13 Going on 30

This past Saturday may have seemed like an ordinary Saturday to everyone. Maybe you were grilling out with friends. Some of you may have been at the state fair, or perhaps you were simply soaking up the sun on one of the last weekends of summer.

For me, this was not the case. This past Saturday marked a blessing almost 13 years in the making. It was not a blessing that I had simply been hoping for in my spare time as I grew up like any normal kid does. In fact, if I'm being honest, I had given up on the possibility of any kind of blessing taking place.

You see, when I was the happenin' age of eight, I met a man who I had no idea would become a second father and an integral part of my life. He was in his late forties. He was a friend of my dad's. He had tattoos on his arms. And he had just been released from prison for serving 14 years for a crime for which he was framed. Casual. Most people read that sentence and can't get past the word "prison." That's enough of a shock factor. Then they read the second part and the voice in the back of their mind grows skeptical...

"I'm sure he was innocent...she was a child...she didn't have the wisdom to see him for who he truly was..."

You're right. I was a child. Praise God, I was a child. I wasn't jaded. I was able to see people for who they were, not for the labels that were cast upon them.

He became my "Uncle Rich," and I was his "Li'l Punkin." He was family and I loved him. There are few people in life who truly see you. They don't simply pay you attention, they see you. Uncle Rich is one of those people.

The story that unfurled over the following 13 years is one that is actually several other stories long. In short, we only had about a year before he was wrongfully imprisoned again. I had no idea that I was embarking on a 13-year journey of longsuffering that demanded a young girl to grow up much faster than she would have liked. Dealing with the hard questions of faith and reason, I found myself in an ongoing existential crisis. As each new bullet of disappointment and pain was fired at me, I began to build a wall around my heart with every piece of shrapnel that passed through my soul.

"Stop hoping."

"It's not worth it."

"You have to protect yourself."

"Your deeply empathetic heart can't take this anymore."

So I did. I just accepted that things were the way they were and that was never going to change. Anytime a glimmer of hope would come to the surface and try to taunt me again, I would duck down behind the wall around my heart so I couldn't see it.

He's not going to ever be out again. And that's...okay. It was a kind of closure I desperately yearned for, so I created it for myself. I took "possibility" right out of the equation. Without entertaining the possibility of him being out, or things being the way they once were, I was finally able to cope. Life goes on. I had finally found a way to go with it.

The longsuffering had caused me to shut the door on a part of that young girl's open heart. The now 13 years that passed felt more like a lifetime each year. With each additional year I wrapped under my belt, I became known more and more as an old soul. Those years contained more growth than usual, I suppose, for the depth of my soul held complexities that mentors of mine said take most people decades more to deal with and realize.

Suddenly, here I was. 22. Unexpectedly living in Minnesota. A close friend of the family had passed away, and I was sitting at the memorial service when a deep aching desire that had made it's home in the recesses of my soul was finally answered. I laid eyes on a man. He was in his early sixties. He was a friend of my dad and my mom. He still had tattoos on his arms. He had just been granted a one-hour release.

He. Was. Here.

Those 13 years that felt like forever had led to this moment.

Wrapped in his arms, the young girl in me came out of hiding. I cried the raw emotions of the 10-year-old girl that still lived inside this 22-year-old's body.

He was only there for an hour, but it didn't matter. Those 13 years of struggle and pain made this moment last forever. Yes, those years were harder than I will ever be able to explain or put into words, but they made this moment possible. For a moment we were no longer surrounded by prison walls. The miracle that I thought would never occur was now more powerful than it ever could have been without the journey that the past 13 years had held.

I have no idea what the future holds. Yes. That is still unnerving and incredibly painful. But for the first time in a very, very long time, there is a hope that springs inside of me. A light has cracked through the doors I shut in my heart. And that is a gift I never could have asked for.

God provided a taste of that which I wanted so badly, but He also gave me that which I didn't realize I needed so badly: Hope.

So yes, the 13 years continue as they were, but I do not continue as I was. And that is a gift.