The Boy They Couldn't Kill

The English language has a million words, but only one for the two kinds of forgiveness. This is a major failure. The two kinds may be similar at the molecular level but they are far removed in magnitude. Like a candle flame and a volcano, an April shower and a hurricane, a soft tremor beneath your feet and the great San Francisco earthquake.

The first kind of forgiveness is the easy kind. Someone wounds you, and in time this offender comes to see what he has done. He returns to lay the wound at your feet. And when you reach down to pull him up a sort of charge passes between you, a cleansing force that refreshes both souls.

Candle flame and volcano. The second kind of forgiveness is a rare occurrence that becomes rarer as the wound grows more severe. In this case the offender gives nothing. He never comes to you. And when you go to him, he turns you away. This leaves you alone with your open wound and a solitary choice. No one will blame you either way. But the wound is yours to keep, or let go, and that choice may plot the course for the rest of your life.

One night 13 years ago a wound was opened in the dark, in a place deep in the abdomen that surgeons call the seat of the soul. The wound was a subterranean river, and it was not closed off until there was no more blood to lose. Professional athletes have done many terrible things over the years, but this was probably the worst. An unborn boy lay in the dark near the rising lake of his mother's blood, and soon he would join her on the brink of death.

The mother had a mother, and this story is about her. She came from the Piedmont of North Carolina, with its valleys full of corn and cotton, and her people were good and prosperous. You can go to Kings Mountain today and find Jack Adams Road, named for her father. He was one of six brothers who sang in a gospel group and worshipped in a redbrick edifice called Mount Olive Baptist Church. You can go to this church today and see the place where Saundra Adams grew up. That is her name. Saundra Adams. What she learned at Mount Olive was an overwhelming sense of gratitude for life. The sense that you don't wake up unless God opens your eyes, don't see the rising sun unless God pulls it from the horizon, don't put food in your mouth unless God helps you hold the fork. And you do all these things and you rejoice.

Saundra was 16 when she and a boy gave in to their desires, and she was 17 when Cherica was born. About to start her senior year in high school. Saundra's father was plowing his cornfield when she went into labor, and he wanted to finish, so they were late to the hospital. There Saundra was in the backseat of that Chevy Caprice, trying to hold Cherica in, and Cherica kept coming, and Saundra kept holding, and Cherica kept coming, and from the day she was born to the day she died she had a bald spot on top of her head about the size of her mother's fingertip.

It was 1975 in rural North Carolina. A girl in this situation was expected to move away or at least quit school. But they were Adamses, hardworking, successful, and her mother and father expected her to graduate. They would help with the baby. They were disappointed by her reckless behavior, but Jack was thrilled for another chance to sustain the Adams bloodline. He took Cherica riding on his tractor and told her she would have many children.

After graduation Saundra's parents said, Go on to college. Make something of yourself. We'll keep Cherica. You can see her every weekend. So Saundra did. She got a psychology degree from UNC-Charlotte and a good job in personnel at IBM. And she brought Cherica to Charlotte to grow up.

Cherica grew up fast, and soon she was living a fast life. She had these deep brown eyes and this willowy frame, and the men took note. She modeled in clothing advertisements and sold real estate. She earned enough to buy a black BMW and a red Mitsubishi coupé. She danced at the Diamond Club and ran in the circles of the newly rich. She mingled with the Hornets and the Panthers, and one day at a barbecue in the summer of 1998 she met a young wide receiver named Rae Carruth.

Although her lifestyle may have suggested otherwise, Cherica was in some ways an old-fashioned woman. Her grandfather's words had stayed with her. She wanted a wedding, a husband and many children. A whole football team, she used to say. Once she and her mother watched a movie in which a woman couldn't have children, and her mother, through modern technology, carried the child for her daughter and gave birth to her own grandchild.

Mom, Cherica said, would you do that for me?

Girl, yes, Saundra said.

It was Mother's Day 1999 when Cherica gave Saundra the news. You don't have to carry it for me, she said. I'm gonna have my own.

Cherica was thrilled about her unborn son. She read My First Bible out loud and immersed him in the music of Bach and Beethoven. And although Saundra rejoiced with Cherica, because she saw every life as a gift from God, she knew it would be complicated. Cherica wanted to give the baby the Carruth name, but her mother was against it. If you're not married when the baby comes into this world, Saundra said, he needs to be an Adams.

Rae Carruth didn't want him to be anything. Carruth's life was quickly diverging from the script. After making the NFL All-Rookie team in 1997, when he led all first-year players with 44 catches, for 545 yards, he had missed most of the '98 season with a broken right foot. He felt shunned by his Carolina teammates and stayed home alone, playing football on his PlayStation. He planned to come back stronger than ever in '99, but in September he was benched for part of the game after dropping a crucial pass in a two-point loss to the Jaguars. In mid-October, against the 49ers, he suffered a left-ankle sprain that would keep him out for a month. Another season was derailed. His career was going nowhere. And now another woman would soon be demanding child support.

Carruth knew a guy called New York and another guy called Little Man. New York weighed 286 pounds and would do anything for money and plenty of things for free. He had once stood on a roof for several hours, throwing glass window panes down at the police. He had once set a fellow prison inmate on fire. Little Man was not so frightening, but he knew his way around a gun and a crack deal. For someone who wanted to solve a problem outside the law, New York and Little Man appeared to be useful men.

Cherica went to a childbirth class, and Carruth went with her. New York later testified under oath about that. He said Carruth told him to meet them after the class and beat up Cherica and make her lose the baby. But New York didn't show. He was nothing if not a con man, so he strung Carruth along. One time New York agreed to find Cherica at her apartment and kill the kid there. Another time he was going to ambush her behind a restaurant. He took cash payments of $300 and $2,000 and kept delaying. Finally, they settled on a plan to murder Cherica.

On Nov. 15, 1999, when Cherica was about seven months pregnant, she got a call at her apartment. Carruth wanted to take her to the movies. Cherica fired up the BMW and drove to his house. From there, she called her mother. Strange men were coming and going. She saw an odd transaction that involved bootleg satellite television. Something's not right, she told Saundra. I don't know why I'm even here.

Just cancel the movie, Saundra said. Tell him you're not going. You're just gonna leave. Saundra stayed on the phone with Cherica and heard her repeat these things to Carruth. And she heard Carruth talk her daughter back into going.

No, no, no, he said. I'm going. I'm leaving right now. Let's get your things. Let's go to the car. And they got in his tricked-out white Ford Expedition and headed off to the Regal Cinemas for a late screening of The Bone Collector, with plans to return to Carruth's house afterward.

Cherica's roommate later testified that around midnight she got a phone call. Cherica was heading home. Carruth was coming with her. This was a total surprise. Cherica had left the apartment in disarray. She asked the roommate to straighten up her bedroom. A prosecutor would later say this change of venue was a crucial part of Carruth's plan. It was 10 miles north from his house to Cherica's apartment. He drove the white Expedition, and she followed in the black BMW. Behind her was a gold Nissan Maxima that contained Little Man and New York.

