Lately, I’ve been thinking about the people who surrounded me in those early days as I began to emerge from the darkness of active addiction. To be truthful, it’s impossible to remember them all; there were many acts of kindness that I wasn’t able to see and will never know. Yet there they were, a veritable squad of cheerleaders urging me forward into new life. There are those, of course, who remain bright in my mind’s eye. This is a story about one of those beacons.
On one of the darkest days of my life, I was sitting in the local courthouse waiting to meet with a prosecutor. I had hit rock bottom with a resounding and humiliating splat. I was trying to wrap my mind around how I had gotten there. The shame was overpowering, and I had little reason for optimism about what would happen next.
As I waited, I noticed a young girl, maybe 4 or 5 years of age, with cascades of curly brown hair, scampering around the corridor. I recall thinking, “if this was last week, I might have looked for the girl’s parents and asked if I could bless her.” In my early priesthood, a mentor had recommended this as a spiritual practice. And I loved it. But it wasn’t last week. It was now. I had been arrested for possession, removed from my parish, and suspended. No clerical collar today. No blessing of children.
As I sat there, lost in thought, and wrapped in self-pity, I realized that that little girl was now standing in front of me, regarding me with her enormous brown eyes. When I said hello, she solemnly handed me one of those giant paper clips (I remember that it was pink) with as much care as if it were a Fabergé egg. “This is for you,” she said. “Don’t put it in your mouth.” And then she scrambled up and sat beside me to chat. A gift, some advice, and companionship. It sounds a lot like God to me.
That was 7+ years ago. Along the road of recovery, what with moving into and out of rehab, then sober housing, eventually an apartment, and then halfway across the country, some of the souvenirs of my new life have gone astray, that giant pink paperclip among them. Even so, that little girl’s gift to me has remained in my heart.
Recently, I shared part of this story in a sermon. The Gospel was Jesus telling the disciples to learn about the reign of God from children. “Look into the tiniest faces and see God,” I said.
After the service, in one of those lovely ways that the universe sometimes rhymes, the first person to greet me at the door solemnly handed me, you guessed it, a giant pink paperclip. “This is for you,” he said. And then, with a wink, “don’t put it in your mouth.”
This new souvenir now lives in my Prayer Book, and I hope to hold on to it for a long time. But, even if I don’t, I will always treasure, and hope to pass on to others, the gift of that nameless little girl. On that dreadful day, I couldn’t bless her, but she blessed me with a warm, bright beacon illuminating the road of happy destiny, a path that I look forward to trudging for many days to come.
Paul J.
Muncie, IN