Rising to Find Victory

‘Are we killing her?’ I ask myself as I lay hands on her to pray during our morning worship time. We’ve lost two more and the pain overwhelms. She keeps her eyes open, staring blankly at the ceiling. I know all too well what the expression means. The pain seems more real than His presence. Questions without answers tumble around the mind and become easier to think on than the distant glimmer of truth. What we believed for shatters and arms search for something more stable to grab hold. Engaging with the heart becomes too painful and so it tempts us to disconnect from our Source.

She’s the strongest one I know. She’s fought it all. We’ve walked life closely together for over a year and she walks it with much more stability than I manage. Her life is one of joy. So I look into her empty hurting face that holds back tears but is filled with pain, and I can’t help but question. ‘Are we killing her?’ As we challenge our team to love deeper, give extravagantly, fight harder, run faster? Are we killing these precious ones who have given everything?

I look into her distant eyes that refuse to connect with Him and fear for her shattered heart. But in reality I know the fear, the questions, are more for me. When getting out of bed feels harder than it should. When the basic necessities require more effort than I have. When breath comes hard and everyday life feels like a battle. ‘Is it killing me?’ This loving with no mind to self. Giving everything I have within me. Pouring out my life for the One who is worthy. ‘How do I survive it?’

She reconnects slowly. Eyes closed she looks into His face again and the tears begin to fall. I can feel her pain in my own heart. It’s too familiar. My almost daily reality in the past season. She finds what she needs in Him and somehow rises again. She returns to the battlefield leading all of her soldiers in training to do the same. Over the next two days her expression changes back to what I know. Her joy is found again as she exclaims to all how amazing her God is.  

Her rising gives me strength. This season is hard and loss and disappointment seem to touch everything I’m doing. My heart is tired and wants to lay down, give up. But as I see the strength in my friend, somehow I know I’ll rise again.  To a place where hope is more than just a word. Where love is not a theology but a lifestyle.  Where vision seems as real as reality because I’ve found it in the heartbeat of God.

Some days I’m a warrior. And some days I’m a wounded soldier. Some days I’m healing. And some days I refuse to acknowledge the wounds are even there.

But there’s hope, because I’m not the only one fighting. There’s an army around me and a very very big God on my side.

More than a Statistic

 

Two more orphans were created in the world today. The numbers are easy to hear:132 million orphans, another every two seconds, 42,000 created every day. But hard to really grasp. 

But suddenly, once you’ve seen, held, loved, it enters your reality and it’s not a number anymore. Poverty stole the life of my friend today and created two more orphans in our world. 

I’ve seen her little legs run full speed into arms that are no longer there. I’ve seen her reach up to hand over school work and wait for the approval that always follows. A mother who can’t read or even understand the language her daughter is learning but knows how to encourage the one she loves. I’ve seen the look on a little boy’s face as the one who’s always been there for him comes around the corner and he reaches from my arms to hers. He knows where everything he needs comes from and that’s where he wants to be. I’ve seen the smile that lights up his face when she’s around and heard a laugh that only she knows how to produce from him. And the way his cry causes her to cry as we drive to the hospital unsure if we will make it before malnutrition and sickness take him from our grasp.

Those arms, those eyes, that beautiful smile that she hides behind her hands in embarrassment are no longer here. And two more orphans are added to the 132 million. 

This is the face of a statistic that the world utters but doesn’t understand. To Junior and Susan and so many like them, it has nothing to do with a number. And once it becomes more than an number to the rest of the world, everything can change. 

Journey of Suffering…

This was a recent facebook status of mine…

“just killed a rat with a wardrobe. feeling pretty hardcore...”

It received 40 likes and 10 comments.

The day before I posted this status…

“For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps.--1 Peter 2:21
Maybe we should add suffering like Christ to our resolutions for this year???”

It received 8 likes and 3 comments.

Now this isn’t an official poll, but I think it highlights how we view suffering. Often our lives are built on avoiding it as we seek fun, health, comfort, and safety. It makes sense I guess. If possible, avoid the bad, go after the good. But this isn’t what I see when I look at the life of Jesus.

Our God is one who suffers. It’s the message of the cross, what the whole Gospel centers around. A God who left perfection and entered pain, who laid down rights and comfort and safety so that I can enter into the fullness of life.

Paul said he wanted to ‘know the power of His resurrection.’ This is what I spend my life pursuing. I want to know what was accomplished on the cross both for my life and the lives of the broken people I hold every day. I long for the fullness of His resurrection to explode everywhere I go. To release the fullness of salvation, healing, hope, life, and freedom to everyone around me.

I’ll give my life so that others can have what Jesus dies for. But will I give my life for the second part of that verse? ‘To know the fellowship of His sufferings, becoming like him in death’? Will I model the one I love and lay my life down so that others can know Him.

Every New Years I evaluate my life. I think through what I like and what I don’t and dream about what my life could look like. This year all I know to dream for is my relationship with Jesus. I know there’s so much more and all I can ask for is closeness with Him. I want to know His breath, his whisper, his desires. But He is a Savior who chose the cross. He is a God who chose death. So as I pursue closeness with Him, I have to be willing to go there as well.

