Don't Go Back to Memphis

I've got countless stories that I don't always have time to write when they're happening. I literally am surrounded by so many signs and wonders, it is sometimes easy to forget them if I don't write them down. Even saying that is odd, because I was a person that, as an unbeliever, was unaware of the idea of those types of things, and as a new believer who attended a very practically-minded church, thought miracles and signs from above were only for “those crazy Christians.”

I don't keep it a secret that I was in an abusive relationship. When I left him, I left with nothing except for a few boxes of our things and my kids. I would not have survived without the kindness of friends and strangers, and I would never have healed mentally, emotionally, spiritually, in the way I have without those same people believing me. Telling me that what was happening was indeed real. Being in a sick, unhealthy relationship has a way of making you believe that your reality cannot be trusted.

I had been seeking the Lord really desperately for a few weeks, knowing and seeing clearly what He had been doing all this time: I went from where I was back then, to having my needs met in abundance. I wake up every day in my big house, in a comfortable bed, and get in my running car... I know that has God provided for my physical needs. I go to the organization I am part of, I go to church, I have a strong prayer life... I know that God has provided my spiritual needs. But my emotional needs... That was another story. In the words of Annie Lobert: “when you leave a pimp, you leave with nothing.” This doesn't apply just to prostitutes. When you leave whatever owns your life, you leave everything that you obtained as a result of that life, including your friends. You have to be pushed to a point where you're willing to leave everything behind to start from scratch, and it is not easy. Lately it has been lonely.

I was visiting the care pastor at my church to talk about this very thing. I showed up a half an hour late for traffic, we talked for a long time as we usually do. I recalled to her what life had been like lately: feeling as though nobody in the ministry understood me or my walk, that I didn't have much in common with anyone else, and the days were all very similar. Get up. Let out the dog. Go to Godtown. Get along swimmingly with everyone. Go home alone. Repeat. The days where I don't have my kids with me, crush me. Nobody becomes a parent so they can have their children half the week, sharing them with someone they couldn't get on with. Recently he had resurfaced after over a year of having no interaction besides picking up and dropping off, factual email exchanges, court dates. I wanted so desperately for what was coming out of his mouth to be true- the longing, the desire to make personal changes, the affection- not just for me but for our family. There was a personal battle between not being an idiot, and not wanting to give up hope that God could make the impossible could happen.

As we were finishing up our conversation, a woman entered the room and asked to speak with the pastor. “There's a woman outside with her kids,” she said, “She said she needs a bus ticket out of town.” I watched the pastor and this woman quickly and quietly start to shuffle around in an attempt to find resources at 6pm, when everything was closed and they were about to head home. There aren't a lot of times where I will say boldfaced, “I heard from the Holy Spirit,” but in that moment, without knowing anything about the situation, I knew that the woman and her kids were coming home with me.

I went out to the gathering area of my enormous church. It was empty. There was a moment where I thought maybe the voice inside was just me, or I was mistaken. I walked outside to leave and there she was: a beautiful, tiny African-American mommy with her three adolescent kids and two giant luggage bags. I asked her name and if she could tell me what was going on.

“I came up here from Memphis. I was leaving an abusive relationship,” she explained,”I was staying in a shelter in Minneapolis and they revoked my shelter voucher because I told them that when I came up here, I arrived in St Paul. And St Paul doesn't want to help me because I was living in a shelter in Minneapolis for two weeks. I've got nowhere to go. I came here to get a bus ticket to go back to Memphis and they told me they wouldn't give me one, because they don't want me to go back to my abuser.” Tears were streaming down her face. When I saw her cry, I didn't quite know what He was doing but I knew it was the Lord showing me where I had been a year and a half prior.

“Don't go back to Memphis,” I said. “You've made it this far.”

I had a van with 7 extra seats, no kids for two days which meant empty beds at the house, and money in my pocket. The woman who walked in on the pastor and me came out to tell the woman and her kids that they couldn't find anything for them, but had them on some waiting lists. I asked the woman if she and her kids would like to stay with me for the night and she agreed without hesitation.

She wouldn't stop thanking me, and kept saying, “I can't believe you stopped for us.” I finally asked why, and she told me: “Most white people are afraid of black people.” I sometimes forget that the rest of the United States isn't always like the Twin Cities. She was from Memphis, where the divide is alive and well. She told me that if she were to be honest, she wouldn't have stopped for me if the situation were reversed. All I could think to say was, “Well, I'm not afraid of black people.”