Rea Road is one of the prettiest drives in metropolitan Charlotte. Going north from I-485, it's a winding four-lane avenue divided by a tree-lined median. You cross a bridge over Four Mile Creek, and at Pineville-Matthews Road you can see the breathtaking crown-shaped sanctuary of Calvary Church. From there the road narrows to three lanes, then two, and it slopes down to a hollow that's secluded on both sides by trees and underbrush. There, at about 12:30 a.m., Rae Carruth came to a sudden halt.

Cherica hit the brakes.

The gold Maxima pulled around and stopped on her left.

She was trapped.

New York had a Charter Arms five-shot .38 Special revolver, and he emptied all five rounds into the BMW. The Expedition pulled away, taking Carruth to a friend's house to play video games. Little Man turned the Maxima around in a driveway and headed south. But as he sped up the hill and saw the lonely hollow receding in the rear-view mirror, he caught a glimpse of the BMW's brake lights flashing red in the dark. And he knew they had left the job undone.

At 12:31 that morning, a wireless phone call was placed to the Mecklenburg County 911 dispatch center. The recording is 12 minutes and six seconds long. It is the sound of a woman dying.

DISPATCHER: 911 Baker. Do you need police, fire or medic?

CHERICA ADAMS: Police. I've been shot. I've been shot.

Between deep breaths and moaning, and honking her horn to seek help from local residents, Cherica described her vehicle, her wounds and her precise location. She also said the words that would send Rae Carruth to prison.

MEDIC: O.K. How did this happen?

CHERICA: I was following my baby's daddy, Rae Carruth, the football player.

(A few questions later)

CHERICA: He was in the car in front of me and he slowed down and somebody pulled up beside me and did this.

MEDIC: And then where'd [Carruth] go?

CHERICA: He just left.

Four of the five bullets had found their mark. Three lodged in her flesh without serious harm. But one left a trail of destruction. It pierced her left side and passed through her abdomen, crossing her right chest, coming to rest near her right armpit. Along the way it tore her stomach and large intestine and made innumerable holes in her small intestine. It penetrated her liver, her diaphragm, her lung. It cut her pancreas in half. It severed the splenic artery and vein, opening such a fountain of blood that she eventually lost it all, and more. The tireless doctors at Carolinas Medical Center kept replacing the blood through intravenous lines, and she kept losing it. Six liters. One hundred fifty percent.

The lethal bullet missed the boy, just as the four other shots did. It missed his mother's uterus by an inch or two. But her blood was his blood. It flowed through the uterine artery to the placenta and gave him the nutrients and oxygen he needed to live. Now the blood was diverted. It was pooling in his mother's chest. And the unborn child began to suffocate.

Nearly 70 minutes passed from the time of the shooting to the time the boy was delivered by emergency C-section. Ten more and he might have been stillborn, according to Docia Hickey, the neonatologist who helped save his life. But the effects of those 70 minutes would be irreversible. Without oxygen, cells began to die in his cerebellum and basal ganglia. There was tissue death in the brain. The human body is quite adept at self-healing and regeneration. But lost brain cells are gone forever.

The boy came into the world, and he was blue.

Saundra says she found her daughter after the C-section in one of her last moments of lucid speech, and she asked Cherica a question.

Do you want him to be a Carruth or an Adams?

Adams, Cherica said.

And so the blue boy became Chancellor Lee Adams.

A week passed. On Nov. 25 the police rounded up Carruth and three other suspects: Van Brett Watkins (New York), Michael Kennedy (Little Man) and Stanley Abraham, a friend of Little Man's who was in the car that night. All were charged with multiple felonies, including attempted murder and intent to kill an unborn child. Carruth was released on $3 million bond.

On Dec. 14, 1999, four weeks after she found the strength to make the call that saved her unborn son's life, Cherica Adams died. Just before the end, Saundra lay down beside her daughter. "I love you," she said. And Cherica left just the way she had come, in the grasp of her mother's hands.

Within an hour or two, Saundra's lawyer had filed a motion in Mecklenburg District Court. By the end of the day a judge had signed an order granting Saundra Adams emergency custody of her grandson. She would carry a child for her daughter after all.

On Jan. 19, 2001, after a two-month criminal trial, the jurors delivered a split decision: They found Carruth guilty of conspiracy to commit murder, of using an instrument to destroy an unborn child and of shooting into an occupied vehicle, but not guilty of first-degree murder. That meant he would not face the death penalty. The judge had some leeway in determining his prison sentence, and Saundra Adams was called to testify.

"Chancellor has cerebral palsy because of this act," she said, facing the judge from the witness stand. "This heinous act. You know, thank—we do thank God that he's still alive. You know, he is our miracle child. Because he was not supposed to be here if that plan had been implemented properly. But Chancellor is alive, and he's got such a strong will. Just like his mom. He is fighting for his life."

She went on, her voice gaining force.

"Every day. I see that in Chancellor every day. Chancellor at 14 months old is not even doing the things that some four-month-olds do. Chancellor can't hold onto this ball. Chancellor can't pick up a spoon and hold a spoon.” Her voice rose to a place of righteous fury.

"He has trouble even holding a rattle in his hand and rattling. He's not sitting up. Talk about first step—he can't even, he's not even near a point of taking a first step. The doctors are telling me that he might not even take a first step till he might even be three years old, or older. But yet Chancellor has such a strong will and such a great personality. And that's the trait that I hope—maybe he did get some of that from his father.

"Because I do believe in miracles, I know that Chancellor will be better. We're gonna give him lots of love, and I know that God is, is working things out already for him to be totally and completely well. And in my heart, even though Rae Carruth has not shown one single ounce of remorse, to me or anyone in my family, there's not been one 'I'm sorry about what happened to your daughter.'

"But in my heart, because I'm a Christian, as an act of my will, and because I know it's out of obedience to God, I am forgiving Rae Carruth."

Eleven years later. Hot day in June. You wait in a T.G.I. Friday's on the north side of Charlotte, looking through the glass toward the parking lot. A metallic-blue minivan pulls into the handicapped-only space by the front door. She gets out of the driver's seat and comes around to the near side. The sliding door opens, and you see him for the first time.

It's hard to say what makes you cry. His face, perhaps, with his father's light skin, his mother's dark lashes and deep brown eyes, lit up with joy when he sees his grandmother's face. Or his body, slim and muscular, athletic if not for the hands that curl inward and the right leg that won't stand straight. Or the way her hand rests on his back as she guides him across the asphalt. Or the way he walks, lurching, as if his skeleton were a rusty machine.

