Rising Waters, Rising Light

If you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday. And the Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail. ~ Isaiah 58:10-11

September 2005 ~ The country was mesmerized by the images: concrete foundations on the Mississippi coastline, littered with broken pieces of boats and trees and Waffle House signs; helicopters with baskets dangling, carrying a man or woman or child to safety; interstates filled with cars and buses and pedestrians all heading north out of the devastated cities spanning from Mobile to Biloxi to New Orleans.  We were saddened and perhaps angered. We wondered why people didn’t leave earlier, or why they didn’t take more people with them when they did leave. We asked all the questions, and watched the nameless faces on CNN ask the questions, as well.

Then, we rallied. Churches and clubs and city councils across the deep South - and the entire country - immediately went into “what can we do? what do they need?” mode. In the midst of the devastation, compassion rose up in us, both individually and corporately, and help was on the way.  Yes, it was also on the way in the form of FEMA trucks and later, temporary housing, but in those first few days, the help was primarily one human to another. 

My husband and brother-in-law headed to south Mississippi to help my aunt and uncle cut down a 100-year old oak tree that had fallen through their ceiling, taking- along with their chainsaws - a truckload of bottled water and peanut butter crackers.

While Anthony was gone, our local news station ran a story about Red Cross efforts in Huntsville.  Many evacuees had come all the way to north Alabama (some even kept going further north) as hotels along I-65 had reached capacity. The Red Cross was asking for local residents with extra bedrooms or living spaces to open their homes to families who were in need of shelter.  Temporary spaces which had been provided by churches and schools were not ideal and these folks were not going to be heading back to the coast quickly.  I started praying.  We had an extra bedroom, kitchenette and bathroom in our basement. Should we offer it to someone?  I called the Red Cross to find out more details, then asked Anthony about it when he got home. He thought and prayed about it for a day or so, then called the Red Cross and we got on the list of host homes, preferably for a couple or family of three. Within hours, we got a call that a young couple from Mobile - Jim and Kim - were looking for a place to stay.  They had been in a church gym for 3 nights, but Kim was in the early stages of pregnancy and not getting much rest in that setup, nor easy access to a restroom, etc. They told the Red Cross they were interested in actually relocating to Huntsville and Jim had already filled out job applications for a local manufacturing facility.  Absolutely, we said.  We would love to have them. 

Anthony called me at school to tell me that they would arrive at 6 PM, and after calling on friends and colleagues, and donations of groceries, meals, and gas cards came flowing in for Jim and Kim. I rushed home after school to spruce the rooms up a bit, just in time for the donated late-80s-model Camaro that had been donated to them (because he had gotten the job at the manufacturing facility earlier in the day, qualifying them for the car donation!) to come chugging down our driveway with a very tired-looking, but smiling, Jim and Kim inside. Our three kids were so excited to meet them and peppered them with questions over a quick spaghetti dinner. Jim described the rising water and pelting winds in Mobile and how he couldn’t even get to his car at work, so a bus had picked him and his coworkers up and taken them home.  He and Kim then hitched a ride to a bus station - with nothing but the clothes on their backs, really - and took the first bus north they could. They slept in a school gym in Montgomery the first night, then continued to Huntsville the next day. Kim almost fell asleep while we were eating and hardly said anything. She smiled hesitantly and said thank you over and over.  We got them settled in their room after dinner and we settled in for a “new normal” that would get less and less “normal” as the days progressed.

Over the next week, Jim and Kim spent their days gathering some donations from local agencies - clothes and a few household items, including a TV that they could watch in their basement bedroom. Jim was very excited about his new job, and he was also very anxious to help out around our house to “pay us back” for letting them stay.  He mowed the yard at least twice while they were there, and one day I turned onto our street as the kids and I were coming home from school and found him mowing the vacant lot at the end of our street… Um, yeah.  I rolled down my window and waved him over… “Um, Jim, Anthony probably doesn’t want our mower out here mowing this lot - it’s really grown up and our mower isn’t the greatest. What a great thing for you to try to do, but yeah, you probably should just take the mower on back to the house…”  

That strange event and a few others started gnawing at me… I had tried to reach out to Kim several times, asking her about how she was feeling and about her pregnancy, etc. She shared little, but seemed uncertain about what was going to happen to them, which was totally understandable.  I asked her if I could make an appointment for her to go to a local pregnancy center so she could get some guidance about prenatal care, etc.  Since Jim hadn’t started his job, they didn’t have any insurance yet and she wasn’t sure about applying for medical coverage in the meantime. I didn’t know much either - but I knew people who did - so I scheduled a couple of appointments for her, anticipating that I might have to take off work to take her to them since she seemed so skittish. She didn’t much want to stay upstairs and talk to me and the kids, but spent hours alone in the basement, watching TV or sleeping. 

