Marcus Redding Hears a Sound

Some people can’t stand the sound of fingernails on the chalkboard. Marcus Redding can’t stand the sound of a car coming to a screeching stop.

Last Wednesday night he heard that sound. They were coming home from evening Bible study. They had to turn left at the intersection to get into their apartment complex. They got in just under the yellow light. The oncoming traffic was stopped, but there was another car coming up behind them that was not paying attention and had to slam on the brakes. It stopped in time and didn’t hit anybody, but the squealing sound triggered a flashback.

Back on that sunny spring day when Marcus got his driver’s license, cruising down 346 and the setting sun hit him in the face, when he overcorrected and crossed over the yellow line, the other car had only a fraction of a second to put on the brakes, and that was the last sound Marcus heard before they crashed.

When they pulled up to their parking place, Marcus was almost frozen behind the steering wheel. Lauren knew what was going on. She reached over and rubbed his neck, “Come on Marcus, let’s go inside.” “I’m okay,” he lied, “I’m fine.” But he wasn’t fine. He couldn’t sleep. And whenever he did fall asleep he had nightmares. He dreamed Lauren had a wreck. She survived but they lost the baby. Marcus woke up, yelling her name. Startled awake, she saw him sitting up in bed, breathing hard.

Marcus felt helpless. Like his thoughts were controlling him instead of him controlling his thoughts. Lauren wanted him to go to the doctor to get something to help him sleep. She just wanted him to rest and be at peace. It was enough stress being out of work and not being able to find a job, and now this. But pills? Marcus had mixed a few pills with his Jack Daniels back in the dark years. Taking pills to dull his pain would be for him like having a drink. He couldn’t do it. He knew where that would take him.

About an hour later Lauren had drifted off to sleep again, but Marcus was still awake with his thoughts. He slipped out of bed and went out to the living room to turn on the TV. They had left it on PBS and they were doing an in-depth report from Haiti about men who had lost their wives in the earthquake and were left to take care of their children on their own. Poor, without work, traumatized. It put his situation in perspective, but he still hurt.

He got up to make a sandwich. On the way into the kitchen he noticed Lauren had left a Bible open to Psalm 139 on the kitchen table. She did that all the time. Leave him something to read in case he had trouble sleeping. She stuck a yellow post it note on the pages with an arrow that pointed to the title “Search Me, O God, and Know My Heart.” He read the psalm. Part of verse 18 jumped out at him, “I awake, and I am still with you.”

So he put those two together: the men in Haiti and God’s constant presence. He read Psalm 139 again, not reading it but making it his own prayer, “O Lord, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar.” Then he read it again and prayed for the men in Haiti, “O Lord, you have searched them and known them!” He prayed their tragedy would cause them to turn to God, since they wouldn’t find that kind of lasting help anywhere else.

And then he realized he needed to do the same thing.

More about Marcus Redding’s journey of faith next week.