Night Voices [rachel]

For a long time they made me angry. For weeks, every night after midnight and before 3am I’d hear them. Their sharp tones would startle me from sleep. Bewildered, a hint of fear rising inside, I’d listen, straining to make out each syllable. Understanding the content made me nervous, pressing my head to my pillow, pulling the covers up around my neck. There was no way I could ignore the screaming, threatening, pleading. Is this real? Is it a dream? Should I call the cops, lift up the blinds, make sure no one has a gun?

People tell me it can all be explained by the bar down the street, its patrons overflowing onto the sidewalks, striding or sidling down the block and perhaps taking refuge on the benches out front, just beneath my window. I’m not so sure they’re right. Whatever the case, the cries are sharp, the pain is real, and the arguments are heated.

Maybe I’m not attentive enough, but the passersby during the day seem more controlled, cold, stone-faced. They turn away, scowl, or say an abrupt hi. But they’re not sobbing, screaming, moaning in desperate tones.

When I first moved to Lebanon I laughed when one of my housemates suggested I didn’t need to drive to a park to take a walk. “Take a walk in this city, on these streets? No way! Something might happen to me. I might be mugged or kidnapped or murdered!” I was in the midst of change—stepping out of my attempt at a pristine and church-appropriate life and stepping into the pain and turmoil of circumstances so that I could actually experience healing. I needed to learn to honestly believe Isaiah 61:1. God came to “heal the brokenhearted”. I had spent so much of my life desperately trying not to be broken hearted. For the first three months after the move, I saw no connection between the healing work God was starting in my life and the city in which I was living. If anything, it seemed to me that Lebanon was a limitation, a dark spot in the midst of an otherwise hopeful experience. For most of my life I lived in a village, a town one street wide and four blocks long. More animals inhabited the backyards than people did the houses. The biggest conflicts were over noisy dogs, new trees for the street, and the possibility of bingo in the Mennonite fire hall. Lebanon was just plain intimidating.

That perception has been confirmed repeatedly by the reactions of people who discover that I a newly a Lebanon resident: “Oh.” “So sorry.” “Don’t forget to lock your doors.” In a game of association, the word Lebanon might conjure up adjectives such as angry, dirty, scary, run-down, hazardous, poor, ugly, mean. The stereotypes aren’t necessarily wrong. Plenty of grumpy looking people tramp the streets, signs announcing “condemned” adorn many a front door, I see more trash in the Quittie Creek each day, and I can’t number the fires that have claimed both property and life over just the past three months. Lebanon with its hardened exterior looks hopeless to many and has appeared so to me for as long as I can remember.

Then one night something shifted. That week I had once again, somewhat reluctantly, been pondering the benefit of feeling life’s pain. I have often struggled with the role that lament plays in the life of the follower of Jesus, long associating lament with doubt, rejection of God, unhealthy questioning. But I’m learning that God is not so religious. He meets us in our struggle. Where there is lament and longing, hope speaks and Jesus heals.

On this particular night, I laid down in my bed around midnight. The cold air of October crept through the just-open window enough to make me pull the covers up around my chin. As I settled in, I heard the first of the voices, this time a wailing complaint, the sound of a woman distraught, a barely consoling voice coming in response from an unseen companion. A shout a few minutes later. Something strange happened inside of me. I wasn’t afraid. I didn’t snuggle further down under my quilt. I didn’t wish the voices would stop. I found myself quizzically but earnestly thanking God for the sounds of my city, my home. I suddenly realized that Lebanon, though hardened by day under the gaze of judging and skeptical eyes, unveils its brokenness at night in the darkness where no one can see, when the hurting people think no one can hear. They shout their weakness and cry their vulnerability.

Lebanon is a broken city. The cement walls around the Quittie Creek reveal that nature is broken. The long-neglected houses show that home is broken. The sorrowful looking children demonstrate that family is broken. The drug deals are evidence that health, mental and physical, is broken. The weeping and screaming out my window tells me hearts are broken. And these same voices say something more: There’s hope for Lebanon.

I still don’t know quite what to do when I hear the night voices. Maybe one of these midnights I will betray their secrecy, their cover of darkness. I will lift the blinds and see the faces that bear the marks of pain. They might be the hardened faces I barely glance at during the day. And just maybe one of these nights I’ll open the window and call out ever so softly, “I hear your pain, Lebanon. I’m not afraid of you anymore. I know that like me, you are broken and God has come to heal us both”.