JOSE
Jose is a rock. He is hard with jagged edges. He’s made of basic elements but heavy enough to be thrown into the water and reach the deep. Jose grew up in a house filled with violence, drugs, abuse, and tragedy. He’s hidden under the covers from bullets. He has been a shield of protection for his mom against a drunk and outraged father. He has cried himself to sleep only when no one could see him because he carries guilt and deep sorrow for his younger brothers death. Drugs were an easy choice to numb a whole childhood of pain.
After years of drug use, it became an identity until it became a personality. Jose would walk through the empty or crowded streets and still be alone. Day after day and night after night, he stayed high, low and everywhere in between.
Even the days in between where a fix could not be found, he couldn’t see himself. He describes it like looking in a fragmented mirror. When we looked at Jose, we could see those missing pieces. We could see he was a leader and deep thinker from day one. Week after week he would show up at practice, most of the time high and his body rebelling against the physical strain. He would cough up blood, sweat tears, and his extra lack of coordination always left him injured, bruised, and bleeding. Month after month he would consistently come and go. Disappear for a few weeks and return as if nothing had happened. When we would go look for him, we would either find him lost to the world on a rock that sits on the side of the main road or we would leave a message with “friends” we knew were covering for him.
One afternoon after practice we told him when he was ready for help, we would be there for him. He told us later that he pondered those words for days. He asked how, why, for how long, what would help look like? One weekend the whole soccer team came to our teams house to stay, and Jose came along as if it was no big deal, but it was his cry for help. Jose sat outside, in the corner, on the stairs, hood over his head, sometimes rocking back and forth and sometimes talking to himself. The whole team remembers that night. Though there was so much uncertainty, it was that night everything changed. Jose ended up staying at our team members home for weeks.
And those weeks were filled with lots of previously unchanneled energy, nervous and impatient comments, really long naps, a crazy meticulousness for cleanliness, slammed doors, will versus will, eating as if he’d never eat again. But somewhere between the clash of wills, we began to notice new patterns: Jose would wake up before everyone else in the house and read chapter after chapter of his Bible out loud, in the evenings he would read to our teams youngest daughter, a bedtime story, he would make the chore list for the tribe of boys staying at the house every weekend, wrestling and laughter in the grass as the sun set, politeness with a knock on the door to ask to have a conversation, family meals that he would patiently wait until we bowed our heads in thanks before taking the first bite and then putting his fork down after every subsequent bite.
It may sound silly, but all those little things were big hurdles for Jose. It meant that strength was Godly in both restraint and love, it meant family was safe, that there would always be enough food, that messes were the result of a weekend well spent and that together there was nothing we could not conquer.
He was afraid to go home, and we would be lying if we didn’t say it made us nervous. But it was time. Since his first time home there have been slip ups, joints smoked, but there has also been a change of friends, there have been “NO’S” screamed in a whisper, and little by little deep changes in identity.
We make time every week to talk about his week. His relationship with his Dad, work, school, girlfriends, his drug using friends, slip ups, soccer, anger, girls, the future, the Marines, and there is never judgment, just conversation. And we end every conversation reminding him how much we love him and wrap our arms around him in a huge bear hug. The tribe is also there. The soccer team; who have watched him on his worst day and his best. They are there to sit it out with him when he says no, and wait for him until he takes the last drag of a cigarette. He knows he has a family who is fighting for him. For full transformation and freedom. He has not given up.
*Names/photos have been changed to protect identity