Beautiful Nate by Dennis Mansfield

Author:Dennis Mansfield
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Howard Books

The Walking Dead

We no longer had answers. We were spiritually drained parents for whom nothing worked—nothing from Christian bookstores or Sunday school lessons or Christian radio programs or Promise Keepers or Focus on the Family or . . .

We were the walking dead, and dead people eventually become odorous to friends and family. Our aloneness and loneliness intersected in the absence of understanding by fellow believers. We were outsiders on the inside of the body of Christ. Like lepers we were treated as unclean by scared Christian parents who were fearful that their own children would become like our son. After all, if it could happen to the Focus on the Family parents, it could also happen to the young couples that had formerly looked up to us.

We were the walking dead, and dead people eventually become odorous to friends and family.

The only place, as a couple, we could focus our energies was toward our son in jail. We visited him often, and we developed a regular letter-writing campaign. Nate reciprocated the letters, and through the medium of the written word, we began to read how he felt and thought. We sent books for him to read, and he devoured them like a starving man devours food. Close friends and family joined us in sending more books. It was remarkable to see his vocabulary expand due to his reading and being clean from drugs. It was as if the major authors of our time became his personal tutors.

Much of the drug-related chaos in our family subsided while Nate was in our local jail. We met with him and spoke on phones through thick glass panels about life and God. We accepted pay phone calls from him. As Nate’s year moved through the four seasons, none of his drug friends visited him. Not a single one. Not even his best friend, not the young man whose house he lived in during his senior year. No one visited Nate in jail other than his family and two pastors he didn’t know—one in particular, David Snyder, visited him regularly. Nate was left alone and uncared for, because those who use drugs care only for themselves. In time, Nate saw himself in them and admitted that they really didn’t care deeply about what he was facing, just as he had not cared for us when he was high. A bitterness brewed in Nate against these men and women.

I wrote him a very strong letter during this time period.

December 1st, 2004

Dear Nate,

It was nice talking to you on the jail payphone. Thanks for calling.

I received your letter from jail, written the day before Thanksgiving. I was thankful that you wrote it and glad that you expressed yourself. I acknowledge your positions and want you to know that the letter did not hurt me. You’ve written from your pain and that helps both of us. Thanks for being open.

In years past I would have harshly reacted to your letter rather than patiently responding. In doing so, I most assuredly would have hurt you.

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