They hurtle down I-77, singing Gospel music together, and he sways from side to side, and his voice is a fervent and joyful moan. They visit his godmother, Judy Williams, who feeds him fried potatoes and onions, and then they go to physical therapy, where his therapist, Amy Sturkey, is teaching him to walk on his own.

"Work those hips for me, Sweet Pea," she says as he bounces on a small trampoline. "Tell that hip to come over and join the party."

She stands by him, and he starts to fall, and fear shows on his face, because he can't catch himself, because his brain was damaged in those minutes when his mother's blood was diverted, but now Sturkey catches him, and he smiles again. He won't quit. Step up, step down, right, left, deathly serious, neck bulging with the effort, jerking like a baby and bent like an old man, so easy to damage, so hard to repair, and when he is done his grandmother holds him, his breathing soft but deep, and she whispers in his ear. "Rest on G-Mom's shoulder a little bit."

And he does, and soon they're off to another structured activity, this time in a church gymnasium with the Allegro Foundation, where children with autism, Down syndrome and cerebral palsy gather to play and learn. Could he have run the 40-yard dash in 4.29 seconds like his father? Could he have caught a deep pass over the middle in the NFL? A teenage volunteer throws him an orange beach ball, pillow-soft, over and over from three feet away, and Rae Carruth's son can catch it only half the time. An athlete? Yes, Chancellor Lee Adams is an athlete. He won a gold medal last April, in the 30 meters, in a motorized wheelchair, at the Mecklenburg County Special Olympics.

A football player? Yes again. Last year at a park in Charlotte he played in a flag football game with other kids of similar ability. Someone tossed the ball in his lap and he took off in that motor chair with the flag trailing behind him. Every few yards he would stop, and the defenders would close in, and G-Mom would yell, Keep going! Keep going fast! And he would go again, just out of their reach, and stop again, and go again, and finally G-Mom ran to him and the coaches ran to him and he smiled and laughed with delight because he could tell from their reactions that he had done something very good. And that good thing turned out to be a touchdown.

His grandmother leaves the gym for a moment, for a respite from all that intensity, and he sees that she is gone. He turns to you, sensing that you must know something, and he looks into your eyes. And he holds the eye contact without fear or shame. The purity in his gaze is astonishing, like a clean white flame, and then he asks that question again.

She could have filled him with hate, for his father and his Carruth blood; or anger, for the loss of his mother; or bitterness, for the loss of who he could have been. She filled him with something more powerful. He hardly ever cried as a baby, so quick was she to feed him and hold him and change his diapers, and as time went on he seemed to cry only for others. He would cry if one child hit another child, or at the suffering of a movie character, or when his godmother had a nosebleed. When G-Mom had food poisoning, so severe she had to crawl along the floor, there he was, crawling beside her.

She taught him that the rain was a shower of God's blessing, and he believed her, so that when his schoolmates ran inside to stay dry he just stood there and let it fall on him. She taught him that he could do anything, that he had no limits, even though a neurologist told her he would never walk or talk, and now of course he can do both. He can ride horses. He started sixth grade at the end of August. He makes his bed and cleans his room without being told. He wakes up smiling and goes to sleep smiling and in between he looks like the happiest person in the world. On the spectrum of cerebral palsy, he is somewhere near the middle. Conventional wisdom says he will always need help, always be catching up, never quite get to normal. But you never know. Medical technology is advancing. He runs through his therapy with a blazing intensity, and Sturkey thinks he could one day dress himself, prepare his own meals and walk safely around his own home. His grandmother believes he will get a job, get married, prolong the Adams bloodline and do many other amazing things. It may not be wise to bet against her.

They're in the minivan again, driving toward home. You want to go with them, but she will drop you off at your hotel instead. She is polite but firm. The home is Lee's sanctuary. No strangers allowed. It's late afternoon now, the heavy air draped over the Piedmont like a blanket pulled too soon from the dryer, and Saundra Adams is talking about Rae Carruth.

"I'm not gonna have anything negative to say about him," she says. "I thank him for my grandson. I thank him for my grandson."

There is a long silence.

"After what you've lost," you say.

"Like I say," she says, "you can focus on what you've lost or what you have left. So I didn't lose. I have my grandson. I have my daughter with me in my heart, always. I have her with me through Lee. So I don't focus on loss. I mean, I think she's in Heaven, with God, so that's definitely not a loss. So I've got a lot left, and a lot of hope left, and a lot to live for, and to be able to help my grandson to become the wonderful man he's meant to be. I haven't lost anything.

"Really, I've gained. I've been pushed into my role and destiny."

This story was edited and adapted from an article written by Thomas Lake in the September 17, 2012 issue of Sports Illustrated magazine.

Just Thinking

A few weeks back, a friend of mine flew in from San Diego for the weekend.  We spent the better part of two days together and her visit was a boost of encouragement.  Though it couldn't unlock the gates of this prison nor improve the conditions under which I live, it certainly made it easier to bear the grimness that has surrounded me for the past five years.

A visit to a prisoner always has incredible significance, which is difficult to put down in words.  Routine is the supreme law of prison.  Every day is like the day before; the same surroundings, same faces, same conversations, same odors, same barriers, and the same ever-present feeling that outside the prison lies an exciting world to which you have no access.  A visit is an unforgettable occasion that breaks the monotony and ushers into your heart all things good with the world.

It's hard to believe it has been nearly 5 years since I was a free man.  So much has changed and taken place in the years I've been gone.  My friend's visit prompted moments of reflection to ponder all that's transpired.  Thinking about the past can be far more exacting than contemplating the present and envisioning the future.  But it's a necessary prologue to ascertain how dreadful experiences serve a useful purpose in the broader scope of our lives.

I will never forget the grief and difficulty of those early days.  The day I was arrested, I was put in a holding tank with 20 other men and remained there for nearly two days.  The conditions were abysmal and frightening.  The cell was the size of a small bedroom in a traditional middle-class home.  Garbage was strewn everywhere.  There was one toilet in the corner with no partitions, no privacy.  We had to crap in the same crapper in front of everyone.  The toilet was clogged and there was no toilet paper.  Guys urinated on themselves, fights broke out, and we slept on the floor.  Reality hit so hard that it took my breath away, took my stance and strength away.  That day taught me it's really not your world.  Someone else is in control.  It's not your show and the show can be brutal.  Brutal in its coldness.  Brutal in its love and affection.  Calamity can hit you straight between the eyes when you never saw it coming, even when you were looking straight ahead.

I've never seen freedom since that day.  I never saw or heard from my wife again.  I lost contact with my youngest daughter for almost 18 months until God intervened and miraculously reconnected us.  On that day, I never imagined any of the above would take place.  That day changed me; it changed me forever.

