Chicken Soup for the Kid’s Soul (26 page)

The Big Director

I
n everything you do, put God first, and he will direct you and crown your efforts with success.

Prov. 3:6

“You wanna help us get back at the guys who beat up our friends?” a kid asked me during recess. “Meet us after school.”

I had never been to a gang meeting before. But the kids at school made it sound like if I didn’t go, I wasn’t being loyal to my friends who had been roughed up by a gang from another neighborhood. So I decided to check it out.

When I got there, everyone joined hands and said what sounded to me like a prayer. Then they named all these gang members that they looked up to. After that, the leader said, “This is your family. I am your father, I am your mother, I am your brother.” He was repeating what he had seen done in some of the gang meetings with older kids in his neighborhood.

I was in the seventh grade at a Christian academy in Chicago when I was asked to be a part of that gang. For a lot of kids who didn’t get much attention at home, the gang gave them something to belong to. It was more than just a club to them—for some kids it was their only family.

During the meeting, I looked around at the other kids. I thought to myself,
No, no this isn’t right. I don’t need this gang to be everything to me. I’ve got a good family, and I know the great “I Am.” That’s God—not this dude.
My mom and dad had always told me that the Lord is my friend, and that if I put him first in all that I do, he would continue to bless me.

I walked away from the gang that day, but it still took me a long time to finally realize that my parents had been trying to steer me in the right direction by telling me about God.

Even though I listened to my parents, I still wasn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, a perfect child. There were times when I was bad to the bone. Once in a while, people will say to me, “How do you know what I’m going through? You’ve never been in trouble.” But I
do
know. I used to get into trouble a lot.

In the neighborhood where I grew up, my friends and I didn’t have any place to play, so we hung out near the railroad tracks and an old factory that was in back of my house. My friends and I would do things we had no business doing, like yelling things at the neighborhood gang members that made them mad enough to shoot at us. We literally had to run for our lives.

You had to be able to run fast where I came from. It seems as though we were always running away from some kind of trouble, or being chased by the police for trespassing at the train yards, “expressing our artistic talents” with spray paint, or breaking windows at the factory.

A lot of my friends from school became gang members. I’ve lost many of them over the years. They either ended up in prison, or they’re dead from gang warfare.

I had a friend who lived in the neighborhood across the train tracks from mine, near our church. We became friends through the Boy Scout troop that met there. One day, kids from my neighborhood went over to that neighborhood with baseball bats and beat up some of the kids. Later, when I was hanging out with the kids from my neighborhood, some guys drove by in a van. They slowed down as they passed us.

My friend from the other neighborhood was in the van with some of the guys who had been attacked. Just before they were about to shoot into the group of guys I was standing with, my friend recognized me and stopped his friends from shooting us. Had my back been turned and my friend not recognized me, we would have been killed. After he saved my life, we became really good friends.

At school, I was a troublemaker and spent a lot of time in detention. I pulled pranks like putting Crazy Glue on my friend’s chair. The janitor had to be called finally to pry him loose, leaving wooden chips stuck to the seat of my friend’s pants.

One teacher decided that for every pink slip a kid got for bad behavior, he would give them a spanking with a paddle. While other kids would have about six by the time he got around to giving spankings, I’d have more like twenty. One time, when the day came to trade in my pink slips for a paddling, I put on every pair of shorts I could find in the house before I put on my pants. Then, right before the time came for the paddling, I slipped into the school bathroom and packed tissue into my pants.

“Bend over, Mitchell,” commanded the teacher with a grin of satisfaction. Down came the paddle with enough force to really hurt, but instead of producing a loud smack, the paddle landed with a POOF!

“Mitchell, are you packing? Huh? Are you packing?” he screamed. His face was red with fury and humiliation. Kids began to crowd around me to see what was happening. He marched me into the bathroom and made me take off every pair of shorts, until the only shorts left on me were the first pair I had found that morning—my sister’s pink bike shorts!

