Stuck

In another conversation with a different girl who hasn’t been able to get beyond her scars, I tried explaining how God is still good even in times like these. But it’s hard for her to believe it. She said she wants the Lord, but she’s too full of pain. “What if you’re stuck?” she asked me. “Like, I want Jesus but I can’t. I’m just stuck.”

“What’s holding you back? What’s holding you down?”

“Unforgiveness. What they did to me.”

“What did they do to you?”

She gave me an eye roll. “Mama Kate, you know what they did to me.”

“Yes, sweetheart, I know. The rape is something I cannot fathom. What did that do to you? What else did they do that you can’t let go of?”

One tear escaped down her cheek and then quickly disappeared. “They shattered my dreams. They took everything. They took who I am and everything I could be.”

Seeing this girl battle having HIV has been so painful. How can I blame her for blaming God? I don’t want to undermine her pain or expect her to believe that God is good. Yet, how can I withhold the very Truth that will set her free?

“God loves you so much that no matter what they took from you, He can give you more. There is nothing the Lord cannot heal. Satan has come to steal, kill, and destroy, but he is no match for God’s power. There is no evil in this world that our God cannot redeem. That’s why He’s so good, so great, so loving. The evil that other people in their own sin and sick choices commit cannot overshadow the mighty love of Jesus Christ. They gave you death (HIV), but HE gives you life! They shattered your dreams, but HE will give you new, big, and better ones! They stripped away your identity and took away who you are, but He restores your brokenness by making you whole again. Making you new. Making you perfect. Making you undefiled. Born again.”

She smiles for the first time. I circle back to our previous discussion about forgiveness.

“Forgiving them is not about them. It’s about you taking hold of freedom. It’s about you letting go of the pain so you can grasp the hand of Jesus instead. Let him lead you. Renew you, restore you. Forgive them, so you can be free.”

I asked if she was ready to forgive them. She said she didn’t think so. I asked her if she wanted to practice forgiving them, and she looked at me like I was crazy.

“How about you write a letter. You love writing letters. Write a letter to your uncles naming everything you just told me and forgive them for it. Just to practice. Just try writing it out and see what happens.”

She paused in thought and then shrugged her shoulders. “Okay, it’s just practice.”

Twenty minutes later, she found me doing laundry and left the letter on my bed. “Here.”

“You have ruled my life in such a way I did not like. You made me to see myself as a bad person who doesn’t know who she is and where I belong and I can’t even find the purpose of living and of being alive.

But you know what? God will change the ashes into beauty and at the end of this life Jesus the Son of God will put me a crown of beauty. I can be a virgin again only if I believe in him. Who do you think you are? Jesus is my husband and mother Mary my mother and she love me so much.

She will carry me to heaven to see my Father, so forget about me and I will forget about you too. I used to cry every day and no one will pay attention and even my family did not care…I forgive them too. My face have scars it’s because of my granny and I forgive her too. I am sure that God will repay all of the things that was taken from me.

Some day there will be no sorrow but instead will be joy, happiness, peace, and adorations. I forgive you all.”

Stunned, I could only stare at the miracle in my hands. If this is “practice,” I can’t wait to see how many more chains will break through this girl’s life when she believes every word from her heart.

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Scars

I walk into the room, hardly making a noise, but she jolts out of a deep sleep at stares at me with enlarged, terrified white eyes. The first time it happened, I laughed because she looked so funny being scared awake like that. The second and third time, I gasped because her reaction scared me. I thought she was having bad dreams. But now… now I want to cry when it happens. Now I know. 

She’s staring at me, frozen. I can see her heartbeat in her throat but she barely breathes. A silent scream. 

“It’s okay,” I soothe. “It’s just me. I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

I still cannot imagine the nightmares this girl has lived through. It took her a long time to talk about her first rape. It took her several more years to tell me about the multiple rapes, the break-ins that would jolt her from her sleep. Sometimes the men would come in numbers, sometimes only one. Sometimes the men would rape her and leave. Sometimes the men would sleep next to her all night and leave in the morning. Those nights she never slept. She never moved. She never lived.

I asked if she ever screamed for help.

Her eyes narrowed and she pulled down her shirt to point to several scars near her breast. “They told me they’d kill me if I screamed. You don’t scream when the knife cuts you here.”

If I stopped to process this during our conversation, I would’ve been paralyzed with pain. Perhaps that’s why I’m so immersed in going at life here 90 mph 90% of the time. If I give myself moments of quiet, like right now as I type this, the tears will come. I weep for them. Years ago I prayed a prayer I didn’t understand at the time. Oh, but I understand it now. I said, “God, break my heart for what breaks yours.” And I’ve learned that sexual abuse is perhaps one of the biggest heartbreaks our Father experiences. He weeps.

