Written in 2006- the beginning of something new came from these simple words...
The physical darkness seemed bright in comparison to the thick cloud of oppression I felt when entering the strip club last Thursday. I’d felt it before, but I pray that it will never cease to alarm me… that I will never become numb to the pain and distorted love that occurs here. My friend Sarah (I changed her name) is both a source of this pain and a recipient. She has been dancing there for almost 7 years.
Walking into the club, my focus was simply on her-- to visit her. We usually hang out at restaurants and the pool if it’s summertime, but every once in awhile, when God leads, I go visit her at work. In public settings, we usually talk about her dogs, her family, her girlfriend, and sometimes God, but tonight, as I walked in, she was silently speaking something different:
“Desire me” – her eyes dared, as she danced on the stage.
Only the girl on stage wasn’t her. She was hidden somewhere in the corner, hating the job, wanting to be who she really is—a deep, passionate person with an incredible heart for authenticity and love. But her alter ego took the stage—and danced.
I really didn’t want her to see me from the stage. I didn’t want us to make eye contact. For me personally, in my place of sin, it’s incredibly hard to let people in, especially those who tear at my conscience. So I traveled to the corner of the room and sat on a chair, trying to block out the naked girls staring at me from the posters on the wall yet asking God to give me a deep sense of how they really feel. I need to feel their brokenness. Maybe if I can experience it I can pray them towards healing. Someone needs to feel it: they seem to be numb.
After a song or two, a young man comes over to me and asks me if I need anything. “Want a drink?” he asks. I politely decline and move towards the back entrance into the owners office. I know the owner. He tells me he looks forward to my visits—the few times I come in consist of both talking with him and praying for him.
He’s quite an interesting man. He knows what’s right and wrong yet he chooses the latter almost every time.
His dads a Baptist preacher- He’s the prodigal son.
I wait by the door and inquire as to where he is. The bartender says he’s not working tonight. Looks like I won’t be praying tonight—I reason.
God had other plans.
As I sat there waiting for Sarah to be done on stage, I am drawn to the same young man who approached me earlier. I strike up a conversation and he tells me about his family. I discover a similarity: preacher’s kids seem to flock together…and, in this case, directly to the strip club. David and I talk some about life in general, and then the subject turns to faith. He tells me about his Christian values and how he knows he will eventually stand in judgment for what he does. He tries not to think about it but reasons, “we’ll just wait and see what happens then”, he says.
That’s a risky way to live, and we talk about that fact, but he doesn’t seem to understand it. The phrase, “Deception wears a pretty face” – keeps resonating in my mind like a broken record as I press on in our conversation. He opens up.
“The reason why I do a lot of this stuff is because a lot of bad things have happened to me,” he assures me, as if I had already placed a huge stamp on him that said “Hopeless son of satan”.
“I understand,” I tell him. And I really do.
And we talk about his sickness, how it ruins his intestines and the surgeries he’s had. It’s so sad that God gets a bad rep when it comes to sickness.
I remind him, “You know that sickness is not from God right? It’s from satan.”
He agrees. The conversation lulls and I proceed to do what I always do when this happens: offer prayer.
We walk to the corner of the strip club and he places his hands out…palms up. He is in full prayer posture now. I grab them and pray. Pray for healing, pray for God’s purpose to be made known. Pray for conviction. Pray for love.
He thanks me and I head to see Sarah. She’s off the stage now and chatting with the same young man who was placing dollar bills in her g-string a few moments earlier. She hugs me and proceeds with their conversation, only now I am included.
Sarah is intense. She thinks deeply and profoundly. Tonight she has props to explain the inner workings of her mind. The Budweiser bottle sitting straight up in front of the customer/man, the thick deep line in the wood of the stage that separated the Budweiser from her third prop and drink of choice: jagged, sharp vodka. She begins to speak boldly and in slight slurs, only she isn’t drunk, but contemplative.
“You know what the problem is Julie?” she asks.
“What’s that, “ I say.
At this point I know that the problem is most likely much deeper than what she is about to say. Then again, she never fails to surprise me.
“Everyone thinks I’m the Budweiser,” she slantedly says. “All nice and pretty and wrapped up.”