May my life be poured out like a drink offering to Jesus like so many others who have walked this journey of suffering before me. He is more than worth the whole of my life.

One who joyful endured suffering…Beaten so badly her leg was broken but still full of joy. My miniature hero

Do they Know?

This time last week I was walking around a slum in Juba, South Sudan where rape, death, and hunger are the norm. This morning I went Christmas shopping in England. I wrote this blog this time last year, but thought it was a good reminder as we surround ourselves with presents, and lights, and yummy food.

Early December I spent walking the streets of S Sudan, experiencing poverty like I’ve never seen, dreaming for a nation. Crying for the pain that’s so real there. Holding precious broken children in my arms. Hearing stories I hesitate to repeat. Stirring my spirit to believe for something greater, clinging to the truth that with Jesus, there’s ALWAYS hope.

I arrived home, excited to see me housemates, desperate to visit my babies, but sad and burdened at the same time. As I walked in my front door, my eyes went to the Christmas tree that had been put up while I was away. A tiny scrap of a thing. Needing branches to fill the barren spaces, tacky décor wrapped around the small plastic trunk, nothing spectacular, but representing 26 years of Christmas traditions in my life.

The contrast from where I’d just been to what I was walking into was almost too much. Tomorrow is Christmas eve and the evidence is everywhere. Lights, Santas, displays in every window, cold air causing us to wrap up tight. The child in me is alive, wanting to celebrate, excited for Christmas morning to arrive and to eat and celebrate with amazing friends.

But I can’t forget, and over and over I’m drawn back to the ones who remain. I sat with them for just a few moments offering them the little I had to give, then walked away. They’ve lived in the same place for years, unable to escape the hell life has become.

A mosquito net as a ‘house’, a broken piece of foam as a bed, scraps of food for days worth of meals. Being intentionally burned by parents for stealing food so maybe she wouldn’t go to bed hungry. Hiding under your bed pretending not to hear as her mother sells herself again so that you can survive. At 17 years, putting your precious daughter in the grave when after 4 years she loses the fight for survival and dies of malnutrition. Innocence lost at six years of age as an older man forces her to do things no child should ever experience.  

And as I sit here, watching the lights brighten and dim on my Christmas tree, I wonder, will they even know? After three years of surviving on street corner, giving birth in the dirt, eating scraps, will my precious friend know it’s Christmas? As I open gifts and eat more food than should be allowed will they remember what day it is? Will they have any reason to celebrate? Will they know that the Creator of everything eye can see, gave up eternity, perfection, relationship with His Father to come and live with me, with them? Will they know that He gave everything, entrusted Himself into the arms of a teenage girl?

And will they know why He did it? Will they know of His incomparable love that led Him to the cross to be beaten, shamed, and killed? Will they know the pain of separation when their sin, our sin, landed on Him and the Father looked away? Will they know that they are desperately longed for by the God of love? Do they know it’s Christmas?

“Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” But how can they call on him to save them unless they believe in him? And how can they believe in him if they have never heard about him? And how can they hear about him unless someone tells them? –Romans 10

His Heartbeat in the Brothel

We walk in confidently but completely out of place in this community built around sex. I look around and try to take it in. Every person I see is either a prostitute, a pimp, or a customer. Hundreds of people in every direction. Even the children are the product, and the hopelessness in their faces shows they've known nothing else. I try to look in the eyes of the woman standing next to me, but there's nothing left. She wants help but not connection. Her heart has been blocked to do the only job she knows. Her frail young boy walks between us, and I fear what his future will hold if he doesn't make it out of this place. She's 12 months pregnant, or so she says, but the baby won't come. We enter her 'room' so the doctor who is with us can check for a heartbeat. I kneel on the floor in this tiny room where child lives and Mama works. A customer comes to the door to sleep with this women about to give birth. My mind struggles to grasp their lifestyle. We exit the hot tin structure housing dozens of prostitutes. There's a crowd outside, gathered to find out why the white people are in their territory. Two young girls walk around as if this place is home. I pray that somehow they will be protected from what their future no doubt holds. Things begin to escalate and we're forced to leave. We're not wanted here. Our existence is a threat to their lifestyle. We leave reluctantly. As we drive away, brokenness overwhelms me, but somehow I manage to hold on to Hope. Words fail and I don't even know what to say to the One who holds my heart. The others I'm with recount how horrible the place is. We question together what can be done. Jesus whispers and through tears Him and I dream together. He reminds me of His faithfulness that I've found in the dry places, and I know it's for them as well. He sees their pain, their brokenness, their sin. And He's there. Pursuing with full force as He's pursued me. He's breaking in to these tin shacks where livelihoods are made through sex. And he's doing it by placing his burning desire and his passionate fire in anyone who is willing to carry it. He's pursuing them through me. And I wonder if that's the question we should be asking. Not why places like this exist. Not where is God in the suffering. But why aren't more people willing to carry His heartbeat into the darkness?