Everyone is so quick to say that Abe is blessed that a family like the Alexanders adopted him, Emily says. “But our family is so much more blessed to have Abe. He is this fourteen-month-old teacher. Sometimes just opening his hand takes an enormous amount of effort and energy, but Abe works so hard in therapy, and my other kids get to see this determination. He just has this little, bright light, radiating an inner joy that you can't explain.”
The Alexanders like to talk about “the ripple effect” of Abe's adoption. Like throwing a pebble in a pond, it has brought people together who have gone on the journey with them, both physically and spiritually. Through Abe, the Alexander children have learned to pray more consistently and more specifically, and they have passed that lesson along to others. A young boy named Jeremiah, the son of family friends, called to say there is a tree near his home that blooms red in winter and reminds him of Abe. Jeremiah prays for Abe every day when he passes the tree on his way to school. In May 2009, the Alexanders received an e-mail from dear friends who said that after watching Abe and his new family, they, too, have decided to adopt a child. The same month, the Alexanders completed their paperwork for a second adoption from Ethiopia.
Ron
E
very couple of months, Deborah and I would take Mama and Daddy to a nice restaurant. He would grab the first waitress he laid eyes on, whether ours or not, and in a voice much louder than necessary, say, “Honey, before you do another thing, I need a whiskeyâJim Beam and Coke, not too much Coke!”
I remember one night at a restaurant when I'd had enough of his disrespecting my mama, and I let a disgusted look creep onto my face. He looked back at me, puzzled, as though I were an alien specimen from an unknown universe.
“What have you got against drinking?” he said, sure that had to be the problem.
“Nothing, Dad. Sometimes I even have one.”
“Well then, why won't you drink with your old daddy? You think you're too good?”
Never did I let him see me take a drink. I even quit drinking altogether for a couple of years. That was after Carson, who was an otherwise perfect child, came home drunk in high school and wrecked his room with a boat paddle from Kanakuk Christian camp. When I was sure I never craved alcohol, I started again, allowing myself wine with a fancy dinner.
By 1975, I was working in investment banking in Fort Worth, where I first made my mark as a fine-arts dealer. I quickly got too big for my britches and, in 1986, decided we needed to move to Dallas in order to grow my business and be truly appreciated by the art-world elite.
That's where Deborah and I started to grow apart. While I stormed the art world and collected a closetful of Armani suits and custom-made boots painstakingly handmade from the skins of various animals, Deborah plugged into God
,
pursuing a passionate spiritual life that included working with AIDS babies and hours spent on her knees in prayer.
Those were sometimes lonely days for Deborah. In Dallas, she had a tough time finding friends who were willing to venture deep into spiritual waters. Most people (including me) were happy to watch from the shore. Some braved the shallow end on occasion, but most were afraid of getting in over their heads.
When we first arrived in town, Deborah wanted to pray for our children, Regan and Carson, and all their classmates and the teachers in the school, so she started a weekly prayer group and invited all the mothers in Carson's grade. I remember how puzzled Deborah was that several women in our neighborhood seemed hesitant about the invitation. Many times, nobody showed up at all.
“Why would anyone
not
want to pray over their kids?” she asked me one day.
Later, I heard through the grapevine that most people were a little afraid of Deborah's intimacy with God. They were especially afraid because she invited them to do the scariest thing of all: pray with her
out loud
.
To tell you the truth, even I felt intimidated when praying with her. Deborah prayed with such passionânot like some nut-ball holy roller but with such knowledge of the Father as though He was her daddy and she was His favorite child. Without pausing or stumbling, she let her words flow like a psalm or a sonnet. Captured on canvas, her prayers would be considered masterpieces, like a Rubens or a Caravaggio. And yet her prayers were not
artful,
as though she meant to impress. Instead, she would simply remind God of His own promises in Scripture and, in an inexplicably reverent way, sort of shake Him by His lapels when she thought He really ought to get moving on a particular project.
