“Why Us?”
Once, the family of the Reverend Jimmy Allen was blessed with an unshakable faith in God. Then came AIDS, banishment, and death—and a need to ask the eternal question.
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Churches are by nature secret places. Every one has a secret, and it’s part of the group covenant that everyone agrees to keep the secrets of everyone else. The First Baptist Church in San Antonio was such a place. The secret everyone knew about the Allen family involved Jimmy’s wife, Wanda. She suffered from depression. In the early seventies she was so depressed that she disappeared from public view. For a long time she was hospitalized at Timberlawn Psychiatric Hospital in Dallas. To his credit, Jimmy did not hide his wife’s illness. One Sunday evening he told the whole church about it. The reaction was overwhelmingly supportive; everyone felt sorry for the whole family.
Wanda Allen had good reason to be depressed. Like many other preachers’ wives, she was married to a man who was married to his mission. The family he devoted most of his time and energy to was not Wanda and their three boys but the heavenly one he was building for his congregation. Twenty years later, Wanda has recovered from her depression but Jimmy is haunted by the memories. “During Wanda’s illness, I had to face up to the fact that my priorities had to change,” recalled Jimmy. “Wanda viewed me as the man with a telephone to God, and she was all alone with no phone to anyone. Once I realized that, we got a clearer and healthier relationship, but it was too late for the early years of my children.”
Silence came between us. Allen knew these were not idle questions for me; I was asking them from my own experience. My father once worked full-time for the Baptist church as a minister of music. Now I am married to a Methodist minister. I know what it’s like to love someone who answers only to his own ideas of God’s changing will. I settled my mind on a long shaft of light that poured through the library window and then asked the question that has lived inside of me for as long as I can remember, the question that I know has already formed in my own two small children.
“Was it worth it?” I asked Allen. “Was it worth it to give so much of yourself to the church at the expense of your own family?”
I saw grief shoot through him the way fire lights brittle wood. “Yes, it was worth it to love God with all my heart,” he replied, haltingly. ”The mistake I made was in not realizing that God loved my wife and children every bit as much as He loved the church.”
Scott Allen, Jimmy”s youngest son, once had a nightmare. He and his own son Matthew are standing side by side on a pier overlooking the ocean. “Step back,” Scott warns Matthew. “There are sharks in the water.” Just then a shark snatches Matthew in its teeth. As Scott stands by, the shark shakes Matthew back and forth, tearing him apart. Matthew screams and holds out his hand, frantically reaching for his father, but the shark dives deep into the ocean and will not resurface.
This dream became Scott Allen’s reality. Of all the curses put on Job, the worst was when God gave Evil permission to do anything to Job, short of killing him. Scott Allen, who has his father’s stocky build, has been similarly cursed: All the members of his family—his wife and two sons—have been infected with the AIDS virus, but he has been spared. Scott has longed for death and found comfort in his own mortality. “We all get a chance to get off this planet,” said Scott. “There is a transcendence to suffering once it is accepted. Once you’ve faced your own death, then life is receivable.” Even though Scott is still an ordained Baptist minister, he no longer considers himself a Christian, having abandoned the faith three years ago. He now studies Eastern philosophy. As the Chinese who follow the philosophy of Tao Te Ching say, Scott has a “hollow heart”: he has experienced both life and death, which has fortified his wisdom.
“Many Christians can’t live with the absurdity of suffering.” Scott told me over breakfast in Dallas, where he and Matthew now live. “They think suffering has to be answered. Well, sometimes it can’t be answered. It is what it is.”
Scott’s ordeal began on a Sunday in 1982, the night before Matthew was born. Scott was the pastor of a small Southern Baptist church in Pacifica, California, a short drive south of San Francisco. His pregnant wife, Lydia, complained of stomach pains. They drove to the hospital and found out she had toxemia. Ten hours before Matthew was born, Lydia was given a blood transfusion in anticipation of a cesarean section. As it turned out, she didn’t need one. She had a regular delivery. Though no one in the Allen family would know it for three years, both Lydia and Matthew had been given a death sentence. The blood in the transfusion was contaminated with the AIDS virus.
Matthew was sick from the beginning. Eight days after he was born, he had surgery to remove two thirds of his intestines. “I got on my knees with a Bible,” recalled Scott, “and then I begged God: ‘Please don’t take my baby.’” Matthew survived the surgery.
“Have you ever felt you changed the will of God?” asked Scott. “Well, I have considered it, and believe me, it’s a very dangerous thing to do.”
Scott was falling—falling from the Baptist fold that had fragilely contained him since childhood. He was eleven when he first met Lydia. Her father was Luke Williams, who served as Jimmy Allen’s second-in-command at the First Baptist Church and was the director of church activities. The two men functioned well as a team because they were opposites. Williams was organized and always under control and kept his emotions concealed; his nickname was Cool Hand Luke. Allen was a visionary, his interior eye permanently fixed on larger goals.
Their children had different temperaments as well. Lydia was prim and proper, every bit as cool as her father. She obeyed her parents, made average grades, and loved church. Scott was rebellious. He argued constantly with his father, stopped going to church altogether by the age of fourteen, and got in trouble in high school for drinking.
On the night of March 3, 1976, when Scott was driving on a county road near San Antonio, another driver, traveling at 75 miles per hour, came into Scott’s lane and hit his car head-on. Scott was driven into the back seat by the impact and seriously injured. He still has a scar on his forehead. Shortly before entering Baylor University in Waco, Scott had a traditional conversion experience. “I was alone, reading the Bible, and I wanted a different way of life,” said Scott. “I did the old, old story. I got down on my knees and gave my life to Jesus. I felt called to the ministry, even though I really didn’t want to follow in Dad’s path and he didn’t want me to either.”
Lydia, who was studying to be a medical missionary at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, was pleased with Scott’s change. The two were married at the First Baptist Church on August 17, 1978. It was a royal Baptist wedding. Lydia, who had shoulder-length brown hair, wore a size four wedding dress made by her sister. Jimmy Allen officiated at the ceremony. Soon Scott and Lydia were off to Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary in San Francisco. While Scott worked as a pastor, Lydia worked as a psychiatric nurse. She sang in the church choir and taught Sunday school.
In 1982, after Matthew was born, the family moved to Colorado Springs, where Scott accepted a position as an associate minister at the First Christina Church. Health problems followed Lydia and Matthew. Matthew had continual ear infections and was not growing at a normal rate. He woke up five or six times a night, begging to be held. Lydia was sick too, with night sweats, colds, and shingles. They made regular trips to the doctor, but no one could tell them what was wrong.
Two years after Matthew was born, Lydia got pregnant again. On May 13, 1985, she gave birth to Bryan. He was born prematurely with heart defects. “What is happening to us?” an anguished Scott asked Lydia. “Why are we getting blindsided by life?”
Four months later, on September 15, 1985, Scott and Lydia got their answer. A woman from a San Francisco blood bank called and told Lydia there was a chance that the blood she had received years earlier was contaminated with the AIDS virus. Suddenly the pattern of unusual illnesses that had plagued Lydia, Matthew, and Bryan fell into place: Lydia knew instantly that they would all die of AIDS.
Lydia asked the caller from the blood bank whether she should have Matthew tested. “Unless you are having sex with him, you do not need to worry,” was the reply. Lydia shouted, “This is my life!” and hung up the telephone. Five days later, Lydia had Matthew tested for AIDS. He was a high positive.
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