Becoming Prayer for the Damned 

If you’ve never seen a meth addict in the throes of a body contorting high, it's hard to explain the horror. We met Natalie on the sidewalk in front of our church. She was painfully high if you can call a life-crushing, hope-stealing, body-hammering...a high. She was around 21 but obviously a few feet from eternity on the road she was on. 

Her name was Natalie, she had bruises on her arms. She wore loose clothing that hung off her contorting skinny body. She was in the thrills of a a drug chaos. Meth creates havoc on the central nervous system, you can see it yanking each nerve fiber like the master of puppets it is. Violently racing through their cerebral cortex like a city street in Bombay, confusing, chaotic and completely out of control. 

She wept openly, stumbled over her words as they poured out of her frightened and embarrassed soul. She was skittish, but that’s  putting it mildly. Through a mix of excuses, mumblings about men, prostitution and words that liars have said to her...she begged, blubbered and manifested the spirit of death before us. She was being consumed like dry paper. 

Some there offered to pray for her, what else can you do in a moment like that, but she said she had prayed already. I stood there silent, no prayers to pray for her. I could only pray for someone to come help us minister to young women like her. I prayed for a house to care for abused women who are being raped by darkness. I prayed for a church to rise up that can say more than, “Can we pray for you?”.     I am sick of just praying, I want to do something, I want to be the answer to prayers for the damned. 

Unfortunately there were about 8 of us around her on the sidewalk, that means there were too many for compassion to fully help. 

She acted like a caged dog and paced around in circles like one who had been beaten and abused. Such animals want to be pet, but are deathly afraid of the hands that meet out pain and pleasure. 

It was just too confusing for her to remain there, so she stumbled off in a fit of mixed desires that overwhelmed her already fried mind, leaving us wounded and...praying.

“Because of your wrath there is no health in my body; my bones have no soundness because of my sin. My guilt has overwhelmed me like a burden too heavy to bear. My wounds fester and are loathsome because of my sinful folly. I am bowed down and brought very low; all day long I go about mourning. My back is filled with searing pain; there is no health in my body. I am feeble and utterly crushed; I groan in anguish of heart. All my longings lie open before you, O Lord; my sighing is not hidden from you. My heart pounds, my strength fails me; even the light has gone from my eyes. My friends and companions avoid me because of my wounds; my neighbors stay far away. Those who seek my life set their traps, those who would harm me talk of my ruin; all day long they plot deception.” -Psalms 38:3-12