"I can't do this...." | Sand Box | Forum

If you want to see abortion end, you must go to the streets. No social or civil rights movement has ever succeeded without going to the streets. Don't excuse yourself from this most effective pro-life activity because it is uncomfortable. No one is 'comfortable' when they go stand and pray in front of an abortion clinic. We go because we know we are called (Proverbs 31:8, Proverbs 24:11, 2 Chronicles 7:14). We go because it saves lives. 

Often times, when you actually do something with your faith and you bring prayer to the very places that dismember children and hurt women, God is going to bless you in ways you never knew possible. You will grow in your faith, if for no other reason than the fact that you are spending intentional and focused time in prayer. 

Rare are the occasions that leave almost as indelible a mark on your soul as baptism. Because these occasions are rare, we tend to never let them leave our memory.

Something happened to me tonight that I will never forget.

From 5-7pm I was praying in front of Austin Women's Health, an abortion clinic just south of the river. I was trying to find every reason to not go to my hours and find someone to cover them for me. For the last 48 hours this migraine has been pounding away in my head and not even 4 Excedrine have helped. Call it guilt, call it commitment, call it obligation…I went. The migraine remains even now. Now, I wouldn't trade those two hours on the sidewalk for anything the world had to offer me.

Many of you who pray at this abortion clinic know Lalo. You might know him as Michael, or Miguel. Most affectionately he is known as Lalo. Lalo is homeless. At 58 years old, his extroverted and almost sweet disposition has sparked a friendship with hundreds of people. Yet while they all know him, he can only name three or four of those hundreds. You see, Lalo is an alcoholic. A retired veteran, Lalo has been in rehab, relapsed, in jail, and lived some of the most unimaginable experiences. You might have been scared by the pungent alcohol on his breath, the ratty hair, the tattoos all over his arms, the shirt covered in skulls. Most people who are homeless live with some sort of mental disturbance. 

Lalo was out on the sidewalk when I arrived for my two prayer hours today. I hadn't seen him since before he went into rehab earlier this summer. As soon as he sees me, in an all too excited voice he exclaims, "ELIZABETH!" He got a big smile from me for that.

After a quick chat, I ask him if he wanted to pray the Rosary with me.

It was a couple years ago, one of the first times that I taught him how to pray the Hail Mary. I explained to him the first half of the prayer is quoting different Scripture verses (Luke 1:28, Luke 1:42), and the second half is asking the Mother of God to intercede for us (Rev 5:8, Rev 8:3-4). His fascination with this prayer made it easy for him to memorize quickly.

Not long thereafter one of the other two ladies Lalo became friends with gave him a rosary and explained to him that it is a repetitive prayer meant to get you in a meditative prayer state as you pondered the life of Jesus (most often through the eyes of his mother).

In asking him to pray the Rosary with me today, he pulled out of his pocket a brochure with Scripture that correlated with each one of the events (mysteries) in Christ's life that you meditate on while praying the Rosary. 

We went through the joyful events of Jesus' early life (when Gabriel announced to Mary she is pregnant with the Messiah, when Mary goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth, when Jesus is born and placed in a feeding trough, when Mary and Joseph present the baby Jesus in the temple, and when Mary and Joseph find him as a young child in the temple). 

After that, I asked Lalo if he wanted to pray another Rosary with me. His explosive and short laughter was followed by a "yeah girl, you're just prayin non-stop!" 

Lalo read the Scripture before we began meditating on each mystery, and I lead the first half of each prayer while he would finish the second half. 

Lalo:

"Then going out he went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives, and the disciples followed him. When he arrived at the place he said to them, 'Pray that you may not undergo the test.' He was in such agony and he prayed so fervently that his sweat became like drops of blood falling on the ground."

Luke 22:39-40, 44

Our Father. 10 Hail Marys.

We moved on to the second sorrowful mystery, the scourging of Christ at the pillar.

Lalo:

"So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released Barabbas to them and, after he had Jesus scourged, handed him over to be crucified."

Mark 15:15

Our Father. 10 Hail Marys.

