On The Ground - Reality Sets In

On the Ground - Reality Sets In

BACK IN DALLAS, I look out my car window as my son, Scott, walks briskly to the car. He looks like the picture of health. But looks are deceiving. As he folds himself into the car, I know that my strapping young son is pumped full of drugs designed to fend off AIDS. He’s HIV infected.

While I was in India, I saw others infected and affected by the disease. Most were women; some had picked up their illness from their “clients”; others contracted the disease from their husbands and then were rejected by their families. Like my Scott, they are responding well to their potent cocktails of modern medicine. Through my tinted windows, the death sentence looked just like a manageable chronic disease.

Then I stepped off the bus and was on the ground at an AIDS orphanage. The reality came crashing home in the form of a slight eight-year-old child. Sitting on the floor to play with V (an initial I have chosen to protect his identity), I quickly noticed he had the wit and charm of a lad three times his age. As I lifted this forty-pound child onto my lap to read him some of his favorite stories, my past flashed before my eyes. I remembered holding and reading to Scott, just like this. Twenty years ago seems like just last week.

Even when I walk through the darkest valley, I will not be afraid,for you are close beside me. Your rod and your staff protect and comfort me. (Psalm 23:4)

Looking through the bus window of my life, I am entertained and distracted by all that whirls by me: business meetings, social events, family gatherings, and obligations. I guess this is good to some extent, because on the ground, my heart breaks for us both.