The Glass-Room Healer
Its one of those places that you can tell is going to be a different kind of experience as soon as you walk in. A large man with a security badge has you empty the contents of your pockets and waves a wand in front of your body. Walking in you are surrounded by a flurry of activity. Some wait in lines for reasons you’ll probably never know unless you’re one of them. Others sit in mostly silent huddled circles surrounded by all of their earthly possessions. They come here to take a break before being thrust back out into the unforgiving streets at closing sometime later that evening. Straight ahead is a giant glass room with rows of chairs and a giant iron gate looming in the front. It says “chapel” on the plaque next to the door, but its not really accurate. This is her room.
Hundreds (perhaps thousands) of times every year she sits at the front of this room and challenges the notions of the innocent minds who come here to serve what they believe to be the “least of these.” Little do they know, it’s this exact perspective she is there to disrupt and render defunct. There is no difference between “us” and “them” she tells them. She knows this first hand.
Many years ago, growing up in rural, highly conservative environment, she was the one in pain with no where to go. Fearing her for her many differences she was cast out by her patriarchal family and a submissive church body while she was still a teenager. She slept on streets, she sold drugs, she ran from everything that reminded her of the places she came from, including the church. She found acceptance among those who had less to lose, and from those who wanted to use her desire for a better life for their own ends. There was one night, she told me , where she couldn’t remember what drugs she had taken and which ones she hadn’t, and it led to an overdose. During that horrible night she heard God calling to her, and she would give him another try.
A few weeks later she walked, with green hair and tattoos no less, into a church down the street and right up the aisle to the embrace of a rather bold and heavy-set middle aged woman. Suffocating under the weight of her embrace, and being forcefully placed into a rather large bosom, she felt the joy of acceptance once again. Not the acceptance of those with ulterior motives, but from the power of a God who chooses to care for rather than cast out those who feel they could never be truly loved. There are days of doubt, she says, but that love is still the prime motivating force for her life.
She left to get training to become and minister and returned reluctantly to plant a church in a city that, for her, was far to close to home. She was in poverty again, but this time with purpose. She was able to reconnect with her family, and renew a relationship with her father that she kept up until he died last year. There was this moment, she tells me, a few months into her return, when she was doubting her own resolve. Thoughts of inflicting self pain to cover her broken feelings returned, but instead of seeking solace there, she said a prayer. Clear as day, He said in return, “Get up and go into the City.”
For months she served the broken, forgotten, and hurting out of her own poverty until one day she got a call from the place with the glass room. It became a home where she could serve, where she could heal, and where she could challenge others to realize the great truth that her life illustrates so well. In this world, we can’t technically serve the lost and broken, because we are ones who are lost. Service must come from a place of shared love and mutual care, or it can never bring lasting healing. Its us seeing the hurt and pain inside of someone else, and asking them to look for the same in our life. Its not vulnerability, its openness. Being open to the reality that we are all kidding ourselves on some level. We don’t have all the answers, we aren’t invulnerable to pain and failure, and we do all need unconditional love. Its the only true love there is.
That glass room has become, for me, a picture of her. A place of quiet amidst the chaos. The clear windows, help you peer into her honest heart, and challenge you to ask what’s in yours. The iron gates, representing the strength of her resolve and her desire to invite you into the same healing process she walks. Her story, a clear reminder that the people you see through glass all around you are humans, not homeless.
You can go there now and see this for yourself. I was there just last week. The pain in the eyes of the broken waiting in lines is still tangible, but when I walk in now I smile a bit. I feel that I can now see beyond the physical needs of the human beings on all the streets of America. I see the hope there is for them, because I know people like her are waiting to greet them when they walk in doors like these. Ready to shower them with love, prayer, and acceptance, and after, inviting them to do the same in return.