As we engaged them in conversation - Anthony was endlessly patient with Jim’s chattering (I was less so, I must admit) - I noticed a few things about their backstory that didn’t add up, a few details that seemed to change slightly over the course of several conversations.  And then there was just a little voice of suspicion that kept nagging at me. I couldn’t put my finger on it and Anthony easily - and calmly - talked me out of my place of distrust by explaining why the inconsistencies weren’t really that inconsistent.  And so we went on that way for about 10 days.

Then, in the middle of his workday one day, Anthony got a frantic call from Jim from a payphone at a restaurant between Huntsville and Madison, where we live. The Camaro had started smoking and had died on the side of the road; he couldn’t get it to restart and he asked Anthony to come pick him up and perhaps call a tow truck for the car. Anthony was in the middle of a meeting, but he told him he’d be there just as soon as he could. He arrived 30 minutes later, but Jim and the Camaro were both gone. He called me at school to see if I knew anything, but I had heard nothing. So he drove home and there was Jim, sitting in the kitchen, eating takeout from Applebee’s.  He had waited about 5 minutes for Anthony, then called a junkyard, who came and towed the Camaro away, giving Jim $200 cash for it on the spot.  He then called a cab (which is extremely expensive where we live) and paid $30 for the cab ride to Applebee’s then to our house, plus $20 for the takeout (we had SO much food in the house, so this was frustrating to me when I found out about it later that day). Anthony - still calm, cool and collected - called to tell me Jim was fine and home; I didn’t find out the rest of the story until later in the day - when I became a bit perplexed to say the least).

The next day - a Tuesday - was to be Jim’s first day on his new job.  He was going to work the night shift (11-7). Anthony called his supervisor to let him know about the car situation. The supervisor said that Jim needed to arrive early to do paperwork and that if Anthony could get him there at 8, he’d bring him home after his shift was over the next morning. This is great, Anthony told Jim, who somewhat reluctantly agreed to the plan. He was very stressed out over not having a car, saying he didn’t want to inconvenience us any further. Kim, meanwhile, was retreating further and further into her shell, although she had agreed to go with me to the pregnancy center later in the week.

We called our church because we had heard that some members had donated vehicles for evacuees, and found out that we could probably get a vehicle for Jim and Kim, but Anthony had to vouch for them and they had to come fill out some paperwork and present a valid Alabama driver’s license. Oops. That was going to be a problem, because Jim’s license had floated away in his wallet, which had been in his vehicle while he was at work the day he was evacuated. So no license.  The work placement program was willing to overlook that for the time being because so many evacuees were in the same situation, but the church - understandably - was not.  No worries, my amazingly patient husband told Jim, I’ll get you to work tonight and then tomorrow I’ll take some time off and we’ll just head down to the DMV and get you a replacement license. Alrighty then. A plan was in place. Well, it was until a few hours later.  As we were sitting on the front porch discussing the situation (outside in case Kim might have ventured upstairs and overheard), I was in the middle of telling Anthony that I thought I would take the day off as well so we could take two cars to the DMV in case Kim got to feeling bad (she had already told us she wanted to go with them), and that I also felt like I needed to go to the Red Cross office and give them an update on everything that had been going on… when a car turned into our driveway.  It was 10 PM. The vehicle was a taxi. Jim got out, slammed the door, and let out a string of profanities. He had not even made it 90 minutes on the job before his refusal to fill out some of the paperwork had forced the manufacturing company to fire him on the spot. I was immediately filled with an anger so intense it was physical. I got up from my chair on the porch, looked at Anthony, shook my head, and went to our bedroom, praying for God to give Anthony wisdom and for us to know what to do. For the first time since Jim and Kim had stepped into our home, I wasn’t just perplexed; I was scared.

Anthony was still on the porch talking to Jim when I finally went to sleep. Bless his trusting and generous heart, he kept on encouraging and reassuring Jim that we would get this all figured out, get them a car, and help him find another job. Jim was restless, but he eventually went to bed as well, and after getting the kids off to school the next morning, the four of us headed to Huntsville - Jim and Kim and Anthony in Anthony’s truck, headed to the DMV, and me in our minivan, headed to the Red Cross office. The eight hours that followed could literally be edited into a riveting hour of reality TV… 

9:00 AM - At the Red Cross office, I met with a case worker and she began the process of digging through Jim and Kim’s records.  Within an hour or two, it became clear that there were discrepancies, the most obvious of which was that the primary address they gave for their residence in Mobile did not even exist. Oops…

10:45 - I called Anthony’s cell phone and found out that the wait at the DMV was quite lengthy (surprise, surprise) and that Jim was very antsy, walking outside every 10 minutes or so to smoke a cigarette and pace. I told him what we had found out. His challenge? To keep a straight face while I told him that the Red Cross was beginning a fraud investigation and would be contacting FEMA.

