Part 2 – The Play
Jenna was a simple girl with simple needs. Born and raised in Los Angeles, her life had been filled with everything she thought she'd ever need: A good husband, a good house, a good job, a great car, lots and lots of cash in the bank and so much more. But two years earlier that perfect life had come crashing down around her. With the sudden death of her husband, and the simultaneous economic implosion of 2008, all of that had been brought crashing to the ground in flames. Even her sizable savings and investments had been reduced to a tiny fraction of their original value in only a few hours. To make matters worse, she'd been forced to use what little remained to bury her husband, leaving her with literally not a dime to her name.
In a strange twist of fate, similar tragedies had also befallen everyone else in her neighborhood at the same time, forcing all of them to pack up and leave their once luxurious homes one by one until only Jenna remained. But that was only the first of the repeated insults to hit her and her family. In order to put food on the table and keep the lights on they'd been forced to either sell off, cash in, or pawn off everything they owned. She'd even had to trade in her expensive luxury car for an old beater that'd already seen far too many miles and too many years on the road.
But even that only helped for a little while because eventually they ran out of things to sell, leaving them with empty shelves and two hungry mouths to feed. They were soon down to the point where the sum total of all their possessions consisted of two changes of cloths and a handful of blankets on which they slept. There was nothing else left, as even the house had been repossessed. All that remained was for them to be thrown out. As Jenna sat alone in a corner of the empty living room, waiting for her kids to return home from school, she quietly read words of comfort from the Psalms, and prayed to God that He would take care of her and her children in this desperate time of need.
It made her think of a time, not two years earlier, when one would not be surprised to see her texting, watching movies, or playing video games all day, every day. And yet now, after her world had so painfully imploded around her, she'd found a peace and security in God's word unlike at any time before. It was during her time of grieving, not long after laying her husband to rest, that a couple from a local church had invited her and her two kids to dinner one night. They'd help console the grieving family and, in the process of the night, led them all to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.
In the days following that dinner, God had called the couple away to other locations halfway around the world to do much the same as they'd done with her, namely leading others to the Lord. As such they'd left Jenna and her two kids in the capable hands of their local church who'd been tasked with their care. And it'd been that body of believers that'd sustained them through the hard times that followed. But recently the church had been forced to close its doors. It wasn't that something bad had happened to the congregation, but rather that so few now remained in the area due to job loses, financial struggles, relocation by their employers, or other things, that they'd chosen to take what few members they had left and merge with another congregation halfway across town near the financial district.
That in turn had left Jenna in a lurch. Where once her church was within walking distance, a blessing for someone with very little money, it was now much too far away to be visited regularly on her meager finances. She pondered this thought as she tried to read her bible, the worries of the world picking at the edges of her thoughts as she desperately sought to keep her mind to the task at hand. Just then she heard the mail truck pull up outside. It had to be an odd thing for the mail carrier to drive through this area of back to back foreclosed homes to deliver mail to the only remaining occupied dwelling in the area. The experience had to be surreal. The thought that her house would also soon join the others in her neighborhood was enough to make her cry.
She struggled hard to fight back the tears. She knew Jesus was with her, even now, and watching over her day by day. But that didn't make the battle any easier. Finally, deciding that the best thing for her to do right now would be to see what'd arrived, she got up and walked outside to her mailbox hoping beyond hope for a miracle. As she anxiously opened the box she found two letters inside, one from the state welfare office, and the other from Shark's Loans, the servicer of her mortgage. She carefully opened the one from the welfare office, hopefully deep in her heart that it would be good news, only to have those hopes crushed by learning that she'd again been rejected for public aid.
She now found herself with nowhere else to turn. Her church still helped her out periodically with food or a bit of money to pay bills, but even that aid was running out, not because they didn't want to help her, but because they couldn't anymore. Distance and an overwhelming demand from their new local community had emptied their food banks so severely that what little remained was carefully rationed out. She sighed again and then opened the letter from Shark's Loans. If the rejection from the state hadn't been bad enough, the news in the second letter was worse. Despite spending time earlier in the week pleading with the loan agent for more time to get back on her feet and to let her keep her house, Shark had completed final foreclosure on her house and was now demanding that she be out by the end of the month.
