There’s a light at the end of a narrow tunnel that became bright and effervescent. Bob saw his dad for one day before he kicked him out again. “I just can’t deal with your drugs and drinking anymore, son,” he told him in an apologetic tone, his graying beard and lined face showing Bob how much he had aged since the last time they met almost ten years ago.
Bob wondered for days and then hitched a ride to Spokane. He lived inside a dumpster at night, went to various street corners, begging for money to get his daily fix, going to the plasma center, and then the food kitchens to get his bowl of watery soup.
He looked at his life and hated how he had become. It was becoming clear even to Bob that he not just needed to change but actually wanted to change. Life, as REM told the masses through the song “Choosing My Religion,” ‘is bigger than you or me,’ Bob realized and went to a church where the people didn’t see a poor beggar or burned-out drug addict, but a person who needed help.
He concluded he needed saved from worldly desires and vices that had plagued him since he was a youth smoking cigarettes and pot, stealing MD20-20 from local convenience stores, and getting drunk, not caring about consequences. But now, now as he held his hands together praying for the higher power to save him, he yearned for that peace that always seemed to alluded him.
A woman church member with white hair and fragile smile came and sat next to him at the same pew he sat, praying for someone to help save him. He wished his mother were still alive, but alcohol poisoned her eight years earlier and now he was faced with nothing. He barely noticed her from the corner of his eye.
“You are troubled,” she stated to him. “My name, given to me from Our Lord and Savior, is Hope. I want to help you achieve that that is missing in your life.”
Bob placed his hands on his lap, saw her and asked her, “Can I be your son?”
“Of course, many have called me Mom.”
“No, I want you to be my mother. Adopt me, please,” Bob begged.
“Yes, I can do this,” she exclaimed. “You are my son now, Bob.”
“Thank you Jesus!”
End
Jerry Schellhammer 