Mooresville, NC

I sat down on this padded porch chair, putting my coffee down and breathing a deep sigh of relief. It’s been forever since I have written, and the past however many weeks hit me like a wave knocking me off my feet. For a person that finds peace and inspiration in being still and reminding myself why I am alive, I have taken almost no opportunity to do so. I love my life being go-go-go, but only because I am able to stop and acknowledge the pace and reflect to find closure and peace through writing. My life has to be made of of conversations, faces, places, tiny moments, steps taken somewhere new. But if I am not documenting these, if they don’t cement into my heart through the written word, they blow away like dead weeds in the wind, I feel empty.

In six weeks, I have had people in my life that could be complicated protagonists in a novel, epic characters on the big screen. People who live in a dark world, who see through their hands touching someone’s skin. People who’s eyes show a world of confusion and unrest. Others, who’s sparkle with joy, who see the world they same way they did on their third birthday. I have held hands with eternal children, locked in an aging bodie they hardly know what to do with. People who love without any reason, who hug like they would cease to exist if they let go, who laugh without any occasion. They wrapped their way around my heart, chocking out questions of growing up, finances, balance, practicalities.

They’ve left me with the transcending idea that anything not done to bring brightness, love or hope in another human beings life is utterly ridiculous and pointless.

And so I continue to live my life. When selfishness entraps me, I know I must bust out by centering myself through writing, then action. I cannot have one without the other. It is call and response, faith and works, prayer and mission.

I have a hard time explaining my life. I can’t explain how I am so blessed, how I am dirt poor and yet the whole world is open to me. I can’t explain how I know people worth their weight in gold, how the riches of my conversations and experiences overwhelm me to tears at times. If I told you I worked my hands to the bone to make my own dreams come true, that would be a complete lie. It is only Grace. It seems almost effortless, all things becoming new and falling into place, God’s plan for my life, all doors opening up. It is a gift, no strings attached. I have thrown out my old sense of obligation to try to pay back such a gift or even try to understand why I am the recipient of it. Just receive.

The night before I left Texas, I had a vivid dream. I dreamt I was in China, in an old temple, intricately and beautifully designed. I had my camera and was capturing what I could with it, through the window, people outside in the market. I turned around and saw a small yellow butterfly landed on the floor of the temple. I snapped a close up of it to my satisfaction, and turned once again to photograph a small boy with a shaved head standing in the doorway. When I turned back around, I was shocked to see not one, but hundreds of yellow butterflies on the floor next to the one.

I know my life is about capturing the beauty thats around me through my pen and camera. Ultimately, that beauty is human beings. Many of us our caterpillars, we start off crawling in the dirt, hardly believing it is possible to ever fly. The metamorphosis that takes place, makes the wings in the end that much more a miracle. I want to capture those redemption stories, and it may just start with one, but who knows what it will become.

Since I’ve left for this month long road trip, I can’t help but see yellow butterflies wherever I go.

My first week at camp was interesting. I love it, but it’s really challenging.  I have always been around people with special needs, so it wasn’t a culture shock. My brother has Downs syndrome,  and my dad and my best friend’s mom worked with them. Often, I try to hard to psychoanalyze people with special needs.  Are they happy? How do they process life? How self aware are they? There has been times when I have actually been jealous of my brother because he seems so content and full of joy. Maybe it’s not that ignorance is bliss, but simplicity is.

My brother Robert (age 20) last summer in Maine

This week I had an array of campers, all of them with multiple disabilities, some with some degree of of visual and hearing impairment and mental retardation. One woman was completely blind and deaf. It was hard to tell how much she understood, communication was extremely limited. She had an obsession with armpits and breasts and would hit my elbow in order to try to stick her finger in her armpits. Several were self abusive and would pick themselves till they bled or bang their heads on hard objects. The week was full of stress, mental and physical exhaustion, but plenty of moments of joy and laughter.  One of my campers, an older hispanic lady, would break into the macarana whenever you started dancing. Another followed me around, ecstatically grinning and high-fiving and always wanting to give me hugs. I got to help them swim, ride horses, go down the zip line, dance, paint, and make jewelry.

