An Unwelcome Opportunity to Serve Part II: Vicki's Account

In the City

When we moved back to the states we wanted to be intentional neighbors. We had grown accustomed to living in the city in Santiago and naturally wanted to find something similar in Louisville. I thought we would move where there was a high Hispanic population because we were accustomed to that culture and language; however, our hearts were drawn to Shelby Park. And so began our journey for city life. I grew up in a very small town so this was more of a stretch for me than I realized.

We began a relationship with our neighbors. Thanks to off street parking we exchanged hellos frequently outside. Ms. Pat was a God send. She’s the matriarch of her family and we’ve had the privilege to meet many of her family members of the last year and half we’ve lived her. She realizes I’m a small town girl and has proven to be a great resource to teach me about city life. At every opportunity, we’ve tried to serve, but one recent day made neighbors family as we fell into the trenches and mourned together.

We were gardening in our backyard as the girls played in the dirt and I chatted with a neighbor. I’ll never forget the sound of panic in Ms. Pat’s voice as she ran into our backyard yelling for Jeff. Her grandson had been shot and Jeff raced her, DeeDee (the boy’s mother) and his sister to the hospital. Norman died before his friends could get him there. As we sat in her kitchen that night surrounded by grief ridden family members, her son explained that Little Norm was shot in the back by one of his friends over a moped.

Shelby Park

I returned home with an overwhelmed and troubled heart. A young man was shot and killed a block from where our City Group meets each week for dinner and prayer a month ago. Some fellow Christians in the neighborhood were robbed by gunpoint in their own backyard over the weekend. On Monday night, our City Group prayer walked the neighborhood. Fifteen minutes after we left the park, a woman was shot and killed while she sat on a park bench near the playground where dozens of children were innocently swinging, laughing and playing. And one night later, Norman was gone. I tried to make sense of how people could take a life so quickly. It was senseless. I remembered the faces of Little Norm’s friends and brothers. Their eyes were dark with grief, blazing with bitterness, hungry for revenge and justice. I cried out to God for our neighborhood. For peace. For unity. For reconciliation.


Over the next few days we made some phone calls and began taking meals over to the family. We enjoyed sweet time with them as we learned more about Little Norman’s life. We put a slideshow together of photos that revealed Norman was the baby of the family, the comedian who kept everyone laughing, a charmer with a warm smile, and a boy with dreams to become a man. He was only 17. He was scheduled to graduate in May, he had been accepted to KY State University, and a coupon for his senior prom tuxedo has arrived in the mail that day and lay on the coffee table surrounded by his photos and candles.

His mom walked us to the car that evening and shared a story that brought me to my knees. Little Norm had been in a lot of trouble as a kid. He had just been out of juvenile detention for 14 days when he was murdered. She said he had changed when he came home, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. Then, she found a journal. He had written out a beautiful prayer to God asking forgiveness and direction as he felt called to be a pastor. His last words in his journal were “Lord, preserve me”. His mom wept in hope for her son’s changed heart but despair as she recalled his last words to her minutes before he was shot, “Mom, I’m coming home.”

At the vigil, family, friends, and the news media surrounded the scene. His brother walked away in deep grief. His mother could not even attend. Christopher 2x encouraged the kids against anger and towards self control. I was frustrated. Those were symptoms, but the problem was deeper. The problem was pride and not striving for hope and peace in a Savior above ourselves. We continued to the wake and were overwhelmed by the number of people and deep grief of so many young people. I prayed silently, “Oh Hope, come and rescue us”. A fight broke out right after we left. They locked everyone inside the funeral home. Someone broke their jaw, some kids had a gun. The police came. Where was Peace?

I sat during the funeral looking at a young man dressed in white surrounded by flowers. I longed for Hope to be restored to these young lives. For another Way to do life. For them to know they are valued and to learn to value others. To understand they were made in the image of their all powerful God as were their enemies. A pastor spoke about Little Norm approaching him at the detention center. Little Norm wanted to change. He felt a deep purpose in his life that he had never experienced before. Then another pastor read Little Norm’s journal prayer as his eulogy. He said Little Norm was a leader and that was evident by the number of people at the funeral. He told them Little Norm was leading them now towards a different life, a life of hope over hopelessness, peace over violence, love over hate. He encouraged them to follow his lead and in a matter of five minutes, Norman’s two brothers, his uncle and nearly 10 friends walked to the casket and committed their lives to a new way of life in Christ.

"No Outlet?" Not Necessarily...

After such a hopeless week, I was overwhelmed by God’s mercy. I looked across the room and I didn’t see gang members, troubled kids, hopeless family members…I saw image bearers of an almighty God who had engraved each of them on His heart. Peace had been planted, we were unified in purpose, and reconciliation was beginning to take root.

An Unwelcome Opportunity to Serve Part I: Jeff's Account

We’ve been living in Shelby Park (a neighborhood in the inner city of Louisville) over a year or so. It’s been our pleasure and our privilege to be befriended by our next door neighbors. Cultivating that relationship has taken some time and care. We’ve kept our eyes open for subtle ways to serve and show love whenever we can. Tuesday night, March 24th, brought an unwelcome opportunity to serve.

Vicki and I, the girls and another neighborhood friend were in the backyard while I was getting our garden bed ready. I heard Ms. Pat calling from the side yard on the other side our gate to the privacy fence. “Jeff! Jeff! Can you do me a huge favor! I need a ride to the hospital. My grandson’s been shot!”

