Mrs. Chris

After crossing over the Mason Dixon Line last Monday, we got to spend an evening with Mrs. Chris and her husband, Lou. Lou was actually born in Medford--and lived a few blocks from our old house on Winthrop Street when we was a little boy. She and Lou met a few years ago and fell in love. Two sweet souls, gifts to one another.

Chris was my mom's BFF while we were just hoodlums, and also our choir director and associate youth pastor. We were very fortunate. While other kids spent their spring breaks and summer vacations on the beach, ski slopes, or in front of the tube, Chris took us to homeless shelters, mental hospitals, and disciplinary institutions. She wasn't trying to scare us out of bad behavior. She made all of those plans based on love and compassion--a bleeding heart if you may. Rather Christ-like, eh? We sorted clothes closets, served meals, and painted walls; we scrubbed, scoured, and cleaned places not worth mentioning or recalling; we held toddlers who smelled like urine and hugged the women they belonged to. And all while singing a vast repertoire of contemporary Christian hits. We were exhausted at the end of every single day. And we loved it.

I grew up in a safe, southern town full to the brim of middle-class Southern Baptists who just happened to be--you guessed it--white. I loved my little town~and an important part of me still does~but I was also completely unaware of my cultural limitations. I was not a born Questioner. (My husband is.) I still don't like to challenge things, ideas, or people, (my husband does.) But, Chris was probably the first person who taught me from a standpoint of love, that there was work to be done and a vast world within to do it. I couldn't assume I would marry within my Cabot circle, have little Cabot babies, go to church every Sunday morning, and call it a life. I'm not saying, by any means, that staying in your hometown is regrettable. I'm simply saying, for me it was not the right path. And I needed to be convinced that it wasn't.

We stayed mostly in the southern states on our trips, but she exposed us to so many different types of people. So many different ways of life. So much hurt, desperation, and loss. And yet, Joy in every single situation if you knew what you were looking for. Among so many other things, I learned that 1) there are people in very difficult situations who need to be loved. And 2) it is possible to love people in very difficult situations.

Most of all, I loved our experiences because I touched a world so far removed from my own. I came back feeling like I could never go back to the way things were before. Of course I always felt I did in the end go back--fail. But now that I'm old enough to look back on that young girl, I know. I didn't fail. I was just learning.

And then I witnessed Chris experience earth shattering loss like no one I've ever known. No one. But she was honest about it, and she let me watch. I was just a teenager and she respected me. She didn't lean on me as a friend, but she treated me as an equal. I'm sure she protected me from the parts of grief I simply could not have handled, yet she was so open. Then years later her world has been racked again. And again. And again.

When I was 12 and entering the youth group, her son smuggled a handful of cookies to me at the welcoming party. At 15 she toted us all over the crazy South. When I was 17 and my parents were divorcing, I spent almost everyday with her while she grieved that soft-hearted son. Today I see her once a year. And today, as she grieves the two parents she has spent the last several years caring for, I still learn from her. To know her is to see what it's like for a heart to be beaten, bruised, betrayed, and torn to shreds, and still love. Still forgive. Still cry out to her Father for help. A heart oozing love still, because there is hardly any blood left to bleed.

Rather Christ-like.