But the story doesn’t end there. Because then He redeems. He rebuilds. He restores. And I’ve seen it in this girl’s life. Her remarkable faith, her unabashed hope, her unexplainable compassion. She has horrid memories of night, but she refuses to let the scars define her. Perhaps I can learn a thing or two from this incredible young woman in my charge.  

A Heart Like Jenga

Setting up this ministry has been like setting up the game, Jenga. Piece upon piece is laid, all interconnected to form one tower. The newer pieces are easiest to take away, while the oldest are, in many ways ,most integral because they form the foundation.

God gave me the first Jenga piece eight years ago. He broke my heart for a cause I never imagined could exist in such horror; he captured my heart for a girl I call my own. “She is my beloved,” He said. “Build her a home.” Satan mocked it when she was entranced by an evil spirit one Sunday, and the demon said, “Get away. We are building a home in here.”

For years she’s been battling these two forces – good and evil – choosing which should be her home.

“Let nothing move you,” God reminded me through Scripture. So, despite the failures or heartache of losing pieces, we’ve continued to build. Some girls have come and gone. Satan has snatched away some pieces (at least momentarily), leaving holes and exposing our weakness in the tower. Still, we lay the next piece.

Because Christ is my foundation, I haven’t been scared. Even when a girl whom I dearly love told me it was her task from Satan to kill me. Even when I’ve watched girls run away with pieces of my heart when they’ve left our home or rejected Christ. I’ve remained firm because I have set the Lord always before me; because He is at my right hand I will not be shaken. –Psalm 16:8

Until now.

Without knowing, piece by by piece – taken or built – I’ve let the tower become an idol. I’ve turned my mission into my identity. And satan has waited a long time to take advantage of this. To take out a foundational piece in hopes to watch me crumble.

Umtfwana wami.

For the past several months, I’ve seen her struggling. I’ve sensed her loneliness. I’ve perceived her doubts. Buried under the pieces of what Hosea’s Heart has become. Calling for my attention but never saying a word. I noticed her weight loss, the way she stopped doing her hair, and…ah, her eyes. I can read her eyes better than the alphabet. I tried to give her time, I convinced myself she was fine. After all, it was her own words she kept saying, “Mom, I’m fine.”

And so I built on. With impending urgent tasks for the ministry, working to meet social welfare’s standards, laying down the roots to our expansion project and balancing home school, two toddlers, and the needs of 14 other girls, I kept building instead of strengthening. I chose work over her. I told her I’d spend time with her but time always ran out. Errands, work – building the tower took priority. By the time I realized what I had become: a workaholic, it was too late.

The tower was shaking. An important piece now gone. A week after arriving to the U.S. this past month, I was given the news that umtfwana wami had left the ministry. That she wanted to do life on her own, without Hosea’s Heart, without me. “It’s okay,” I prayed, rejoicing that this could be her opportunity to truly surrender all to Christ. That this was her test of faith, and she would succeed. I had no doubt.

“She’s selling her body again,” the news came like an unforeseen tsunami. “I didn’t want to believe it,” Rachel told me, “But I saw her on the corner myself.” I felt like an arrow had pierced my heart. Images of her on the corner that I pass nightly on my way home made me sick to my stomach.

I was shocked. Still am. Still waiting for someone to wake me up from this terrible dream. My whole body went numb. Even ask my mom. She was with me the day I found out. I became like a robot, unfeeling and rude. I couldn’t breathe, yet air passed through me freely.  But worse news came. News from another volunteer whom umtfwana wami had told the reasons for her leaving. Leaving because I didn’t love her—blaming me for things beyond my control. Making me an enemy. It was as if the arrow that had pierced me was filled with venom. I’ve never felt so cold in all my life.

I wish this post had a happy ending. But to be honest, not all the venom has been sucked out of me. The tower of my heart is still shaking. So I’m admitting that I’m weak, vulnerable, in need of help navigating through the pain, the shock, the anger, the self-hatred. How could I have been so blind? So prideful? So idolizing? How could she be so selfish? So victimized? So ungrateful?

And yet God’s grace touches us both. Touches us equally, heals us profoundly. And I hear Him remind me again, “Let nothing move you…”

Satan may have succeeded in making my tower shake, but he can never make it fall. For Christ alone is my rock and my foundation. In Him, I will not be moved.  

“The LORD is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.” –Psalm 18:2