“Absolutely! Let’s go!” I ran into the house and snatched up my keys and my cell phone, told Vic I’d be careful and we were on our way. We needed to swing by Shelby St. a few blocks down and pick up Ms. Pat’s daughter (her grandson’s mother). I pulled up and Deedee and another woman with a baby hopped in the back seat. We were on our way headed down Broadway. Deedee had somewhat of a cool head about her. The younger woman was in hysterics. I wasn’t sure what her relationship was to the rest of the family. At this point all that I knew was that the boy had been shot. In the chaos of cell phone calls, yelling and screaming I was able to find out that the kid’s name was Norm, that he was 17 and was asked not to go down to Victory Park that night on the corner of 23rd and Kentucky.

As I’m driving down Broadway it’s as though I’m watching myself with this family in some kind of tragic documentary. Deedee is directly behind me on the phone with the young men that are with her son. As we are driving to Norton’s ER they are coming from the opposite direction. Norm is in the back seat bleeding, unresponsive. Deedee starts to yell into the cell phone at whoever is with her son (one of his friends). “Where the hell are you?! Get the f*** to the f****** emergency room! Is he breathing!? What the f*** do you mean you don’t know?! Get to the f****** emergency room!” I listen to the conversation cycle through the same content, over and over again. This mother in despair desiring nothing more than to be beside her son hoping that he is ok but knowing that he is not, fearing that he won’t be, stretched like a wire between hope and despair. I could hear her cycle through grief, hope, rage & regret just wanting to know something for sure.

Ms. Pat, stable, calm, a rock, she is the matriarch or her family and the foundation. She lights a cigarette and rolls down the window. It’s clear that she is trying to take the edge off of herself to be who she needs to be for her daughter and grandchildren in this moment. She interrupts the phone call occasionally, asking for clarification of what few details are known, telling everyone to calm down until we know something for sure.

The entire drive, brief though it was, I was just praying God’s peace on this family and to let Norm make it.

We arrived. Norton’s ER entrance comes off the street and then goes down below street level. You have to drive back up to get out. At the top of that hill was the green car Norm was driven in. EMS was parked up there along w/police who were taping off the car. They had just beaten us there. Ms. Pat and Deedee were out of the car. The young mother I did not know got out of the car and collapsed in the driveway. I found out later that this was Norm’s sister. The baby was in the car in the car seat that was unattached. An ER nurse came out. The sister was lying in the only open lane for other EMS units to use. I helped the nurse get her up off of the ground and walked her into the waiting room to sit down.

No updates on Norm. The entire family began to show up over the next 20 minutes. At one point Ms. Pat asked me if I could take the baby home with me and keep him until they got done at the hospital but before I could leave he started fussing so they kept him. I stayed for a while and offered whatever help I could back at their house. When it became clear that there was nothing left that I could do to help I made sure they had may cell number and said they could call for anything at anytime, that I was praying that Norm would pull through.

I had to back out of the ER entrance because the exit was blocked. This required that I pull around the corner where the green car was parked, where the family had now gathered near the police and the witnesses that brought Norm in to find out what information they could. By now the sister that I had helped to the waiting area was there with the rest of the family and a crowd of onlookers were on the other side of the street. As I drove by I saw the family in my rearview mirror. They seemed to respond to something… the sister collapsed on the ground… “He didn’t make it,” I thought.

I pulled over and parked, walked back to the opposite corner where the crowd was gathered. I asked a guy looking over to the other side, “What just happened?”
He confirmed what I already knew. “They just told that family that their kid was dead.”

“ That was my next door neighbor’s grandson.”

“Sorry man.”

“Yeah… me too.” I walked back to the car and called Vic with the news.

I prayed for their family all the way home. I prayed for this neighborhood. The day before I was praying in Shelby Park with our City Group and my family and left the park with them anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes before a woman was shot to death on a park bench in broad daylight with children around. I was angry with our Enemy. I sensed that whatever all of these events were that they were at least in part the forces over this neighborhood baring their teeth at those of us who feel called here to be servants of the Kingdom. I am thankful to God that my family was not intimidated by these happenings and my prayer is that other Christians in the neighborhood are not either. If we are Christians our presence makes a difference. Rev. Lincoln Bingham has said that if we are Christians when we walk into a room or a community God shows up. We need him to show up. For his people and for this city, every part of it.

This violence so close to home was not the peace for my neighbors that I have been praying for. But what I don’t know is who might have been spared that might not have been… What I did know is that my family had an opportunity to be what peace there could be even in the face of such violence and sinfulness. We would spend the coming days loving this family in whatever ways they would allow us. And what God opened up for us was amazing ways to come alongside of this family in their grief. We were given opportunity after opportunity to care for them deeply, we were able to call upon our brothers and sisters at Sojourn and Southeast to come alongside too and they did. And we were able to witness some amazing ways in which God was already at work in this situation in a variety of powerful ways. Vicki will comment on some of that in the next post.

I do not pretend to know what God is up to in the face of such tragedy or through it. What I do know is that if we claim Christ as Lord we must train our eyes to view tragedy and suffering redemptively. We serve a God that turns death into life. Where ever we see death we should look for ways in which life might take root, embrace it and encourage it in Jesus’ name for the sake of the Kingdom, may it come.