At the end of the week, I was so ready for them to go home, but it was sort of bittersweet. The parents came to pick them up, and one of the moms thanked the other counselors and I  profusely. She told us that we had no idea how much it meant to her and her husband to have just a five day vacation. Their daughter, (the huggy one who followed me around everywhere) was 21 and adopted and it was her first year at camp.

“I have a lot of miles on me.” She said, as her daughter jumped up and down, babbling sign language. She shared how it has taken years to teach her daughter even to put on deodorant. She has Charge Syndrome and no sense of smell or hearing.

“And she doesn’t even get it in her armpit! the mom chuckled, “She still tries to put it on her elbow. But four years ago she put it on her wrist, so she is getting closer. We rejoice at the little things.”

We laughed with her, but inside I was filled with emotion at the thought of that kind of dedication and patience in raising a child that never truly grows up.  I thought of my own parents and the sacrifices they have made for my brother. What kind of things does that teach you about life?

I know my own perception needs to be altered on a daily basis. So often I find myself responding out of humanistic thinking that a person’s value  is based on what they can contribute to society, that the mind is god over the heart. I need to be reminded that it is those who live as little children that are truly living. There is also something about taking care of people’s basic physical and emotional needs that takes the weight of my own complications out of my head. There is no room for them.

I am re-posting something I wrote in China after visiting an depressing orphanage and having my perception changed through in encounter with a child sitting in his wheelchair in the corner, forgotten.

The Kingdom Is Yours (From “All Things Are Becoming New”)

What do you see when you stare at the wall?
You are strapped to a wheel chair, unable to move.
You can’t control your own muscles, drool drips down your chin.
One eye is fixed on something in the distance, one to the side.
Thick black tufts of hair grow in all directions from your head.
What do you think? Do you know who you are, what you are?
Are you screaming inside, trapped in this body? How do you feel?
You grab my hand. I hold yours tight.
You look at me with those eyes, black as night.
What do I see?
You smile, like you have a secret you want to tell me.
And I get this sense like I have tricked.
I look into your eyes, and I don’t see rejection and hopelessness. I see life.
I get this sense like you have seen things I have never dreamed of.
I know, strapped in a chair in this room in this orphanage, you have been places I could never imagine.
The kingdom is yours.
Blessed are the poor. The weak. The meek. The last ones. The rejected.
You grab my hand tighter.
Who am I to pity you?
I am too strong. Too independent. Too beautiful.
Too grown up to see what you see, past the colorful wall, out the door, into the air, up and up.
The kingdom is yours.
You know it. You have seen it. You belong to it.
“What do you see?” I ask again, and you begin to grin.
I’ve had it all wrong. This world is backwards and upside down.
I see in your eyes, that the kingdom is yours.

I believe, as time goes on, I will realize even more, we need people with “special needs.”

“Maybe the last ones are the lucky ones, the ones who got this whole thing figured out. Cause when they go looking for something beautiful, they start looking from the inside out.” – Matthew West.

I just got back from a three week meander across the west coast and back. It was an interesting trip. I felt like I was in the movie “Away We Go.” In the movie, a pregnant couple travel across the US visiting people, trying to find a place they belong. (I love this movie- and not just cause it has Jim from The Office. And NO I am definitely NOT pregnant and most of the time I was by myself or with my friend Jeanne so it was a little different.) In the end of the movie the couple ends up finding home in the most unlikely place- the one place that the girl had been avoiding, her past.

After six years of living in Lindale, being in Teen Mania then YWAM, I am in this interesting transition. The possibilities are spread before me, and I have the constant choice of excitement or fear.

Each place I went to, I envisioned myself living there, stating my life with my love. Each trendy city I was in, I convinced myself it was so much better then Texas. Each person I stayed with I had some sort of conversation about relationships, marriage families, trying to piece together what it all means.

