I Said Sure

My story...
Part 1 Part 2
Part 3 Part 4
Part 5 Part 6
Part 7

I remember Phil saying, after he had lived in Boston for a year, "Headless, cherish what you've got here at Mission Waco, cause it doesn't happen anywhere else."

I thought that was perhaps the most depressing thing I had ever heard.

Mission Waco is a ministry to the innercity of Waco, Texas. When I was in my first year at Baylor, Mission Waco had birthed a Sunday morning Bible study that would soon become Church Under The Bridge. They would all gather under the interstate bridge of I-35 and the 4th & 5th Street exits and share coffee and bagels and laughs and the Bible with homeless guys.

Unlike a lot of Christian ministries, the men under the bridge did not need to become Christians to receive food and drink - (dripping with sarcasm...) a novel idea! Instead, those who gathered there became a group - a being... Dang it! I hate overused words! Fine, we became community.

When I began going a year later - no longer a Bible-study but now a church - our community consisted of drunks and druggies and prostitutes and rich kids from Baylor and motorcycle riders and delusional, mentally ill folks and international students. Now, you would imagine that the "together" people would have ran the service and all the "messed up" people would have sat a listened. You would be wrong.

We went ahead and did scary things like let Jim join the worship team and Kevin take the offering and Ed greet people and Carla pass out bulletins. Speaking of passing out, Henry would pass out almost every Sunday (we had a "ministry" to try to catch him). The sermons were interrupted by just about anything you can imagine - from a burning car on the bridge above, to homeless man's filibuster, to abortion trucks circling and honking, to a donkey braying.

You imagine it. We had it.

But we laughed our heads off at it. And there was so much grace. And everyone knew that at the end of the day, whether we were "together" or not, we all just fell on God's mercy. And we all had a responsibility to each other to protect and provide. My community made a safe place for me.

When you first get to Baylor, everyone tells you: "NEVER GO OUT ALONE AT NIGHT!" Never jog at night! Never do anything at night, particularly if you are a girl. But I did. Because the people everyone was so afraid of - homeless men, black men, poor men - they knew me. And they took care of me. I am part of their family.

Sometimes, all someone needs is to be trusted.

And the rich kids who intimidated me so, turned out to just be people with different experiences. They knew what mountains looked like. I knew what a water moccasin looked (and smelled) like. They could ski. I could ride a horse. They had money to give. I had empathy to give. They knew how to play the "school game." I knew how to think.

And we taught each other.

I escaped the prison I made for myself by unlatching the cell and walking out.

*****
Here are some fun stories from my Mission Waco days.

1) We would have weddings under the bridge (for those who dared). These weddings were so amazingly exciting for the guys who lived there! For days, they would "pick up" the place and fuss and yell if anyone threw any trash out of their car windows. And they would go to the Thrift Store and buy the most amazingly hideous outfits. And they would bathe and shave and, inevitably one of them would get a hold of some really, really stinky cologne and they would all smell terrible on the day of the wedding! One wonderful guy who was quite mentally ill would bring a smashed up, broken video camera and would "film" the whole wedding - even to the extent of getting right up there with the bride and groom as they exchanged vows!

And we would all laugh until we cried.

2) Every Palm Sunday, we would line up in two rows and wave palm branches while "Jesus" rode a donkey through the crowd. "Jesus" was a Baylor student one year, but most years he was one of the guys who lived under the bridge. One particular year, a combination of events led to the donkey's absolute refusal to participate, so one of the motorcycle guys threw Jesus on the back of his bike! We waved our palm branches and screamed at the top of our lungs, "HOSANNA! BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF LORD!!" cause how else could you hear with that Harley sputtering like they do?

*****
In the end, almost everyone of my Baylor friends went to the mission field. I struggled for awhile with what it meant to be "called to missions" and concluded that because I was not certain of my call, I was free to do whatever until God decided to clarify. One couple that didn't go to the mission field decided to move to Michigan. They said, "Hey, why don't you come with us?"

I'd never seen snow before.

So I said sure.

posted by Headless-in-GR @ 2/02/2005 08:00:00 PM