God Cries...

A dear friend of mine has been trying to save a meth addict. He's a beautiful man, on the inside and out, so she says.

She says she took him in, despite her better judgment, because he saved her life. She was very ill with no way to the hospital and he was the only one that stepped up to the plate and took her there. He did this at a time when he was rebuilding his life. He was trying to get sober, living in a halfway house with "ex" criminals and other "recovering" addicts. He had a new job that he'd only been with for a little less than a month. He had taken her to the emergency room in the middle of the night, but the hospital stay was too long for him to get to work on time and he was fired the next day. That same day some drama hit the halfway house because of the meth users within and he left with no where to go but another users house. It was pure happenstance that she even met this man, but he helped her to the point of his own demise so her logic was, "You save my life, I save yours." She invited him to stay at her place, where he could comfortably get sober and get on his feet.

Three months later she sits in my living room crying because he went out on a bender and didn't come home. I'm the only friend, she says, that understands why she took him in. I'm the only friend, she says, that understands why "found" people go looking for the "lost." She tells me about all the good qualities she sees within the man, the honorable character traits that lie there like dormant seeds that need nothing more than a little bit of water and some fertile soil. The problem is, those seeds lie in the midst of addictive thorns that seem to choke every seedling beginning to sprout.

I don't know what to say to my friend. Her soul is beautiful, shining like a beacon through thick fog. And she's right, I do understand why the found go looking for the lost, why the Shepherd leaves the 99 to find the 1. But I also know that my heart hurts when my friend cries, that I feel anger toward the man that causes her pain. And just as I feel that she looks up at me, tears in her eyes, and says, "This must be how God feels, when He gives us everything and we give Him nothing in return."

I pause and watch her wipe some tears away as she continues, "I've given this man a place to live, food to eat, clothes on his back, and I did it all because Jesus says, 'if your brother has no shirt, give him the one off your back.' I've given more than my shirt. I've lost friends because I cut them off, thinking they wouldn't understand, I've lost money because I've cared for someone I couldn't afford to, and I've lost sleep when he's disappeared. And now I'm crying because my only goal was to help the man stay clean and he fell off the wagon. I have no idea where he is, I have no idea if he'll be back, and I have no idea if he'll survive. I expected nothing from him, except to pull his life together and move forward. So, this must be how God feels when we don't do the right thing. I don't think He sits up there angry with us all the time, I think He cries. He cries because He gives us everything we need to succeed in life and we piss on it anyway. He gives us everything because He created us and He loves us and we piss on it anyway, and God cries..."

With that she started weeping, and so did I, because I believe she was right. I believe that's the truth. Despite every Baptist Bible Thumper I've ever known to preach fire and brimstone and Hell and every other judgmental condemnation they can from the pulpit, I believe my little no name friend, my non-theological friend has it right. God cries when we fuck up...