Finding Glenn

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“Herb, Glenn is missing.”

My mother’s phone call induced an immediate tension in my chest. Glenn, my oldest brother by eighteen years, was last seen stepping onto a bus on Crenshaw Boulevard just north of Interstate 10 in Los Angeles and hadn’t been heard from again for days.

It was a familiar feeling, that tension. Glenn had a habit of doing crazy things that kept our family’s cortisone levels sky high. But it wasn’t his fault. Even though at the time he disappeared he looked like an adult in his 50’s, Glenn was really a child in an adult body. As a result of an accident as a toddler, he suffered a head injury that left him permanently brain damaged with the mental ability of a five year old.

I suppose it was the frustration of watching his four younger siblings grow up and surpass him in the things we could do, like going to school, driving a car and going on dates, that led Glenn to start brush fires in our neighborhood. It was all for attention, of course. And attention it got! As a result of setting those fires, the State of California made Glenn its permanent ward and put him in a mental hospital in Pomona.

Governor Ronald Reagan’s budget cuts forced the state to close that hospital and “mainstream” Glenn in a neighborhood halfway home for the mentally handicapped. But it just so happened that his home was located in front of that bus stop on Crenshaw Boulevard, a temptation that proved just too much for Glenn.

I hung up the phone and caught the first flight back to Los Angeles.

“We’ve filed a missing person’s report with the police,” my mom said as I walked through the front door of my childhood home, which also happened to be near Crenshaw Boulevard.

“But so far, we haven’t heard anything,” she added.

I found a large picture of Glenn in a frame, drove to the bus stop in front of his half way home, got on the bus and walked down the isle, holding Glenn’s picture up and asking if anyone had seen him get on the bus. No success.

Every time another person got on the bus, I showed them Glenn’s picture and asked if they had seen him. Still no success. After several miles, I got off, crossed the street, and rode the bus back, again showing Glenn’s picture. And again, no one recognized him. All day long I rode the bus up and down Crenshaw Boulevard asking people if they had seen my brother. No one had.

I was getting discouraged. But I didn’t give up. The next day I tried the same strategy, still to no avail. But it was late on my second night in Los Angeles that we got a break. Glenn had been found in South Pasadena sleeping in the back of a bus!

Dad, Mom and I all paused to thank God for answering our prayers. What a relief we felt!

I look back on that experience as a “compassion boot camp”: God teaching me in real life how he actually feels about losing someone; how intensely concerned he is for them. Jesus described this feeling in his famous parable about the lost sheep.

“What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wader off. In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish.”¹

Christian, we were that hundredth sheep. We once were lost, but now are found. Amen and Amen.

This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.

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1. Matthew 18:12-14, New International Version