Permanent Tears: One man’s journey through Hell to find Heaven

 “…to open their eyes, in order to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in Me.”  Acts 26:18 (NKJV)

            It is dark in California.  It’s a cloudy day, chilly, sullen.  But the skies aren’t the only way windows are darkened.  The Golden State’s sheen sparkles brightly on the surface, enticing and backlit by waves of sunshine.  But where there’s bright light, there are shadows.  In California, the shadows are such that they’ve lost fear of the sun.  In California, the shadows cover people every day, rendering them anonymous, blocking out the comfort of the sun, making them forget that there is another day, another way.  It is dark in California, to those people.
This is the story of thousands of lost.  And this is the story of one man who chose to take the shroud of shadows from his life.  This is Javier’s story.  This is not just Javier’s story.  This is a story about finding the light.

“It’s easy for you, but for me, I’ve gotta be careful.”

            Javier sits in the basement of the adult rehab center where he’s currently staying.  He folds and unfolds his hands.  When speaking to our interviewers, he is at times candid and evasive.  There is a long list of topics that he spoke of that he’d rather not have us mention.  That’s okay.  This isn’t about any of those things. 
He’s in his early 40’s, although in certain lights, he seems older.  Tired.  There’s a constant note of flat seriousness in every emotive tone of his voice.  He doesn’t laugh easily.  He folds and unfolds his hands again.  And begins to talk about Jesus Christ.
“…this life in Christ is better than the life I was living before”, he affirms, his voice saturated with an accent that’s two parts his native Colombian and one part L.A. street.  “Now I understand the word ‘surrender’.  The things I used to do before, I don’t do it no more.  Because it’s God.”
A cross hangs on the wall.  The basement in which they sit is both comforting and cold.  Javier owns nothing.  Only God can claim to own him.  This is the life that is better than the one he has cast off, a former existence of pain and excess, demons and earthly delights.  Sex and drugs.  Pain.  And death.
Let’s not start there, though.  Nor here, in the time and place where Javier has chosen to give his story a new beginning.  Javier would like us to begin at his old beginning.  So we will.

“They want to see you sleeping…”

            Coming of age is hard enough, but imagine doing it in a country that is fighting for its own identity at the same time.  Colombia in the 1970’s was synonymous with the drug war, quickly declaring its title as the epicenter of narcotic production.  Drug cartels and guerilla groups waged constant battles against each other and the government.  And in the midst of this war zone, Javier was trying to find himself.
He grew up under the heavy hand of an abusive and alcoholic father.  “My dad, he liked to drink all the time and beat my mother,” Javier quietly says.  “He told me, you’re not going to do anything in your life.  So I [asked him], why did you bring me to this world?  Why?”
Of the things that one considers necessities – food, clothing, shelter – Javier’s family only could rely on having a roof over their heads.  Although the family was large, very little money found its way through the doors.  They were often hungry.  They wore whatever they could find.  They struggled.  Javier took to robbing strangers to make ends meet, carrying out threats of violence while trying to stop the war in his own home. 
“I used to go to a cemetery,” he balls his fists, “go up to people with a knife.  People gonna bury people and when they come…’gimme your watch, your money’.”  He pauses.  “I was a stupid little kid.”
Through it all, however, Javier’s mother found solace in the Father, praying for her family, praying for Javier’s salvation.  But still she suffered at the hands of his father.  And Javier couldn’t stop him.
“I see how he make my mother cry.  And I can’t do nothing.  But when I was a little child, I say, ‘one day, I’m gonna be a big man, and I’m gonna beat you up…”
Instead of fighting his father, Javier chose to walk into another battle.  At 17, he enlisted in the Colombia National Army.  This wasn’t a war that finds protesters crying out, families begging for their children to come home.  This was a fact of life at the time.  This was, potentially, an income.  This was an escape hatch for Javier, but unbeknownst to him, he chose the wrong door.  A tiger licks his chops.  A lady stands alone.
When talking about his time in the jungle, Javier becomes very matter-of-fact.  A defense mechanism for the things his young eyes saw.  His tone becomes flatter.  It causes one to think of teenagers in the U.S. today, bloody shoot-‘em-ups in video games and movies spiking adolescent imaginations.  Javier didn’t need to imagine.
“I remember we couldn’t sleep at night time because all the time, gunshots…two, three o’clock in the morning, that’s when the enemy comes.  They want to see you sleeping.  When you wake up, they don’t wanna talk.  They wait till you get tired, go to sleep, so they come to kill you…I remember the nights in the jungle,” he makes the sound of guns firing, “screaming, ‘Javier, help me!’.  And the next morning, they go to the base, and have to come, picking up the bodies.  I see a lot of blood.  Dead people.”
For six years, Javier stayed in the jungle, not sleeping, fighting, picking up the dead, and starting again the next day.  For two months out of the year, the soldiers were given a reprieve, flown back to bases to shower, shave, sleep.  At the end of those two months, however, back to the jungle they were sent to do it all again for the next ten months.
“I was a stupid kid in the jungle with a big gun, more bigger [sic] than me.  I remember, I said, ‘God, please.  Don’t let me die in the jungle.”
At the age of 23, when young adults in other countries are trying to find jobs, trying to fall in love, Javier was released from his service.  And found nothing.  There were no celebratory parades for his homecoming.  No pension or insurance waiting for him.  Just a terse “thank you” from the government.  Just “good-bye”.  Thanks for your youth.  Good luck.
Broke and broken, Javier signed up for the first available job he could find.  After his six-year stint fighting for his country in the jungle, his new job sized him up as a single man, no dependants…and placed him back in the war zone.  Back in the madness.  Anyone else might have lost their mind at that point, but Javier was still strong enough, even after picking up the bodies of his friends and fellow soldiers, even after being ignored by his own country, to go on.  The true madness, somehow, was still to come.