A tear streamed down her face as she thought about the meeting. She'd come into the office alone, apprehensive about talking with them, but hoping for some kind of human charity. However, after seeing the loan manager completely eviscerate another couple, the Bakers if memory served her right, all hope that she'd had in saving her home vanished. Her meeting, which had taken a grand total of five minutes, had ended in about the same way as that of the other couple. She was told that she would lose her house unless she came up with the entire amount, or at the very least the past due amount, by the end of the week. She'd hoped that getting approved for welfare might help her make at least one of those back payments. But with that hope gone, she felt almost certain that they would end up in a homeless shelter. The tears, which had only been a trickling stream before, now became a gushing, unbridled fountain of pain.
"Why, God, why!? Why are you doing this to us!?" she cried. "I thought you loved me and my children!"
As strange as it still was to her, she felt a peace that passes all understanding flow over her as if to say, "But I do."
"Then why are you taking everything away from us!? If you love us, why won't you help us save our house!? WHY!?!?"
But to that there was no answer. Just then she felt the winds pick up slightly. She looked up at the sky, and through her tears was surprised to see dark storm clouds gathering on the horizon. This time of year was usually marked by severe drought and lots of clear, sunny days. To see clouds of any kind was a rare event. Just then the school bus turned down her street. Not wanting her kids to see her this way, she hurried inside and closed the door. She watched from the living room window as the bus pulled to a stop in front of the house, dropped off her two children, a young boy of ten, and a little girl seven years of age, and then pulled away.
She sighed again and then took the two letters in her hand and slid them into her backpack that leaned against the living room wall. The two children came in the door a moment later happy and giggling from the school day, despite knowing that they would come home to an empty house that would soon no longer be theirs.
"How was your day?" asked Jenna, doing her best to hide her tears.
Brad, Jenna's son, gave his mother a beaming smile and then expounded to her a whole list of exciting things that'd happened that day, including a surprise field trip to the zoo. Emma, her daughter, wasn't far behind with her tales of adventure and excitement at school that day. Despite all they'd lost, all the hardship they faced, and the bleak future that stood before them, there was still a joy about them.
She could only attribute that to their faith in God. If Jesus hadn't been the center of their lives, she didn't know what kind of a mess her children
would be in. This in itself helped her to feel a little bit better. If her children could find joy, even in a dark situation like this, then she could as well! She immediately set about fixing them a dinner of peanut butter sandwiches, the very last of the food in the house, and then sent the children to doing their homework while she went about the last few chores she was still able to do.
One of those was packing the car in preparation for leaving the house once and for all and never coming back. Even though there wasn't much to pack, she was going to ensure they brought with them all they had left, whatever little that was. Just then, much to her surprise, her phone rang. What made it even stranger was that it hadn't been on all week as she'd been saving the battery for emergency calls only. Yet there it was ringing. She picked it up and saw that the caller was listed as anonymous. She answered it.
"Hello?"
A deep, booming, authoritative voice answered her greeting.
"This is God."
Jenna's heart leapt within her chest.
"God?" she replied in a quavering voice.
"Yes, I am your creator!" bellowed the voice.
"Oh, um, what...uh, what are you calling me for?" she stuttered, nervous at the prospect of being called by the Almighty.
She was also slightly surprised as well, given that God had never contacted her like this before. At least not that she could remember.
"I want you to leave your house. Now!"
Jenna blinked slightly. Was God getting into the eviction business too!?
"Leave it!?" she asked in surprise.
"YES, GO!" boomed the voice. "Leave your home now and never look back! It is vital that you do this immediately and obey me without question!"
Jenna was shocked. To begin with she'd never actually spoken with God, and secondly she'd never expected Him to speak with her this way on their first verbal conversation. She gulped nervously, not wanting to disobey Him.
"Alright, I'll go. But where?" she asked.
"Just go. I will show you on the way."
"Yes, Lord," she replied anxiously and immediately hung up.
She then stood there for several moments in stunned silence, oblivious to the still darkening skies and increasingly stronger winds outside. Thunder boomed in the distance as she tired to get her mind around what'd just happened. Then, must to her surprise, a still small voice tugged at her heart.
"Go," it said.
Suddenly Jenna snapped back to reality, quickly shaking off the shock of the moment and refocusing her thoughts to the here and now.
