All I Want for Christmas is Mom

            “I miss Mama Kate,” sighs one of the girls after a volunteer had asked a group of them what they thought about this year.

            “What do you mean?” asks the volunteer. “She’s here, though.”

            “I mean, like, I miss mom,” she clarifies, and the others nod in agreement. “I miss the way she used to kiss us goodnight and the way she would wake us up with her guitar in the morning.

            “I miss the way she’d sometimes leave flowers for us or other small surprises,” another adds in.

            “I miss the way we’d just sit on the porch all afternoon and chat or laugh with everyone and we’d do her hair.”

            “Or play ball in the driveway.”

            “Yeah,” another sighs with hopelessness. “It’s like she’s only running the organization and she’s no longer our mom.”

 (Trying to reason that we don't live in the same house anymore so some of those things don't happen wasn't a satisfying answer.)

            I can’t begin to describe the piercing pain in my soul when the girl who said the last statement shared all this with me. “I see how much you do for me, for us,” she added. “But sometimes, we just want you, Mom.”

             The pain came for many reasons. One, because how do you explain that running a non-profit organization comes at a cost, and often it’s the cost of time. How do you explain that the beds they sleep in are a result of spending hours, days, weeks driving around and finding the right size beds to fit in the rooms? How do you explain that the room they sleep in was carefully designed after 100s of hours, weeks, and even months of taking out my measuring tape, drawing, marking, doing calculations, hand writing the architectural layouts for the homes before submitting to the paid architect to professionally design? How do you explain the meetings with the lawyers, the land owner, the contractor, the workers, the fence guy, the security guy, the bankers, etc. How do you explain the hours in my office calculating, marketing, recording, planning, modifying, hiring, letting go, waiting… How do you explain that spending my time and heart doing my very best to run the non-profit is for them?

            But then I remember my desires for my own mom. I remember when us kids would be all set to watch a movie and mom would be doing dishes but we wanted her to watch the movie with us instead. Or when we’d be playing games before dinner while she’d be cooking but we still begged her to play with us instead. We’d complain that she didn’t spend time with us, not understanding that if she did, there would be no dinner on the table when we were hungry. And who would be upset then? Us, of course.

And so I understand their longing to just spend time with me, not understanding that time spent with them may mean losing something else they would need later.

The second reason the pain came, is because I consciously did try to step away to make room in their hearts for the house moms we hired. I knew that if I always filled that space, they would never let the house moms in to fill it, too, no matter how much I wanted to keep filling it myself. I loved being their mom. They were and are the why behind what I do.  But again, how do you explain stepping back was a self-sacrificial act of love? Because to them it probably felt more like a piece of abandonment.

And thirdly, it’s because most of my time is now spent in my car traveling to and from the girls home to my home and back again. The travel time really adds up, and especially in the summer, it really makes me tired. I ache and ache to get my house built on the land so I can finally live with them. But we had to build the multipurpose center first because that became a greater need for space for temporary home school until our future school building is up. So my house got pushed for last stage of phase one, and by this time… I think we’ve exhausted all our funders who have faithfully supported us financially through this entire expansion process. Now that’s it’s my house that needs funding, it becomes a lot harder to ask for financial support.

But after the girl shared her heart about how they miss Mom, I started reflecting and seeing things with a whole new view. For the second half of the year, after the move to the land, the girls have lost so much joy and life at the home. It’s been hard to see the joyful ones become stagnant and like they are only going through the motions of life. I figured it was due to the transition of moving and grieving the old house and living in town with running water and electricity. But what I noticed is the grieving was for something deeper, and things like their acting out against the aunties (house mothers) was for more than teenage hormones. They were grieving the loss of mom, and I had no idea. Until now.

I still don’t know how to marry the two roles: mom and director. I don’t know how to let them keep me as mom without fearing they will deny the real house mothers. I don’t know how to give them more time when I am exhausted from the other tasks. I don’t know how to explain to them that my days aren’t filled with me going off and having fun without them, that my lack of presence is because I’m working very hard for them and the future girls coming. But I do know one thing: something has to change! And with certain changes, I can still do the things I used to once do that made them feel loved and special.

I can name two things: one you can help fix, the other is up to me and God –

1)    My house being built will finally bring Mom home! 

“A home without Mom is still chaos,” one of the elder girls told me plainly, asking me to hurry up and move to the land. I told her it depends on God’s timing and his provision. But I ache like her. There is so much more of myself that I can give once I’m finally living alongside them again.  I'll have more time for playing and being, I can kiss them goodnight before I head to my house, and I'll be able to sneak over to the houses in the morning and wake them up with my guitar again.So, if you have extra Christmas money you’re wanting to spend for a good purpose, please know that if it goes to building my house, you’re investing not just in a building but reviving motherhood itself!