In those early days, I found myself in the most severe depression.  It was so profound I doubt there is a name for it.  The pain made me crazy and dismantled everything I believed.  I was transferred out of the holding cell and placed in a cell where I was locked down 23 hours a day.  The days were long and dark, one after another without end.  I would stare at the ceiling for hours, mumbling over and over, "Jesus, I'm losing my mind."  I could not sleep.  Panic attacks assaulted my normal and steady constitution.  The agony sent my heart into crazy drumbeats that could last for hours, my breath cascading into rapid, thin gulps that left me ventilating in cupped hands.  I never believed such things existed.  In my past, I'd listen to others describe experiences similar in nature and I normally dismissed their words as fabrications and exaggerations.  And then it happened to me.

I felt like I was in the darkest forest at midnight.  And it got worse before it got better.  The first time I was let out of my cell to mingle with other prisoners, all hell broke loose.  I had not showered in days.  When it was my turn, I stripped and entered the rain closet.  It was barely two feet wide and I held a button down continuously for water flow.  I was inside only minutes when I suddenly heard a violent rumbling, voices screaming and shrieking.  Then came a maelstrom of pounding footsteps.  Before I could react, the shower door ripped open and two red dots danced incoherently on my bare torso.  With Tasers pointed, guards screamed at me to get out and lie face down on the ground.  I rushed to join the clothed prisoners on the concrete.  I was the only one naked on the cold, dirty floor.

My depression worsened day by day and became dark and dense.  I felt like I was splitting apart, atom by atom.  I could not see beyond the four walls confining me and they were closing in, squeezing the life out of me.  I could only see the world through smoked Plexiglas; I could no longer see the hope, the vibrancy, the world as it once was.  It was the most helpless feeling.  I was separated from everyone in my life; I could touch no one I loved.

One sleepless night, in the early morning hours, I told God I couldn't take any more.  Sprawled out, I spoke the most desperate words a man can speak.  It was the most honest and sincere prayer of my life.  I didn't ask for a miracle to deliver me from the mess I was in.  I simply asked for help, for strength to get me through each day.  I vowed to God and myself I'd fight back if He provided the strength I needed.  I can't explain what happened in that moment.  There were no fireworks, no audible voice, no feeling of emotion.  I did not feel God's presence.  I felt nothing.  My spirit was completely crushed and broken.  Minutes after my prayer, I fell into a deep sleep for the first time in days. 

I woke late the next morning and began to write.  I wrote and wrote.  I wrote for hours.  I grabbed my Bible and read.  I read and read.  I found some desire to exercise.  I got down on the floor and did push-ups and crunches.  Then dips and squats.  I crawled underneath the tiny table in the cell, grabbed the bottom and pulled myself upward in a rowing motion.  I found some motivation to stick to the regimen.  I attacked it each morning and night.  The workouts brought blood back to my brain.  The reading and writing opened new worlds.  God provided the strength for me to reach through the smoking ashes my life had become and find the will to stop my slide into insanity.  On that lonely ledge, at the end of the world, I found some footing to become defiant with my condition.

The reading and writing birthed life in me again.  It empowered me to rise above the suffocating walls of the jail, granting clarity and vision.  As I wrote each day, I envisioned Paul, Hugo, Dostoevsky, Mandela, Solzhenitsyn; I visualized each man writing in his prison cell.  The writing carried me back to the happiest moments of my life and brought noble ideas back into my den.  It helped turn my tragedy into hope.

Five years is a long period to be separated from those you love.  Loved one's lives march on and people change.  Dreams and hopes prove difficult to fulfill and when misfortune strikes, fate hardly ever provides golden parachutes.  But significant progress is always possible if we dig deep and hold onto belief with every ounce of strength we can find and allow God's intervention into all facets of our story.

My prison years have not been filled with waste.  The lessons learned.  The time spent reading, studying, and writing.  The discipline I've discovered.  The God I've come to know.  I'm a much different person than I was five years ago, totally changed and transformed.  My mind.  My heart.  My body.  My intellect.  My spirit.  My faith.  All of me.  Changed.

I remain highly optimistic behind these stark walls.  I see beyond the heavy clouds and spot the brilliant blue over the horizon.  However wrong my calculations have been in the past and whatever difficulties I still must face, I know in my lifetime I will again step out into the sunshine and walk with firm feet on a free ground.  That future moment will be brought about by the strength of my God and the sheer determination of my faith.

Often as I run lap after lap on the track inside this barren place, my mind wanders far and wide, recalling this episode and that mistake.  I think of my girls as I move in a continuous oval, wading through heat and cold and rain.  As I run I am aware I'm going nowhere as I've been going nowhere for the past half decade.  But my love for my daughters makes somewhere out of nowhere.  In this place, on this track, I'm moving forward even as I'm moving in circles.  Shayne, Abby, and Shelby return in my love, so alive and so beautiful.  I have them still, in my heart and in my memories.  And every step I take is one of unbending determination toward them, a step toward holding my girls in my arms one day again.

In spite of all that has happened, the ebb and flow of life through heartache and brokenness and disappointment, I live in hope and expectation.  Sometimes I have the belief this feeling is part and parcel of my self and seems to be woven into every fiber of who I am.  I see this as an act of grace and the gift God gave me in that cold lonely cell when I lost all will and desire to go on.  I have no other way to explain it.  From that moment forward I felt some hope, and that strengthened and replenished my waning resources of fortitude.  Hope is a powerful weapon when nothing else remains.

I feel my heart pumping hope steadily, warming my blood and lifting my spirits.  I'm convinced that floods of personal disaster can never drown a determined individual nor can the cumulous of failure destroy him.  The past of my life might fade, but it will never go away completely.  Plus, as much as I wish otherwise, my past is just too unbelievable, too convoluted, a mélange of some salacious behavior and years of upright living and compassionate deeds.  I've learned not to allow the wounds of my past to shape me into someone I'm not.  Each day, this past pushes me to get down on my hands and knees to remind myself of how grateful and humble I need to be.

The recollection of another era is a reminder that events lived are not only a part and companion of our history, they're a way to give context to our lives, to our collective past, present, and future.  In another time and place we can look back and say, "God showed up then."  This forges a faith strong enough to look beyond circumstance, beyond trials, beyond chaos; recognizing our harsh experiences are never an end unto themselves and not without purpose.  They are part of something greater.

All of us face days when life is hard.  Days when our opposition and our own imperfections tempt us to take an easier path, avoiding our responsibilities to our loved ones, our children, and to the gift of life God has given us.  We all face struggles large and small.  We all face difficulties and hardships.  When the waters rise and hope takes flight, we must do our best to suspend disbelief and pursue hope through discouragement and disappointment, through negative feelings and a shattered self-image.  When the outcome of our struggle and pain is uncertain, we must not give up nor give in and accept the world as it is; no, we must continue to press forward and seek the world as it should be.

