The Woman at the Bar

Alone, she sits, glass half empty in her trembling hand. Her occasional visits have become a nightly ritual of total surrender to the toxic, amber liquid numbing her brain. And there, forsaken and forgotten, she sits in the dim light, mopping her tears with a soggy napkin. She’s the talk of the town, an outcast, looking for love in all the wrong places. Every bartender knows her name, but no one knows her gut-wrenching story.

She was orphaned as a young child and taken into foster care, where she was beaten, molested, and worked like a slave on the farm. Her foster mother was a demon from hell and lashed out all her resentment, anger, and rage on her tiny, frail body. She walked miles to school in the freezing cold and rain, and many times, she discovered rocks in her lunch pail instead of food.

When she wet the bed, her foster mother would hang the stained wet sheets out her bedroom window for everyone to see. She had no friends. No voice. No one to dry her tears in the dark and lonely nights.

When she was finally old enough to leave the foster home, she found her estranged family, who lived nearby. But it was not a happy reunion. Again, she met with danger in the filthy, greedy hands of her alcoholic father and one of her ten brothers. Betrayal of the worst kind; unwanted, unprotected, unloved. That’s the badge she wore on her heart that never aged with time.

Barely in her teens, she fell in love with a handsome, blue-eyed Romeo and gave him her body, heart, and soul. But when she got pregnant with his child, he slammed the door in her face. She wasn’t good enough, pretty enough, smart enough. Neither he nor his family wanted anything to do with her or the baby girl she carried.

Months later, she married a man who claimed to love her, and despite having given him two sons, she didn’t love him. He began drinking, sleeping around, and contracted a sexually transmitted disease. So she took her three children and left him. But her troubles were far from over. Her second son was born brain-damaged. When he was three, he became severely ill with encephalitis and suffered extremely high fevers, causing even more brain damage, and was committed to a sanitarium, where he spent the rest of his life.

So each night she pushes open the door, every head turning, every eye rolling, as she shuffles across the floor and slumps heavily on the barstool. Greedily, she gulps down the first glass, and then another.

Suddenly, a man walks through the door and quietly sits on the stool next to her. His smile is warm, mysterious, compelling, drawing her into the depths of his soul. Even before he spoke, she knew he was no ordinary man.

“I’ve never seen you here before,” she said, her voice low and raspy. “Do you come here often?”

His penetrating eyes pierced her soul, exposing the darkness hidden there. What does he see? Why is he sitting here next to me? There are other empty barstools. Why did he pick that one?

Clearing her throat, she presses her arms tightly against her body, as if to shield it from further exposure. He’s so strange, yet so intriguing, his eyes so piercing. What does he want with me?

“So, do you have family around here?” she asks, trying to control her slurring tongue. “What’s your story? I’m sure you have one. Everyone has a story.”

Chuckling softly, he answers, “Yes, I have a story. A story so wild and out of this world that most people don’t believe it. But, right now, I’m interested in your story.”

Seriously? He walks into this dreary, noisy, godforsaken barroom looking like a saint, and wants to hear my life’s story? The story I try to forget? The story that haunts me in my dreams and tortures my days? The once-upon-a-time story with no happy ending?

Gulping down another swallow of the fiery liquid, she squirms on the barstool as a flood of emotions stumbles from her mouth. “I lived with a man once. But he threw my love away. Then I married a man, but never gave him my heart. He gave up on me and found solace in the arms of other women.”

“Yes, I know about your husband, and the man you lived with but never married. I also know about your childhood and the reckless decisions you made as a result. I know everything about you. Nothing can stay hidden in the dark from my all-seeing eyes.”

Slowly, she raised her head and, gazing intently into his soulful eyes, her stone-cold heart began to melt. Feelings she tried to numb, memories she tried to forget, are suddenly revealed in the light of his presence.

“Excuse me, sir,” she stammered. “I heard about a man called Jesus who came to free the world from sin. I even heard that he died on the cross and rose from the dead! You couldn’t possibly be him, could you? I mean, it doesn’t seem likely that you’d come to this godless place, least of all talking to me, a woman, scorned and rejected by society.”

“Yes, I am he, and I’ve come here to set you free. In your blinding grief, you stumbled off and were captured by the jaws of death. Night after night, you come here to quench your thirst, but stagger out the door thirstier than when you arrived. Drink from me, the springs of living water, and you will never thirst again.

Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah? (John 4:29).

Closing words:
This is a true story about my mother’s abusive childhood and her tumultuous life as a result of it. She sang in the bars for mere pennies to help support herself and her two children. No, she didn’t meet Jesus at a bar in the flesh; she met him at the foot of the cross, where she repented and gave her life to him.

It doesn’t matter where you meet Jesus; it only matters that you do and invite Him into your heart and life ~Sandi