“To get the dream, the American Dream…”

            In 1989, Javier walked out of the jungle for the last time.  In search of something new, he found the same trodden path that so many had walked before him, and followed it into the arms of the United States of America.
Oh, the American Dream.  Dreams, we forget, are illusions.  Sometimes these illusions can pleasantly find their way into reality, but far too often, it’s our nightmares that cross that threshold instead.   Some nightmares, however, start off benign, allaying our fears, calming us into a tranquil state.  A peace that can last well until the nightmare starts throbbing, and then, then it’s often too late.
Running from a war-torn country, Javier found himself at the tranquil beginning of that dream.  He arrived with nothing, spoke no English, but was bewitched by the new landscape that surrounded him.  When he talks about his arrival now, he almost begins to seem younger, still enraptured by that first experience with a new country, a new start.
“I go to the United States, buy a big house for my mother, buy everything for my mother, she gonna be a happy mother.”  His face lights up.  “When I come to this country, I say, ‘thank you, God, this is a new life.’”  Mimicking his younger self, he begins to look around, his tone awestruck.  “I remember walking, and looking at the buildings…in Colombia, all I see is jungle and trees…drugs…I come to this country, big change!”
Javier began the immigrant diet of a dollar and a dream.  He stayed with family who’d followed the same trail and found a job making eighty dollars a week.  Like many others, the amount was still a windfall to him, after being spit on by his native country after years of service.  He lived off of twenty a week, sending the rest home for his family.  And on that minimum wage, he began to restart his life.  He met a woman from Mexico whose story was not dissimilar to his own.  Together, they began a family --  Javier, his woman, and the two daughters they created.  Life was beginning to seem…normal.
But living off of low wages begins to be impossible in America after a while.  Surrounded by those that have more, a disquieting sensation begins to grow.  The American Dream changes colors on the edges, the dark green of money heralding the entrance of the American Nightmare.  They followed opportunity west, and together found California.

“Money changes people.”

            While the drug war had set a stage in Colombia, the sideshow had made its way to the American west coast.  In the eighties, the international drug trade had given a rallying cause to gangs across the entire U.S., where the only gods they paid homage to were themselves and profit.  By the early 1990’s, Los Angeles police estimated that 1,000 gangs were active in the area, harboring at least 100,000 members in total.  After the 1992 L.A. riots, opposing gangs found themselves creating truces and mobilizing themselves, becoming stronger.  Here is where Javier found himself, the cash-money dream trickling down into his hands.
“I moved to L.A. and that was the big mistake…because now I see how I’m gonna make money.  I meet some gang members, they give me money, they give me all the liquor I wanna drink…I can sleep with any woman I want.  And I love that kind of life.” 
His words have lost their excited parsing, his tone has evened out into the flatness that he spoke of his war experience with.  Which makes sense; this is a new war he had found.  There are no battle lines.  This is a fight on the streets, and a fight in the soul.
After his introduction to the feel-good life, cash in hand, drugs chasing themselves through his veins, he began to rise through the ranks of a major L.A. street gang.  It’s easily understood; Javier is both charismatic and hardened.  A war torn life had prepared him for this new one.
“I feel good at the beginning ‘cause I got money and the drugs that I use.  I got respect on the streets, everybody know who I am.  I got my people to watch my back.  I got everything.”
Everything.  He emphasizes this word.  He means it.  He meant it.  Everything means he finally feels good.  Everything means he has money to pay for anything.  Everything means he was not a scared, stupid kid in the jungle with a big gun anymore.  Everything means he is a man with a gun, a man with power.  A man in control.  Everything.
But he was not a man in control.  He did not have everything.  Because unlike Hollywood’s idea of street gangs, his gang didn’t answer solely to vice or profit.  His gang served what they thought was a higher power.  His gang served the devil.
“We’d go to the cemeteries and take the bones from the dead people and worship the devil.”  A tremor of fear creeps into his voice.  “…speaking in tongues…to the devil to get power.  I remember we say to the devil, if you give [us] money, sex, drugs, and everything, I will always belong to you.”  He pauses, saddened.  “I don’t even know what I was talking [about] at that time.”
In the drug world, anything is possible.  Here were grown men making deals with the devil, trading souls for earthly pleasures, selfish desires.  Men who walked the streets gun-laden and lost, asking Satan to protect them.  But their own souls weren’t the only currency.  The devil doesn’t stop satisfied easily.
Javier continues, “One of the rules of the gang…when you have a baby, you had to present the baby to the gangs.  There’s gonna be a ceremony.”  He trails off and repeats himself a few times, trying to get the words right.  “When the baby come out from the body of the woman, [it] is presented to the devil and the gang members.”  Sullenly now.  “You come to the family.”