Sunshine and Shadows

In every life there are shadows.  If there were no shadows, there would be no sunshine.  Out of the sunshine, shadows form and are cast.  My life has been filled with mostly sunshine.  I've been able to do what I love.  I've traveled the world and seen unbelievable places and met wonderful people.  I have beautiful and healthy daughters, an amazing family, and incredible friends.  Enfolded in the sunshine is a long era of time filled with honorable deeds and actions; years of spearheading noble causes.  Yes, my life has been filled with sunshine, prodigious sunshine; so much so, I forgot about the shadows.  Slowly they crept in and clouded my sunshine.

I've made mistakes in life.  I tried my best to do the right things and continue to do whatever I can to repair my wrongs.  There was a period I lost my moral compass and found myself in a very difficult situation.  The shadows lengthened and widened.  Without compass to guide, I made desperate and strained decisions.  My injudicious choices were never fueled by anything other than doing everything in my power to salvage a sinking ship.  Never was there any intent to hurt anyone or cause another loss; yet individuals were hurt and suffered loss because of my mistakes.

There's almost never a time when every decision we make is correct and every step we take is in the right direction.  Life is filled with complexities, and rarely are the complications black and white.  People seldom make the right choices when they're under peril or duress.  The shadows.  People choose right because they see something that makes their life valuable enough to start moving toward a life worth living.  The sunshine.

Out of the shadows comes enlightenment.  Within our greatest traits are the seeds of our undoing.  There is a connection between the great gifts we possess and the great problems we encounter.  Sunshine and shadows.

http://stevewilson777.blogspot.com/

The Moment

So I read today that Roger Clemens is coming out of retirement at the age of 50 to show professional baseball hitters he can still get the best of them.  The last time Clemens made a comeback he was 45 and amply compensated – $28 million – for his subpar performance and half season with the New York Yankees.  He found little reward on the field, going 6-6 and was shelled off the field in the third inning of his final outing, a playoff game the Yankees lost.

This time around, Clemens’ return from retirement is on a much smaller scale and his new team is slightly lighter on tradition and history than the pinstriped squad from the Bronx.  Nonetheless he is still returning and for some reason refuses to fade quietly into the Texas sunset.  He takes the mound tonight for the Sugarland Skeeters of the independent Atlantic League to face the Bridgeport Bluefish.

Apparently this comeback is fueled solely for the love of the game.  He's seeking some satisfaction with little financial incentive.  And his return is a far cry from his glory days of climbing the hill for the Yanks to face the Boston Red Sox.  I mean the Skeeters and the Bluefish?  Come on, these are hardly names one associates with baseball.  Sounds more like games my seven year old daughter Shelby plays on her Nintendo DS.  And what is a Skeeter anyway?  I believe I know what a Bluefish is but a Skeeter?  I did some digging and lo and behold I learned a Skeeter is a southern moniker for a mosquito, a common fan pest at night games here in Texas.  So in reality, Clemens is pitching for the mosquitoes, but as they say aroun' these parts, he's pitchin' and throwin' heat for the Skeeters.  Who in their right mind would name a baseball team Skeeters?  Even more so, why would a seven-time Cy Young Award winner and future Hall of Famer want to pitch for mosquitoes, Skeeters, or any team named after an insect?  He's pursuing the The Moment.

Though my athletic prowess is not on the level and scale of Roger Clemens, I'm an athlete nonetheless.  My two best sports are tennis and basketball.  In my present environment I can't play tennis  – my favorite – so I focus solely on basketball, my first athletic love.  The problem is, at my age, basketball is extremely hard on my body.  I'm reaching the point in life where it's becoming more difficult to lace up my Nikes night in and night out.  But for some reason I can't quite quit the sport I love even though I've tried a dozen times.  Why?  The Moment.

I play in two basketball leagues a year, spring and fall.  Scattered in between are a few tournaments.  The seasons are rigorous and long.  We play 3 games a week and with playoffs included, it's not uncommon for each campaign to extend well beyond 30 games.  When you're 48 and running up and down the court with young twenties who are faster, stronger, and more athletic, it's quite extracting and demanding on the body.  Especially three nights a week in a prison basketball league, which is much more physical than any rec league in America.  As a result, I'm the pregame player who smells like I walked out of an Icy Hot factory and I'm the postgame player stretched out on a yoga mat with ice packs wrapped around knees and ankles taking up yoga positions.

For each of the last six seasons, I've told myself this is my last campaign.  Initially, other players believed me and understood why I wanted to hang it up.  I'm the oldest guy in the league and one of only a handful of white guys.  But now they just roll their eyes when I mention retirement because they know I'll be back.  And sure enough, when the next season arrives, I'm back on my team and training hard to get in cardio shape by our first game.  I don't want to miss The Moment.

I've retired at the end of every season even though my performance and numbers remain competitive.  I consistently score in double figures and for the most part can stay with my man defensively using stealthy old-school slight of hand tricks like grabbing my opponent’s jersey.  I still have the ability to pull up behind the arc and bury 3's and my jumper has not yet morphed into a decrepit set-shot.  And every blue moon, I score 20 plus points in a game and managed to hit 30 once. (The planets aligned) I retire because my body does not always cooperate with my mind.  My brain tells me, I can beat that guy off the dribble; I can cut hard off that pick and beat the young fool to the hole.  But my body sometimes refuses to cooperate and screams back, that was 20 years ago stupid.  The aftereffects of each game require my self-prescribed cocktail of Motrin, Tylenol, and Aleve.  And the day after is always the worst as I walk around cement like looking like some mannequin that escaped from a display window on Fifth Avenue.  So why do I continue?  For that matter, why does any athlete push his body and extend himself and attempt to defy Father Time?  The Moment.

Every sport offers a pinnacle of achievement and feeling known as The Moment.  It's why athletes compete and perform.  It's why they come out of retirement and return to the sports they love.  It's why you see boxers attempt comebacks in their forties.  It's why there are senior leagues for every major sport in this country.  It's why Michael Phelps WILL swim again in Rio.  It's why Sampras and McEnroe and Borg and Agassi are still slugging it out on the old man's Champions Tour and why there is a Senior PGA Tour, Senior Baseball League, and thousands of recreational leagues for just about every sport and age group imaginable.  It's exactly why Roger Clemens is taking the mound tonight for the Skeeters.

The Moment is not exclusive to professional athletes.  It's found and felt in every league in every sport in every nation.  It's not limited to age or ability or talent.  It's seen in pick-up games and flag football contests and on lonely tennis courts where it's you and your best friend banging it out for bragging rights.  It's felt on the fields, courts, tracks, diamonds, courses, ranges, roads, and in the rings, lanes, and rinks.  It's experienced in all weather conditions: rain, snow, sleet, wind, heat.  The Moment is why you see old people playing softball in your city parks and even older people carting around on golf courses.