When everything fell apart in my life a year and a half prior, a friend came over with two bags of groceries, a hundred dollars and the keys to her van- an extra vehicle that she ended up selling to me for $1 (the vehicle I still drive today). I don't think she knows, even now, how much that meant to me. I had spent the entire day on the phone, trying to make a plan for the rest of my life, without the man I had made my rock. Starting over involves endless phone calls with people who are burned out and don't care about you, people who DO care about you but are unable to help you, voicemails, filling out piles of applications, standing in endless lines, getting on waiting lists when you need help, RIGHT now. Until now only my closest friends know, that for a short while, I had gone back to him. There was still a restraining order in place at the time. It wasn't because I was stupid or even because I believed what he was telling me. I was just tired. And I missed him. I missed what I thought we were. I missed our family. I missed not being in crisis. I saw a woman sitting on a curb with her three kids- the same number of kids that I have- with absolutely nothing, who had made a drastic and desperate effort to get out of the situation she was in. She was so tired, worn out, defeated, and humiliated that she was willing to go back to someone who hurt her just because it was familiar. The small degree to which I had experienced that, felt like it was going to destroy me. And I was in a city where I knew where everything was. I had friends. I was already in the system. She had none of those luxuries. I saw a woman and kids who needed to rest. I cooked for them, gave them access to my shower and a place to sleep for the night. I wanted to make the phone calls for her, find the resources for her, and when I found the one that was going to work, pass it onto her so that she could just receive it.

I called and texted every person I could think of. I asked for prayer and resources. I called a woman at a shelter who told me all domestic violence shelters are plugged into a state-wide database, and there were only 3 openings: one bed in Duluth, one on the White Earth reservation, and two in Isanti County. This family obviously needed four beds, and all of these places were between one and four hours away.

The next day I brought her to Godtown for prayer. I don't know what it is like to be black, and I never will. But the moment we pulled up and she and her kids saw other black people, I know they felt a sense of belonging and understanding that I couldn't give them. My friend Sandra picked up the family, drove them around and took them to lunch while I kept making phone calls, texting with friends who wanted to help. We eventually found her a place- one that was perfect. I dropped her off and told her this was the beginning of something great, and I was so glad she didn't get that bus ticket. A few days later I stopped in to visit her and the kids, and her youngest son threw his whole body into me with the biggest hug. It was the first time I saw this woman smile.

People recall stories like this in their own lives, about times they helped someone in need, and I roll my eyes at the cliché things they say or boil with rage over their self-back-patting. That is a sin of judgment I definitely need to deal with inside of myself. But I can tell you that when this woman hugged me and said, “thank you so much, you are such a blessing to me and my family,” I instantly knew the reality of when people say, “I was blessed by the person I helped.” The night I picked up this woman and her family, I was inside the church talking to my pastor about how I felt lonely and like I had no purpose. I recalled the bad and unhealthy friendships I had in my old life- how they may have all thrown me under the bus, but in the time we were friends, they understood what I was going through because they had been through everything I had been through. I had been spending quite a bit of time romanticizing a life that almost destroyed me, and took a lot of time to even come close to repairing. When I walked outside to meet this woman- I wasn't even supposed to be there. My appointment with the pastor was from 4:30 to 5:30pm. Because of traffic I walked out at 6:15pm. I was prepared to go home alone like I always did, but that night God provided a family for me to cook for and spend time with. I made a friend. I didn't have to wash my dishes or take out my garbage last night because her kids insisted they do it for me.

During the time I accidentally met this woman, I had been praying that God would bring healing, restoration, forgiveness and peace to my family. I told Him that we were in agreement with His will for our us, and prayed that our family would look, act, function, think, feel and speak the way He wants it to. In my mind I kept thinking that God's ideal for our family would be for us all to be reunited.