11:15 - I called my school to confirm that I would NOT be coming in for the afternoon and waited for the Red Cross folks to finish their paperwork to begin the investigation.

12:00 noon - The Red Cross case worker and I drove to the DMV and parked in a corner of the parking lot.  I was in the back seat, and I crouched down (in case Jim or Kim were outside) and called Anthony to find out what was going on (yeah, this is the reality TV part). He indicated that they were about an hour from being served.  We drove to get sandwiches for Anthony, Jim, Kim, and ourselves and headed back to the DMV. I walked the sandwiches and bottled sodas in as casually as I could. Gulp.  We didn’t want Jim and Kim to know anything was going on with the Red Cross, but we wanted to stay close by.

1:15 PM - Jim’s name was finally called at the DMV. After proceeding through the labyrinth of forms and answering questions, a state trooper called him back to an office.  Anthony called me on my cell phone (I was in the car again) to let me know that he was concerned about Jim.  Apparently there were raised voices from the office where he was with the state trooper. He abruptly ended the call:  “I gotta go.” 

1:30 - Anthony walked out of the DMV and told us that there was a problem: Jim’s application for a driver’s license had been flagged and the state trooper was investigating why. He would keep us posted.

1:45 - Anthony called me. The state trooper had left Jim in his office and came out to talk to Anthony, letting him know that Jim had outstanding warrants (in at least two states, for assault and armed robbery, among other things) and at least two aliases. The state of Alabama was contacting the other states to ask about extradition, but meanwhile he wanted us to know. 

2:00 - The Red Cross case worker and myself started making phone calls, she to her supervisor and FEMA contact, me to friends to please pray about what was going to happen. The state trooper met with Anthony again and let him know that neither state was going to extradite Jim at this time, so technically they could not do anything else at the DMV except refuse his application for a driver’s license.

2:15 I-  called a friend to see if she could pick up our kids from school…

2:30 - FEMA called us to let us know that because it was so late in the day (almost 4:00 Eastern time, where their executive offices are, and apparently even during a natural disaster the folks in charge of fraud do not work late…), they would be waiting until the next day to start their investigation of Jim (Kim’s name was not on any official paperwork, so she could not be charged).

2:45 - By this time, Anthony and I knew that Jim and Kim could not come back to our house, but we had to figure out how we could prevent that from happening! I called my friend Kelly, whose brother Dale is a county commissioner and who had known about the car being sold on the side of the road (I had called him to find out if there is any way we could get the car back!). Kelly called Dale and within a few minutes, a Madison County sheriff’s deputy called Anthony to get a statement. Amazingly, even with all the crimes on his record, the only thing that he could be charged with RIGHT THEN was “theft by deception” for selling that donated car (because it didn’t actually belong to him). 

3:15 - A very agitated Jim was led by a state trooper to another office at the back of the DMV, where a Sheriff’s deputy escorted Anthony and Kim.  The deputy arrested Jim, and instructed Anthony to read a statement to Jim, indicating that he could not come within 1000 feet of our property except to retrieve his personal belongings, which would be placed at the property line.  Jim was then led out to the deputy’s vehicle in handcuffs and taken to the county jail.

3:30 - The Red Cross case worker spoke with Kim (who wouldn’t even look Anthony or me in the eye) letting her know that we had found a shelter for her to go to and asking her if there were any items that she wanted me to pack for her.  She shook her head no and just looked down at her feet.  My heart broke for her.

     As the evening progressed, we began to process our shock. And as time went on, we learned more details about "Jim" and "Kim" (not their real names): they were not married, Kim was not pregnant, they were residents of a small town about 80 miles away, and they had both been arrested for methamphetamine possession/production. Which made sense when we found out that their actual ages were several years younger than we had guessed… and when I found a plastic cup full of what I thought was rock salt in our freezer (this actually happened while they were still at our house, and ironically I dumped it down the kitchen drain right in front of Jim, who was sitting at the table drinking a cup of coffee with Anthony).  When I tell people (especially my students) about pouring his meth crystals down the sink, they ask “Did he say anything?” “Umm, no.  What would he have said? ‘Hey, don’t dump my meth down the drain?’” 