The Moment.  It's in that millisecond when I get the ball and I lift off the ground and my shooting hand goes forward and nothing else is happening in the world as the world goes silent and I see the ball rise in the air and arc perfectly as it leaves my hand and floats through space and I just know; I just know it's perfect as I watch the round orange come back down through the iron hole suspended in time as it swishes the net.  Then there comes the immense joy I feel and the waves of adrenaline rushing through my veins and the adulation from my teammates as we race back down the court to defend our basket.  The Moment inspires you to believe you have one more in you.  It's why you never quit.  It grants an illusion of clarity to our complicated lives.  As Mark Twain once wrote, "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than the ones you did do.  So throw off the bowlines.  Sail away from the safe harbor.  Catch the trade winds in your sail.  Explore.  Dream.  Discover.  Live."  Live your Moment(s).

A Day In My Life - Music

Today, nearly five years of living without an iPod and my music came to an end.  For the first time in the feds we're allowed to purchase MP3 players and download music.  Over the last year, I heard a rumor this day was coming but I never believed it.  In this environment the most unimaginable rumors swirl with every gust of wind.  And frequently they prove to be false.  I was stunned when MP3 players went on sale in the compound store last week and we were informed we could start buying songs through our computer system today.

All week, my mind's been spinning as I've tried to recall my favorite tracks.  I've carried a pen and notepad everywhere writing down songs and artists as they come to mind.  When I can't remember a title, I scribble lyrics I recall and ask the music connoisseurs if they know the name of the song.  Usually they suggest I sing the lyrics so they can ascertain some frame of reference, some rhythm or beat.  Big mistake.  No one has deducted a song title from my impromptu solos but they certainly have cast cringed faces and distorted smiles in my attempts to belt out tunes I can't quite remember.

I've hauled my notepad to the weight room, the gym, the track, and around the housing unit.  I've slept with it because I found myself waking throughout the night with song titles rollercoasting through my thoughts.  Following a week of horrendous solo performances, of wracking my brain trying to remember all the music that's been missing from my life for the last half decade, the day arrived to download my first songs.

I woke bright and early and rushed to the computer terminals with music list and iPod in hand.  I was eager to reunite with my music.  On arrival, I was greeted by a lengthy line snaking its way through the unit.  It was the longest line I've ever seen inside my living area, at least fifty deep, all waiting to reconnect with their music.  Disappointedly, I returned to my room and postponed one of the most anticipated moments of these last five years.  As I waited for the line to shrink, I contemplated why I was so anxious to download the missing music of my life and why so many others were feeling the same way about their music.

Music is a harmony that unites the spiritual and emotional with the physical in the human life.  We do more than hear music; we feel music.  The music we listen to is a metaphor for what goes on in the heart and soul.  It's an expression or representation of life churning internally, of emotions and spirit.  In our very constitution we are musical, as is the world itself.  No matter where you travel on this bouncing ball, you encounter music.  It's deeply embedded and entrenched in culture, in history, and in the lives of people found in every given region and country on earth.

Our spirit is fundamentally musical, complete with tonalities, moods, rhythms, counterpoints, harmonies, and dissonances.  It corresponds to some feeling or thought, and when we listen to music we are led to sensations that dispel the humdrum of daily life.  Our spirit yearns for understanding, for completion, for inspiration, and often in a song we find some solace for our yearnings.  The light clicks on.  Someone understands how I feel.  Music has the ability to move us deeply.  More than all the arts, it has a powerful effect on a person's life.  The brilliant Greek philosopher Plato wrote, "Without music, the soul becomes feeble, deaf, and blind."  Music touches our spirit directly and brings out individuality and imagination.

Often I approach life as a logical problem and when faced with difficulty I do my best to determine which alternative is correct and makes sense.  And sometimes nothing makes sense and the choices in front of me are clouded by confusion.  Music helps shift my thinking from logical sequence to pliable reasoning, and this opens windows where I can see and appreciate the many different ways life arranges itself.  It reconnects me with my past and this adaptive vision, as with music itself, provides significant insight that is a profound deepening and understanding of the original content of my life.  In other words, music casts fresh perspective on all that has occurred up to this point in my journey and can help calibrate my forward view of a boundless horizon filled with unlimited possibilities.  Words often can't do this; they are sometimes empty and inattentive, void of feeling.  But music moves my spirit, igniting me to action and fanning the flame of belief.

Music is made up of measures and developments so it's tolerant of the many different kinds of figurations that make up a life.  This is often why we connect to certain songs, why certain music resonates in our hearts.  Music creates an atmosphere, a milieu, a haven for clarity and calm.  Sometimes words don't enlighten but a song clears away all the cobwebs and allows us to see the various dimensions of our lives.  The deep power of music provides an ordinary life with beauty and poetry and in times of uninspired pragmatism allows our spirit to interact with inspiration.

Perhaps one of the reasons we lack enchantment in daily life is we often think too much in terms of cause and effect, instead of stepping back and acknowledging the sovereign expressions that simply come from being alive in a living and fluid world.  Music helps me appreciate the aesthetics of events that shape my life rather than their truth or fairness.  The art of living is quite different in tone from the toil of living.

Some hours later the line for the computers had vanished.  I sat in front of a workstation, logged in, and clicked the music button.  Suddenly I was connected to the outside world.  On the screen in front of me was a bridge to my entire past.  It was overwhelming at first.  My mind went blank as I tried to figure out what song to download first.  I noticed a running clock in the window.  I had fifteen minutes to select my songs and could only purchase a daily limit.  I quickly searched for songs that resonate with me and carry deep meaning both past and present.

The first song I purchased was What Faith Can Do by Kutless because the lyrics burn in my spirit.  I believe every word of this song; I live and feel and breathe the lyrics.  Next I pictured my three beautiful daughters whom I miss more than words can describe.  Past images of wonderful times spent together raced through my mind.  I needed songs that would take me back to moments where I could feel their touch and hear their voices and see their amazing smiles, songs that would wrap me into their past and present lives.  I downloaded Butterfly Kisses, I'm Already There, and Ready, Set, Don't Go.  These three songs connect me to my girls and bring me back to a very special experience I had some years back.

Next came God Of This City  and How Great Is Our God  by Chris Tomlin.  Both worship anthems inspire me greatly and remind me: Nothing is impossible for my God.  It's a tremendous blessing for me to access music that ushers the presence of God into my life as I live in a very difficult place and mind-bending world.  I followed those up with I Could Sing Of Your Love Forever  and Did You Feel The Mountains Tremble by Delirious.  These incredible songs take me back to the many years I lived out my calling, times where I was used by God and witnessed so many miracles and astonishing acts as I travelled and spoke all over the world.  And these songs reignite my belief that one day God will use my gifts again in a similar way.

Before I knew it, my time limit was up and I’d purchased my daily limit of music.  I scrolled through my iPod to make sure all songs were downloaded.  And there they were.  It's strange when you lose something and go without it for years.  Then suddenly you find it again.  It's an amazing feeling.  You appreciate it more, value it more, treasure it more.  So much more.  You comprehend, maybe for the first time, the considerable emptiness the loss created.