There was a depth, an intensity, a beauty to my wife's prayers, as if she had boldly stepped into a rare inner circle of divine light that others dared only regard from a distance. And in the beginning, that irritated me. It was as if she was so spiritual that she wasn't being real or down-to-earth. So I understood why the ladies didn't want to show up and secretly wished I had that option.
Before long, Deborah and I had grown so far apart that I was looking for a way out. She was sure I loved art and money but not so sure I loved her. I knew she loved God and our kids but was fairly certain she could just barely stand the sight of me. And so, in 1988, when I found myself in Beverly Hills, sharing wine with a beautiful blonde painter, I made a lot of excuses to myself on the way to a hotel room.
After a friend threatened to rat me out, I confessed. Deborah and I went to marriage counseling, and she forgave me. She also told me a truth about women's hearts that I wish I could tattoo on the insides of every married man's eyelids: “I know you're an art dealer and that you love ranches and horses and longhorn steers and fancy cars. But what I don't know about you is what's in your heart. What you're thinking when you look at me, when you hold me. Even if you're thinking you don't like me very much at that moment, I can deal with that. What I can't deal with is not knowing your heart.”
Of course, that scared the crap out of me. Every man reading this knows his heart is a place so dangerous not even he feels safe going there. But I also knew that as much as I yearned to know my wife on an intimate physical level, she yearned for emotional and spiritual intimacy. Suddenly, I understood that just as sexâlots of itâwas important to me,
knowing
me,
experiencing
my interior world, was important to her.
From then on, Deborah and I prayed together, usually lying together in bed. I would hold her in my arms, and she would know my heart according to my prayers. At first, I prayed about things I thought she'd want me to pray about: our marriage, the kids, the whole “Lord, we just want to thank You for who You are” kind of prayers that we sometimes pray because we want to sound hyperspiritual. But slowly, gradually, I began stripping off the layers of anonymity that shielded my heart from intruders, even my own wife.
Out loud, I told God I was afraid of what I felt was my wife's superior spirituality. I told Him I resented her relationship with Him. I felt she loved Christ more than she loved me. Saying those things aloud then, and even writing them now, seems stupid. But they were real to me, and the results of my saying them were immediate. Deborah and I began connecting at a deep, spiritual level, drawing energy and life from each other like an unbroken circuit.
Deborah always treated my prayer attempts with understanding and was never condescending. I liked hearing the good things she said about me; they made me want to be even better. Meanwhile, she began adjusting her life in such a way that, without compromising her faith and integrity, she could make me feel the importance I wanted to feel in the relationship.
In the end, our prayer together was the key to the success of our marriage. That's where we became intimateâ“velcroed at the heart,” as we used to joke. Ironically, it was exactly what I wanted from the beginning. I just hadn't known how to get there. Meanwhile, the deep joy of our physical intimacy was a direct result of the intimacy of our prayer.
During the final twelve years of our marriage, people used to ask me, “What's your secret? What is it that you two have?”
I would reply, only half-joking, “I used to be down on my knees begging for sex. Now I'm down on my knees praying with my wife.”
Denver
It got to be the 1960s. All them years I worked for them plantations, the Man didn't tell me there was colored schools I coulda gone to, or that I coulda learned a trade. He didn't tell me I coulda joined the army and worked my way up, earned some money of my own and some respect. I didn't know about World War II, the war in Korea, or the one in Vietnam. And I didn't know colored folks had been risin up all around Louisiana for years, demandin better treatment.
I didn't know I was different . . .
I knowed there was other places. I had heard my brother, Thurman, was out in California stackin hisself some paper money. So one day, I just decided to head out that way. Didn't think about it much, just walked out to the railroad tracks and waited for the train to come a-rollin. There was another fella hangin around by the tracks, a hobo who'd been ridin the rails for a lotta years. He said he'd show me which train was goin to California.
I
was about twenty-seven, twenty-eight years old by the time I wound up homeless in Fort Worth. Little children likes to say, “It takes one to know one!” So if you want to know about homeless folks, just ask me 'cause I was one of 'em for a whole lotta years.
