We’ve known Cecilia for a while now. She comes to our neighborhood for crack, and she comes to our house for food and rest at the end of a binge – or sometimes just a brief respite somewhere in the middle. Our door is always open, so over the course of last semester we got to spend a decent amount of time with Cici. We would welcome her in, offer her some hot tea or a bite to eat, talk for a while, and then give her a ride wherever she needed to go. All this happened, of course, under the well-maintained pretense that she was in our neighborhood visiting a friend, or seeing so-and-so about such-and-such.
One day she asked us for a ride up to United to buy her some cigarettes. She said she would need just about five minutes to talk to a friend about something (panhandle some drug money). We drove her over there and Josh ran inside to buy the menthols. Throughout the evening, Cecilia had been acting a little strange. She seemed very conflicted. She kept hinting that she really wanted to tell us something, but then she would shy away from it.
Cecilia started to get out of the car, but then she stopped and looked back at us with this look that said, “Can I trust you?” There was not really anything that we could have said to help or hinder Cecilia in her internal battle, so we just waited and silently prayed.
“I want to tell you guys,” she said, “but I’m just afraid you’ll look at me differently.”
“Cecilia, we love you. No matter what. We love you.”
“I know you do, but I just don’t know…” she said. She looked at us, then out the window, then back at us.
“Well, we will be happy to wait here for you, Cecilia, but we would really love to talk to you about whatever is on your mind – if you want to.”
“I do want to, Wes, but it’s just hard.”
Silence. Then release.
“You probably already know this, but…”
For the next thirty minutes, Cecilia talked to us about her addiction, about her husband Carl and his addiction, and about how much she really wanted to be free. We just listened and tried to send as much love in her direction as possible. The Spirit of the LORD was with us that night, quieting our souls and preparing us for the relationship He was ready to give us as a gift.
There have been plenty of other times hanging out with Cecilia when I have felt awkward, confused, angry, disappointed, or often impatient; but on this particular evening, God was working things together for good, and I was a just an observer of His redemption. I felt a peace, a confidence in Him, and an overwhelming joy at His goodness. My heart was already broken for Cecilia; months of relationship with her, almost exclusively during her binges, had accomplished that. That night, God gave me hope in the fact that, while we are called to love and to devote all our mental, spiritual, entrepreneurial, and all other resources to that basic and high calling, redemption (in a holistic sense) is ultimately His job in which He graciously allows us to participate.
We never ended up waiting around for Cici to panhandle. Instead she asked us to drive her home so she could introduce us to Carl, one of the meekest and most pure-in-heart men I have ever met.
We are fast friends with Cici and Carl now. We have been over to their place for dinner a few times, and they have been to our place. Carl has all of our phone numbers so that he can call us any time he is tempted to smoke crack. Some old charges caught up with Cici, and she is in jail awaiting trial for parole violations. With God’s grace, she will be admitted to a 9-month prison rehab program, and hopefully Carl will be able to simultaneously get into an in-house recovery program on the outside. Carl has been clean for three weeks now.