I watched my dear friend who has waited 28 years without a boyfriend get married to the man of her dreams. Caught the bouquet, danced with precious girl friends.  I stayed up late with with a friend as she processed her recent break up.  I drove around the San Fransisco, listened to my aunt talk about the days of the hippy movement, the history of the city, of my own family. I held my  brand new baby twin nieces, one with down syndrome, smiled as I heard my sister-in-law say “I love my kids so much. There is no love in the world like that.” Watched my friend’s roommate who is a newly wed, grieve over her mom passing away a few days before.  We stayed with another friend had recently got a divorce.  She is just beginning to find herself again. Stopped in Salt Lake city and and stayed with one of “my girls” from ministry team who is about to get married.  Ended up where I started- back in Denver with my best friend who is about to have a baby in a few weeks.

I thought too much about my future. Of the job I am starting at the camp in Dallas for disabled people on Saturday. Of the month long road trip/tour my boyfriend and I are taking in August. Of marriage, kids, travel, ministry, writing. What will be.

Beneath all the layers of the painful and beautiful memories of the people that altered my soul in my time in India. I realized and admitted to having some sort of  mild post traumatic stress syndrome. I have been so afraid to admit how much India affected me. That, in itself, is part of the healing.

On the bus ride back, entering Texas I felt that strange sentimental feeling like I was coming home. Back to the place I am always trying to escape from. The place where I was born again, the place I found God and life.

The sun rays shot through the Texas sky, peach colored brush strokes, like Jesus coming back into the world and into my soul. I felt a burden lift.

Cause oh, you are home. No matter where I go you’re in my bones. And No matter where I sleep, I never rest outside the place I keep my soul. -Levi Weaver

Lately, I have been struggling with what I believe. I guess it’s because truth is not as black and white as I once thought.

No, it’s a palette of beautiful colors.

Truth is not hard facts written on paper, Truth is a Him, a person, Jesus.

You have to know Him, and that is a lot more complicated then following rules or reciting lines. But it is a lot more life giving. In fact, it’s the only thing that does give life.

There is a lot of blah blah blah theology made from the assumptions and selfishness of humans that I have never questioned. That being said, I don’t really care about that crap. If I cared about it, I would probably say good bye to this awkward contradicting religion thing people call “Christianity.”

So, I have decided instead to focus on what I do know- not much. Here is what I for sure 100% believe in with all my heart, mind and soul.

God is love.
Love is all we need.

Questions of science, science and progress, don’t speak as loud as my heart.

Pain and struggle is always worth what’s on the other side.
Everything has meaning.
Everything is connected.
Jesus is truth.
The mysterious and mystical makes more “sense” then the practical and logical.
Love is never wasted.

Being child-like, seeing things through eyes of wonder and awe, is the only answer to the problems in the world.

The more you see the world, the more you see God.
It’s always about people.
Every person is infinite, deeply complex, fascinating.
Creating is the most brave and beautiful thing someone can do- whether its art, writing, music, food, inventions, or a new life.
I have to write.
I have to constantly go.
There is a sacredness to the poor and abandoned.

Every day is a gift.

Beauty is meant to be captured.
As soon as I stop looking, the answers come.
Going for a walk can be the most “productive” part of my day.

There’s only grace, there’s only love, there’s only mercy and believe me, it’s enough.

It’s not what but who you know, The meaning of life is relationships.

I’ve been given the greatest gift next to salvation- the love of my life, and I am going to be with him till I die.
I don’t know how to love apart from Jesus loving through me.

When heaven meets the earth, we will have no use for numbers to tell us who we are and what we’re worth.

The gospel is offensive to those who don’t realize how broken they are. It is pure grace.

I am broken.
I am whole.

I am nothing apart from God, but I am not apart from Him.

