The Journey Was Never Easy, But My Yes Has Never Been Hard

I’ve been trying for the last two days to put into words what the last decade has meant to me. But I couldn’t. And it’s frustrated me. So I finally decided, I’m just gonna write anyway. Whatever comes, come. I mean, how can I even begin to share the testimonies, the pictures, the miracles I’ve witnessed in ten years? I can’t find the words to describe the tumultuous journey of the shocking disappointments mixed with the miraculous surprises. The ones who I thought would stay, thought they’d be around for the long haul but are long gone. And yet the delight of the ones who spat insults from day one, thought they wouldn’t last yet they are the ones still at my side. The journey has never been easy, but my yes has never been hard.

There is no way to describe what I do or who I am outside of Jesus. He is my easiest Yes, my every day Yes. He is faithful, He is Hosea, He is my Savior, Sustainer, my Builder, my Husband Redeemer, and my Best Friend. In ten years, look what He has done! And He’s allowed me to keep my pretty hair color (the stress of 36 children hasn’t given me too many grey hairs yet! Ha!), keep me young and full of youthful adventure, and give me children – on loan and for forever. I didn’t carry anyone for 9 months, but I’ve carried some of them for over 9 years+! I’m at the close of one decade and the start of another, of new dreams and new people to carry those dreams, too.

 Acknowledging the new dreams means giving thanks for the first dreams. The dream that took a small-town girl from Marshall, WI to Eswatini, Africa!

 A dream that impossible from day one.

“You won’t find her.” But I did. He led me right to her at the exact second when our two worlds collided as she drove by in the back of a truck at the exact moment I crossed the sidewalk.

 A dream that took the form opening the home in 2013, and getting the call in 2014,

“This is a house, not a home. There is no heart here. If you don’t want to see your dream collapse, you need to move here.”

So I did. I packed up my life and moved into a house with cockroaches so big that they made noises at night as they scurried across the floor and I thought it was mice. Rats and snakes were other worries, too.

“She won’t last,” betraying words from a friend whispered behind closed doors.

But I did. He was my reason, not human praise.

“I’ve never seen a home like this one. Please build more,” the social welfare visitor blessed us and asked us to expand.

And we did. It was always His plan from the beginning, and He only allowed me to know it one step at a time.

 “She can’t do it,” words were cast over the dream the transfer our home to a rural area after we bought 7.5 acres of our land. We were building and raising funds. We moved into a place with no electricity and no running water. We used a handmade “outhouse” for our toilet and had to order water trucks from the city.

But we did it.

He provided, step by step.

“Hosea’s Heart won’t last beyond this,” the doubt continued from those even in my circle.

But we did. We not only lasted, we prospered.

I remember the day when someone confessed to me bluntly, “I’m surprised Hosea’s Heart is still running,” as if my leadership was so poor it was going to devastate the entire ministry.

There were times when I felt so alone, I didn’t know if I could last. Not only had I been betrayed by my inner circle, but my children, too. There was a season where they turned on me, ignored me, rejected me, used me, in acts of manipulation to get what they wanted or to get back at me for decisions I made that they didn’t like. But I pressed on. Few remained at my side. I had my Ruth who stayed faithful and was my Hosea story. I saw Jesus in her and was reminded that you don’t need a sea of people, sometimes you just need one. I could be distracted by Judas or be grateful for Ruth. I chose gratitude and pressed on.

 “You’ll never find water here. It’s too rocky and dry.” Two bore holes were dug but empty. Indeed dry land.

But we found water. Water from a rock! Today, we have a borehole that supplies us with well water!

 “They won’t be successful after Hosea’s Heart,” people said about the precious children God gave me. Watch the mama bear come out!

College degrees, diplomas, full-time jobs, a marriage, good mothers, calling to check on me, advising younger sisters, pursuing personal ambitions and making choices (good and bad) – and that alone being a win, the freedom to make choices for their own future, fully capable and responsible for the consequences. And God didn’t spare consequences and He didn’t spare my mother’s heart. A sword has pierced mine, too. But most of all and above all, every single one of them knows Jesus. Every Single One.

