Undying Love

 His big, childish, impressionable eyes watch the scene through the crack in the door. Yelling, fighting, throwing, hitting. It's a scene he's watched hundreds of times, and yet it still upsets him. Tears drip from his chin onto his nightshirt. He crawls back into bed and covers his head with his pillow, attempting to block out the angry sounds of his world.

He goes to school and comes home, silent. He barely says anything to anyone, although his teachers have tried to talk to him. There is so much pain and anguish in his heart, and he doesn't know how to open up and share. He spent so long in the dark, being told to be quiet that now he isn't sure that he will ever want to talk again.

Silent submission turns into violent rage as he gets older. No longer are his teachers trying to get him to open up, they are only trying to cope with his tantrums. His anger and frustration that builds at home is poured out on his fellow classmates, making him despised among them. None of them understand, none of them know what he has been through.

He finds someone who is sympathetic to him, he makes friends. For the first time in his life, he feels accepted. He only wants to be loved, although he won't tell anyone that. They offer him forbidden treats, he accepts them, at first hesitantly, but soon he is just as big and bad as any of his friends.

He finds young people who are in the same trouble as him, and he brings them into the fold, telling them that they don't need the people who hurt them, that he can take care of them. He gives them what they want, and they take it.

He doesn't stay in school, he doesn't want to be around the kids who hate him, the adults who despise him. They only see that he is a troublemaker, and maybe he is, but that is the only way he has of coping with what he has seen, what he has done. He doesn't need them anyway. Deep down, he knows that he wants the love and attention that he never got from his parents, but he refuses to admit that he needs anyone but himself.

He sits alone, leaning against the cold brick wall in a back alley in an unfamiliar town. He can't figure out how he's gotten so far away from what he wanted to be. He's becoming like his father, drunk, lonely, unfaithful. This is what he never wanted to become. But looking back on his life, he sees every mistake he made in getting himself to this dark and damp alley.

He stands over his mother's hospital bed. Her eyes are closed, she slumbers, but he knows that she will probably never open her eyes to see him. He heart aches with the memories that could have been made with her, if he had only stayed. It was never her fault, she was so wrapped up in avoiding a beating, not only for herself but for her son. She may not have been very motherly, she was angry most of the time, and she may have spent most of her time yelling at him, but she was still his mother. And now she is slipping away, and he will never be able to thank her for the tiny bits of joy that she was able to give him.

The wind tousles his hair as he looks out over the ocean. He has to begin again. He has spent his whole life in trouble, he wants something else. Something that can give him the peace that he so desperately needs. But he doesn't know what could give him that. He tried drugs, alcohol, women, none of them ever worked. He had watched the people he had once called friends descend into a pit that they would never be able to rise from. He knows he never wants to end up there, but he doesn't know what to do anymore.

Alone, as always, sitting on a park bench, he studies the cracks in the pavement and tries to make sense of his life. That's when a stranger comes to him. She says he looks like he could use a friendly word. They talk for a long time, the sun is sinking by the time she stands to leave. He asks her if he can have her number, so they can talk again, she really encouraged him. She gives it to him and they part ways.

He watches her, every time they are together, trying to decipher the secret to her joy. People make cutting remarks about her sometimes, but they roll off her like it was nothing. She has hard days too, but she keeps her chin up. He can't seem to figure out what makes her that way. He asks her, she tells him her secret. A man who is God came and died on the cross for her sins, saving her from eternal punishment. She's a Christian. He's heard the story a thousand times before, people always want to preach to you when you are in a bad situation, and who better to preach to than him? He had always scoffed at the idea before, but coming from her it didn't seem so hard to believe. It so obviously changed her, believing in this man who was God, so why couldn't is change him?

He asks her more, she tells him more. She explains the Gospel to him, as best as she can. She gives him a Bible, he reads it, devours it. He doesn't understand most of it, especially the love that was shown by the man who was God. All these people hated him, and yet he still paid the ultimate price for them. When he rose again, it sealed the fact in his mind, he must be God. He prays, begging the man who is God to come into his heart, change him, get him away from the horrors that he has seen all his life. He needs love and kindness, only the man who is God can show him that. He needs to be saved.

Life has a new color now. He can still she the shadows that he slunk through all his life, but now he can also see the light that he shied away from. He no longer takes human kindness in the wrong way, assuming that everybody wants to use him. He tries to show others the miraculous love that he was given. The girl can see the difference, she in overjoyed for him. She asks him what changed, he told her that he knows that he is loved. That's all he ever wanted, was someone to love him, despite everything, and he finally found what he had been looking for for all his life. He had found somebody with perfect, undying, love.

Cheers!