silence

When my family lived in Chile, we worked with a congregation that met on the back porch of a house. Sunday school classes were held inside in the living room or in a bedroom. This family’s house literally was the church. This was stuff straight out of Paul’s letters. The children’s Sunday School class was held outside. Before class started, we would prepare milk and bread for the children to eat. For many of them, this was their only breakfast and possibly one of the only things they would eat all day. These mornings seemed so alive. Everyone was excited to be at church, even the children. It wasn’t something their parents pulled them by the collar to. In fact, many of their parents didn’t even come to church, they came on their own. Sunday morning was a blast.

There was one morning that wasn’t exactly sunshine on our shoulders. In fact, it is one of the saddest things that I’ve ever experienced. There were two brothers that came to church every Sunday morning on their own. Their home situation was pretty rough. Their dad would come home from work and take out his frustration on their mom. He’d beat her. They witnessed this probably every day of their young lives. One night, their mom was fed up. She’d had enough. When the father came home, she hit him upside the head and tried to stuff a handkerchief down his throat to suffocate him. When this didn’t work, she did something that blew my seven year old mind. She split his head open with an axe. All of this with her two younger sons in the room. These two boys witnessed their dads head getting split open like a watermelon. That in itself is one of the most terrible things I can imagine a young kid witnessing. As if that wasn’t enough, their older brother decided that to show the shame of having a mother who axed your dad, he would force the two young boys to shave their heads. All hair gone. Complete humiliation. This all happened on Saturday night. Sunday morning came and the two young boys came to church. This was where they knew to come. I remember some adults talking to one of the boys while he cried. I went over to the other brother and put my arm around him. We walked in the field next to the church, not saying a word, our arms around one another. We went down to the creek and stood. We both cried and neither of us said a word.

There are moments in our lives when the pain is so overwhelming, our world completely torn apart, that there are no words that can heal our hearts. I can’t begin to imagine what was going through those two boys minds that day. I can’t fathom what it must feel like to witness such an awful thing. My seven-year-old mind couldn’t come up with any words, any Sunday School answers. The only thing I knew was that this boy was hurting deeply and the only thing I knew to do was walk arm in arm with him and keep him company while he cried. I think I need that seven-year-old mind to teach my twenty three year old mind a lesson.