I’ve been back for a bit now. It’s been interesting. It is good, I love being back with people I love, and all. I miss the kids mostly. I am still sorting through and processing everything that happened. There is a lot of changed going on in my life right now.  I am leaving YWAM in a week, I know it’s time to move on.  I am praying about a couple different options, for now I am going to be road tripping to several different places, visiting some people. I am ready to live out of a suitcase for a bit. Such is the nature of my life. To go, and to write about it.

Here’s an Article I got published on Assist News.

http://www.assistnews.net/Stories/2010/s10060029.htm

Well, I am home. It’s been a journey to say the least.

India for me has been a love-hate relationship. I didn’t think I could cope at first. It was an odd feeling, me being the world traveler, and adventurer. It felt like too much, too many old women with hands left as stubs from leprosy, too many five year old girls with tangled hair and dirty faces looking at me with pleading eyes. Too many sad stories. How do you reconcile your life after something like that? How do you live “normally” pretending to care about all the things that used to mean so much? I didn’t think it would be that big of a culture shock, and so it was. I didn’t think I could be as calloused as I was at times, only to break open in a frenzy of tears. There were times when the faces and stories would build in my mind until I finally just had to grieve.

Yet those breaking moments were necessary and made it all worthwhile. It was only after breaking when I could see the light shine through. That joy, that hope I experienced seemed to transcend the most difficult of realities.

The other week we took a group of eight girls from the red light district to a water park. That morning, our contact went to pick them up, there was a police raid. Girls scattered, some were caught and beaten, thrown in inhumane prisons. The newspaper headlines boasted of underaged girls being rescued, but we knew it wasn’t a rescue for those who were over 18. Even if they had been sold into the chains of the brothel at a young age, if they were an adult, it was their fault, and they would be punished.

Those eight girls had wide smiles, despite their narrow escape and their bone deep tiredness after working all night. Days were usually meant for sleeping. That day, it was fun in the sun and water. We rushed down the water slide, racing, piling on mats to go faster. We splashed and knocked each other off of tubes, allowed laughter to be our common language.

There was no separation between us- we were women, allowed to be girls for an afternoon, smiling, waking up, enjoying the feeling of water on our skin in a land so hot and dusty. I watched the girls, brown eyes sparkling, childhood returning, and I knew we were the same.

The joy and innocence of the day was broken beginning with the knowing stares of a few men. I saw those looks and it turned my stomach. A fierce feeling that I needed to protect them came over me and I glared at them with a look at authority. They turned away, temporarily. Next came a ego-filled jock collage guy who felt like it was his civic duty to inform us tourists just who the girls we were hanging out with were. “They must have tricked you! They are not who you think they are! Tourists are like gods in our country, you should not be mixing with such people!”

We calmly informed him that we knew exactly who they were, they were our friends.

He got more and more riled up, yelling about how tourists were gods and they were polluting us. A righteous anger rose up inside of me. I marched over to the group of guys with more courage then I knew I had. I told them that we were not gods, actually we serve the real God, and He made everyone equal, including those precious girls. He wouldn’t have it.

Things escalated. Our contact Joy, finally came out and began talking sternly to the group in the local language. While this was happening, the guy I had told off had stormed off to the garden where charlotte was standing with one of the girls. This girl was sweet yet not mentally all there. She had propositioned the guy earlier, which we didn’t find out till later, was why he was so mad. The guy yelled in her face. Charlotte tried to block him, but he pushed her aside, pushing the girl to the ground, punching her, kicking her.

We saw first hand the hate and prejudiced created by a society where a person’s value is determined by what they are born or forced into.
I kept waiting for Jesus to walk into the scene, draw a line in the sand and say “Whoever has no sin among you throw the first stone.” Afterward, I realized, in our own way, we were doing just that.

Drawing a line in the sand in choosing to simply give of our day to people the rest of the world may deem as garbage. To claim  a person is valuable just because they are alive, because they were created by God, is a bold declaration. Every injustice problem in the world is rooted at the idea that some people are more important than others. In India, we got to reverse that.

I don’t think I will ever forget the people I met, the 8 prostitutes we saw as girls for one afternoon,  the 34 kids who invaded my heart in a deeper way then I thought possible. I know without a doubt, I will continue to write there stories.

