Disclaimer: DOWN but not OUT

(DISCLAIMER: Pontius Pilot looked into the face of Jesus and asked, “What is truth?” He was staring Truth in the face but didn’t recognize that’s what Jesus is.

This is a story I have written. Some of it is true, some of it is not. Can you tell the difference? Do you know the truth when you see it? Are you willing to work for it and wait for it? To settle for nothing less than the whole truth? To seek the truth with all your heart in order to find it?

Then read on. But pay close attention, because the truth isn’t always where and what it seems. Or whom it seems. And very often, life is stranger than fiction.)

This last year has been the biggest year of my life. I will NEVER forget it. If I had to describe it in two words they would be: Nightmarish & Surreal.

I won’t go into it all now. It took me a year to live it, it may take me even longer to write about it. Probably I will spend the remainder of my life on Earth trying to process exactly what happened.

It started in February  when I returned home after a stay with my friend to discover that the ceilings in the kitchen and bathroom of my basement suite had caved in and they were now sporting water falls. When I flipped on the light it exploded while I stood in a puddle of water. If I had still been in my winter boots with the rubber soles I probably would be dead now. But I’m still here, so read on.

My landlady told me to “live with it” and that she would repair it “sometime in the Spring” and that it was merely “cosmetic”. I gave notice and in the next 5 days tried to give away as many of my belongings as I could then move what little I had left into storage. More than 44 years of living boiled down into 6 medium boxes and 2 pieces of furniture. They weren’t even my favourite belongings. Due to the time restraint, ceiling waterfall, lack of money and my neighbours (with my consent) taking whatever they could grab, I was left with a Hodge-Podge of things I had collected but very little of what I actually needed. I did, however, get a momentary thrill at freaking people out by just letting them walk into my home and take whatever they wanted. No restrictions and not one penny changing hands. They certainly will spend a very long time with the belief that “Christians are different.”

A few minutes after giving in my keys, I fell down a flight of stairs and uttered the word, “Ambulance” before falling unconscious. I awoke to the ministrations of 5 firemen, before the ambulance drivers showed up. I had hit myself 3 times on the back of my head, 4 times on my face, twice on my legs, popped my left knee cap out of joint, twisted my back and dislocated my right shoulder.

April & May  was spent in bed. Then I had to re-learn how to walk (now I must do it with the aid of a quad-cane). Which is not a bad trade off. I may be 45 and crippled, but after that fall, I shouldn’t be here at all! But I am, so read on.

I spent the next months bouncing around without a home while trying to recover. But during the Summer, my friend's legs became hugely swollen and she developed huge running sores. She spent hours cleaning and bandaging them while on antibiotics, but to no avail. The doctor tossed out words like gangrene and amputation.

I noticed that summer that every time I stayed with my friend I would get a high fever. It frustrated me because I would go to her place to help her run errands, do shopping, and a bit of cooking and cleaning. But instead, this “freaky fever” ( as we began to call it) would lay me back in bed in a delirium and pile of sweat only to be robbed of the few ounces of strength I still possessed. Making me not very helpful.

THEN , on the fateful day of September 21, , I discovered a leak under her sink. We both inspected and found there were actually 2 leaks. One was only present when the taps were on and ran clear water, the other was a brown goo that oozed down the wall behind the kitchen sink. Now, outside the apartment in the hallway the same brown drip has been running off and on for more than 13 years but with no big consequence, so we figured that the brown drip had finally worked it’s way into her apartment.

So, with my friend's huge legs with the weeping sores and me with my temperature of 102, we packed a couple suitcases and left her apartment building at just before midnight on September 21 to go to a hotel for a few days (we thought), pausing to slip a work requisition under the office door of the building’s manager to inform him of the repairs needed.

That was the last time she ever saw her apartment and it’s contents. We have both been homeless since then. Moving from place to place, while the building manager and his boss refused to fix the leaks or even admit to the leaks or the surrounding problems they were causing by being left unattended. After Christmas came and went we were still homeless and at the end of our rope in every respect: emotionally, mentally, physically, financially and (I’m sad to say after 34 years of Christianity) spiritually.

