Truth Resurrected

how: part 4

Last time I shared the events that brought us to the bottom of the cave, in darkness and ultimately, death.

After my mom died and failed to return, we started wrestling with what to do next. Do we run and try to start over somewhere else?

All I knew was I wanted to get away. I remember listening to “One Headlight” by the Wallflowers and how one verse became something of an inverted anthem.

“Well, this place is old, it feels just like a beat up truck

I turn the engine, but the engine doesn't turn.

What smells of cheap wine, cigarettes

This place is always such a mess,

Sometimes I think I'd like to watch it burn.”

Life drew on for 5 long months. While we were occasionally entertaining ideas about what to do next, someone invited my aunt Katrina to a Christian revival meeting. After one night, she brought my sister and I along with her and towards the end of the week we decided to do something completely radical (for us). Something we hadn't done in a long time.

Tell someone the truth.

It was not something any of us were accustomed to doing.

But for the first time in years, we did it. On a Thursday night in a church conference room, for the first time we told someone what had happened and what we had done. The pastor was kind and compassionate, if understandably nonplussed. That same night, the police were called, arrests were made and I spent the night in the cool, dimly lit conference room of a county jail.

It was September 13, 2001 and as the world was reeling from the tragic events of two days before, I too was reeling in my own little world from the accumulated weight of the past 5 years.

I was twelve years old, had missed the last 4 1/2 years of schooling, was without a legal guardian, and was lacking in almost everything except vice, guilt and shame.

I was lost. As far as I could tell, the situation was hopeless.

But something was happening.

Years before, we had killed the truth but somehow that week he was coming back to life. His light was making its way down into the lifeless bottom of that dark cave we had slid into. And it was about to change my life forever.

Up Next: Exiting the Cave