“’Can you fix my mind?’ ‘Only God can do that.’”

            In dealing with the devil, there isn’t exactly a rulebook.  It’s like unlocking a door, letting the thieves in at night.  Like man, Satan isn’t interested in only taking what he is offered.  Javier unlocked the door and the devil waltzed in.  For every action there is a reaction.  Every sin has its consequence.  And quite often, the ones that suffer aren’t ourselves, but the ones we love.  And the devil took his dues.
There are a great deal of pauses in the recording now.  Javier takes his time telling this portion of the story.  A break for water.  Throats clear.  And he continues.
“When my daughter was four years old, the little one, I remember…I called the guys, wanted to take my little baby to the babysitter, gotta do something.  And we was driving, and at the stop sign, we was shot [sic].”
This part is painful to him.  The years haven’t passed a veil over the pain, not yet. 
“I got shot three times.  And these two gang members died.  And then my daughter died too.  She was four years old.  She got shot in the head.”
It takes very little to coax the mind into falling in on itself, into falling apart.  When there is no anchor to attach to, the suck of the whirlpool will get ever louder, stronger, until the entire vessel breaks into pieces.  Javier had had more than a little coaxing in his life, more than just a slight undertow.  After the years in the jungle, the work that drugs had done to his brain, and now this loss, his youngest child.  An innocent.  But once that whirlpool gets a hold, there is no relief. 
He awoke the next day in a hospital room, hooked up to machines that controlled the difference between breath and stillness.  Beyond those machines stood police officers, asking questions they knew the answers to, but demanding a response all the same.  Past them stood his family, the daughter left behind, the woman he loved. 
Javier speaks through a tear that spills, uninvited, unwanted.  “I see my girlfriend cry.  I see my other baby say, ‘Where is my sister?  Why you kill my sister?  Why?’  I was confused.”  He hangs his head. “I was supposed to be dead.  Not her.  After my daughter died, I go a little crazy.  My girlfriend leave me.  My daughter leave me.  I’m there by myself.”
Neither the police nor his family got any answers that day.  His family walked away, into their own jungles.  The police had their own answer:  jail.  For while some things don’t have rules, the gangs of L.A. do.  And snitching is not an option, not if you’re interested in staying alive.
Inside the jail cell, the walls began to close in.  By choosing life, Javier might have given up his soul to the devil that very moment.  Jail is hell.  Jail is as dark as death can be.  For the next few years, Javier only saw the world for two hours a day.  The rest of his time was spent in lockdown, left alone by all the things he had served to silence and apathy.  His personal demons gnawed at his skin, clung to his bones, trying to latch their claws into the pieces that were left.  And still he kept away from the light, turned away from God, led his own way into the darkened confinement of his mind.
“Always somebody come to me and talk to me about Jesus Christ.  And in my mind, I say, this guy doesn’t really know who he has [sitting] in front of his face, he don’t really know.  Talking to me about the love of Jesus Christ, and my first question is, if God’s got too much love…why my daughter die?  What kind of love is that?”
Javier was angry.  Angry at this God for taking away the life that he thought he loved.  Angry at himself for loving that life.  Angry at the walls that held him.  Angry at the guards who ignored him.  Angry at these men who passed before him, trying to explain to him the life that God wanted for him, the love that He had for him.
“A lot of preachers come to the unit…they just look at me.  Say God gonna do something great for you.  Say, great?!  I stay in this cell, locked down 20 hours a day.  They’re on the outside, talking about God does great things for me?  I don’t wanna hear that.”
Javier snapped at some point, driven by the pain of loss and the darkness inside and surrounding him.  He wound up undergoing psychiatric treatment, the madness enveloping him having no clear cure.  But the cure wound up being found in words, not in pills.  He recounts an incident with his doctors.
“I asked this doctor, ‘Doctor, can you fix my mind?  Can I come back a normal person?’  And they say in my face, ‘We went to school many years, we find all kinds of medication, but we don’t have the power.  Only God can do that.’”  He shakes his head.  “Only God can do that.”