“Each one of them is Jesus in disguise.” -Mother Teresa

Promo Video for the Children’s Home we worked on

Week 5 Update
Zoos & Underground Sugar Zane Shops

Every day we walk through our neighborhood, about 10 minutes to the Children’s home. We pass “Raj’s Shoppe” where we buy milk, bread and mango ice cream. We pass about 8 stray dogs, often picking though trash, We cut through field with a family of girls that run out dirty and barefoot from their tin shelter to shake our hands.

It’s so interesting how the foreign can quickly become so familiar, how you can learn to sleep through construction going on outside your window at 3 am, or the eerie Muslim call of prayer playing over a loud speaker 2 hours later. Every day we arrive at the children’s home and are greeted by white teeth grinning from a brown face, sparkling big eyes, arms tugging on us. But these kids have become so much more than faces. They are more then the tragedy of their pasts, or the hope of their future. They have become our friends.

Naomi is a five year old who has completely melted my heart. She is the youngest of 12, born to a scheming woman who trained her children to beg and steal. Naomi had been taken off the streets because her mother gave her up, put into another orphanage where she was adopted into a family in Germany. After being their three months, her mother claimed she had been stolen and she was sent back to India, back to the abuse of the streets and a mother who just wanted to get money out of her. Finally, she was rescued by Hope of Glory Foundation. Naomi is sweet, and imaginative. I love seeing her eyes light up when she sees me.

The other day, we took all 31 kids plus all the staff to the zoo. It was quite the logistical mess to say the least. The grand total of everyones tickets was under $9 US. We had a picnic in the shade (no PB&J- Fried rice and cucumber carrot salad with our fingers!) Then spent the afternoon walking around with the kids. My “buddy” was Ruth, the youngest of the bunch, (age 3) she was in awe at the snakes and elephants. Ruth was given to the Children’s home along with her two older brothers when she was a baby. Her mother loves her children, but had to part with them because she lost a leg due to polio and turned to prostitution to survive. She knew she would rather give up her kids then have them raised in that situation.

We’ve been faced with the sickening reality of prostitution since we have been here. We have visited the red light district several times and are getting to know some of the girls. The other day we were hanging out there, chatting with the girls, about to start a bible study,  when one of them looked out of the window and started panicking. A couple of the girls quickly got up and left. Our contact explained that they saw police and had to make a run for it. Once in a while, the police would show up demanding money. If they didn’t pay them, the girls could get thrown in prison for two years, or worse. We also found out one of the girls had been murdered the night before by her customer.

After the bible study, as we were heading back to our van, we saw the group of girls that had left. Our contact invited them for a glass of sugar cane juice, so we headed to an underground shop, hoping we wouldn’t look too suspicious. We hung out,  attempting to break the language barrier through laughter. The machine that made the sugar cane juice had bells on it, so we sang “Jingle Bells” for them. We found out one of the girls we were with had only been there a week. She was from another state and had been sold by a family member. She had tried to escape, but the rickshaw she was in had dropped her off at the brothel door and she didn’t know where else to go. She couldn’t even speak the local language, and was afraid if she tried to go home she would be killed. We prayed for her, asking God for a way out.

Next week we are going to take the girls from the brothel to a Water park! The leader of the home agreed. We are excited to be able to steal them away from the reality of their lives, even if is only for a day. We believe for a way out for these girls, for life to come to their tired bodies.

It would be easy for me to be overwhelmed, being faced daily with such incredible need, so many broken people. But everyday I am also faced with 31 lives that should be prostitutes and criminals. Now, they are dancing, singing praise songs, coloring, learning English. Now, they want to be pastors, rock-climbers, doctors, and flight-attendants. Their faith challenges mine, when I watch even the youngest fervently ask God for their school fees, for healing for the staff.

I am so humbled every day by these kids. They have no self-pity for the hell they have been through. They are a well working family, serving and taking care of each other.

