For C... He is there

I have been having the privilege of getting to know a young man at work. He has taken to sharing a lot of his life story with me after bedtime and before he falls asleep. He is a pretty cool kid! Loves to laugh, proud of the A’s he is starting to get at school, learning guitar and works too hard at hiding his smile.

He also has been living one of the worst nightmares I have ever heard… since the day he was born.

I have heard that it’s easier once you are “desensitized” to this stuff. I don’t want to be “desensitized.” I want it to hurt me every time I hear another kid got abused.

What really started to get to me tonight is that I started noticing a pattern with his stories. The pattern I noticed is that he just kept telling stories. I didn’t ask to hear stories. I didn’t pry or ask questions. I just sat there by his desk and listened.

Story after story came. Beatings, fires, police, drugs, broken glass, alcohol, betrayal, illness, death, abandonment and atrocity all had one thing in common; him. In the course of our 45 minute bedtime talk, he must have told me 25 stories from his childhood and early teenage years.

I drove home feeling like I built a relationship with a hurting kid. There I go again.

Whoop.    Dee.    Freakin.     Doo.

So I drive home after work and get out my 40 Days of Purpose book. I am on day two titled, “You are not an accident.”

I once heard that in some African language the world translated “hello” actually means “what called you forth?”

Okay here I go. Brains rolling. I guess this means I’m praying. So what is my purpose? What called me forth? What needed me so badly on the earth today that I was given another day?

Well apparently my purpose today was to be that boy’s friend. Who cares.

WHAT ABOUT HIM?

This boy. 15 years old. Abused and mistreated from the day he was born. Scars all over his hands, arms, legs, face, back and heart. What is his purpose? What called him forth? What needed him so badly on the earth that he was given another day?

He told me of the time that he stood in from of his bathroom mirror with a knife to his neck, ready to end it all.

I told him of the times we sat in his room and talked about his hurts. He smiled.

As I listened to all of those stories that he wanted to share with me and I feel like I am really getting to know the real person behind it all. I felt like we bonded. But here is where it gets me… Jeremiah 1:5 reminds me that God knew that boy long before he was even formed in his mother’s womb.

The boy and I got this cool feeling knowing we had connected. But God knows him infinitely more than I ever could. God knows everything about him. He was there in every single tortured moment in that boy’s life. Ever-present and ever-knowing.

We are not an accident. And we are never alone.