Awake: Discover the Power of Your Story

By Joel Sheldon Clark

Joel Clark’s heart-pounding, tear-jerking, laugh-out-loud stories didn’t happen by accident. His life of adventure ignited when he embraced the journey God had planned for him—the story God wants to tell through each one of us. With interactive film clips and personal interviews embedded in this Zondervan ebook, Joel invites you into the story Jesus is telling in the middle of the orphan crisis in Africa, the heart-rending tragedy that followed the Haiti earthquake, as well as his own quirky and very real love story. As you meet the characters who have shaped Joel’s journey, you’ll see Jesus through the tears of a young slave in Africa and witness intimate conversations with child soldiers in Haiti and youth group kids in South Africa. And you’ll be challenged to enter a God-adventure of your own. Because, according to Clark, another person’s experiences are never enough. Your unique passions, gifts and circumstances are calling you to live big and say yes. What part of the unfolding story is Jesus longing to tell through you? It’s time to do it … for the story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Zondervan
• Release date: Apr 3, 2012
• ISBN: 9780310335801

Joel Sheldon Clark

Joel N. Clark is the co-founder and creative director of Switchvert, a production and ideas house co-located in Washington, DC and Johannesburg, South Africa. As a writer-filmmaker, Clark’s love for story and adventure shine through the diversity of products he and his team create, ranging from short films/features, sitcoms, commercials, and justice-oriented documentaries filmed all over the world. He has worked with such authors as Donald Miller and Mark Batterson on various film projects. He lives with his family in Washington D.C.  

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

Bring Back the Clowns

September 2006 Haiti

The Woman, Part 1

I watched as they dragged a screaming woman into the dusty streets of Cité Soleil. Stopping directly outside our truck, a group of men threw her to the ground, savagely ripping the shirt from her body. One man jumped in with fists flailing. He was trying to drive away the others, but there were too many. He took a fist to the face, immediately going to the ground. At least ten men were involved in the fighting, but the crowd that had gathered to watch easily numbered more than fifty, and it was growing by the second. My eyes were glued on the woman who was at the center of it all, being pulled back and forth like a rag doll.

Father Rick Frechette—whom I simply call the priest—was talking on his cell phone, not yet aware of the brutality happening just outside his eyeshot. Only when a man was shoved against the side of the truck did his attention shift. We were inside a medical truck, and the woman was being attacked just a few feet from my door. Unable to make myself move (and unsure what I would do if I could), I sat and watched as the violence began to spread. Some of the spectators—men and women—were beginning to join in the fight.

The woman was screaming, agony obvious in her eyes as one of the men brought his face close to hers, shouting angrily. Tears mixed with the dust to make muddy tracks down her cheeks. Wrestling an arm free, she slugged one of her assailants hard in the face. Shock shifted to rage as he grabbed hold of her arm once again and slammed his fist into the side of her head. Stunned, her legs momentarily gave way as she slumped between the men.

My breath stopped as a knife flashed from somewhere deep in the crowd. The fighting seemed to be spreading to a much larger group. At least twice as many men and women had now joined in the madness. Less than a minute earlier, only ten men had been fighting, but now there were more than thirty men and women who were shoving and screaming at each other wildly. Yet it was this woman who was at the heart of the chaos. All of the violence was centered on her. I didn’t know what had caused it, but that didn’t matter. Someone was going to die.

Another man rushed forward, trying to free the woman, but he was shoved hard. Stumbling back, he slammed against the side of the truck and fell to his knees. Transfixed on the scene in front of me, I didn’t hear the door opening on the other side of the medical truck. I didn’t notice the priest exiting the vehicle.

I’ve been in a fight to protect someone on two occasions, but neither of those experiences came close to preparing me for what was happening now. With the Haitian woman, life and death hung in the balance. I felt both concern for her safety and powerless over the situation. It was the powerlessness that distinguished this occasion from the time almost ten years earlier. When I was nineteen, I don’t think I would have gotten much more than a bloody nose.

Take Your Hands Off the Girl

December 1995 — Pittsburgh

She was screaming, the sound reverberating off the alley walls. Stuart and I ran to the window. We were three stories up, inside a church in the center of Pittsburgh. It was ten o’clock in the evening, and the church was locked for the night. We were trying to pry the window open, but it looked as if it had been rusted shut for the past twenty years.

I was in Pittsburgh with a team of students who were volunteering with the church for a week. We had been spending our days serving in soup kitchens and helping out wherever needed. The pastor had graciously allowed us to sleep at the church so we wouldn’t have to spend money on hotel rooms. Although I’d spent a little time with Stuart, we didn’t know each other very well. We just happened to be together when we heard the scream.

When the woman screamed for the second time, she sounded like she was struggling with someone. Stuart and I stared at each other for a moment, uncertain about what we should do next. Stuart quickly darted for the stairs as I followed close behind. The stairs led directly to an emergency exit that seemed to be in the right place. Stuart shoved it open and stepped aside, allowing me to run out at full speed.

My feet crunched on newly fallen snow as I slipped on a layer of ice beneath, barely keeping my balance. I was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and it was well below zero. I turned, frantically searching for the woman and already feeling the intense cold. Standing next to the now-opened door was a man who stood with his hands clasped around the neck and shoulders of a woman. She was pressed against the wall in the back alley of the church. He was wearing a suit and a warm-looking leather jacket. The woman was dressed in an evening gown that shimmered when she moved. She had golden hair and was quite beautiful.

When the man saw me, he took his hands off her throat and grabbed her by the wrist. I looked at Stuart, who was still standing in the open doorway, looking as scared as I felt. We briefly locked eyes just before he turned and ran, the door slamming shut behind him. The door didn’t have a handle on the outside. Stuart had locked me out in the alley with the man.