In the eyes of these children, I see the kingdom of heaven.

Yesterday, I walked the steps to the top floor of a brothel. They were narrow, wooden, creaky, dark. It was late afternoon, almost time to wake up, to begin business. I wondered how many walked these dark stairs before, and what their motives were.

We followed Jasmine, a young girl with a slender nose and bright red lips. She showed us to her room, a small dirty place, walls lined with rusty metal trunks, locked, floor lined with girls who’s belongings were inside, some stirring, some sound asleep still. I could hardly stand up the ceiling was so low. An electric burner  on the floor held pots crusted with old food that must had been their kitchen. A large window with bars across showed a prison like view of the busy traffic below. Evening in Pune, India meant everything cooled down, and people were out shopping.

On this street you could buy whatever you wanted- fresh fruit, electronics, rice, sex.

Jasmine pulled out a straw mat for us to sit on, motioning to another girl who was awake. She left the room and returned with glass bottle of cold mango juice for us. We made small talk through our translator. Jasmine has a sister, Emily, in the children’s home we are working with. She is a beautiful quiet girl, I have grown to love the past few days. Jasmine had brought Emily to the brothel with her in order to escape living with their abusive uncle. The people from the children’s home had finally convinced Jasmine her young sister would be better off with them. They still visit her and the other mothers of the kids, which is why we were there.

We sat around, trying not to be awkward with the language barrier, trying to see hard faces soften with a smile. More of the girls began to wake up, and we introduced ourselves to each one. I saw desperation in her face of one of the young girls like I have never seen. I knew just looking at her, she was a walking corpse. I wanted to cry, hug her, drag her out of her dark reality, show her the sunshine and the great, big beautiful world. I wanted to show her there was so much more then this crowded room, sleeping during the day, living a nightmare night after night, then countless bodies just using and discarding. But I just smiled at her.

I thought about Sara, another one of  “my girls” at the children’s home. The first day I was there, some boys made fun of her drawing and she cried and cried. I tried to hug her, but she just stared at me blankly. I told her she was an amazing artist, and a great girl, and she shouldn’t listen to those silly boys. Later, she came back to me, a smile on her face. She gave me her picture, her with her friends at the children’s home, under a happy sun, green glitter making the whole picture sparkle.

Sara was born in a brothel. Her mother died from “being overworked” and the madam of the house was going to use Sara as her “retirement fund” as soon as she turned 12. The workers from the children’s home pleaded again and again to let Sara go with them. Out of nowhere one day the Madam agreed saying that may be the only good thing she did with her life. Sara is 9 now, she’s been in the home almost a year. I thought about the fate that would have awaited her just a few years from now, had she not have been rescued.

I looked around at each women, imagining the little girl in them. Did they still hold onto any hope they could escape that place? Did they still dream of a better future, of true love, of a family? In a few faces I recognized a glimmer of hope, most seemed to have discarded that long ago. How many nights of this before you lose your dignity, your worth, yourself?

The translator asked if we wanted to say anything. I told them they weren’t just beautiful on the outside, but God saw them as beautiful on the inside. That He saw who they really were, still a little girl, innocent,  that nothing could ever separate them from His love.

It’s hard to believe it in a place like that, but I had to, I needed to, for these girls, for me for humanity itself. I found myself believing it the more and more I said it. I wanted to tell him how Jesus came from the lineage of a prostitute, how He offered nothing but grace when the world offered stones. I just told them He loved them and knew that was the only thing worth knowing. If they could just really see it.

I know as many of the Jasmine’s there are, there are also so many Sara’s and Emily’s. Aren’t we all at one point in our life trapped in a dark place, waiting for someone to tell us hope is not dead, waiting for a rescuer? We’ve got to to be brave and compassionate enough to walk out the rescuing side of Jesus’ character. We just have to.

