Our theme for the month of October is “flash nonfiction.” Writers were asked to submit pieces that were 250 words or less.
John-Mark presses the metal button in the wall, and we wait expectantly: faces (and name badges) turned toward the ceiling camera, ears braced against the resonant metallic clang we know will ring out any second. Once it does, we pull open the heavy door, slide into the vestibule, listen for the vaguely hydraulic hiss indicating it’s locked securely behind us, and press the button for the next door. Five doors clang open and hiss shut before we gain entrance to the pod for our first book study of the day.
The clanging and hydraulic hisses that still sound so foreign to my ears are the constant, everyday fare of the residents here at Lubbock County Detention Center. The book we’re studying is C. S. Lewis’s The Problem of Pain. I often wonder how we must sound, naively discussing pain with these souls who have—every one of them—experienced more anguish than we, even taking both our lives together, have had cause to even imagine. They, however, are incredibly gracious, willing to fill us in on the coarser points.
This is not a ministry to the lost. These women are so joyfully receptive of grace, so keenly aware of its necessity, so eagerly awaiting the coming kingdom that they are more ministering to us than we are to them. The world labels them lost, but the world is a poor judge of reality. I’ve studied COVID-19 beliefs long enough to know that existing in reality is, alas, no guarantee of perceiving it.
Natasha (Strydhorst) Unsworth (‘16) is a science communication researcher and practitioner working on her Ph.D. at Texas Tech University. Natasha hails from Calgary, Alberta. Some of her favo(u)rite authors are C. S. Lewis, Francis Collins, and Bill Bryson. Her favourite earthly place is the Canadian Rocky Mountains, and her favourite activities are reading and enjoying the great outdoors—preferably simultaneously.
