My Date with The Velvet Hammer

Author’s Note: A few months ago my husband and I both resigned from our jobs (a pastor and a worship leader at a large Southern church, respectively) right after having our second child, in an effort to pursue our passion for social justice in a new way.  After four months of searching, we have yet to find gainful employment.  The following essay is one from a series I am writing on our experience of unemployment and faith.

I just got back from a coffee date with an old “friend.”  Things did not go well.  My friend claims to be a truth teller, which is a quality I typically admire when the truth is a compliment, but that was not the case today.  No, today the truth hurt, and not just a little.  I am trying not to run to my usual comforts of food, caffeine, shopping or HGTV.  In fact, after today’s date, my comforts aren’t going to deliver anyway.  My friend really didn’t have to say anything, he couldn’t, and even if he could, what would he say?  Instead, he simply unveiled some disturbing qualities that have been lurking around for a long time.  All he did was show me a few facts, like numbers on a dot-to-dot.  He left me with the task of connecting the dots and the finished picture was not what I wanted to see. Things didn’t look so bad at first.  The image was familiar enough, so much so that I almost missed seeing the stains that were splashed all over, like dried blood on white linens.  But then I saw them and I haven’t been able to look away.  I am somewhat undone.  I agreed to this date under false pretenses.  I thought we were just going to look at a few spreadsheets with numbers, but something else transpired.

Instead of numbers all I could see were beloved faces.  It was unsettling.  I couldn’t view $150.00 paid to Time Warner Cable: phone, computer, TV without seeing my daughter Bella, sitting cross legged on a dirty floor in India having her head popped with a stick each time her little hands fumbled over capping off the end of a cigarette.  At the sight of $40.00 for new running shoes, it was Dagnea’s beautiful, charcoal, Ethiopian face that ran through my mind along with a quote from his last correspondence that read, “Please pray for my mother who is sick with HIV.  My father is dead.”

I wanted to look away from these faces, like I do during the scary scenes in a movie, but I couldn’t.   This wasn’t a movie.  This wasn’t a picture meant to stir emotion that I could eventually walk away from.  These images are real lives of real people living in arm’s reach everyday.  Thankfully it’s not my Bella who sits on India’s ground slaving her five-year-old life away– it’s someone else’s precious daughter. Do they love their child any less than I love mine?  Of course not.  And Dagnea, our Compassion sponsored child, he’s one of millions whose life or death is of equal value to a pair of running shoes.

I’ve heard staggering statistics throughout my life.  In the past, my response has been a pattern of shock, grief, prayer for how I might engage more boldly in the world’s atrocities and then guilt and frustration when nothing in my life changes to help impact a suffering world.  The picture I saw when I looked at the completed dot to dot was the familiar image of an American woman, well groomed and fed, passionately sharing the truth of God’s love with another friend as she drives down the road in her car.  She is earnest.  So how is it that she drives right past God himself who is beckoning to her on the road’s side?  She didn’t mean to miss him – it’s just that he looks different than she would have guessed.  He isn’t well groomed or fed like her.  Quite the contrary, he’s begging for help.  He’s homeless.  He’s black.  He’s suffering.  He’s dirty.

I am beginning to suspect that this time of unemployment is an answer to years of prayer.  In response to God’s love, I have prayed for courage.  I have prayed for compassion.  I have prayed that God would show me how to use the currency of my life to love others and to share the truth of his love.  I was just hoping he might wave a wand to get the job done.  But God’s way is vastly different from mine.  He seems to be very fond of wild, unpredictable journeys that require his constant help and companionship.  I asked for courage.  Could it be that I am becoming courageous only through facing hardship?  I asked for compassion.  Could it be that compassion only comes as a result of suffering?  I asked to be charitable.  Could it be that we become charitable when we’ve faced our own need for charity?

I’ve found that money in America functions a lot like an NFL uniform.  We try to acquire enough financial padding to become immune to our true vulnerability.  The problem is this immunity also inoculates us from our destiny of loving God and others.  We’d rather stay comfortable in our super-sized homes, cars and wardrobes than sacrifice our comfort for another human being created in the image of God.  Ouch, I know.  The truth hurts.  But here’s the good news.  We aren’t just left with our guilty, ugly stain of blinding selfishness, which in and of itself would immobilize us from changing.  God promises to create in us hearts of flesh as we walk with him.  He is gentle and kind, promising not to give us more than we can bear.  Perhaps this is why he chooses the process of journey over instant transformation.

I don’t know where your journey might begin.  Maybe it entails a radical start like quitting your job and having a baby.  I can recommend this approach to those of you who struggle with control and consumerism, like me.  Or maybe your journey starts more subtly, over a coffee date, with an old friend.  My friend would be more than happy to meet with you if you are in need of a reality check.  I like to call him The Velvet Hammer, but his real name is Quicken and for $80.00 at a software store, he’ll even move in. Be careful.

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