2) My heart needs some revival.

I also realized this year that I got so tired of getting hurt that I put my heart away. I mean like I started becoming numb unconsciously to protect myself after two girls had run away in September. My heart gets ripped out every time something like that happens, and I was so tired of that kind of betrayal and heartache. But in trying to protect my heart, it meant I became unfeeling. You see, you can’t just block the pain, you block all the emotions, including love and joy. The only emotion that seemed to be consistent was my anger. So after having a personal retreat time with Jesus, I rediscovered all of this and am in the processing of learning to have a hard shell while maintaining a soft heart.

So, in essence, all we want for Christmas is a new home and renewed heart, so I can be Mom again.

I Broke for His Brokenness, Too

It’s with somewhat of a heavy heart that I return to Swazi. The morning after my arrival, I’ll be waking up the kids early to get ready to attend their father’s funeral. It matters more to Lucia than it does to Benji. Benji never lived with his father; he never even met him until his mom took him with to visit the father in prison. Lucia, however, lived with her father when she was a baby. You see, this is the man who bought umntfwana wami when she was only 12 years old. But she couldn’t stand being sold and used so she ran away and survived on the streets as a 13-year-old prostitute. But after spending a year on the street fending for herself, this man kept coming for her and convinced her living with him was at least better than the streets. She gave in to his ownership and then bore his children. Deep down, she truly loves her children, but raising them as a teenage mom with trauma from exploitation meant she sometimes hated them for what they reminded her of: that she was nothing except a body to be bought and sold, used and abused.

I was living in Swazi the year she was living with this man, and to be honest, I hated him. What I hated more was that she felt like at this point she couldn’t leave him. She was terrified. She believed that he owned her. I remember vividly getting a call from her friend, who begged me to come and rush her to the hospital because this man had stabbed her. My hatred for this man continued to grow. And it seemed that nobody crossed him. He was involved in gangs, bar fights, was very violent, and even the men in the Mangwaneni community were afraid of him. I had implored help on several occasions to “rescue” umntfwana wami from him, but no one wanted to take that risk with me.

Until one day. I finally convinced Johannes to take me to this man. “Aren’t you scared?” he asked me with eyes as big as the mangos in his hand.

“No,” I lied. “I’m not scared.” David and Goliath, I told myself, David and Goliath.  He tried convincing me that it wasn’t worth my time nor the risk, but I refused. I had actually been badgering him for weeks, so he finally gave in.

When we got to his hut, Johannes knocked on split wooden door and waited. When no one answered, he knocked again. This time a voice answered, and Johannes announced he had something urgent he wanted to talk to him about. The man took over five minutes before opening the door.

When he saw me he swore out loud.

“Sorry,” Johannes said sheepishly. “This is the urgent something. She won’t’ rest until she meets you.”

“Hi, Mary-Kate,” he sighs, saying my name like he knows me. (I was shocked to realize he probably knew a lot about me like I knew a lot about him.)

Every word and speech and weapon I came prepared to use, vanished. So did the hatred.

I expected to see a Goliath, a man of venom, terror, and evil.

Instead I saw a “boy” who was lost in his own brokenness. And somehow, someway, my heart broke for him that day.

The meeting lasted not more than a minute, but it was enough to sober him up and to soften my iced heart. I still hated the things he was doing, his abuse of “my child” but I no longer hated him. It’s hard to explain it.

I saw him on a few other occasions that year and years following. One was when I tried to convince him to go to church with us. He agreed, but when I knocked on his door and he saw me standing there, he ran away! Another time I arrived unannounced when he and his gang were drunk and high. A few men, looking dangerous and making the hair stand up on the back of my neck, approached me with lustful eyes until he stood up and said something in SiSwati that was enough to send them quickly away. That same day, umntfwana wami came running out saying, “Mom, look! Look! Look at the marks he left on me. He beat me!” she said it almost as a dare to him. Like, I dare you to touch me when my mom is here. When I looked at him, shocked and upset, his gaze fell and he became embarrassed. And I’ll never forget the day when umntfwana wami ran up to me with delight and exclaimed, “He doesn’t beat me anymore! He doesn’t beat me anymore!”

I was taken back by this sudden outburst and only managed to ask, “Why?”  

“Because I told him that if he did that again I will tell you and you will call the police,” she beamed with a newfound freedom. Indeed, I had been telling her over and over and over that she didn’t have to endure his abuse, that he didn’t own her, and that I would do anything – anything to get her out. “He’s afraid of you,” she giggled at first, but then a solemn yet mystified look glazed over her eyes. “And he’s not afraid of anyone.”

