Post # 13, Part II of IV In the summer of 1996, my sister Lisa came up to Bakersfield to stay with my brother for a week. While she was there, members of East Side Trece burglarized my parents’ home in San Bernardino and left an ominous message on the phone recorder for Lisa to return to San Bernardino. I knew it was only going to get worse for my sister and my family. It was a Saturday afternoon as I lay on my bed asking the Lord for direction as to what I could do. I didnt have to wait long before I was given an answer. As I lay there, a very specific scripture came to mind. One I was not familiar with. Proverbs 3:27. If you had asked me at that moment what that scripture said, I would have replied, “I don’t know.” I had to look it up. Proverbs 3:27 says: “Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to act.” (NIV) In that moment, as I read that verse, there was that moment of absolute clarity when I understood I had been called to act. Act to save my sisters life. I also understood to some degree the cost. I began to cry there on my bed. There were tears of joy that God had spoken in a very direct and clear manner in response to my pleading for an answer and there were tears of anguish for what, I knew in my heart, lay ahead of me and my family. This day was different from the day my dad first told me of the gun and gang issue. I didnt have any answers that day. I had some on this day. There is never a nice clean tear in a piece of fabric. It is not just the initial tear either, but the subsequent unraveling of the seemingly still salvageable pieces of fabric. It is no different when a family is torn apart. It is never a simple and nice “coming apart at the seams” that can easily be sewn back together and fixed. No, when families come apart there are tattered edges; raw feelings and emotions; wounds and hurts that surface, whether they are based in reality or not; and then there is the division itself, which causes individuals you have grown up with and love, to choose sides rather than fall into the chasm by themselves. I was fortunate, I suppose, to have been old enough at 35 years of age to process the divorce of my parents. Not that it made it any easier to stomach but I just can’t imagine being a child and having the very foundation of your life crumbling underneath you and not being able to process or articulate the pain, confusion, the self-blame or the loss. Unfortunately this is reality for far too many children. Maybe it’s for these very reasons that God says He hates the act of divorce. Nevertheless, I had to act. The first order of business was to inform my parents that Lisa was going to now live with me and that I would now be her provider and protector. That was a fun phone call. Not! Then the trip over to my brothers’ place to advise him and my sister what I had planned to do. My day is getting more fun by the minute. To say my parents, my brother or my sister Lisa were not happy would be an understatement. In my mind what I was trying to accomplish all made so much sense to me. Besides I knew God had spoken to me and I was going to act. I then asked my wife and sister in law to take Lisa shopping to get her some big brother Robert approved, modest clothes. The three of them returned from a day of shopping with nothing. Imagine that-three women, with no set budget limits, come home from a day of clothes shopping with nothing. I was told Lisa refused to cooperate. I explained to my sister that we would try this one more time and if there was not any resolution that her big brother would go, by himself, shopping for her. Their next trip out was a huge success. For my plan to be successful, I was going to need help. I laid my need for a baby sitter out before our church family at the Ridgeview Vineyard. Being summertime and with everyone working, I needed someone to watch Lisa until I got off work. Mia Shaw stepped up and said she would help us. So for four days a week I drove from central Bakersfield to west Rosedale to drop my sister off. Mia did so much more than watch my sister. Mia did bible study with my sister and began to pour into her acceptance, identity, camaraderie, standards, and discipline. Mia did more than that-she just loved on Lisa. Then I went out to Valley Bible Church, who had opened a Christian High School. I met with the school administrators and told them what was going on and what had happened in San Bernardino. I begged of them a chance for my sister. They made no commitments but assured me they would pray about it. A week later, I got the call informing me they would give Lisa a chance. While all this is happening, Lisa began yielding her life to the Lord. There was a radical conversion. That’s not to say there werent issues that had to be addressed or dealt with but she was changing before our eyes.
Posted on: Wed, 22 Oct 2014 02:43:35 +0000
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