Capes

Yesterday, I took a box to a lady I've been helping for months. On and off, her friend from Louisville will send a box of items to give to her. But both of these ladies are elderly and can't get out much. So I'm the willing, grateful, go-between.

They met years ago at a strip club, one trying to help get the other out of the life.

The lady who lives near me, the one I deliver boxes too, is in her mid-60s, chain-smoking, and alone. We talk on the phone some, message online, and I see her about once every other month or so. She's battled throat cancer, and still has so many serious health problems. I anticipate one day, I may not hear from her again because something will have happened. She just got an eviction notice yesterday, even though my church has helped her (and her daughter) with rent money this year...

It's so unbelievably sad.

But the saddest part is something she showed me I can't get out of my mind. "Do you want to see a picture I drew?" She scooted her wheelchair towards a white canvas on which she had freehanded a pencil drawing. It was hard to make it out. "Can you tell what it is?" she asked. I squinted my eyes, and asked her to tell me:

A faceless woman, with booty shorts. Her legs were backwards, her knees grotesquely bent the wrong way. The outline of two high-heeled, chunky boots. Most of the canvas was swooping pencil marks coming from where the arms should be - big wings.

"She's a cape-dancer. I used to be really good at that. Made you feel like somebody. I miss that part."

My heart sunk in my chest. As I looked around at the squaller she lived in, pipes frozen (or water turned off by her landlord, she wasn't sure which), tobacco and cigarettes everywhere, eviction notice haphazardly thrown by the front door, I hated sin. I felt suffocated by it. What was this box of random things - well meaning, but useless - going to do to really help her? What were my visits, rent help, online church links, phone calls really doing? When all was said and done, when a white canvas presented itself, the pencil still started drawing a scene from the life my Louisville friend had worked so hard to get her out of.

I don't fault her. I understood what she meant. Even when cape-dancing was degrading and objectifying and oppressive, it was still attention. When it was men with lustful eyes, it was still being on stage. When it was fake in a rhinestone kind of way, it still sparkled.

In the end, after all these years, it was still all she knew.

Capes. Worn by superheroes. I wish Jesus wore one. I wish He would swoop down and save. I wish He would change her circumstances, but mostly, I wish she would have a change of heart. He already made a way for this. He came humbly the first time, and died and was resurrected so we would be saved. But the second time, He'll come in power no cape could contain. It's just that there, in that half-trailer, I longed for that day with an ache I could feel. It gripped my heart and made it hard to breathe.

I left shortly after that, it was starting to snow and I needed to get home. I confess I was grateful to get a fresh breath of cold, snowy air after her smoky room. I still smelled of it. I breathed in deep, over and over, and cried all the way home.

One day, I know, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord.

And until that day, it doesn't make the trying, the helping, the loving and the praying any less important. Even if it's still hard.