As he turned, I immediately knew I was in trouble. I’ve always been the skinny kid. Throughout my childhood I dreamed of being the wiry kid who was hard to pin down in a fight, but this was only a dream. There is a difference between skinny and wiry. Skinny means you just have skin over your bones. Wiry means you have tight muscles under that skin. Wiry kids are cool. This man, on the other hand, was neither skinny nor wiry; by the looks of him he’d probably always been the muscle kid. The muscle kid has a six-pack by the age of five and never loses it.

Both the man and the woman seemed as confused by my presence as I was. He looked at me, waiting.

With a voice that squeaked with fear I stuttered, Take … I had to clear my throat. Take your hands off the … girl. I’m sure my tone was more distressed than forceful.

I’m not sure why I chose to speak like a superhero. It probably came from watching too much Batman on TV as a child. The man looked me in the eye, the edges of his mouth curving in a small smile. Even the lady didn’t seem as appreciative as I would have hoped.

Get out of here, he said. Leave us alone or you’re going to get hurt. His tone was more irritated than angry.

He was right. This man was at least twenty-five, and I was only eighteen. I was a kid from the suburbs who had never been in a real fight. This was a guy from the city. Everyone knows that guys from the city know what to do with their fists. I’d seen Lean on Me.

I can’t … He turned and gave me an are you really still here? look. Taking a step back, I continued. I can’t do that. You need to let her go. This time I sounded more like I was asking a question.

I spent my childhood dreaming about being in this kind of situation. In my dreams I had bigger muscles and a lower voice, and I was never scared. I’d stare into the mirror, furrow my brow, and then point and say, Let go of the girl, or, I guess I’m going to have to teach you a lesson, or, Prepare to meet Mr. Pain! I’d practice these and many other ridiculous lines with the desperate hope that I might someday have a reason to say them. I still practice these kinds of lines, but now it’s usually while I’m driving, which is much more grown-up.

A moment later, I found myself lying flat on my back in the snow. My jaw was throbbing, and I had no idea where I was. I honestly never saw him hit me. I was looking at him, but the whole fist coming toward my face thing somehow escaped my notice. After a moment of confusion my eyes focused on the man. He crouched low and grabbed my shirt. I still didn’t know what was happening; to this day I’m not sure if he was trying to hit me again or pick me up and tell me to run along. I started thrashing around, like a snow angel in distress. Just then the emergency door opened again, and this time there were five men standing in it. Stuart had returned with backup, thank God. When my friends saw me, it looked like I was wrestling with the man.

Until now, I haven’t felt the need to tell the truth of this story. If they wanted to think I was wrestling, who was I to tell them different?

Although this story is slightly embarrassing, it’s also something I’m proud of. I stepped outside and stood up for someone who needed help. Even though I lost the fight, I lived a story that would help define me for years to come. But when I watched the woman being beaten in Haiti, I don’t think I could have made myself grab the door handle, let alone get out of the truck.

Death on the Wind

Hours before the woman was attacked, I had arrived at a hospital in Pétionville, just south of Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. I was there to do some research for a documentary I was planning to direct. As soon as I walked through the gate to the hospital, the priest spotted me and asked if I would help his staff load the trucks. He told me we were heading into Cité Soleil with much-needed medical supplies.

In 2006, the priest was the only white man who could come and go in Cité Soleil with relative ease. He was well-known as a man who stood up for the poor and the oppressed. Although this was the first of many days I would spend with him, it was immediately clear that he has a deep affection for the Haitian people. He has lived and worked in Haiti since the early 1980s, and his French/Creole comes more naturally to him than his English.

I followed a few young men up a long, dark stairway to grab some supplies from a storage room. They all seemed to be in a hurry to load the trucks and get moving. Later I learned that virtually all of the men who accompanied the priest on these outings owed him their lives. Every one of them had either come out of gangs or from off the streets. The priest had loved them enough to actually step into their worlds and be the love that I usually only talk about.

At the top of the stairs was a storage room filled with portable X-ray machines, crates of medical supplies, and long, rectangular boxes. Only when I picked up one of the boxes did I realize what it was. I had never touched a coffin before. This wasn’t one of the fancy coffins I’d seen in movies; this was a thin, long box made of cardboard. I carried it down, wondering if we were going to a funeral. After I loaded it into the back of the truck, I went back upstairs with the young men and grabbed another. In the end we loaded eight coffins and a myriad of medical supplies.

As we drove away from the hospital, the priest told me the story behind the coffins.

When we drive through Cité Soleil, we often find bodies rotting on top of the trash heaps scattered throughout the city, he said very matter-of-factly. I started bringing coffins with me because I can’t imagine what it would be like for kids who have to walk past these bodies every day on their way to school — not to mention the diseases the bodies spread.

You find bodies just lying on piles of trash? I couldn’t believe it. How do they get there?

On a bad week we’ll find seven or eight, but sometimes it’s only a couple, he said. They are people who’ve either been killed by a gang or have died from malnutrition or some disease. Most households don’t have money for a proper burial, so the bodies are thrown on piles of trash. Imagine what it does to a five-year-old child to walk past a rotting body on a daily basis. That child doesn’t have a chance of growing up normally. People wonder how some of these gangsters can be so cruel. Just think about that five-year-old and then see if you still wonder. In just a few years, these boys and girls will be young men and women, and unless someone does something, they will be the next gang leaders of Haiti. So we pick up the bodies when we see them, and we bury them. The people appreciate it, and the kids can walk to school without having to experience that kind of thing.

My mind couldn’t comprehend this kind of horror. I didn’t say anything mainly because I didn’t know