Adrienne, Turner, Alec - 2005

   Jim and Kim continued to impact our lives.  A few days after Jim’s arrest, a $5000 check from FEMA arrived for him in our mailbox. Mail continued to arrive for about a year, despite our repeated attempts to get our address removed from his records. We found out that FEMA did press fraud charges against him and he went to federal prison. The only word we got about Kim was that she eventually moved from an emergency shelter to a women’s shelter and was considering either signing up for a local  job training program or moving home with her parents. I cried. We prayed, thanking God for his protection.  We tried to explain to our children (11, 7, and 4 at the time) why Jim and Kim were no longer staying with us without traumatizing them. We took all their belongings to the dump after waiting a week for them to be picked up.  Anthony slept very little for a month or two - sitting in the living room at night watching the driveway. I wrote a strongly worded letter to the Red Cross. :)

   I know this story is really much too long for a blog post. (If you are still reading, thank you!), but it has reverberated in my mind and spirit for the last decade. Every time I think about those two weeks or retell the story to someone, I ask God to help me to better understand the "why." 

   Right now in the U.S. (and around the world), social media and the news is aflutter with questions about the Syrian refugees. Who is offering help, who is not. What are the risks? The rewards? What if someone comes into our country who is not innocent? So many questions that are beyond my scope of understanding or influence. I do not pretend to know the answers or to equate the Katrina evacuation with this situation. 
   However, I know what Anthony and I felt compelled to do. With one heart, we knew we had to help. We knew God was calling us to help and that he would provide the means to do so. Did we hear God's voice wrong? I don't think so. Did he mean for us to put our family at risk? Perhaps. Is this in line with what I know about God? It is. He never called us to comfort or safety. He called us to trust him, and then to go and tell and love with abandon. Even those who don't love back. Even those who deceive us. Even those who are our enemies. In no way do I have the courage of missionaries like Jim and Elisabeth Elliot, but I often think about what my responsibility is when it comes to the concept of sacrificial love. We have put our American spin on sacrifice and count ourselves generous to send $20 to help world hunger or to put our change in the red bucket at Christmastime. Sometimes we dig a bit deeper and give to our churches. And sometimes we really do sacrifice materially - giving up a luxury or two to sponsor a needy child or help a family who is adopting. Are only the wealthy to be philanthropists? As I recall the story of the widow's mite, I think the answer is surely no. Are only those who don't have kids at home to offer an extra bed (or the couch) to those who need shelter? Perhaps, but perhaps not.  

   Would Anthony and I make the same choice again?  I am not sure, but we have talked about it some and have determined that we probably would if we felt led by God to do so. I will admit that I would likely ask the Red Cross more questions...! However, I believe in my heart of hearts that what I have is not mine to keep to myself or to protect. I do not believe we should be reckless or unsafe, and we should steward our resources well, but we should hold onto them very loosely.
   But in the end, what does "safe" really mean? What does "love your enemies" look like? Does that just mean refraining from hitting them when they make you mad? Not talking about them to others (ouch)? Or does it mean broken-and-poured-out, risk-taking love? Even when safety or comfort isn't guaranteed?
   Please hear my heart and know I do not know what God's will is in each and every situation where humans are in need or what each person or family is called to do. But it is my conviction that we are perhaps asking the wrong questions when it comes to helping others. (Do they deserve it? Do they REALLY deserve it? Are they scamming me? Will they use this money to buy drugs? How did they get themselves in this situation? Will this REALLY help them? Who, me, Lord? Even though I have so little and Dave Ramsey says I need to pay off these credit cards? Shouldn't *insert name here* help them instead? Will this be safe? Will they appreciate what I'm doing?)

      Perhaps the questions we should be asking are more subtle and are not ones we can really know how to ask well or comfortably:

To whom should I offer help?  

How can I help them?

To whom can I show love-grace-generosity today without expecting anything in return (perhaps not even thanks)?

Who are "the least of these" in my life (or community, or country, or world)?

Where can I sacrifice a little so someone in need can benefit?

What am I holding in my fist (literally or metaphorically) instead of offering it, open-handed, to others? (money, time, a hot meal, a listening ear)

   As a natural introvert, giving of myself is harder than giving money (it helps that I have never gotten used to having much of the latter, so it's easier to give away!).  God is teaching me - slowly but surely - what his lavish love and grace look like. My good and generous Father modeled this kind of love for me when he gave Jesus - his only, precious, perfect son - for my sin. He didn't protect, hesitate, or hold back, but gave it all. I cannot even begin to comprehend this and know even in my most generous of moments, I cannot even come close to the magnitude of sacrifice that Jesus made for me. I didn't deserve it; I cannot earn it. I can only pray that I am willing to be poured out, even sparingly, for those who might need something I can give.

If you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday. And the Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail. ~ Isaiah 58:10-11