Runaway Radical by Amy Hollingsworth

Author:Amy Hollingsworth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2014-11-30T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

I’LL KNOW THE EXIT WHEN I SEE IT

I AM HOME FROM AFRICA.

Every now and then I’ll get a call from my host family, and we talk about the weather in Cameroon. I ask about their newborn son, the baby I didn’t stay around long enough to see born. I ask if they received the package of American goodies I sent them.

They ask about my family, about how I’m doing, and I say I’m fine. But sometimes I don’t answer their calls. Sometimes I’ll go weeks ignoring their messages, staring at my phone until it stops ringing, until the call redirects to voice mail. My recorded inbox greeting used to say something about love, that I was glad the person had called, and whoever they were, I loved them very much.

Now an automated voice takes my calls.

It’s strange to think how I drew inspiration and comfort from my cloister closet. How the walls chronicled my spiritual growth, how the framed photograph of the Honduran girl gave me the strength to keep going. How it ensured I would never forget her.

But now I wanted to forget.

The afternoon I arrived back in the States, I returned to the place that symbolized the start of it all. I had failed my duty in Africa, but I could always return to my closet. I could always go back to the drawing board.

It’s strange how a place that had kept my ideals so safe now felt so threatening, how a place that had occupied so much of my time could become so unfamiliar. The writings on the walls no longer inspired me. They taunted me. They reminded me that I had failed. I had failed the quotes; I had failed the Honduran girl; I had failed myself. But worst of all, I had failed the God of the universe: “Whatever you do for the least of these, you do for me.” I managed a short nap, but then I rolled up my sleeping bag, untouched for what felt like a lifetime, belonging to a man I no longer recognized, and I closed the door like one closes a casket.

Over the course of the next year, I would return to the closet, not as a mourner paying respects, but as something closer to a grave robber. I painted over the walls; I took down and trashed the photograph.

Some reminders could be taken down, like the photograph. Others stare me in the face every day. Seeing the homeless on my way to work, running into youth I had mentored at the store.

Before Africa, I remember waking up one morning to the front page of the newspaper, a story about a stabbing in the downtown area. A young drug addict had hunted down his dealer after a botched transaction and stabbed him to death outside his house. I folded the page and looked at the mug shot of the suspect in question. I didn’t have to see his name to recognize who he was.

He was just a kid, no older than I was, who had attended my church.

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