Bradley

He stands, with his guitar on the side of the Venice beach walkway. Surrounded by jewelry vendors, medical marijuana petitioners and fortune tellers. His friend with pink shoulder length hair and piercings all over, skateboards back and forth in front of him. He is sun-burnt, fore-head glistening already from the heat of the California day. There are others all around doing the very same thing, playing music on the street for whatever change the people passing are generous enough to toss into his guitar case. But, among this crowd he stands out.  He doesn't belong there and once we begin to talk to him it's evident that he knows that as much as we do. But, he is done with trying. After two tours in Iraq, three marriages and losing his daughter and last wife to another man, he is done. In between the songs, he tells us about his past, through standing around listening to him sing, we learn about all the brokenness he has endured. Bradley started out playing us songs that were filled with profanity, but as we continue to stand and listen to him, not saying anything he begins to fade out of the expletive filled songs and into worship music. By the time he finishes  Casting Crowns, "Who am I" we are in tears. At that point, we share who we are and ask him about his relationship with Jesus. He seems almost offended that we would question that he doubted what he was singing. As more people come around he starts playing some other music, laughing and joking with us again. We listen to him for almost two hours before we tell him we really have to go. Sensing we really are going to have to leave he plays one more worship song for the "Jesus Freaks". But before before we walk away for good, we ask to pray with him and while we do, Bradley puts one arm out to his side and has the other pointing up  to the sky-grinning and swaying. I have no idea how much we impacted this man, but I do know that the couple hours we spent with him, changed our lives forever. I have no clue where he's at, how he's doing or if he is any closer to God than he was that day. We probably won't ever know how he ended up, or if anything we did helped him, I can only hope that he remembers the "Jesus Freaks" who tried to tell him that he could be so much more.