The first time I ever heard the voice of the Lord, I was face-down in a pillow while screaming filled the room. Words that cut my very character: “Angela, I used to think it was what you do, but you know what? It's WHO YOU ARE. You're just a s***y person, it was how you're made, and that's never going to change!” I had learned over the years to just let him go, let the rage run its course, keep my head down. Don't fight him, it will make it worse. In my head, I said, “Jesus, help me.” I heard a response: “He's not the one. Get out.” I thought for sure I was going crazy. I asked again, “Jesus, help me.” He said, “He's not the one. Get out.” I had no idea of the concept of spiritual warfare at that time, but in that instant I stopped crying, and this man who had been screaming at me, flipped me over and said, “You're not going to leave me, are you?” He had tears in his eyes. He threw his arms around me to embrace me. “Angela, don't give up on us. I love you. We are going to make this work. We're a family.” I sat there stunned. That was our last trip together, and within a couple of months our relationship ended in the last of many frightening confrontations we had had as a couple. I stayed with him for a long time even though I was unhappy, because we had been through so much and survived so much. From the outside we had everything we could ever want, including a beautiful family. I bought the lie that nobody would ever love me if I left him, but he would replace me quickly. A couple of times I saw myself drifting back to him, inevitably crushed by the reality that nothing had changed and our dynamic was still the same. In the same week that I met this woman, I was listening to this man I loved talk about how he missed me, seeing his sad eyes and kind gestures, and hearing the changes he said he was trying to make. When I left I spent 10 months in a support group, where they told us, “Don't believe the words, believe the behavior.” I wanted so much for his behavior to reflect all the good things he was saying and doing. I could hear the same voice, “he's not the one, he's not the one,” and I ignored it. Of course it would be the best and God's ideal will for our family to reunite, I thought. Surely that still small voice was just me. I wanted so badly for everything to be true. The brief experience I had had with dating someone had crumbled almost as quickly as it had started, after a year and a half of waiting. I didn't have any close friendships and in the moments I felt very alone, I didn't feel like anyone in my new circle would understand. When I began to see that the man I loved indeed had not made any changes, and in fact, he was hiding me, what he did with me and what he said to me from the people in his life, he had no intentions to honor me or our family, and was continuing to live a life that he was not honest with me about, I was so sure that God was withholding something good from me. I was sure that this emotional need I have- this need to be known and understood by another person, to be loved and accepted for who I am and not what I can do to puff them up- God was capable of delivering on that but simply refused.

When I met this woman, I knew she was just like me. I knew she was where I had come from. I knew she was tired and burned out and hopeless. I knew she understood me. I knew that her story was real. I knew that the guy she left had hurt her, I knew he wasn't good enough for her and I knew he wasn't doing what a loving partner should have done for her. I knew if she went back she would continue to be hurt by him. And I KNEW when I saw her that God was going to come through for her. You hear people say, “when you know that you know that you know...” I knew that I knew that I knew, God was not going to let this woman fall. She had nothing and I had total confidence in how much God loved her, I knew God put me in an exact place at an exact time with an exact amount of resources and exact understanding to help her... and yet there I was with my kids, a beautiful home, a car, a church, a group of accountable and reliable friends, a ministry, and I was so convinced that God wasn't going to come through for me. I watched her in the span of three days, go from a woman ready to return to someone who was hurting her, and thinking maybe that wasn't so bad after all- a woman with shame in her eyes and nothing to her name but two luggage cases and three scared kids- to a woman who felt safe. A woman who could smile. A woman who had a place for her and her kids. A woman who knew she had a friend she could trust. She ministered to me way more than I ministered to her. I needed a whole bunch of people to partner with me to make what I did for her actually happen. All she had was herself and her current circumstances. God was able to work through her to bless me, even when, by the world's standards, she didn't have much to offer to someone.

I was recalling the whole story to a friend and saying, “I know the Lord has a lesson in this whole thing for me and I don't quite know what it is.” I was walking her through everything that happened, and as I did, I blurted out without even thinking about it, “I think God was trying to tell me, 'Don't go back to Memphis.'” I sat there at my kitchen table and I could feel my eyes get huge. That was it.

I know God showed me something really important. I know that He was faithful in His promises to withhold no good thing from me, to expose things for what they truly are, to protect me and to minister to my heart. I don't serve a God who strong-arms people or loves conditionally. I don't serve a God that doles out guilt and shame by the truckload, or turns His back when things get difficult. He knows I'm stubborn, He knows I don't listen when I don't like what I am hearing, He knows all the faulty things about me. He came down to my level and showed me His truth in the most gentle way possible, and in it He helped me help someone else. He delivers on His promises, and if your heart is for Him, even when you start to doubt His voice or start along a path that you know is wrong, He will show you the Truth in love.

Don't go back to Memphis!