Things just got worse until my mom found a way to help me stop acting up so much in school. As she tells it, the Lord sent her a message in a dream. He told her to take me to the local theater to join a summer acting class. I got on stage and acted out like I did in school, only this time the teachers loved it! I had found my God-given talent. From then on, I spent most of my time after school and on the weekends learning about acting, and performing in television and film as well as in live theater.

I later moved out to Los Angeles to pursue my acting career. One day, I got a call about my friend who had saved my life from gang warfare. He had been killed when a gang cornered him in an alley and shot him. That’s how I might have ended up too, if I didn’t have the Lord directing my life. I realize that God is “The Big Director” of it all, and he has blessed me and made my life better than I ever imagined it could be.

Someday, when I have children of my own, I plan to pass my faith in him on to them. I am going to tell them about the blessings he has given me, and the troubles that he has helped me out of. I hope they will continue to keep the faith in him, so if the neighborhood they live in is dark and going wrong, or if it seems that civilization has lost its mind, they will have a friend to lean on. They can ask “The Big Director” to help them find their way, just like he did for me.

Kel Mitchell

A Personal Message from Kel Mitchell

I know from my own experience that kids often get into gangs or drugs or other destructive situations because they are bored or lonely, or they feel rejected and angry. They don’t know where to go, or how to develop their God-given talents. And they don’t know that there are other choices available.

There
are
other choices. Get involved in a youth group at a local church, encourage your school to start an after-school program, or find a Boys & Girls Club you can join. Get involved in sports or a play. We’re all good at something— it’s just a matter of realizing what that is and going after it.

If you’re having problems, or if you see friends going the wrong way, ask someone for help. If you don’t know who to go to, or feel afraid to share the situation with someone that you know, there is always someone out there to help. In the front of the Yellow Pages in your phone book (or in some areas, the Blue Pages) there are 800 numbers to call for advice or help. You can often find a list of issues and problems that will likely include what you’re going through.

You can also pray and ask the Lord to guide you, as I have. You can talk to him any time of the day or night. I pray about things that are big or small, and I truly believe that God will make it happen for me. Although it might not come when I think I need it, or exactly how I expect it, it’s always right for me. He has changed my life, and that’s enough evidence for me that he is real.

[EDITORS’ NOTE:
To find a Boys & Girls Club nearest you, call: 800-854-CLUB.
]

I Love Her More Than Ever

In my short life, I have learned a lot about drugs and what they can do to a family.

When I was really young, I lived with my mom, my brother, Christopher, and his father, Michael. I didn’t know it then, but there was a lot of drug use happening. Michael used drugs, and I think he was a dealer. He also used to beat my mom sometimes.

All I remember of my natural father when I was growing up is a time when my mom and I were staying in an apartment and he showed up there. He started drinking beer and throwing the bottles everywhere in the apartment. My mom made me stay outside. She finally ran outside to get me, and we drove away. I saw him last year before he moved to Colorado. I think he’s getting into drugs again. Sometimes he lies, and sometimes he doesn’t. You just never know.

When I was in the first and second grades, my mom wouldn’t send me to school all the time. She didn’t have a job, and she just stayed around the house all day. I missed a lot of school. Sometimes, she’d tell me to just stay home. She was too busy doing her drugs. I didn’t really mind staying home because I didn’t like the people at that school. It wasn’t a good school because there were gangs hanging around. I missed so much school that I got held back. I am supposed to be in the sixth grade right now, but I’m only in fifth.

During those years, I didn’t live with my mother all the time. Sometimes I lived with a lady named Deann and her family because my mom would be out partying all the time. Sometimes I lived with my grandparents when I couldn’t stay with Deann.

One of the times I remember most clearly was when I was about seven years old. I was in the car with my mom and my grandma. We were going to an apartment where we would drop my mom off. I was going to live with my grandmother again because she believed that my mom was using drugs, and she wanted to take care of me. I was really mad at my grandmother because I didn’t believe what she was saying about my mother.