My First Playlist

Bent, Matchbox Twenty - I don't think there is a song I relate to more.

My Wish, Rascal Flatts -  My prayer and greatest hope for my daughters, my friends, my family.

Alright, Darius Rucker - At the end of the day, nothing in life is more important.

Hello World, Lady Antebellum - My prayer, my hope, my faith, my thoughts, my feelings, my girls ... song says everything I long for and desire.

Let's Stay Together, Al Green - A timeless classic on what marriage and love are all about.

The Color Of Love, Boyz 2 Men - For me, the most beautiful song lyrically and musically.  Love is the most powerful force in the universe.  It's magical.

4 In The Morning, Gwen Stefani - Sometimes our relationships reach a point where all feeling is lost, where everything is frayed, torn, fractured, and the only thing that remains is our commitment. When you hold onto and honor commitment by giving every piece of who you are to that commitment, something miraculous takes place.

Heal The World, MJ - A hope that burns in my heart.  I want nothing more than to make any wrongs right, assist others, and give my remaining years to help the hurting in our world.

Babylon, David Gray - A feel good song that triggers fond memories of wonderful times lived all over the world ... NYC-Honolulu-London-SF-HK-DC-Rome-Paris-Amsterdam-Munich-Monte Carlo-Kiev-Miami-Helsinki ... the list is endless.  Life is amazing and anything is possible.  Red lights do turn green again!

No Love, Lil Wayne & Eminem - You can't write a song like this nor relate to it unless you've lived the lyrics.  Like me, both Weezy & Shady lived through a difficult relationship and walked the path of incarceration.  Though graphic and provocative, the song is reality in my life and story.  Most lyrics apply.  "I'm alive again, more alive than I had been in my whole entire life."  "My nightstands are full of open Bibles."  "Been to Hell and back, I can show you vouchers."

Not Afraid, Eminem - A personal anthem.  A constant reminder to stand strong and never again lose sight of what's most important: God, family, and my girl's lives.

Everlasting God, Lincoln Brewster

Could It Be Any Harder, The Calling

The Last Beautiful Girl, Matchbox Twenty

Mockingbird, Rob Thomas

The Space Between, Dave Matthews Band

‘N Dey Say, Nelly

The Riddle, Five For Fighting

There Goes My Life, Kenny Chesney

Don't Blink, Kenny Chesney

Headlines, Drake

Take Care, Drake & Rihanna

When I'm Gone, Eminem

Mercy, Mercy, Me, Marvin Gaye

What's Going On, Marvin Gaye

Adrienne, The Calling

Angel, Lionel Richie

Viva La Vida, Coldplay

I Can Only Imagine, Mercy Me

Disrupted Faith – When God Seems Indifferent

Perhaps there is no greater disruption to the sparkle of the human spirit than unanswered prayer.  When news arrives that runs contrary to our fervent petitions and dislocates all we hoped and believed would transpire, our spirit is catapulted, sometimes instantaneously, into a shattering thrust, a blast from one state of mind to another.  Feelings go numb.  Words fall to the ground.  An explosion of confusion chases away lucid thoughts as the wind of our hopes and the gust of our dreams evaporate, leaving a hollow vacuum of nothingness.  Behind us lies a void.  And in front a wall, a wall of darkness.

In my previous post I wrote of news received from the U.S. Court of Appeals informing me I lost my Direct Appeal.  The news was difficult to absorb.  Once I read the ruling, I returned to my room and sat numbly on the edge of the bed.  A throbbing dread drummed in my heart and became a black hole of shock that swallowed all my questions and released no answers.  The decision seemed to pull all the air from my lungs and the court's opinion rippled on the gloomy sea of my feelings.  I catatonically reached for my Bible and impassively thumbed through its pages reading hundreds of notations I've written in the sidelines.  These inscriptions cover everything from personal insights to promises God has spoken to my life.

As I perused certain entries, I remembered times of prayer and study when I jotted those thoughts down.  My mind drifted back to bygone moments of inspiration and discovery.  It dawned on me that I've never prayed and fasted so much for God's help and intervention in my life.  I recalled a 40 day fast I undertook late last year wherein my faith flourished and reached colossal heights.  This fast centered on God working in my case, working in my family unit, and working in the lives of my daughters.  My thoughts revisited numerous extended fasts where I diligently sought God's provision for all who have been adversely affected and hurt by my mistakes.  Memories resurfaced in a crisp clarity of recollection to a period where my spirit was booming with confidence and conviction and assurance in a time when my body was hurting and wanting and failing.

In that dichotomy of reminiscence, those long minutes of my fragile self where I orbited polarizing realms of faith and disbelief, of trust and uncertainty, something strange occurred.  Abruptly, my thoughts shifted to the story of Joseph in prison.  Then Paul and Silas chained to a wall.  Then Peter isolated in a cell facing imminent beheading.  And then a kaleidoscope of images burst in my mental wanderings such as a disillusioned Jonah pleading fervently for his life in the belly of a whale; an inconsolable David stretched out for days on his palace floor begging God to spare his child; a heartbroken Job covered in boils mourning the incomprehensible loss of all his children.  I saw the great biblical characters of history, the great men of faith in their discouragement, in their sadness, in their hopelessness, in their desperation.  I did more than see; I felt.  I felt the pain and heartache and disappointment and despair.  I felt the hot sting of tears leak from my eyes and trickle down my cheeks.  It was a quiet grief, a quiet distress, quiet enough to hear the anguished droplets fall from my aging face onto the thin vellum pages of my Bible, one after another, each wet circle weeping outward into words on the page, words of trust and hope and faith, words I could find no strength to believe.

After some time, a tranquil emptiness enveloped the room.  Then I unexpectedly felt God's touch and presence amidst the whirl and crush of the news.  Though it was impossible to imagine anything good coming from the court's decision, there was a sudden calm and assurance, a potency from another world.  Mysteriously, and seemingly out of nowhere, an overwhelming sense of trust arrived and jolted my spirit.  I glanced down at my Bible and words from the book of Isaiah leaped off the page, "My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts says the Lord.  And my ways are far beyond anything you can imagine."  In a flash, God's Spirit transcended my injured spirit.  God granted me an unexpected endowment of faith.  Inexplicably I saw the current setback and horror of this experience from a new perspective.  Somehow, somewhere, I just knew God was using all the broken and disjointed pieces and creating a story of ineradicable hope.

