turn, however, and you'll find yourself wandering a different land. Just across the highway holds scenery so different its as if you've stepped through Lewis's closet and into a nightmarish Narnia. Head to E. Lancaster around lunch time and you'll see the baggage clad dirty men scurrying about like a destroyed ant bed, eager to get in line for their next meal. Roll up your windows before you smell their disaster and they smell your fear. Aging architectures with missing windows are left alone. Café's and restaurants have been boarded up. The only sign of life in this desert are the beating hearts that crowd the sidewalks. If it weren't for them, E. Lancaster might as well not be on a map. There are different invitations on this side of Fort Worth. The woman on the corner who's hair hasn't been washed in months...she has an invitation. The circle of guys behind the dumpster huddled down and bundled up…they have an invitation. The random cop car begging for intimidation in a sea of criminals…that's an invitation, too. The obvious question in any right mind is how one highway can separate such different worlds and cultures, but some things just don't have answers. Or, in my opinion, some questions are just too risky to ask.

Either way, this dark and forgotten land has been somewhat of a home to me. The simplicity in the air can set a soul free. There's something about such harsh reality that reminds me to be alive.

This morning I am sitting in the Day Resource Center, surrounded on every side by these harsh realities that have become my friends. I've been here before, but today its different.

The Day Resource Center is packed with chairs that face a big screen, movie playing television providing the only means to an escape these people can find. I haven't been in here in quite a while. Even in the discomfort, I have become comfortable in the streets. The open air fades the smell a little and concrete fields mean I don't have to get too close to anyone I don't want to. Here, however, I had to struggle just to get my little butt in a seat. The long ratty hair of the woman beside me is tickling my left shoulder and the dirty sweatshirt of the man to my right is keeping my arm warm. I can feel the breath of the man behind me and if I'm not careful my knees may bruise the back of the person in front of me. Behind me and to my right is a chocolate skinned woman with round cheeks and full, chapped lips. Wearing an oversized ski coat, her frame is hard to make out. As she's fallen asleep her body has gradually leaned further and further onto the shoulder of the person next to her. It's cute in a way. A dark red color has been painted on her fingernails, only now to be noticeably chipped and fading. Her head is fully covered with a navy blue toboggan, the kind we Christians buy in bulk to hand out during winter. I wonder if in her mind the only dignity she has left lies in her polish remains.  I wonder if her hair has much in common with her fingernails. I wonder if the person beside her minds or even notices her sleepy weight.

 To describe this room as "cramped" is an understatement. "Uncomfortable" is a nice way to put it. The stench of brokenness is like a sweet reunion to my selfish soul.

 I often question why most people out here have some sort of addiction or a record a mile long. Its hard for me to give in to the belief that they've "always been this way", or they simply "choose" this lifestyle. Yes, there are many of my friends that choose to sleep in the shelters and eat off of charity. But, somewhere along the line they had to make the choice to give up. Some kind of darkness had to flip the switch of self worth off and convince them that life isn't worth anything. Somewhere along the line, darkness won the battle.

 I have to wonder: is it the trouble that put them on the streets or the streets that got them in trouble?

 When the place you call home creeps with demons and reeks of death, there is a weathering that takes place on a spirit. Denver Moore, homeless man and co-author of "Same Kind of Different As Me" says, "The streets'll turn a man nasty." Later he explains homelessness by saying "Sometimes its drinkin or druggin that lands a man on the streets. And if he ain't drinkin or druggin already, most fellas like me start in once we get there. It ain't to have fun. It's to have less misery. To try and forget that no matter how many "partners in crime" we might hook up with on the street, we is still alone."

 We that claim Jesus as life believe that He is the answer and hope to every longing and ache our hearts can fathom. Yet even we, being surrounded by life-giving families and communities, experience loneliness. We fall into addictions. We are prescribed anti-depressants. We apply for credit cards in hopes of soothing our need for newness. Little demons that peck away at our being.

 I am convinced that when darkness isn't broken by light, death starts a knockin. So yes, Jesus is "the answer", but is this a reality on the streets of Lancaster? Nope. (Maybe until  we are diligent in pushing back darkness like it was our only purpose in life, will this even begin to be a reality for the "least of these".)

 After time, I believe this dark hole of a home begins to wither a soul. Cries for light aren't heard. Cravings for truth aren't satisfied. And the soul begins to die…

Expecting someone in this environment to cling to the hope that Jesus can and will meet their every need is like expecting a flower to stay green under a blanket. The reality is that without light, the flower beings to wilt, and eventually, she gives up.

Yes, I realize these are natural things against a supernatural God. Yes, we serve a Lord of miracles. Yes, if you surround a candle with darkness it will burn with light (as one once argued). If we're going to go that route then who's there to trim the wick when it gets heavy?  Eventually even a candle burns down to a puddle of shapeless form.

 I am also convinced there is good. Somewhere under all the layers of dirt and depression, behind the years of anger and shame, there is good in these people. I see it every once in a while. A few weeks ago, a woman who fights to love Jesus every day gave everything she had to support our friends on a mission. It was twenty three cents. A little girl in the shelter known for hitting anyone that doesn't give in to her way shared a bite of her donut with me. In front of me, Paige sits on the floor with her back against the wall. A man about our age with shaggy brown hair and wrinkled khaki pants jumped up and offered her his seat. Somewhere in his heart, there is good. Even on the darkest streets in the country, there is chivalry. Jesus saw the spark of good left in people, too. The tough skinned prostitute suddenly kneels to wash his feet with her tears. The scrawny little tax collector ends up dining at the table of the Christ.

A flower may wilt and the petals may become black. It may lose its fragrance and have no backbone to stand straight. Cut it open though, and you may be surprised to see some green.

 It's there. And I am convinced I can find it.

 Want to join me?

-Keri