I look at the bottle. It may be packaged nicely but I am not deceived.
“They all think I’m the Budweiser, but really,” she leans in close, even though her voice carries well over the loud wailings of Nelly Furtado singing “Promiscuous girl” through the speakers.
“Really…I’m not the Budweiser,” she says. She points to her drink-- “I’m the vodka.”
“Really?” I ask.
“Yea,” she says. “I’m a big swirling mess. A huge mess of intensity and all sharp and crazy --mixed together in a huge bitter shot.”
Cool analogy, I think.
Snapping me back to reality she says, ”The problem is…” (she points directly at the line) “This.”
“It’s that damn line,” she says. “The line between who people think I’m supposed to be and who I really am.”
I glance at the line. Then up at the man who is staring blankly at us both. Then at Sarah. I lean in real close to her as if this is the biggest secret in the world and say, “Guess what?”
Her expression softens and her ears perk up. She’s listening.
“We’re all the vodka,” I whisper.
She looks at me slightly confused, then I can see her slowly beginning to grasp this concept. Her face changes piece by piece, as if the blinds of understanding were slowly being opened on her beautiful face shade by shade.
“We all have our stuff Sarah,” I tell her.
She agrees.
“We’re all a swirling mess of craziness in some way. Some people hide it better than others, but we’re broken people.”
She seems slightly comforted by this fact and I proceed and ask her if anyone knows she’s the vodka. Is it possible for her to tell anyone about this swirling mess inside her?
“Oh no!” she exclaims, as if I had just asked her to sell one of her legs and poke out an eye. “No one can know that because then they’ll run away. I have to keep it all bottled up nicely in the Budweiser bottle. That way no one knows who I really am.”
I’m both unexplainably hurt and incredibly excited to hear this. She has come to a slight understanding of her own brokenness. And in my vulnerability I am hoping she sees that she is not the only one broken.
We all may as well be poster children for the human condition. But the real secret in knowing our brokenness is nothing unless we have a full understanding of the Healer. So I lean in close again, this time she’s ready to hear, and I whisper. “I have a secret to tell you, Sarah.”
She seems to like this game of secret-and-tell, and I continue in all sincerity.
“God knows we’re the vodka,” I say. “And He totally accepts us and loves us with all our messiness.”
She softens. Then quickly hardens back up. 'Keep up the stage persona', I can just imagine her telling herself. But she’s not on stage at this particular moment and she’s not totally hardened. She still cares and she still loves.
She proceeds to tell me about the last time she prayed, and how afterwards she did the opposite of what she knew she was supposed to do. She seems frustrated and she starts pounding the table, as if beating her fist against the wood will somehow equate to punishing herself for her sins. I interrupt and simply say, “You can’t save yourself.” Over and over. I think she already knew that but hearing it out loud seemed to be cathartic to her. I myself never tire of hearing it. I need to hear it. And know it and believe it.
*He saves me from myself.*
It was a profound moment, but the nature of a moment is that it passes, and it did. I just hope it left something significant we can return to in the secret contemplative times.
As I was finishing up our conversation, my friend Ashley comes in and starts something completely brand new. After small talking for a while, Ashley informs me that she really feels like she needs to pray for Sarah. She’s thinking she should pray for shame to be broken off of her.
I've learned that the nature of shame is a tricky thing. It leaves you in a moment long after that moment has passed. It suddenly defines you not by WHO you are but rather by WHAT you DO or what you have done. And it never lets you move forward. Ever.
Right before we lay our hands on Sarah, another dancer walks by. From her view, she sees her co-worker in this hallway talking to two strangers intensely and begins to mock, “Sarah, are you in trouble?” She points her finger and jokes “shame, shame, shame”. And from that place we now know what to pray in all confidence… and so we do.
Ashley’s voice is soothing, but powerful. I open my eyes during the middle of the prayer and glance at Sarah. Her eyes are closed. She is not in a faraway place. She is present. She is soaking in the prayer. She is soaking in the love that God is pouring out on her. She is emptied out and real and not defined by the skimpy material covering three small spots on her body or the sharp, pointed heels laced up her legs.
She is fully herself and she is beautiful.