Though it's difficult to see and understand in the present, I have learned in times previous and have been reminded in these years of a punitive sojourn that the obscure, unplanned, unexpected, and disappointing answers are inevitably worthwhile, sometimes needed, and often quite important on our journey through life.  My own life of faith has included many surprises across the years and I suspect if our spiritual pilgrimage did not include a few unexpected detours, we would hardly need faith.  After all, we normally lean on God out of need, not out of surplus.  I believe the sooner we discover this sublime truth, the sooner we will reach deeper depths of experience with a God who keeps shaking things up, keeps changing the path, keeps rocking the boat to test our faith in Him, teaching us to not rely on easy answers and bullet points, but rather rely on His sovereignty and love.

Looking back on this ordeal, I see many coincidences, God-incidences that are misshapen pieces of a mysterious puzzle of God's promises for my life.  As with any puzzle, I can't forecast what piece will first connect to the next, nor can I predict what piece will be the last to find its place to complete the jigsaw.  I only know as I look at a life full of scattered pieces, somehow the pieces link and once assembled they form a beautiful portrait.

God's presence ebbs and flows in our lives and sometimes there is more mystery than resolution to our faith.  This was never more evident than in the puzzle of the Crucifixion.  In a time when God seemed most absent, He was closest of all; when God appeared most powerless, He was most powerful; when God looked most dead, He was conquering death and reclaiming life.  Though his followers petitioned for Jesus to be spared the awfulness of the crucifix, those prayers and hopes returned unanswered and their faith was severely jilted by the enigma of events that occurred at Golgotha.

This pattern of paradox is a recurring theme throughout the Bible.  A litany of individuals who witnessed miraculous acts and frequently received favorable answers to their prayers also endured long droughts when miracles did not happen, when urgent and desperate and passionate pleadings dropped back to earth unanswered.  Like the aforementioned individuals of biblical fame, those heroes experienced crisis moments that sorely tempted them to judge God as indifferent and powerless and uncaring.  Confused and bewildered, they faced a life-changing fork in the road: whether to turn away embittered or step forward with any sliver of faith they could find.

God works with whatever grain of faith a person can muster, even the type of faith that's barely hanging on and can't seem to marshal belief.  Any measure of faith touches God's heart from the kind an outcast woman exhibited by groveling on her knees through a writhing mass of human bodies, to the type displayed by a prophet who possessed the brazenness to call down fire on a mountain top.  This same bold, fiery faith also morphed into a faith filled with doubt, so much so, it caused Elijah to fearfully run for his life and beseech God to kill him.  Astonishingly, God responded in greater intimacy to the prophet's cry of distrusting faith than his fiery demand and bold demonstration of faith on Mount Carmel.

In reality - doubt, disappointment, unanswered prayer - often coexist with faith, for in the presence of certainty who would need faith at all?  Those who honestly confront their doubts often find an expansion of faith exceeding those very doubts.  Faith appears when least expected.  God does transcend our limitations, our doubts, our fickle faith.  He also transcends the disappointments, setbacks, and failures of our lives and births new perspective and fresh hope.  Rarely was this more apparent than when a forlorn father brought his sick son to Jesus and said, "Help us if you can."  Jesus responded, "What do you mean if I can?  Anything is possible if a person believes."  The aching father's next statement is quite revealing and reflects the spirit of one whose faith has been wounded: "I do believe, but help me overcome my unbelief."  And Jesus countered the father's faltering faith and healed the man's son.  The father's shaky confession did not interrupt God's miraculous act in his son's life.

If there is one lesson the Bible teaches me about faith it's that God often works in ways I could never predict or fathom.  As in my abovementioned news, the answers to our faith are not always what we desire or expect.  And these disappointments can draw the life out of us and send our faith reeling.  The unexpected responses deflate our faith and cloud our perspective.  Faith can easily lose all support of feeling and confidence and belief similar to what the first Christians experienced at the time of Jesus' execution and death.  On that black day of infamy their faith faltered and vanished.  Most were left with broken hearts fractured by incredulity, doubt, and devastating questions.  As with us in our times of dimness, they were unable to grasp or comprehend that the darkest deed in all of history was the necessary prelude to the brightest.  As it was then, it is true now: the dark riposte in our lives just could be the needed prelude to the brightest.

There will be periods of life when God seems not only invisible but completely absent, when God remains silent and all the Bible's promises appear flagrantly false.  Whenever I encounter a sense of estrangement, a gist of disappointment or discouragement, I remind myself: God's faithfulness is the one constant in the annals of history.  Times will come that test me and press my belief to the outer fringes.  I may not receive the answer I hoped for; I may continue to undergo stringent discipline for my sin or failure.  Though I long to make my wrongs right, to fix what has been turned upside down, God may have something different in mind.

We sometimes experience times of unusual closeness when God seems responsive to our every need; we also experience times where He is distant and can't seem to be found.  When the latter arrives, we instinctively blame ourselves, assuming we have done something to push God away.  A voice inside whispers, telling us we are unworthy to receive blessing and something good from God, hinting our faith is weak and blemished and God would never respond to such flawed faith.  Irrational thoughts stream and gust through our mind, distorting the truth of a God who is there, who will answer, who holds our hopes in His heart and our best interests in His hand. 

In those times when I have no words and my faith stumbles through disappointments, failures, and doubts; in times when answers are not found and questions pile up, I find solace and strength in the faith of others.  I discover if God appeared in their storm and stirred their faith to rise, He can do the same for mine.  Maybe what I sense as abandonment is actually a form of empowerment.

I think of a young Jewish girl whose life embodied this principle.  She was interned at Auschwitz and somehow found a way to keep her spirit elevated enough to pen a journal during those years of anguish and separation and merciless torment.  She wrote of an uninterrupted dialogue with God: "Sometimes when I stand in some corner of the camp, my feet planted on Your earth, my eyes raised toward Your heaven, tears sometimes run down my face, tears of deep emotion and gratitude.  And I want to be there, right in the thick of what people call horror, and still be able to say: life is beautiful.  Yes, I lie here in a corner, parched and dizzy and feverish and unable to do a thing.  Yet I am also with the jasmine and the piece of sky beyond my window."

Etty Hillesum knew the horror of bottomless suffering, yet her young mind also understood that God is present in our pain, in our travails, in our suffering.  He is forever present in the beauties and oddities of life.  And in her abandonment she was empowered to look beyond the daily dreadfulness of life in a death camp and trust a God who could redeem what appeared irredeemable.

Etty's courage and example of defiant faith demonstrates that every human heartbeat is a universe of possibilities.  With God by its side, every human will has the power to transform its fate.  Fate is not something unchangeable as though it's fixed at birth and as constant as the rising and falling of the sun.  Life is stranger and more beautiful than that.  The truth is, no matter what kind of situation you find yourself in, no matter how good or how bad, you can change your life completely with a single thought, a single act of faith.  And this is what we must do in our setbacks, in our mistakes and failures, in our discouragements and disappointments.  We must put one foot forward, and then the other, and lift our eyes to the frown and smile of the world.  We must believe, and hope, and trust as we follow faith and push our brave hearts into the promise of a new day.