Location: Auckland
Sitting in a food court downtown.
Behind, the ladies are complaining about the last meeting they had to sit through.
Across, the gentleman is leafing through his notes.
I check Facebook for the fifth time in twelve minutes.
There are no updates.
So I try Google.
The last update was an hour ago.
Twitter.
At last, there is some vague update that doesn't say very much.
We are still waiting.
I had shied away from posting much about this most recent troubling news because of a variety of reasons, amongst which one of them was that I wasn't sure where I stood about capital punishment or execution.
No, rather, I was ashamed of my upbringing that for so long, I had viewed execution only as a means to keep people out of trouble.
Execution wasn't something I wanted to talk about because there were so many grey areas I wasn't willing to explore yet.
But because a dear, dear friend pleaded and pleaded on all forms of social media, I finally paid attention.
Kelly Gissendaner
Have you met her?
I haven’t.
But I know people who have.
I know people who have heaps of stories to tell of her.
Of her life, a story that is ridden with twists and turns.
But more importantly, a life REDEEMED.
Suddenly she wasn’t just a name in the headlines anymore.
No, she was a friend.
A mother.
A minister.
A fellow follower of Christ.
And she had a story, just like I do.
My mind raced back to that one afternoon in Berlin.
My visits to Neustart had become part of the rhythm of my time in Berlin.
There are so many stories in that tiny space on Kurfürstenstraße, but there’s one that always bring a sting to my eyes at just the thought of him.
Neustart was a café that served as a safe house for sex workers in Berlin. I can’t say that I made much of a contribution to that place in my short time there, but something broke inside me that would leave a permanent mark forever.
I first met him on one of the first few visits I made to Neustart. It had been explained to us that because it was a safe house for sex workers, men were not allowed in that space. But J (identity concealed) was a different story. He had earned the trust of most of the women and was allowed to hang out there while his girlfriend was at work on the streets.
We sat down with him one afternoon. He spoke to us in brilliant English, and we learnt that he picked up the language from a fellow inmate when he was in prison. He was only a few years older than I was, but there was something in his demeanour that looked like the world had taken its toll on him. And then he laid it all out.
When he was about twelve, his parents sold him to druggies. Life on the streets led him to witnessing his best friend being shot the first time he was in Berlin when he was only eighteen. He was so matter-of-fact in telling us his story. I, on the other hand, struggled to believe that this could be real life for anyone.
After that afternoon, I was curious to hear more of his story, but we hardly got a chance to sit down with him again. I would get an update once in a while from one of the social workers there that he was doing well, and that he had checked into a rehab facility and was willing to give God a chance. In the midst of the dark stories in that space, I had found a glimmer of hope. Perhaps I could witness redemption at work in real life after all.
On my last visit there, I asked one of the social workers there if they had heard anymore from him. I had hoped for a chance to say goodbye, and to wish him well as he continued on his journey. I don’t remember how she said it, but the news broke me, and I left in tears that afternoon.
As part of the process to get clean, J had to get tested for HIV.
The test returned positive.
I remembered pleading with God that afternoon on the bus ride home. J had decided to take steps to wholeness and had been doing so well.
It wasn't fair that he had HIV.
It wasn't fair that he never stood a chance.
It wasn't fair that he wasn't even a teenager when he got sold into the drug life.
But it also wasn't fair that I wasn't the one born into that situation. I honestly couldn't say that I would have made better life choices than J tried to if I had been born into a different family. Even now, five years later, my heart still aches that I was born into privilege, and he never stood a chance.
Yet there was something that nagged at me as I struggled to make sense of the latest twist in J’s life.
That’s not the end of the story.
I had no idea what that could mean, but I could only be thankful that that thought saved me from being crippled by despair and helplessness that there was NOTHING I could do about J’s life. His story remains unfinished for me, but there was that twisted irony that I could only trust there would be redemption in his story—even if I would never get to find out what that would look like.
Perhaps I had taken the naïve and easy way out by simply clinging desperately to the belief that there HAD to be a greater being in control of J’s life instead of giving over completely to anger and helplessness. The honest truth was that I selfishly HAD to believe that there was a divine being in control. Because if that wasn’t true, everything I had given my life to so far would have been a fraud, and I was too much of a wuss to live a life without hope. While I didn’t subscribe to the belief that this divine being was, as my spiritual pops Ed puts it, “an interventionist God” who would undo J’s HIV, I NEEDED to believe that there would be an ending to J’s story that would have the ultimate redemption and grace written all over it—if for no other reason than the selfish one: I just need to be able to sleep at night.
Time: 1513hr
I was sick in my stomach waiting for an update and could not finish lunch.
So I moved to a café to start writing.
I scroll through Facebook again.
And then Twitter.
Another Google search.
Kelly’s execution was scheduled for 133 minutes ago. She was sentenced to death for the 1997 killing of her husband, having recruited an ex-lover to carry out the murder. My friend Hannah met her when she was teaching a theology course at the women’s prison in Atlanta. You can read more about that here.
Since I began working on this book, my week in Atlanta has been on my mind a lot. Like the Berlin chapter, there are so many stories from that week in Atlanta to tell, but lately there’s been that one scene that has replayed itself over and over again in my mind recently.
The motel we stayed in during our week there was right smack in the middle of where a majority of the drug deals go down. On our way back to the motel after walking the streets and talking to the homeless one night, I finally paid attention to the people gathered right outside the gates of our motel. We had met a number of druggies by then that I was starting to be able to tell which ones were high. But that was when I noticed that there were kids that hung around that street as well while mum and dad were doing… well, what they did. And the kids. What chance did they stand?
I didn’t realize it until I met J four years after Atlanta, and walked the streets of a community rampant with domestic violence as an advocate for children in Auckland two years after that: that night in Atlanta was when I was just beginning to understand that there was a brokenness in humanity that desperately needed Big Picture REDEMPTION.
Time: 1607hr
187 minutes have passed since Kelly’s scheduled execution.
Checking Facebook again.
And Twitter.
Google at this point is proving pretty worthless.
The people of Starbucks at Aotea Square have come and gone.
Life is still moving on as usual in this corner of the world, and I allow myself a moment to lament that this is what happens when your heart lives in so many different corners of the world at a time.
But I think that’s what gets me.
That Big Picture REDEMPTION is so desperately needed all around the world.
For J.
For the children on the streets of Atlanta that night who are probably teenagers and young adults by now.
And I could tell you about the children in Cambodia piled on motorbikes
And children on the streets of Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota
And grownups around the world crying out for whom Big Picture REDEMPTION.
And then I think of Kelly.
She made a decision to allow that Big Picture REDEMPTION into her life as well.
But yet humanity had somehow discerned that we would make a better judgment call on her life.
That.
That, I cannot understand.
Allow me a moment of anger to say this:
I have found myself wondering over the last few days if it would be better for her sanity for this to be the end of it all for her.
If it would be better for the twisted nature of human judgment to end here for her.
Because if not, how long?
But yet I want to believe that there is Big Picture REDEMPTION for ALL of humanity.
That we would uncover our own desperate need for redemption that saves us from the need to judge another or inflict revenge, and leave that to the work of a more divine being: A God that sees all and knows all and reconciles all to Godself.
And so we wait.
Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison.
Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy.
