A typical Saturday chore turned into a life lesson for my daughter.
It wasn't supposed to be. No one plans on seeing and discussing matters of abject human suffering when they set out to drop off a few bags of leftover leaves. It was merely a job that needed to be done – one that was made a bit brighter by the spring weather and the promise of getting new mulch and fertilizer for our blooming strawberry patch.
However, that trip across town required us to go through the center of our rather large Midwest city. I never like making the trip, but as city ordinances and our property lines make burning the leaves difficult, I'd rather bear a 30-minute round trip once or twice a year than pay a small fortune to have someone haul the truckloads of debris that somehow falls off the 5 trees in my yard each year.
Because spring and summer is so-affectionately known as Construction Season around these parts, our quick trip was hastily turned into a slog. On the highway exit ramp, we got stuck in a line of cars that my daughter called a traffic jam. I laughed.
Oh child, if you think this is a traffic jam, wait until you can drive and it's rush hour on the interstate around Chicago...
I wasn't really paying attention to the cars, however. What caught my eye were the two men panhandling at the intersection ahead of us. It was normal to have a man occasionally out there on a highway exit, but it was the first time I'd seen two at that spot.
Once we'd made our turn, we were nearly home free. In just a few minutes, we'd be at the drop-off site and on our way.
Or so I thought.
Instead, blocking the only bridge over the river ahead of us for several miles, was a 5K/marathon. A crowd of white-collar, upper class runners were weaving their way through a network of cones as police cruisers protected them from the cross traffic. Little people like myself and our chores would have to wait.
Frustrated, I turned the only direction available and pulled off onto a side street. We were now in an industrial zone straddled by rows of homes built by Polish and Dutch immigrants in the 1920s. For many decades, this neighborhood had gone stagnant as manufacturing moved overseas, but when new companies set up shop along the river 15 years back and the city started to grow again, patches of the declining city blocks had been revitalized.
In this particular neighborhood, that resurgence seemed to be moving slowly. We hit a street named "Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard," and, as is the sadly case around such streets in cities these days, ran into a different, bleak world. The city streets, long-since dilapidated, were being fixed, but this had involved tearing up the entire road and the sewer system underneath. Construction machines sat silent on this fine Saturday morning, forcing passing vehicles to use a dirt strip that rivaled the worst roads I have traveled in the deep Wadi Rum desert or rural Ethiopia.
Behind our truck, a BMW barely made it over the bumps of this road in a major American city. We drove by run-down auto garages and convenience stores. The homes looked disheveled and sad. A number of Hispanic migrants have been moving into that neighborhood lately, but mixed with the hope of the American Dream are prostitution dens and crack houses associated with the cartels.
On my daughter's side of the vehicle, two women sat on a stoop outside a shuttered business. Both looked homeless and had bags under their young eyes. One looked at me as we slowly bumped along the dirt road, but our eye contact wasn't enough to dissuade her from her efforts to light her pipe to smoke crack or fentanyl.
My daughter noticed these things.
As a second-grader, she shouldn't have to. I grew up in a poorer neighborhood without a fraction of the gadgets and toys my children have, but America 33 years ago was a vastly different place. Now, in my Midwestern city that still leans red (and is surrounded by deep-red country with "Trump 2024" flags plastered 5 minutes in every direction), I'm passing churches with transgender flags, broken infrastructure, and homeless drug addicts on the streets.
What happened??
For the rest of our drive, I talked with my daughter about tough things: About addiction and poverty and evil and the government. She told me that she had heard from her friend that the president had joked about ice cream recently after a mass shooting.
I talked about how we, as Christians, march toward the suffering in the world to offer peace – and how truth and love will win in the end.
I was glad, despite the horror of our current national situation, to have the time to prepare my daughter for the task that lies ahead of her and her generation – to get her ready for living in a wasteland that was once called America.
Do we realize how much has been taken from us? From our children?
Some of you do. Even fewer of you know how many of us will have to lay down our lives like Christ to turn back the darkness that now covers this nation.
Others of you are like the runners in the marathon, still enjoying the scenic city skyline for a casual morning run while two blocks away, broken women smoke fentanyl on a torn-up street.
