My Weakness, His Strength

It’s not yet 8 p.m. and we finished dinner! That’s something to celebrate because some nights I don’t get to start dinner until 8 p.m. (#MomFail)

            I made myself a cup of coffee just an hour ago, and if you know me well, you know that I’m not a coffee drinker. So you can guess how much I needed it. I could hardly keep my eyes open after this long but fulfilling day.

            It started just before 6 a.m. I woke up at 5 but didn’t roll out of bed till 6. Luckily the kids are on term break for school, so that means I can sleep in a little more and not worry about helping them get ready in the morning. Nonetheless, I wake them up, and Benji is always the first one to hop out of bed. Lucia - no matter how much sleep she gets – is like a brick on a bed, sometime immovable. Eventually she gets up, too. We have our daily breakfast of Corn Flakes (for them) and Apple Cinnamon oatmeal (and tea) for me. I drive to African Christian College (ACC) where I have my English class at 8 a.m. On the way, I pick up two girls from the girls home, who have kombied to a meeting point. I homeschool them, so they get the opportunity to be out of the house for awhile and sit in on a college English class.

            Class today is great. I come alive when I’m in the classroom, and these students are sharp and eager to learn. Their last essays showed such tremendous improvements from their previous writing that I almost did a happy dance in the classroom! They come from multiple different countries, so our class is extraordinarily multicultural. But I only have two weeks left with them, and probably only two weeks left of teaching there in general, as the demands of my job and attention have increased dramatically at the girls home, and I need to focus my time and attention on where I’m supposed to first be. Next year, I’ll most likely be teaching homeschool at the girls home, though, so at least I will still have the teaching experience that keeps my fire lit.

            After class, we drive back to the girls home because they are all on school break, so the break schedule requires me to be more active in programming and keeping them active (and from wandering hearts and minds…or legs…)

            We play “Ship Captain” and as they form different pairings, trios, or groupings, I give them questions to discuss together as a way to get to know one another better. One would think by now they would know each other, but they really don’t. 16 teenagers in one place? They are sometimes frienemies… (sometimes friends, sometimes enemies), and they hardly know the stories behind the faces they call sisters, especially since the dynamic changes often with girls coming and going. They are scared to share their stories, and some just prefer to act like a “normal” teenager and not think about how she is different than others (or even the same). They all want to fit in, and they all get easily jealous of one another, so they put up a lot of walls. It is my aim this year to help them break down the walls, one step at a time. The activity works brilliantly, and I thank the Lord for giving me the idea for it just last night.

            After that, a couple girls ask me to join them in a board game, Sequence (won one, lost one ;) ), and then I spend some time helping the one who is cooking lunch to serve the rice and beans (I’m so terribly hungry by this point that I actually ate plain rice while waiting for the beans to finish, and the girls thought that was the most hilarious thing they’ve seen from me).

After lunch, I have bible study with a small group of girls. I have just recently broken them into small groups because they had been getting ruthless in fighting for my attention. There had been some recent discovery of demonic activity among some girls who had chosen to participate in satanic worship and committed themselves to the cult, some of which have been in it for many years before they entered the home. While we were celebrating deliverance and the fact that what’s done in darkness will always come to light, it stirred up so many issues among the girls themselves. Cliques formed, division strengthened, and jealousy was on steroids. While I tried to minister to the girls in the cult, suddenly they were being blamed, and I was, too, for not giving attention to others. So I decided to break them all into groups so I could have equal time ministering to them as individuals or in smaller numbers. Today’s group is special in the sense that they are daring to go through a book called “Journey to Hope: Overcoming Abuse” by Dr. Becca Johnson (whom I met through Rescue: Freedom International). This small group of 4 girls are going to be the very first in the home to go through a book that will help them learn to tell their own story in the end, and to tell it to the small group of their sisters. None of these 4 have told their sisters their story before. So I am so excited to see how God will use this, not only to impact them, but also change the course of hope for other girls in Hosea’s Heart.

            After I finished with the group, one of the eldest girls asked for some one-on-one time, so I sat with her for about an hour, listening and offering advice and encouragement. It lit me up again. I rarely get to do this anymore. My job and my days demand so much of my attention elsewhere that I rarely get to sit and listen…which is the only way I can effectively give advice and encouragement. Being able to do this today was a revival of my gifts.

            I said my goodbyes and made my way back to my flat with Benji and Lucia. I had planned on being home around 2 p.m. so I could work on my office stuff and other work that needs time and attention, but I didn’t get home till past 5 p.m. I make time to read a book with Benji and then Lucia (who are getting better and better, and I must attribute a lot of their academic growth to Bonolo, who helps them on Sundays; both Benji and Lu have blossomed under his positive attention), and then I get to making dinner.

            I am truly exhausted, but not from the day. Today was amazing. But I am constantly tired from the excess work and stress and impact of working with girls who’ve directly been impacted by the worst kinds of evil on a daily basis. To be honest and painfully vulnerable, I am struggling with “compassion fatigue” (the nicer term for vicarious trauma, or otherwise explained as “the cost of caring for others”). But the hardest thing about my job is actually taking care of Benji and Lucia. It is the hardest and most exhausting, especially because I am faced with my own failure on a daily basis. You see, today was not a normal day. As I mentioned, sometimes I don’t get home till 8 p.m., working a full 13 hour day (and sometimes multiple of those in one week), and that means Ben and Lu suffer with my impossible schedule as well, and they suffer with my lack of energy and attention and my irritability because they get the last of me every night. I hate it. I hate knowing that I am not being a good mother and feeling helpless in changing it. Feeling helpless in improving it. Even their head teacher at school said some mean and derogatory things about me and my unsatisfactory mothering. Some days with them I want to scream. I want to call their mom (which I can’t because she doesn’t have a phone and she has been MIA for the past 2 months) and yell at her and say, “COME AND GET YOUR KIDS! I’M TIRED!” As horrible as that sounds, I’m being honest. Some days, I just feel so ill-equipped and so fed up with their constant fighting and demands that I want to go to sleep and not wake up for a week…or more.  

            But then, there are moments like tonight… and it changes everything. Everything.

After I served dinner, Lucia volunteered to pray, and this is what she said:

            “Thank you, Father, for this day and everything you’ve done for us. Thank you for this food and please bless those who do not have food tonight, and bless those who don’t have money that they need to survive. Like that man who couldn’t talk at the store today who was asking for money. Father, bless him to give him food, shelter, or whatever he needs tonight. Thank you and amen.”

            I couldn’t believe this seven-year-old. Hours earlier, there was a man who came to our car asking for money. I was in a rush to get to the shop and back that I kindly dismissed him. L Turns out Lucia didn’t dismiss him. She kept him in her heart to the extent of praying for him at dinner time – a man I had completely forgotten about. And I am moved to tears.

            Nothing but tears of joy as I reflect on this entire day. In the midst of compassion fatigue and feeling like a mom-failure, God revived my gifts today, and He humbled me. It is not only my duty to raise them; it is the Lord’s. And no matter how I fail, God doesn’t fail. He doesn’t falter. And He will raise not only this seven and five-year-old but also the girls to change nations upon nations. He will Shepherd, He will guide, He will provide. He will renew, and He will restore. I want nothing more. More of Him, and less of me.

            Oh Shepherd, my Shepherd, there is nothing I shall lack.