And at the end of the day, after all is said and done, all that matters is their last breath is “Jesus.” There is nothing more “successful” than eternal life. And I haven’t missed the opportunity to introduce Him to even one.

I remember the day we lost on of ours to the world. She was young but promised hell if we didn’t let her leave. We called the social worker and the social took her back. She had refused to believe that the 38-year-old man who had bought her and convinced her that she was his wife from 8 years old was an abuser. He had been arrested and she placed with us but at 14 years old, she had already endured so much trauma and manipulation. She thought we were the abusers, because with us she lost her “freedom.” But one year later, she called crying. She said she messed up. She didn’t know but now she knows. She said the man she is now with abuses her and she knows that’s not love. She actually said, “I know now that’s not love.” Even if we can’t “keep” them all, the ability to show them love – it changes everything.

 So love continued to be our dream and as our wait list piled up, the dream to add more homes surged to a priority.

 “You’re crazy. That’ll never work,” they said about my dream to bring our dance and music production to the U.S.A. “What will people say? Won’t people think you’re just making excuses to get girls to America?”

But frankly, at this point, I didn’t care what people thought about me. I learned that the hard way. As a leader, caring too much about people’s opinions of you will only always bring you down. I answer to One at the end of the day, and His opinion is all I cared about. And I knew it was His dream.

I was listening to music one day, and a whole vision unfolded. The storyline to our production, the dancers, the music. Then I started writing the pieces that would accompany it for the spoken word portions. It was His from the beginning.

So when they said, “That’ll never work,” God winked at me and said, “Watch this.”

It was like a reward for being a girl with God-sized dreams. It blew me away. It still feels like an actual dream that we got to bring a group of girls to the U.S. and travel around Wisconsin, performing and multiplying souls, being witnesses of God’s healing power and hope even in the darkest moments.

And now it’s 2024, and my dream life is Lucia, almost 13 now, still snuggled up next to me but making the same sassy face from when she was two; Benji still giving me sweet kisses on the cheek and knowing every time I’m not okay, the same sweet smile and eyes of that baby boy I used to rock to sleep. It’s the girls taking turns to help clean the house or give me a massage after they can see I’ve been stressed or overloaded. It’s the messages from the grads checking in on me. It’s the best sound in the world – every day: their laughter. I could bottle it up and sell it, no joke. It’s the best feeling in the world – their hugs, tight and wrapped like the arms of an angel. My grandbaby squeezing my finger and giggling at me. It’s the best sight – their gorgeous, jaw-dropping smiles. Watching her love her child in a way she was never loved herself at that age. It’s the best smell – walking into the kitchen on a bad day, and suddenly life makes sense again! And it’s the best taste – a wedding cake, cut and shared in the presence of the entire Hosea’s Heart family, the wedding of our first child, taking place in our own home; eyes full of tears but heart full of swelling gratitude. This life – it’s bread from heaven, a provision only God can give.

A dream fulfilled at the close of one decade.

And a new decade

giving birth to the dream yet to come.

 

My Stomach Sinks but My Heart Swells

            Parent-teacher conferences, especially for a young teacher, were always a bit daunting. Though I got to know the students very well, it was usually the first time meeting the parents, and I never knew what exactly to expect. I was surprised one night when a burly man with a gruff voice introduced himself impatiently, looking like this was the last place he wanted to be.

“You Miss Martin?” he asked but it sounded more like an accusation.

“Yes?” I should have been more confident, but I wasn’t. When he shared whose father he was, my insides quivered because I had just reprimanded his step-son, who was always a bit naughty, the other day.

“My son says you told him he has a good reading voice,” he cut into my thoughts. “That’s the first time he’s come home to tell me he had a good time at school. And that a teacher complimented him.” I couldn’t believe it, and yet I could. He seemed to hate school. “That meant a lot to him. Just wanted to say thank you.” He turned and left me with my jaw half open.