Later, when I went to visit my mom, I walked in from playing outside and saw her and some of her friends doing drugs. That’s when I finally believed what my grandmother had been trying to tell me, and I ran out the door, crying. I was afraid that my mother was going to hurt herself with the drugs.

For a long time, I lived partly with my grandmother or Deann or my mom. One day, when I was living with my mom, I came home from school to find that our house was totally trashed. The police had raided it because they were looking for drugs. I didn’t know what a raid was then, but my mom told me. Then, a few months later, I found out for myself what it meant.

I had been sleeping in the living room, but that night I got up and went to the bedroom where my mom was sleeping. I was lying on the bed with my mom, when all of a sudden the door burst open and the police came in pointing guns. They told everybody to put their hands up. I was scared. My mom had a needle in her purse, and she was arrested. She told me it was a friend’s, but it had really been her needle. She used to lie to me.

I finally called my grandmother one night when my mom was doing drugs. I didn’t want to see her using drugs anymore. My grandmother came to pick me up, and I lived with her for a long time. I felt like my grandmother was the one person who was there for me. She took care of me and got me all the things that I needed. If I needed shoes, she got them for me. She’d do anything for me. Still, every night I used to cry myself to sleep because I missed my mom so much, and I was afraid for her. I would lie in the living room with my grandma, and she would just sit there by my side.

After some time, my mom moved in with us at my grandma’s house. She got a job at a restaurant, but she was still using drugs. One night she borrowed my grandma’s car to go to work. She brought back the car and left a note saying that she’d be back later. That was at one o’clock in the morning. She didn’t come back when she said she would. I was worried about her, so we called Deann to ask if she had seen her, but she didn’t know where my mom was, either. No one could find her.

We didn’t hear from my mom for six months. We didn’t know it then, but she had been accepted by a recovery house and was getting off drugs.

Then one day my mom called. She sounded different— happy. She was off the drugs. She told me that she had felt that God would make her die after all the bad things she had done, and she had become very afraid. She decided to get clean and that she wanted to have a better life.

Then, on my birthday, my mom came and surprised me. She said that in a couple months, I might be able to live with her again. She continued to get better, and we finally moved near the beach, where my mom always said that she wanted to live.

Going to the beach is our favorite thing to do together. We go in-line skating there all the time now. We go out to dinner sometimes, and to movies, too. My brother lives with his grandparents, but sometimes he comes to visit us. We go everywhere when he visits and we buy him toys.

My mom has a job now with a company that makes hardware. We go to church, and sometimes we just read the Bible together. We pray every night for my grandmother now because she has cancer and just went through chemotherapy.

My mom and I have a better relationship now that she is clean and sober. We get to spend more time together, and we have more fun. But most of all, we are both happier. Now we’re telling the truth. There are no more lies. We share everything, no matter what. My mom is my best friend, more than anyone else is. I am proud of her, and I love her more than ever.

Amber Foy, age 11

Dear Momma

W
ho ran to help me when I fell, And would some pretty story tell, Or kiss the place to make it well? My Mother.

Anne Taylor

Dear Momma,

  
I miss you. I miss all the good things that we used to do. I miss how you would laugh and tuck me into bed. I miss your kisses and hugs. I miss the way you would talk about how you loved your kids and your family. You said if you were God, you wouldn’t leave us.

  
Every night I think I see you and hear your voice, but I guess I really don’t. Momma, I know you hear and see everything I say and do. Sometimes I want to cry, but I try to hold it in. Momma, I love you from the bottom of my heart. Your love is deep in my heart. I wish I could see you just one more time. I wish you didn’t have to die. I’ll love you always.

Your Son

My mother died when I was nine years old, and I was in the third grade. I just wrote to her because I miss her.

Darnell Hill, age 13