“I had to be destroyed to come to Christ.”

            After leaving the penitentiary and the psychiatric system, Javier was ejected back into the world beyond gates.  Left standing there with nothing and no one, he was drawn to the adult rehabilitation center he calls home now.  He was surrounded by other men trying to make the adjustment back into the “real world”.  But the “real world” they once inhabited wasn’t a world they wanted to rejoin.  Many of the men began to study the Bible for hints on the path of this new life.  Javier followed suit, and soon after proclaimed his saving grace in Jesus Christ.  But his words were not full yet, they were empty and cautious.  For the second time in his life, he was trying to make a clean start.  But that new beginning he wanted was inhabited by ghosts of the life he wanted to leave behind.
Across the street from the center is an empty intersection.  But not for Javier.  That corner was a part of his territory.  On that corner he had stood, earning the price that his old god demanded.  And if “money is the root of all evil”, well, some roots hadn’t been weeded out of his heart just yet. 
“I start thinking about how I can make money again.  So I went back, started selling drugs again.  I used to sell heroin, crack, and cocaine.  My addiction is cocaine, so heroin in my hands don’t bother me, crack don’t bother me, but when I have cocaine…that’s a problem right there.”
So he put his feet into his old footsteps and began to walk away.  He left the center and his brothers in Christ.  He allowed the cocaine in his hands to move towards his nose.  But God had planted a seed in his heart that began to grow, and those roots began to move the foundation of his old lusts away from the core.
“I used to sniff a lot of cocaine, listen to the Christian radio, listen to the preachers, and I said, this life is [expletive].”  He curses a few more times emphatically, then looks vaguely embarrassed.  But he knows that he’s spoken the truth, in the words that he knows.  And he was right.
When Javier tried to return to the rehab center, he found a new man in charge.  And once again, he had to humble himself and begin again.  This man was tougher than the previous one, but it was a toughness that Javier needed.  In this man, he began to find a mentor, someone who was willing to converse with him, to answer his questions – about life on the outside, about drug addiction, and most importantly, about God. 
One day, Javier was taken to a party where he met a missionary who’d recently returned from Colombia.  She told him of children there, without homes or food, no family, no protection, fending for their lives daily.  In that moment, his mind returned home.  He traced the path he had walked – out of his father’s reach into a war zone; out of the jungle, into America; out of God’s light, into the devil’s dark.  All results of his own decisions, all born of following his own greedy wants and desires.  And while he, a man in his late thirties stood and complained about his lot in life, with a roof over his head, surrounded by people who now genuinely cared about him, these children ran around rootless and starving in the dark.  These realizations followed him back to the center, back to his cot.  And he finally let go.  And let God.
“I know I’m gonna have problems in this life.  But this life in Christ is better than the life I was living before.”  He looks up.  “I pray to God, say, look, He can use me.  If [I] can do something for somebody, I will do it.  I’ll do it from the heart, because money don’t fix my life.  Money don’t do nothing for me…God did it.  I surrendered to the Lord.”  He chuckles to himself, a low and sad sound.  “I had to be destroyed to come to Christ.  They ask me, ‘Javier, who did it?’  God.  I was looking for God.  He was looking for me a long time ago.”
Today, Javier sees these streets he stalked in a different light.  He sees the ghosts in a different way.  Finding himself awakened after the death of his American Dream, he has been reborn.  But his story is not yet done.  He owns nothing of material worth: no house, no car.  Just the room here in which he rests, the Book that he reads, the few clothes that he keeps.  And love.  He’s begun communicating with his estranged daughter again, herself a born-again Christian.  When he speaks of her, it’s with love and praise.  She is “beautiful”.  She is “good”.  She is a reason to love and live.  So is his freedom in this world, in his release from the darkness?  All three sprung from the love he first found in Him.
And so Javier works, on himself and on others, hoping to cast some of His light on those walking under the Californian shadows, guiding them into the new footprints that he stumbled upon on his own journey up from under.  And he is content.  He is waiting on the Lord.
“He [won’t] give you what you ask for, but what you need.  Now, I sleep good.  I don’t need no guns under my pillow to sleep…I don’t need it no more.”  His chin lifts skyward, and he ticks off on his fingers the low marks of his life.  “I promise to God, everywhere I go, I will say, ‘God did it’.  Prison didn’t do it.  The psychiatric hospital didn’t do it.  Gang members didn’t do it.  Police officers didn’t do it.”
Javier smiles, looking relaxed for the first time.