“My son says he likes you as a teacher because you don’t have favorites,” a mother wrote me over email while apologizing for not making the conferences. “That’s the best compliment I think a teacher could get.” I was surprised, again, by who the son was. He was quiet, reserved, hardly got any attention in class because he was content in the background. Apparently, my praising him for his high reading scores made him feel seen and valued just as much as the others who talked and volunteered and soaked up classroom attention.

“You’re the reason my daughter wakes up in the morning to go to school,” a shy mother said with a shaky voice. With an intense look in my eyes, it’s like she was communicating something beyond words. Tears welled in my eyes at her intense gratitude, and I felt more seen and appreciated in that moment than maybe ever.

So it was to my utter dismay that in February 2014, I got the phone call that changed it all.

“Kate, this is a house, not a home. There is no heart here.” A friend in Swazi had called me about the challenges we had been facing from the NGO we had partnered with in running the home. They had opposite ideals, money was going missing, the girls were going without food and school shoes, and they were all still without a mother.

When I hung up the phone, I began sobbing. Not because I didn’t want to go. I’ve always wanted to be in Swazi. But my La Crescent students and parents, staff and community, had changed my life. It was my dream job, and I was more than content staying in it. I had poured my life into my students, loving them into life and providing more than just an education; I wanted to be a light, to be Hope in the flesh, and resurrect self-worth wherever it lacked in those I taught/coached/mentored. I had actually started believing I could live in both worlds; I even secretly had talked to the Superintendent and asked if it was possible that I teach half a year and do my other half in Swazi. He actually gave me his blessing, no joke. 

But when the call came, it wasn’t about half here, half there. It was all and it was now. They deserved a mother, not just a bed to sleep on (the first bed some of them ever had); they deserved the home I dreamt for them.

“Ms. Martin, do you have to leave us?” one of the shortest boys in the back of the room had raised his hand. He was smart but pretending not to be and was very shy, rarely speaking in class. I was actually shocked to see his hand go up. And devastated at his question. It wasn’t long, though, until the students got on board and supported my move to Swazi. They actually threw a goodbye party for me. They filled a notebook (that I STILL have) with notes and encouragements to me. They sent packages once I moved and sent Christmas letters. My basketball girls sent videos and kept me updated on all their happenings.

And now, ten years later, I can’t help but wish I could hug and thank EVERY single one of them AND their parents. They changed me. They charged me. They enabled me to do what I was called to do. God knew what He was doing, and He knew why He had me at La Crescent for those few short years. Few but mighty. Unforgettable.

In fact, I still have all their class pictures on my wall in my War Room. I pray for them. I think of them. And my spirit lifts. They gave me the greatest gift: an eternal smile.  

And in celebration of this eternal smile, I could write about all the incredible students I had, from my student teaching group with Ms. Sandy, to my seventh graders, eleventh graders, and ninth graders, but the one pinnacle moment to symbolize my career at La Crescent would be my “last act” with the freshmen I had in 2014: the English Oscars.

You wouldn’t believe what a group of 15-year-olds did. But I believed. I believed in them from the beginning. I believe that our world can be changed by the youth of these young teenagers who have so much to offer our world. And they didn’t just prove me right, they blew me away. When we began planning this huge end of year production, some of my colleagues even laughed behind closed doors. “They say it’s going to be a trainwreck, Ms. Martin,” one kid told me one day of his teacher’s remarks about our big production. “Don’t worry,” I smiled. “They won’t know what hit them until it does,” I winked.

And it was a smashing success. So wildly incredible, that after it ended, I sat on the auditorium stage and cried. I was so depressed it was over.

Do you know what they did?

These 100 FIFTEEN YEAR OLDS planned and executed an entire production THEMSELVES: they manned the stage lights, the audio and microphones, the decorations, the video and presentations, they made the video clips for “And the Nominees are…” in each category, some of the guys hand-made the awards in their welding class, they were the MCs, the speakers, the performers (dancers, musicians, spoken word artists), the red carpet models strutting down the aisle, the stage crew, and the program and production crew. 