Of course, I didn’t realize it in the moments, but he was “afraid” of me because I may have been the only one he truly respected. Eventually we started Hosea’s Heart and eventually my girl was placed in our safe home. But he continued his belief that he owned her. One year, after umntfwana wami had run away from her rehab program and I hadn’t heard from her in months, I got a call from her friend’s number, but all I heard was sobbing. Finally, because she couldn’t talk herself, her friend grabbed the phone and said urgently, “Get her quickly. Please. He’s trying to kill her.”

When I arrived, it wasn’t hard to find where they were. There was a large crowd gathering at a distance away from the man, who was standing outside someone else’s hut. But no one in the crowd ventured to intervene. I had found out on my way that he had tried dragging her back to his hut, demanding she live with him because he owned her. She refused. There was a commotion of aggression, he pulled a knife on her, but she escaped, running wildly to her friend’s hut. When I arrived he was still standing outside the hut, waiting for her to come out, and threatening the lives of both her and her friend.

But when he saw me, he didn’t look upset. He somehow looked relieved. Like he was two people inside of one body and didn’t enjoy doing the evil things he was doing. I approached with gentleness and put my hand on his arm to calm him down. “What’s going on?” I asked softly.

“She – she – she…” he stuttered, exasperated. He knew there was no excuse but still I could see the twisted hurt in his own heart. “She’s sleeping with other guys again! She’s a dirty girl! Look at all the things she’s done wrong these years!” He reminded me of the way my child had broken my own heart, how she’d keep running away, and call me only in times of desperation.

“I’m not here to defend her behavior. And it hurts me, too,” my eyes began to glisten but I pressed on. “But, you don’t own her. You do not have any right to her. You cannot threaten her like this.”

“But!...” he trailed on, getting riled up and yelling things to the girls inside.

“So, I’m going to tell you what I’m going to do. I don’t want her sleeping with other men either. So, I’m going to help her. You’re going to stand here. You will not touch her, do you hear me? I’m going inside to bring her out and we will leave together. You will not threaten or touch her or follow us. Is that clear?”

He didn’t respond.

I knocked, called into the hut and told my girl and her friend to come out – that it was now safe and nothing was going to happen.

She emerged with her suitcase, tears still streaming down her face and fear in her eyes. But he did just as I had told him. He didn’t move. He stood there, knife in his pocket, watching me escort her out, letting the good side win over the dark side.

The next time I saw him was a year ago when we brought the kids to visit him in prison. He had been in and out because of stealing. This time he had been in for two years and was soon going to be released, so we wanted to make positive contact before he came out. All of us, umntfwana wami included, visited him and it was actually beautiful. He interacted with the kids, told them he loved them, and apologized to umntfwana wami for everything. He seemed a different man, and he said prison changed him for the better. I had serious talks with him about getting rid of the notion that he owned her, and he said he understood. He asked if once he was out if he could come visit his kids once in awhile (they had been staying with me, though their mother had run away again). Then, he looked at me, almost with tears in his eyes and said, “Mary-Kate, thank you for taking care of my kids.”

Since he’s been out, I only saw him once when he came to say hi to Benji and Lucia. But I had heard he had been sick, in and out of the hospital. Until just last week, I received a message that he passed away.

I was shocked. I had hoped that I could visit him when I got back to Swazi so that I could at least pray over him, at least try one more time to share the gospel. But it’s too late now. All I can hope for is that someone else at the hospital did. That someone prayed with him, that he chose to receive Christ, that he pleaded for forgiveness and like the criminal who hung next to Jesus said, “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.”  I pray that his last breath was, “Jesus.”

Indeed, we forgive him, too in the name of Jesus. He wasn’t an evil man, but he was a broken man who made wrong choices. But then again, aren’t we all like this in our own way? Maybe not to that extent of stabbing someone, buying someone for sex, abusing someone, stealing, etc. But Jesus reminds us that even if we have hatred in our thoughts, or lust in our eyes, or evil in our hearts, we are the same grave sinners. And to think I once hated this very man that I judged made me on equal ground with him.

So, when we talk about the work of anti-sex trafficking and prostitution and sexual abuse, we must never objectify the very men who objectified the women. We must not forget to pray for these men. We must not forget that it is their own brokenness that led them to this and that they are just as in need of a Savior as any. Let us not forget that we ourselves are sinners in need of a Savior. Let us not forget.  

 So we pray for his soul, and for those he left behind. We pray for Lucia and Benji, who lost a father, and especially for Lucia, though she hardly knew him, she deeply loved him and prayed for him almost every night before bed. I believe that through her prayers, his soul was healed.