The struggle with the building managers dragged on. They issued threats to her, she tried to compromise and back and forth it went like some kind of dreadful tennis game.

A strange substance was growing in very bizarre places and on several surfaces in her apartment. The building managers demanded my friend pay every cent of rent but we wanted someone official (like a Health Inspector) to say that her home was safe.  Yet this yellowish, neon substance was continuing to grow and glow on several surfaces.

The first leak connected to the tap had been repaired, but the brown oozing leak was ignored and left to continue. We returned to the apartment every week to check the circumstances and watched as her home and belongings were destroyed week by week by neglect, fumes and this strange substance glowing and  yellowish.

As our situation and our bodies continued to decline, for whatever reason our closest family members just stopped communicating with us. And there's still  been “no questions asked”. As of the writing of this, they have no idea where we are or how we are. And have not even tried to find out. They don’t know and obviously don’t want to know.  They could have contacted us by cell phone and email at anytime during the many many weeks.

However,  my great-Aunt who is in her 80’s, refused to abandon us. She could not get to us physically, herself ailing, but her encouragement, guidance and humour through her constant letters kept us afloat. There is something about that older generation that understands what loyalty, perseverance and sacrifice really mean. Besides that, all three of us began to read the Bible and pray every day together, even though separated by several hundred miles. We actually became united in faith, prayer, love, sacrifice and determination.

We have experienced great hardship, great pain, sicknesses from Lupus to Jaundice and so much unending stress, anxiety and fear that people would constantly ask us, “How do you keep going?” Or stating, “I’d have been insane a long time ago if I were in your shoes.”

How does one answer those questions? Or reply to those comments? Even if I had the vocabulary and talent to phrase it, it would mean nothing except to others who have seen the “bottom of the pit.” How do I express what it’s like to wake up each day bone weary and with no hope for the future? Believing that the remainder of your days will bring only greater hardship and sorrow? That happiness is a thing you once knew but would never see again? How you kick yourself for not appreciating simple things like a home or a family while you had them because you know they are gone forever? What it feels like to watch your loved ones consider you a liability and would rather live completely without you than to risk that you might ask them for something? To hear someone  who has an intimate knowledge of betrayal, sickness andd heartache say, “I would have rather died and not heard the things I did in these past months and not have known the world was this bad” ?

Yet I need to find more words.  How do I describe the wonder in experiencing more grace, strength and miracles than most humans see in 10 lifetimes because we discovered Jesus waiting for us there, in the bottom of that pit? We learned the deepest of mysteries: that it is only in the darkest places that you can see the smallest light. Small, white, penetrating and fearfully powerful. It’s like looking at a small star, almost unperceivable in our night sky, but once you know it’s character close up and comprehend that it is in fact a neighbouring sun,  you can understand the magnitude of it’s power and light. This same star that would be completely invisible to us during the daylight would be ignored, but in the darkness we can begin to understand because we see it clearly for the first time. But I’ll come back to the metaphors later.

We have been abandoned by our closest family members, by friends, our church, our government and so … here we are.

The people who did those things thought they were doing it to a couple of aging, poor cripples. Both of whom barely have the strength to get out of bed most days. But they are wrong. We gave our lives over to Jesus years ago and Jesus said that “whatever you have done to the least of these, you have done it to me.”

(Read parable of “The Sheep & the Goats” found in Matthew 25:31-46)

I also put forth for your consideration a promise that God made to us, “I will contend with those who contend with you …” (Isaiah 49:25

And since we are definitely the "least of these" they didn’t do it to us alone. They did it to Jesus. And as much as Jesus is merciful, he is also righteous, holy and just. Just. Justice. That’s what we desire most. To know that some how, in some way people will be made to account for their actions (or inactions). But it is not up to us to do it.

“…leave room for God’s wrath , for it is written ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay’, says the Lord.” (Romans 12:19)

And I don’t doubt for a minute that he will do just what he says. So we are going to strap ourselves to the Lord and hang on. Edmund Burke said, “all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” . But that is not going to happen here. We are neither down nor out. We are just … regrouping.

“ They will bow down before you with their faces to the ground; they will lick the dust at your feet.
Then you will know that I am the LORD; those who hope in me will not be disappointed.” Isaiah 49:23