The Drive-By

 

We went zip lining. 

 

All 7 of us piled in the back of a white pickup truck & rode perilously up the winding dirt roads. We didn’t stop until we reached the highest point in all of Honduras. 

 

 

 

There’s a piece of my soul that never comes down from a high like that. 

 

 

 

In the late afternoon we piled back into the truck bed and began a silent descent. 

 

We passed a laundry line with a small pink skirt, a large floral dress, and several cloth diapers. 

 

We passed school children in black shoes and pleated uniforms who waved and smiled cheerfully. 

 

We passed low, rock walls, and high barbed wire fences that enclosed the fields of corn and bananas and fruit trees. 

 

Soon my skin was covered in a thick layer of white dust from the roads and the wind. 

 

 

 

Then we passed a house. 

 

 

 

It was small and someone had painted it pale blue. A young girl stood near the door wearing a white shirt and jeans. Her long black hair was hanging loosely at her neck and I wondered offhandedly if she knew how beautiful she was. 

 

I smiled at her. 

 

She was crying. 

 

I heard a deep voice shout something  angrily-  A tall man in a green button up stomped towards the girl. 

 

 

 

We drove past more laundry lines, more children, more fences and fields… 

 

 

I wondered if the same confidence that sent me sailing through the air from mountaintop to mountaintop on a tiny cable could push me from the bed of the truck and through the gate of the blue house to stand between the girl and the man. 

 

Both are reckless, both are risky…

One is selfless. 

 

What could I do? 

Stopping the car would only make the man in green angrier still, and his rage against the little girl wouldn’t stop just because a white woman reprimanded him…

 

But my heart can’t stop thinking of her sweet face and the fear it held. 

 

 

I cry sometimes. 

I pray always. 

And I wait patiently for the One who brings both justice and mercy.