Lalo paused. He looked at what the third mystery was and paused. Having known trauma intimately in my own lifetime, his response was immediately recognizable. Some dark memory had surfaced within him. Instead of being able to unemotionally view the events of his haunted past as a spectator, I could tell that part of him was re-entering this memory and re-living it. 

He began to tear up. He started rocking. He shook his head. Tears started to fall. 

"I can't do this." -Lalo

"The third sorrowful mystery is the crowning of thorns." -Me

"I can't do this." -Lalo

Ransacking my mind for the right words (there never are any), I barely make out: "If it is hard for us to think about it, I'm sure it was even harder for Jesus to live it." 

"But I know what he lived through. I…..I've had it done to me." -Lalo

I stared at him with what I hoped he would see as a look of compassion and desire to listen. 

His hat read "Vietnam Veteran" in bright yellow letters which stood out on their camouflage background. 

"Something from when you were in Vietnam?" -Me

All I got in return was a head nod. I didn't expect much more. 

"Lalo, I am so very sorry for what you went through." 

He cried through his pain. I kept looking on, hoping he would still sense an eagerness to listen and to be there with him as he re-lived something so horrid and painful.

"I begged them to stop. I begged them to kill me. But they wouldn't." -Lalo

I was wading through uncharted waters and had no idea how to talk to a veteran suffering from PTSD. I didn't want to poke or prod in a way that would be more damaging than it would be healing. He could have been MIA as a soldier. He could have been a POW. I didn't need to know. In that moment, I simply needed to know that he suffered and he needed healing. 

"Lalo, if they would have killed you all those years ago in Vietnam, I wouldn't have never met you…….

….do you want me to read this Scripture?"

Again, another head nod for 'yes.' "I just can't." 

This time, me:

"Weaving a crown out of thorns, they placed it on his head, and a reed in his right hand. And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, 'Hail, King of the Jews!' They spat upon him and took the reed and kept striking him on the head."

Matthew 27: 29-30

As he sucked in his sobs and drew the tears back behind his eyes, I found myself tearing up. As I was meditating on the sheer pain that Jesus experienced for love of us, I tried to imagine what hell Lalo must have lived through himself. 

It would be a whole two more mysteries (Jesus carrying his cross, Jesus being crucified) before we finished the Rosary. It would be two more meditations before I had my eyes opened up more than they already were as I entered into the suffering of another human being.

We finish. Lalo looks at me and asks if I know why he comes to pray all the time. I always just thought this particular sidewalk had become a stop on the way from the corner a block north of the clinic where he often stood and the liquor store a block south of the clinic he frequented.

"Have I told you about murdering my children?" -Lalo

Knowing that he had been in prison, my mind starts racing, conjuring up some thriller-worthy story of him murdering his children. Not letting my voice betray my wild curiosity, I simply say 'no.' 

"Yep. I did." -Lalo

It dawned on me: he has children that were killed while they were in the womb. 

"Three abortions." -Lalo

"I'm so very sorry to hear that. When was this Lalo?" 

"1978, 1979 and 1983." 

Knowing those years only as years that some of my siblings were born in, I also immediately realize they were after the Vietnam War ended. Good Lord what hardship he must have had in his life! 

"Those babies are the reason I come and pray out here all the time." -Lalo

And pray out there all the time he does. Anytime he sees a prayer volunteer praying alone, he will stay and pray with them until a second person shows up. He stops and prays every single time he passes the clinic. He prayed with me for almost two hours tonight.

Before I left for the evening, Lalo said something so genuine that it yanked at my heart: "Elizabeth, thank you for praying with me here today." It was I who needed to thank him.

Compassion comes from the Latin 'to suffer with.' No, I wasn't in Vietnam suffering with Lalo when those atrocities were done to him. No, I wasn't around in 1978, 1979 or 1983 when his children were aborted. But I was able to suffer with him through the pain those scars still cause. 

So while you go to the sidewalks to pray for an end to abortion and those prayers will be heard, God WILL do something in your own heart.

Like I said, I wouldn't trade those two hours on the sidewalk for anything the world has to offer.