When God Sends Help: "Virgie" (reposted)

I was thinking about how God brings people into our lives right at the perfect moment. Sometimes we wonder why they didn’t come sooner, but that’s where our faith in God becomes important. God sees the entire timeline of the entire world beginning to end. He knows the perfect placement of things while we only get a sliver of the view. And comically, we often think we know best. I have had people come into my life for just a season. And I am sure God has intended for other people to be in my life that did not obey His call. But no matter what, we can trust that He knows best and will take care of things regardless.

By the time I was age 12, I was pretty broken. I had been molested, bullied, found & lost a very important cat to me, moved three times, and was at my fifth school, to name just the top trauma's & adjustments I had faced. I was always a quiet kid, but now I was just empty inside. I felt lost in the world, and very much alone. All my older siblings were out of the house by then, so it was just me. We lived in Georgetown, Delaware at the time. My father was the pastor of a one hundred member congregation nestled at the back side of a small community. We had been there about two years at this point when one night there was a knock at the door. It was late in the evening and we were all ready for bed. I heard the bell first followed by loud banging. I peeked my head out of my bedroom door as my father passed by carrying my grandfather's old single shot .22 rifle. He waved me back into my room. I heard my mothers voice in the hall and then silence. Though I desperately wanted to leave my room to see what was happening, I just stood in the middle of the room listening closely, mostly to my own heartbeats. Thirty to forty-five minutes passed. I had finally retreated to my bed when my mother opened my bedroom door and flipped on the light. “I need you to get dressed and go over to the church and see what's going on. Don't let them know you are there.” I did as I was told. I ran in the dark from the back parsonage door to the side door of the church. Luckily my father had left on the lights because it was a very large church building. I ran through the long hallway full of classrooms, past the offices, and into the foyer. On the other side of the sanctuary was a door that led into the fellowship hall. I could hear strange singing echoing from the partially opened door. I slipped over to the door, slightly frightened by the dark shadows of the sanctuary around me. I saw my father handing a middle aged woman a cup of coffee. She had a bucket of water and mop in her hand. She was drunk and my father was trying to sober her up. She mumbled things about God and my father was trying to answer her questions and tell her about who He was. Every once and awhile he would go to the kitchen for another cup of coffee. I didn’t have to wait long before I heard a sound behind me. It was my mother still in her nightgown covered with a robe. I looked down at her slippers. She opened the door as she told me to go home. I fought it just a little, but only because I was afraid to go back through the darkened church and outside once again all alone. I didn’t believe in boogie men, but I also understood that there were things out there, whether I could always see them or not. Then she gave me that look, that Mom look that can move armies and mountains with a single glance. I ran like the wind and didn’t look back, well, maybe a couple times. I had heard my father say the woman’s name, Virgie. She was somewhat short and heavyset. Long hair in the back, but cut short on the sides with really short straight bangs. It was the eighties after all, hair was a statement. To my delight and awe, Sunday came around and so did Virgie. My father introduced me to her and she had the biggest smile. She was different from anyone I had ever met before. She had a few tattoos on her arms and wore blue jeans and a t-shirt. That was highly unusual for our church back in those days. Virgie continued to come to church. In conversations that I overheard, I knew she was still struggling with alcohol. She would call the parsonage sometime late at night and my father would stay on the line with her as she mumbled unknown conversations. Over the months she had started to talk to me more and more. She would ask me about school and the things I liked to do. No adult had ever talked to me like she did, as if I was important enough to talk to. Soon every Sunday she gave me the biggest hug and smile. I didn’t know what this happy, warm feeling was that I would get when she lit up by just seeing me. Like she just found an old lost friend every time. No one saw that I was depressed. Or knew I just wanted to die. My first thoughts of suicide were at the age of seven right after being molested. Five years I had held onto my secret. Five years of heaviness that I thought I could no longer bear. Virgie made me feel like I was worth something just with her warm smile and huge hug. I believe Virgie saw something no one else did. She saw my brokenness, my fear, my loneliness, and lack of self worth. She knew I just needed to be loved on. As far as I knew, to everyone else it didn't matter whether I was alive or dead. I just knew I had to do what I was told, wear what I was supposed to wear, and behave as close to perfect as I could get. Mistakes were not an option, at least not without heavy disappointment and consequences. Virgie let me be a kid. I laughed more with her than anyone else up until that point, including my own friends from church and school. Meeting Virgie, the drunk, was the best thing that had ever happened to me. I didn’t understand for many years that God had brought her into my life to help me cope with everything I held deep inside. I also think God wanted me to understand that there was more in life than just what I had experienced. I never told her, or anyone, the things that had happened to me. I believed that it was all punishment for something wrong I had done. With that came shame and embarrassment. So I held onto it tightly and feared that one day someone might find out. I remember sitting on the brick wall outside of church one Sunday. The sun was shining down on us. She told me that if I ever wanted to talk about anything that I could talk to her. She said she promised not to tell anyone else, but to just listen. I thought about it for a moment. No one had ever asked me to talk about anything that had happened to me, not even my parents. Inside I wanted to grab her and thank her for caring about me, even loving me like she did, but instead I just smiled and nodded. I wanted so badly to tell her everything, but I couldn’t make the words come out of my mouth. I felt that knot in my throat you get when you are about to explode into tears or just gush all the trauma out in incoherent blubbery words. She just smiled and reassured me that she was always available if I needed her. Virgie attended the church for a few years, but I don’t know what ever happened to her. She is definitely the first name on a very small list of angels that God has brought my way. Sometimes they are the most unlikely people. I think those just might be the best ones to have. If God has people greet us inside the gates of Heaven, I sure do hope Virgie is one of them.


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