" The Pull" I was at the camp the other night (now two friday's ago) and spent alot of my time with one guy. He is two weeks away from going home. or not home. He is still talking about going back out to the gang he is from and letting go of his real family. He lost a brother to gang violence already. So he should hate gangs. But the way of the streets is to kill the ones who kill your people. An eye for an eye. If you talk to any gang member, it makes total sense, they totally get what they do. How exactly did his brother die? His brother was on trial for the murder of a rival gang member, he beat the case and gets released. Upon his release from jail he gets picked off by the rival gang of the murdered guy. So the justice system cleared his brother, but the rival gang did not. Wow, sounds like a movie. So anyway here I sit with this guy, barely 18 years old, and he is trying to convince me that it makes more sense to stay with the gang then to go stay with his family. What? Am I hearing you right? This is the most logical? To him, it is. His family is relocating to another state, no doubt to have a better life. But he has no concept of life outside of his box. So I do what I do, I fight for him to get it, we battle there in what lately has been "the land of tension." He is worried about his mom, so I tell him, his mom would be up every night wondering, Is he alive, or is he dead. Is that the highest for his mom? That she has already lost one son, and it's not time to lose another. I noticed he fought hard to keep the tears from falling from his eyes. Not so tough? We stop for a minute, I ask do you want to read the Bible? He says, yes. So I read with him for a while....We read The Parable of the Sower from Luke....and I explained you can't just hear the word and let it be taken away from your heart. You must receive it, retain it, get it deep down into you. We talked about Solomon, and I asked him if he could have anything in the world, what would he ask for? He said, "my brother". I said, yes, that was good. But I also shared he needed wisdom to make the right decision and he couldn't do it on his own. Like we have been telling him all along. He nodded. He looked different than he did when we first started. The tension is loosening. The pull not so tight. What a contrast. As I am writing this, Pedro is now out. It was 8 days ago since we talked. Where did he go? Was this talk and many like these enough?
Last night as our 14 guys entered the room, I looked at the faces. These guys are tough but not, the tension between being hard hearted and soft is evident in most. We had 2 hours of our class taken due to "riots and unruly behavior", directors say it is bad. Our guys have lost two friends in the past few weeks to gang shootings, one was shot four times in the head. So we are there in this land of tension. But there are tears inside, there are stories to tell. And we are there to fight for them to help make sense of this life, because the way they are they thinking right now is crazy. But we know, he is thier peace and it is by faith that we plant each seed. Pedro is gone, somethimes I feel like a mom. I wonder where he decided to go? Is he alive? or Is he dead? This call is hard.
