In the Wilderness - Kim Barnes [85]
When school started in the fall of my ninth-grade year, my mother drove me across town each morning so that I wouldn’t have to attend my old junior high, where Patti and my other one-time friends still gathered at the corner to smoke. I was relieved not to have to deal with their scorn and pity. My new school had a reputation for being “clean,” populated with students more interested in football and cheerleading than mescaline and Janis Joplin. My new classmates had already heard of me, of my past and my sudden transformation. I was surprised to discover they thought I was a narc, a teenage undercover agent who had bartered her way out of juvenile detention by selling her soul to them—the priggish parents who saw pushers on every corner, the principal, the pigs.
The distinction seemed of dubious credit, but I was secretly pleased to hear that my past reputation had preceded me. I had no desire, however, to be mistaken for a narc. Whether left over from my old self or ingrained in me by the code of family, one of the worst breeches of integrity anyone could make was to squeal, to rat, to be a toady. I went out of my way to assure the “rinks”—the dope smokers and neophyte hippies—that I was cool and would hold their confidence. My newfound jock friends were uneasy with my crossing over the clique lines, but they were aware that I had a mission: to recruit souls for Christ.
I invited my schoolmates to attend our youth meetings, led by a young minister and his wife who had about them an intriguing California aura. Reverend Dave, our youth pastor, wore his hair a little too long, the elders felt, and he had a way of moving his shoulders and head while playing his guitar that made them nervous. His wife had a heavy hand with the mascara wand, the women whispered—a bit too much glitter. Still, all this might be forgiven in the face of the fact that more and more teenagers were being drawn to the church.
“Jesus freaks!” the heathens shouted at us as they drove by, music blaring. We ignored them, joining hands in the park and praying beneath the limbs of gnarled elms, secure in our sacred circle, calmed by our combined voices. I wasn’t alone anymore. Many of the popular kids from my school had heeded the call from the altar and joined me in the ranks of the born again. Bonnie was saved now, and Candy, Brent and Joe.
Together with Pastor Dave we started a call-in radio show, broadcast live from the studio of KRLC, the same station I had listened to all those long nights when my world was unraveling. We held the night spot from ten to eleven, catching the young crowd still tuned in by surprise. Between cuts of Christian rock (a new designation not all our congregation was comfortable with), we testified to the joy and love Christ had brought into our lives. When it was my turn at the mike, I spoke of my past.
“I know that there are those of you out there who are thinking, ‘I’m so alone, I’m so scared.’ You don’t need to be scared. You don’t need to be alone. You won’t find comfort in drugs or alcohol. I’ve been there. I know. Christ is the only answer. Ask Him into your heart tonight. I’ll pray with you.”
Everyone in the booth would bow their heads; even the disc jockey, looking bored and a little incredulous, would lower his eyes.
“Dear Lord, You see into the hearts of everyone. You can see, even if I can’t, the lost souls listening tonight. They need You, Jesus. Touch them, Lord. Let them feel You come into their hearts. Let them know the joy of surrender, the joy of knowing You as their Savior. Let them be born again.”
As I prayed, Pastor Dave and the others joining in with their own urgings toward salvation, I marveled at how far I had come. To every thing there is a season, I thought. Only God could know the reason.
Pastor Dave believed that if you were going to take away the activities of the world, you had to fill the void with more righteous choices. Instead of going to the school proms, we had banquets