I walked down the stairs of the brothel, knowing I would carry that day with me forever.

walking up the dark stairs
my heart sinks in despair
your daughters are trapped
in abuse and lies, does anyone care?
but I see the barred windows lets the light shine through
I know beyond reason it will be ok
there will be a brighter day

hungry eyes, haunting desperation
dirty hands, tugging, begging for attention
these streets have beaten the best out of you
stolen your precious childhood
but somehow redemption is possible
somehow, even this can turn to good

that dark places between tough and hard
is your home
the only thing stronger then this pain
is the fear you will be all alone
hope seems like a distant land
you can’t get a visa for
but we can get there together
take my hand
we can get there together

I don’t know how this ends
but I know its an ashes to beauty story
I can’t see the road we are on
but I know we’ll get from suffering to glory
this can’t be a tragedy
no matter how sad the tale
It’s a mystery how it happens
but I know love will always prevail

*names changed

Tonight, we are getting on a train to ride 24 hours to Pune. We are saying goodbye to the city that has slowly become a temporary home the past few weeks. The faces I have met will stay with me.

Joshua* had a flashy bright blue shirt that made him stand out from the other kids. He was HIV positive, like the rest of the 13 kids he lives with, but it didn’t stop him from running around, popping balloons and grinning. Years earlier, his mother was in the final stages of AIDS. She couldn’t get treatment, and soon the pain became unbearable. She set fire to herself, burning alive in order to escape this world. He was three years old at the time, and with her.

Pria*  looks like a bollywood version of Shirley Temple with her bouncy black curls and infectious grin. She is six years old and the size of a three year old, because when she was 2, her mom didn’t want to take care of her and her brother anymore, so she decided to starve them. She locked them in a mud hut and left them alone for weeks. They managed to survive on leaves that blew in under the door, and mud that washed in when it rained. Pria still goes by the nickname “baby” because of her size when she was rescued.

As I sit in these children’s home’s in India, listening to incredible stories, I feel humbled and honored. I am amazed God would chose me to be the recipient of such redemption and grace showing in these kids lives.

The redemptive lives of Joshua and Pria may never be best selling books, but now because you have read this, one more person has entered into their stories. As any good story, it spreads and multiplies one person at a time, a whisper in an ear, a chat over coffee, a shout from the rooftop. Light enters into dark corners, truth beats deception, what was unknown is suddenly known.

I wrote this the other day about a woman who sat next to me at the slum church we ministered at.

What stories are hidden behind those old eyes?
That face, scarred by burns?
If I could decipher your foreign tongue, I would.
If I could open your heart and read it like I book, I would.
What brought you here, to this time and place,
to intersect your life and mine?
Have you ever found love?
What are your dreams, your hopes?
How do you see the world?
In a moment, a flash, a look, a nod,
tears flowing at the same time
I know, perhaps beyond all differences
we are made of the same ingredients,
just slightly re-arranged
Maybe 8,000 years from now
we will be neighbors
then we’ll sit on my front porch, drinking wine
and I’ll finally hear your story

On a lighter note, I have been working on a list of reasons why India is great in my mind. Here is what I have so far:

Surprising Things About India That Make Me Smile
*It is perfectly acceptable (and encouraged) to eat rice with your hands, but when we had a pizza party, the kids ate their slices with a fork.
*You can be 40, wear bright pink polka dots, stripes, gold jewelry and flowers in your hair and not be considered gaudy.
*The endearing head bobble. (although it still confuses me “Do you mean yes? Or no? huh??)
*Ice cream stands on every corner.
*Posted rules (such as traffic rules) are more like suggestions. “It would maybe be a good idea if….”
*Appy Fizz. (Fizzy apple juice. Not just for new years.)
*Every little girl is allowed to dress like a princess every day. Even when your 20.
*Sweet green jelly and red onions mixed into chicken and rice.
*India is very much their own country- even the youth don’t seem to be trying very hard to be western. It is refreshing.
*Random kids calling you auntie and wanting to shake your hand.

Please be praying for compassion and creativity for my team. It has been a struggle and a fight to write. We know there are so many more stories to tell in the  next month and we don’t want to grow calloused to it.

