I made it two weeks on the streets of Milwaukee even though my picture was circulating on every news channel. On the street, no one watches TV. No one cares that you’re a kid-that you’re just fourteen years old and miles away from home. There are lots of places for runaways to hide, people who’ll let you sleep for a night. Please don’t ask me more. None of those days matter. Only one-the day I met her.
“You need this.” She just walked right up and said that to me one morning..
I turned toward the woman who seemed to appear out of nowhere. She was small, black, kind. I did not know why I thought kind immediately .After a few days on the street, I did not believe that about people anymore. I assessed her features deeming her young and unremarkable except for the strength of her rich brown eyes.
My eyes left hers, returning to the streets of Milwaukee, as she pressed bills into my hand. I looked at the crumpled bills-two hundreds. My eyes snapped back to her face. “What? I can’t take-“
“Go home, Mary. Take that and go home.”
My heart sank; so many days and no one knew my name. My face flashing on T.V. screens daily yet on the street I was invisible. “How…”
“I’ve been sent to tell you something.”
A nervous laugh, passed my lips. “By who?”
“God.”
I scanned the street. I would drop the money. I would run.
“Don’t run. He sent me to tell you His Son the Lord Jesus Christ died on the Cross to save your soul, your life.
Her eyes, oh, those eyes, I’ll remember throughout eternity they’re still the kindest eyes I’ve ever seen. “What makes you so sure?”
“He being Man and God rose himself from the dead.”
I thought of my own mother, taken before her time. “The dead don’t rise. They stink, then they become ash, and they are never again what they once were.” I turned to leave.
“The dead in Christ do. What have you got to lose by trusting Christ?”
I looked at her again. She was serious. This plain Jane woman was more certain of this-this story than anyone I had met in my life. I felt wetness on my face, a trembling that wracked my body. “My sanity.”
A perfectly arched eyebrow rose. “Kid, that appears to be on shaky ground anyway.”
I laughed then. People passing by watched us curiously. My mirth died. “I just want…to believe again.”
“Believe in what.”
“In life.”
“Believe there is life in Christ and then go home, Mary.”
There was a need pressing down on me, an undeniable pressure. I felt cornered. There were two ways out, which one was safest. “Why do you trust?”
She smiled and her unremarkable face was extraordinary. “Because there is nothing else that has hope in life or in death for someone like me, someone whose heart is at times downright ugly. Who has so little faith and has sinned so much.”
“What do I have to do?”
“Believe.”
I tossed the money at her feet and turned to go down the street. My feet were surer than they had ever been in my entire life.
“That is for you-“
“No need. I’m going home.”
“But-“
I tossed over my shoulder “God may have told you to speak to me, but not to give me that.”