They were REMARKABLE. It still amazes me. How did a bunch of 15-year-olds pull that off? AND they packed the auditorium with their family and friends who witnessed the most memorable event of my teaching career. (Where are they now that I need a production crew for our Scars: Up from Ashes dance and vocal crew in Swazi, 😉)

They left me devastated. How ironic. While it was the best moment of my professional career, it marked a depressing moment of my personal life. I had to say goodbye to my dream life. What awaited me in Swazi, I will never regret. It was the right time and the right move. But it still came with pain, with a cost. Probably one that most won’t know or understand. For, while my students moved on and in the past ten years have grown and graduated college, started families, moved, or pursuing other goals, my heart is still with them. I think of them and pray for them. I am still their biggest fan. Even if they don’t know it ten years later.

Ah, Lord. What a decade. Tomorrow we will celebrate my arrival in Swazi, what You’ve done in the last ten years, but today. Today is for my students. Today is for the sinking feeling in my stomach as I reread my journals and look back on the life I had in La Crescent. My colleagues who were my besties, my colleagues who I looked up to, my colleague whose daughter had become my very best friend and I frequented their house as if I were a member of their family. You can’t make this stuff up. Today is to count the cost and honor the ones who live in my heart forever. To you, La Crescent community, Danita, Amy, Shelley, Peggy, Melanie and Colleen and Janet, Rick Walter my principal, and the whole LaC staff, the Conways, Kelly, Sarah, and all my students, my student-teaching ones who were barely younger than I was at the time, my seventh graders who drove me crazy but were still so lovable, my eleventh graders who tested me but made me better, to my basketball girls, and to the Classes of 2015, 2016, and 2017: Cheers to an incredible next decade of your lives, that you may be filled with the fullness of Hope, Love, Mercy, and memories of a life once lived as a teenager in LaC. God bless you all.  

Darkness of Soul

          My soul in anguish

My heart, taking a beating

The whips in the hands

of my own

Lashes from within

Voices mocking

Cutting off my life supply

Closing in on all corners

Jesus, why are you far off?

 

Am I Job being stripped?

Doors slamming in my face

My plans frustrated

What I attempt, it fails

My worth tattered like a discarded blanket

That my child trades in for something “better”

Am I the brown pastures

Where they want green?

I am a fall leaf,

only worthy for a season.

Accepted, then discarded.

Over and over, a cycle.

They're hurt by others,

then it’s thrown on me

When will it stop?

When will the sky lift?

Lord, who?

Who will you send for me?

I found a seat a sat down for dinner. On each of our plates lay a unique handwritten note from members of a church in Seattle. Every note had a different message. I was stunned when I read mine.

“You are on the front lines of a spiritual battle…Keep fighting the good fight. The enemy can only be defeated by love.”

I looked up, looked around. Looked at other people’s notes. Each one was different, and there was only one message meant for me, the one “randomly” lying on my plate.

I believe there are plenty of coincidences in life, but more than that, I believe God handcrafts certain moments that are tailor made, just for us. As if His angels were the ones not only writing the cards but also handing them out, placing one on each plate, knowing ahead of time who was going to sit where. There couldn’t have been a better message for me. I was on the front lines of a spiritual battle. I was being targeted, hunted, attacked. Battered and bruised, I was in anguish. I was tired. Tired of loving.

Since January of this year, I started experiencing something I can only describe like Mother Teresa once did: a darkness of soul. My external circumstances were nothing to complain about really, but my internal anguish was like a deep, unreachable wound. Like I knew something bad was going to happen, but I couldn’t stop it.

In fact, I did know and experience this. Several of my girls had gone home for a week over the Christmas/New Year holiday because they had earned it. However, not all of them were able to have safe visits. Knowing this, I practically begged one of the girls not to go. I gave her other options, I gave her ideas, and I told her exactly what would happen if she went where she was not supposed to go. And I asked her to reconsider the week she earned. She’s of age and earned it, so I couldn’t remove the privilege just because I was worried. But it’s like my spirit knew. She made me promises we both knew she wasn’t going to keep. She believed her biological mother was suddenly, miraculously a new woman and was safe. To withhold her from being with her bio mother would simply be cruel, and yet, I knew. I knew the devastation that was about to hit. Sure enough, she broke her promises, she went where she wasn’t supposed to go, her mother wasn’t who she was supposed to be, and horrible things happened to her frail body in just a week’s time. She came back, and I tried. I tried so hard to help her put the pieces back together. But she was already gone. Her body was there, but she had never returned.