“The time is coming when everything will be revealed; all that is secret will be made public. Whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be shouted from the housetops for all to hear! ” – Luke 12:2-3

I believe storytelling is much more then an ancient art around a campfire, or a group of kids in a circle at the library, it is eternally important, it is spiritual warfare. The act of daring to  speak out truth or put it on paper is a brave one, it is lighting a candle where there was only darkness before. In doing this, we bring the kingdom of heaven to earth.

*Names changed.

(I don’t have any pictures of the leper colony cause it wasn’t allowed.)

We walked into the barren clinic on the edge of the leprosy colony. A familiar face hung on both sides of the wall, Mother Teresa, a picture of loving the “least of these” we were about to meet. I made my way along the bench in the waiting room, shaking hands and introducing myself to each person waiting for their weekly care. Some hands couldn’t make a grip, as the disease had eaten away at their appendages. A thin man slumped on the floor by the door, the ends of his legs stubs wrapped in thick white bandages. One lady with coarse graying hair and toothy grin motioned for me to pray for her. She said her name was Sandra Mary, like Mary, she pointed out the glassed-in shrine of Jesus sitting on the shelf across from us. Her brown eyes were starting to cloud over blue-gray with cataracts. I didn’t know how much she could see. Maggie and I prayed for her. I felt humbled and outside myself, like I had nothing to give this woman, I was simply a small character in a much bigger story. I also felt a connection in my spirit, and as if my heart were opening really for the first time since I have been in this mad country.

Sandra wanted to try on my sunglasses so I ended up giving them to her. She made the whole clinic laugh, this wrinkled Indian woman, no longer just a leper, but a celebrity with her “movie star” shades covering half her face. It made my day.

It’s funny, I have heard horror stories about leper colonies, or people romanticizing the idea of touching outcasts. Not to downplay it, but It felt a lot more normal then that. Yes, I can’t imagine that being my life day in and day out- going from clinic to clinic, cleaning out wounds, washing feet, cutting away infected and filthy skin, but to the medical team, it was life. It was what they knew they had to do and so they did it- I am sure with days of frustration, apathy, love and everything in between.

The other day we were at a children’s home. The couple that runs the home, the people who we have been staying with, won’t call it an orphanage because once a child is there, they are adopted into a big family. It was so evident visiting these kids are well-loved and not lacking attention. They weren’t waiting for a missions team to come and entertain them to validate their existence- they entertained us. I wandered into the kitchen and met a teenage boy roasting peanuts on a cast iron skillet. He told me he was 15 and had lived in the home since he was five. I asked him what he wanted to do when he grew up. He told me he wanted to be in ministry as he cautiously stirred the peanuts. “Like, you want to be a pastor, or a missionary?” I asked, somewhat naively. He looked slightly confused, “No…here.” I watched as he poured the slightly blackened nuts into a dish and offered me some, white teeth flashing. Here.

It’s a strange and humbling thing, when God takes you half way around the world, to a place famous for being this exotic, “dark” missions field in need of Him, and all you can see is how much they get it and you don’t.

We went the top of a mountain and worship with a church where most of it’s attendees still live on the streets. They fed us heaps of rice under the shade of a tree in the hot of the day.

We are not the celebrities here. People care less about our skin color. They are not dying to be our friend or to take what we have. And it’s the best thing that could happen.

Last night at church I met a woman who had tried to sell her kidney after her husband left her with a debt and she had no other way to take care of her three kids. When someone had told her that was a good idea, she thought maybe it would be better to kill herself because there is no other way out. The debt is only about $500 US. Charlotte and I got to pray over her and encourage her and we could tell something was really breaking through.

I’ve been thinking of this Sara Groves song since I have been here. It runs as a soundtrack in my head often,

“Something on the road
Cut me to the soul.
Your pain has changed me
Your dream inspires
Your face a memory
Your hope a fire
Your courage asks me what I’m afraid of
And what I know of love.”

I need India more then India needs me.