"Brad, Emma, grab everything you have and get in the car!" she said as she turned and hurriedly began packing up the last of their possessions.
"Why? Are we going somewhere?" asked Brad.
"Just pack your things and get in the car, now!" came the sharp reply.
The two children looked at each other briefly, and then scooping up their homework and school bags, did as their mom asked and made a beeline for the car, their arms full to overflowing as Jenna worked quickly to stuff their last few things in the trunk. She then started the car and backed out just as a strong gust of wind shook the house like a hammer. It was at this moment that she looked up and caught sight of a terror she'd not seen since the summer she'd spent with her aunt in the midwest as a child. It was a gigantic, raging tornado, and it was bearing down on their house!
"Mom, what is that?" asked Emma.
But Jenna didn't waste time explaining. She punched the gas, causing the car's tires to squeal and smoke as it raced down the short driveway and out into the street with a roar! She then slammed it into drive and bolted down the street as debris of every shape and size began raining down around her. She did her best to keep the car under control, despite the raging winds, while at the same time keeping an eye on the twister as it gained ground behind her. By now her kids, having figured out what was happening, were screaming in panic.
"Lord, help us, help us, help us, help us," she said, repeating this over and over again as her heart raced in fear.
Eventually though, the tornado abated, first stopping in its tracks, and then roping out and ascending back into the sky. Seeing this Jenna gave a nervous sigh of relief. Yet at the same time there was a tug of loss in her heart. Not only had they lost the house legally, it was now gone physically. They really now had nowhere to go. Once again the tears became a river down her face as she came to the end of their street, and then did her level best to merge into traffic on the main road without hitting anyone. But try as she might she could barely see through the tears, nearly causing her to wreck several times. So rather than risk killing herself and her children she pulled off the road and into a nearby gas station. She found a parking space near the street and shut off the car.
"Are we alright?" asked Emma, fear still in her voice.
However, Jenna didn't respond. She was struggling to regain her own composure. Just then, must to her surprise, Brad leaned forward and put his hand on her shoulder.
"Mama, you always taught us that when things are scary to call on Jesus," he said.
This brought a slight smile to Jenna's face. Despite all of the excitement and insanity they'd just gone through, her son still held on strongly to his faith.
"Out of the mouths of babes," she thought.
She then lowered her head and began to pray, her two children joining her as she did.
"Dear Lord, thank you for sparing our lives and saving us from that disaster, to which I have no explanation for its appearance or why you allowed it to happen. But Lord, you know our needs. You know we now have no roof over our heads, and no place to call home. Where do we go, Lord, and what do we do? We have nothing, except you. What is your will for us, and where do we go?"
Just then they were all startled by the loud blast of a truck horn. Jenna quickly shook it off and tried to concentrate on her prayers again, struggling desperately to hear from God and to learn what it was He wanted them to do. Again the horn blew, this time seemingly louder and longer. It was shortly after this that she felt a tap on her shoulder.
"Mama, look! Jesus is talking to us!" said Emma.
Jenna looked up in curiosity to see what her daughter was talking about and spotted the most usual sight in front of her. There, stopped on the street in front of them, was an eighteen wheeler with a trailer painted in the most unusual way. It had two mittens laid out at ninety degree angles to each other surrounded by grass. But it wasn't the mittens that interested her. It was the words that were written at the bottom of the picture.
"Go to Michigan. Don't ask why. Just do it."
Jenna blinked. She'd heard of God talking to people in odd ways, but never like this. Was Michigan really where God wanted them to go? That was halfway across the country! But no more had she thought this than she felt a gentle nudge in her spirit.
"Go."
She looked down at her gas gauge. Less than a quarter of a tank.
"But I don't have enough money or gas to make it, and that's a long ways away, Lord," she quietly prayed.
"Go."
Jenna gave a nervous sigh. This was going to be a massive leap of faith for her, but if that's what God wanted, that's what she'd do. Now all she had to do was get out into traffic, which currently resembled a massive parking lot. But this thought had no more than crossed her mind when suddenly the traffic began to clear, and before long the streets were nearly empty. She started the car, pulled out into the street and began to drive. Even though she wasn't quite sure how she'd get there, she knew that if they could get out of LA, then they could figure out the rest of the details from there.