A depressing chill fell over the place. A strange shift in the atmosphere. We were battling spirits, now. A power of darkness. One of the youngest said she’d rather be a queen in hell than God’s angel because, well, Queens are better and have more power. Suddenly girls were talking about running away or killing themselves. A spirit of death. The thief had entered. A physical thief had broken into my home two years ago, but now it was an unseen one. Some of the girls who had gone “home” for the one week holiday had come back with the very demons they were once delivered from.

I wrote:

It really felt like suddenly the enemy was within. A darkness of soul, a thick, suffocating blanket. Prayer seemed to help, but it was like momentary relief. I poured out my unshed tears, dried up from the shock of runaways and the hatred that seeped from deep corners of their abusers still whispering over them.  

So I did the one thing I know how to do best: write. I prayed and wrote and filled my journal with prayers, pleas, and prophecies that flowed. And this is one that spilled out onto the ink of my pages:

“Attack her heart,” the enemy ordered. “I have tried for ten years and failed. There’s no way to get her from the outside. We must plot from within.

I will put an enemy inside her walls, Masked as a support. She will lean on the supports after I’ve beaten her down as much as I can.

And then I’ll pull the support out from underneath her. What she thought would be for her, I will use against her.

They will reject her, betray her, mock her. They will play with heart like a bouncy ball until her spirit is broken.

Yes, it’s her spirit we must break. We’ve broken her heart but He just keeps mending it. Now, we crush her heart until her spirit breaks. And the only way to her heart is through the very ones she gives her heart to.”

I still remember the way my heart jumped to the roof of my head and got knocked back down to my toes. “We can’t find them. Their cell phones are gone. They ran away.” In the cover of darkness, they slipped under the fence, took their early inheritance, and ran back to bondage. My daughters, gone.

And right before my conference, too. So I went to the conference emotionally exhausted, spiritually dry, and physically stressed. Dr. Becca Johnson reviewed the warning signs for burnout, and this time I knew how to respond, how to protect my hope. Thanks to the entire Atlas Free network (men and women from over 23+ different countries around the world all in the same fight with me), I felt supported, encouraged, inspired, and my hope reignited. I received needed advice. “You are enough. What you’re doing is enough. You’ve given them the greatest gift: the opportunity to choose. They may choose wrong, and some will and it will be devastating, but even so, you gave them a gift they didn’t have before, and that’s enough.” I also reconnected with old friends and met brand new ones. I felt cared for, intentionally noticed, seen, and appreciated. I was prayed for, and I felt held. Held together. So to see the completely “random” hand-written note by a “stranger” sitting on my plate on the last day of our conference, I was struck. Hope Surged. Healing Began. Someone sees me, sees my battle. And sees the love I have is enough. Love wins. Love defeats the enemy. 

And my prayer journal reflected exactly that. God responded to the revelation of Satan’s plan to attack my heart: 

“Attack her heart,” he ordered

But I say, “The more cracks, the more light you let in.”

He knows he has no access.

He can only pierce the surface

His weapons will never touch the heart of the heart, your spirit!

He only thinks he’s clever,

Planning a downfall like the trojan horse

But he forgot in his prideful foolishness

Whose palace he put the trojan horse into

Bait for bait.

I baited him.

It worked.

When the supports fall, it will fall on him.

What he seeks to crush will be the very thing that crushes him.

So, take away the fool. He cowers in the corner,

But you can find him by the sound of his chains shaking

In fear.

It is finished, Satan. You with your trojan horse crushing your own head, are defeated.

I AM has spoken.

Kate, I Am here.

 

If you missed my previous blog similar in theme but centered on forgiveness, check it out here: "Take Me Down"