Now, there ain't no two ways about it: some homeless folks is just plain ol', no-account lazy. I don't mean to be bad-mouthin nobody, but that's the truth.
On the other hand, though, there's a whole lotta homeless that got that way 'cause they kept tryin and tryin, and no amount a' tryin they done ever amounted to much. You can work a little pickup job for a day and make twenty or thirty dollars. But what you gon' do with twenty or thirty dollars? Maybe you can rent you a room for the night or have a decent meal. But what you gon' do after that?
Did you ever lose somethin or somebody you cared about? Somethin or somebody you really loved? I'm telling you whatâif you did, you know that ain't somethin you can get over real easy.
Like I couldn't get rid of the pain when I watched my grandma, Big Mama, get burned to death in her shack. Or when that man ran outta the woods and stabbed my daddy to death. Or when my Aunt Etha, that was takin care a' me after that, took sick and died. All them things happened when I was just a little-bitty boy.
Lotta homeless folks been hurt like that. And the hurt just hangs around you like a stray dog that smells a bone. You can't never get rid of it unless you gets rid of the bone.
I always did believe in Jesus.
Most a' the people on the streets know Jesus loves 'em. But they figure nobody
else
loves 'em
but
Jesus. Street people done heard more sermons than most preachers ever preached. Lotta good folks come 'round the 'hood, talkin 'bout Jesus this, Jesus that. Tellin us about Him is one thing . . . who gon' stick around and
show
us Jesus? See, deliverin kindness ain't the pastor's job. That's our job. When Jesus sent the disciples out two by two, He didn't go with 'em. He stayed back and laid low, maybe had Hisself a cup a' coffee.
Listen at this: Jesus sent the disciples
out.
John and Mark and Nathaniel and them went
into
the villages. When I was homeless, one thing I just couldn't understand is why all these folks kept tryin to invitin me
in
someplace that I didn't wanna be. They'd come out and hand me some kinda piece a' paper, talkin 'bout, “Jesus loves you! Come fellowship with us!” Now, their hearts was in the right place, and they just tryin to show me the love a' God. But seemed like they didn't understand that it just ain't that easy.
For one thing, them folks that invited me was all smilin and clean, and I was all ragged and dirty. 'Sides that, most a' em was white, and I was black as a coffee bean. Wadn't no way I was gon' show up at their church lookin like I looked.
For another thing, where was I gon' leave my bags with all my worldly goods, my blanket and my soap and my half-pint and what have you? It wadn't much, but wadn't no way I was gon' leave it in the 'hood with all them fellas ready to split it up amongst themselves. And I was pretty sure they didn't have no luggage check at the church.
Then they'd say, “God bless you!” and leave me with that piece a' paper so I wouldn't forget where I was s'posed to show up. 'Course, they didn't know I couldn't read.
See, we don't need to be tryin to drag the homeless, or any kinda needy people, to “programs,” to “services.” What people needs is people.
And needy people don't need no perfect people neither. When Jesus sent His disciples out, He sent Peter right along, knowin Peter had a bad temper and a potty mouth and was gon' deny Him three times. He sent John and James even though they was full a' pride and fightin over the best seat at the table. He even sent Judas, knowin Judas was gon' betray Him. Even though Jesus knowed all a' their sin and weakness, He sent 'em anyway.
Listen, if the devil ain't messin with you, he's already got you. If you is waitin to clean up your own life before you get out and help somebody else, you may as well take off your shoes and crawl back in the bed 'cause it ain't never gon' happen. Jesus don't need no help from no perfect saints. If He did, He wouldn't a' gone up yonder and left us down here in charge.
Heart Knowledge
By 2004, Matt and Ashley McNeeley's marriage had followed a similar path to mine and Deborah'sâtroubled and marred with adversity. Matt, then twenty-seven, was an alcoholic who had compromised the marriage. With their daughter only eighteen months old, Ashley, also twenty-seven, was desperate to keep her marriage from crumbling and set a low bar for her expectations. All she wanted was for Matt to be faithful and get sober.